A community memorial ceremony in Kfar Aza on the two-year anniversary of the events of the Oct. 7 massacre, October 16, 2025. Photo by Tsafrir Abayov/FLASH90.
(Sept. 16, 2026 / JNS) A Gaza terrorist who U.S. prosecutors allege joined the Hamas assault on southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, can be heard in intercepted telephone calls laughing and discussing weapons and ammunition as the attack was underway, according to newly filed federal court exhibits. One of the transcripts, filed on Tuesday by prosecutors in the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Louisiana, records an 8:55 a.m. call involving Mahmud Amin Ya’qub al-Muhtadi, who entered the United States in September 2024 and was arrested in Louisiana in 2025 on immigration-fraud charges.
The Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel began at 6:30 a.m.
“How is the situation?” an interlocutor identified in the transcript as Abu Haytham asks al-Muhtadi.
“Ok, what type of things do you have?” al-Muhtadi replies.
Abu Haytham responds that he had rifles but “no ammunitions.”
“Ok, are you ready?” al-Muhtadi asks.
“Yes, ready!” Abu Haytham answers.
“Ok, bring the rifles, and whatever you have,” al-Muhtadi instructs.
“Ok, bring ammunitions,” Abu Haytham says, with the transcript indicating laughter.
“What?” al-Muhtadi replies.
“Man! That is not what I meant,” says Abu Haytham. “You are not normal.”
In a separate intercepted call from 9:33 a.m. filed by prosecutors, Al-Muhtadi laughed as he stated, “Ah, no, I went inside,” and told an unidentified caller to join him “at Malaka’s, inside.”
During the exchange, Al-Muhtadi repeatedly told those around him, “Be careful, don’t mention Al-Qassam! No one mentions Al-Qassam, boys,” and ordered, “Turn your phones off, boys.”
When the caller asked if he had “extra—ammunition and things,” Al-Muhtadi responded, “Yes, yes man. Yes. Yes.”
After the caller said, “So, I will come to you empty. I have nothing,” Al-Muhtadi instructed: “Just come, but if you can, secure a motorcycle to use it, in order to come inside?”
Prosecutors submitted the transcripts as an exhibit to a motion in limine seeking to compel the defense to provide transcripts of material it intends to use at trial. Prosecutors say the calls support their allegation that al-Muhtadi directly participated in the Hamas-led assault.
Court exhibits also include a Sept. 18, 2024, online exchange after al-Muhtadi arrived in the United States. An associate advised him not to contact “the resistance guys,” warning that he was “under surveillance for everything” and urging him not to publish anything.
“Um Amin, there is democracy here,” al-Muhtadi replied. “If you post Al-Sinwar’s picture, no one will tell you anything,” in an apparent reference to Yahya Sinwar, who was the leader of Hamas in the Gaza Strip and the primary mastermind behind the Oct. 7 attacks against Israel, before he was killed by Israeli forces in October 2024.
Fan’s Fake F1 Sign Sneaks Brutal Anti-Government Message onto Live Broadcast
When a major sporting event rolls into a highly politicized city, the live television cameras are bound to catch something the producers didn't intend to broadcast. But during the inaugural 2026 Spanish Grand Prix in Madrid, one fan pulled off a deceptive, viral masterpiece that managed to bypass the F1 broadcasting censors entirely.
The viral moment, which exploded across X (formerly Twitter) just hours before the race, featured a seemingly innocent fan expressing his dedication to Red Bull Racing's Liam Lawson. However, as the cameras zoomed in, the wholesome message vanished, instantly replaced by a brutal insult directed at Spain's Prime Minister.
As we saw during the live broadcast, the fan weaponized the predictability of the Formula 1 camera operators.
The fan stood near the front of the grandstands holding a large, highly visible poster. On the front, it read in bold, colorful letters: "I TRAVELLED 19,854 Km TO SEE LIAM LAWSON #LL30", complete with the New Zealand and Australian flags.
It was the exact type of wholesome, dedicated fan content that television directors love to feature during the pre-race buildup. Taking the bait, the F1 camera operator slowly zoomed in on the fan.
The moment the fan realized he was occupying the center of the live television feed, he swiftly flipped the cardboard sign around. The reverse side featured a completely different, highly legible message: "PERRO SÁNCHEZ HIJO PUTA" (Pedro Sánchez Son of a B—-h). The camera immediately jerked away, but the damage was already done.
The Political Context of the Madrid GP
But to understand why a fan would travel—or at least pretend to travel—nearly 20,000 kilometers just to insult the Spanish Prime Minister on global television, you have to look at the deeply fractured political landscape surrounding the new Madrid Grand Prix.
The arrival of Formula 1 to the streets of Madrid (specifically the IFEMA exhibition center area) has been heavily championed by right-leaning local politicians, most notably the President of the Community of Madrid, Isabel Díaz Ayuso. However, the event has faced massive pushback from left-wing groups protesting the privatization of public spaces and the use of public funds to host an event for billionaires.
The political divide was glaringly obvious during the race weekend. While King Felipe VI attended the event to show his support, Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez (who leads the left-wing PSOE party) and his cabinet ministers were notably absent.
Furthermore, the chant "Pedro Sánchez, hijo de puta" is not an isolated insult; it has become a highly popular, recurring anti-government rallying cry chanted at right-wing protests across Spain over the past few years. In fact, Spanish news outlet OKDiario reported that hundreds of fans were chanting the exact same phrase following the playing of the national anthem at the Madrid GP.
While the F1 broadcasting directors are undoubtedly furious that they were tricked into airing a localized political attack to millions of viewers worldwide, the internet has largely applauded the fan's tactical brilliance. Whether you agree with the politics or not, you have to respect the flawless execution of a perfect live-television troll.
Israel’s Defense Minister Israel Katz attends a ceremony on Aug. 13, 2026, marking the return to the former community of Ganim in the West Bank, which was evacuated in 2005 as part of Israel’s Gaza disengagement plan. Photo by Hilel Ben Or/Flash90.
(Sept. 15, 2026 / JNS) In a survey conducted this month among a sample of 663 Israeli Jews, 72% of respondents said they would not agree to an Israel Defense Forces withdrawal to the pre-Oct. 7, 2023, Gaza border without a security perimeter inside the Strip. The data, with the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) published on Monday, comes from surveys conducted on Sept. 1 and 3 for the Israeli Society Index.
Among Jewish respondents, 55% indicated they might agree or do agree that Israel “occupy the entire Gaza Strip and administer it through the IDF for at least several years.” Forty percent of Jewish respondents said they would not agree “under any circumstances.” Arab Israeli respondents overwhelmingly opposed occupation under any circumstances at 69%, compared to 63% who expressed opposition to the prospect in a similar JPPI survey published last year.
The survey also demonstrated greater optimism among Jews compared to last year’s survey. Last year, only 36% of Jewish respondents agreed with the assertion that “Israel is improving, and things will get even better,” compared to 43% this month.
The survey had a sample of 206 Arab respondents. Last year, 6% of the Arab respondents expressed optimism compared to 5% this year.
A majority of Jewish respondents (56%) said the rise of antisemitism internationally should not cause Israel’s government to change its policies, representing a very small change over 2025 (57%).
Asked about the upcoming election and the main candidates’ suitability to serve as prime minister, 46% of Jewish respondents said Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was best suited, followed by Gadi Eisenkot with 29% and Naftali Bennett with 14%.
Among Arabs, only 11% indicated Netanyahu was best suited, trailing Eisenkot (27%). A quarter of Arabs said “someone else” was best suited to be prime minister.
Fauda hits No.1 on Netflix in Lebanon and reaches top ten in several Arab countries
The success comes in spite of the fact the fifth season centres on the Hamas-led October 7 attacks
Israeli television drama Fauda has become the most-watched show on Netflix in Lebanon and broken into the platform’s top ten in several other Arab and Muslim countries, despite its latest season centred on the Hamas-led October 7 attacks.
The fifth season of the hit series climbed to number one in Lebanon just two days after its international release on Netflix on September 8, according to streaming rankings compiled by FlixPatrol.
Elsewhere in the region, it ranks sixth in Jordan and the United Arab Emirates, eighth in Bahrain and Qatar, ninth in Egypt, and tenth in Turkey, Morocco and Oman.
The show, which follows an elite Israeli undercover counter-terrorism unit, has also broken into Netflix’s top ten in dozens of countries worldwide.
The success is particularly striking given the subject matter of the new season, which is the first to have been made since the October 7 attacks.
The series includes a two-part flashback depicting the Hamas assault, accompanied by a viewer warning because of the nature of the scenes.
Season five follows Doron Kavillio, played by co-creator Lior Raz, as he struggles with trauma following October 7 and becomes embroiled in a revenge mission that develops into a dangerous undercover operation in Marseille.
Co-creator Avi Issacharoff has said the new season seeks to explore questions about revenge and the cycle of violence following October 7.
“Is the revenge worth it? Is continuing this very endless cycle of bloodshed [worth it]?” he told Netflix ahead of the international launch.
The season, which first aired in Israel in May, is available internationally in Arabic, Hebrew, French and English.
Fauda, created by Raz and Issacharoff, first aired in Israel in 2015 before becoming one of the country’s biggest international television successes.
Israeli officials warn Houthi control of the Bab al-Mandab Strait could trigger maritime anarchy unless an international coalition acts against the threat.
With the Houthis seizing control of the Bab al-Mandab Strait over the weekend, Israeli officials estimate that there will be no choice but to create an international coalition to act against the developing threat.
An Israeli official discussed the consequences of the development with Kan News and warned of a large-scale incident. "If an international coalition is not formed to act against the Houthi threat, anarchy could erupt in one of the world's most important shipping lanes."
The strategic strait, which was seized by the rebel forces, is a major shipping route through which hundreds of vessels pass en route from Asia to Africa and the Middle East.
The organization’s presence at this location gives it the operational capability to block maritime traffic using simple, inexpensive means, including Kornet missiles or explosive-laden boats, without requiring advanced radar systems or shore-to-sea missiles.
Despite the growing tensions, Israel’s political leadership is currently inclined to avoid direct intervention in the conflict between the Houthis and Saudi Arabia.
At the same time, US-led talks have begun with regional partners in an effort to formulate a response to the international threat.
Israel's oldest fruit just became its newest spirit: meet the distillery reviving a 2,000-yr-old tradition
"There's a very large amount of waste of dates that simply aren't beautiful enough to make it to the stores, but their sugar is perfect"
Just ten kilometers from Jordan, in a small community in northern Israel called Revaya, someone is doing something nobody's done here in two thousand years — turning dates into alcohol.
The distillery is called Zoara, a small, locally owned operation tucked into the Valley of Springs — a region long considered one of the most fertile landscapes in the ancient world.
For thousands of years, this stretch of the Jordan River Valley — from the Sea of Galilee down to the Dead Sea — was exactly that: abundant, full of palm trees and flowing water, according to the Bible itself. Dates were its most celebrated fruit, woven so deeply into life here that a nearby city, Zoar, was simply known as the City of Dates.
And today, Zoara, which is named after that very city, is working with the dates that aren't exactly celebrated — the ones farmers throw away because they're considered too "ugly" to sell.
The Backstory Nobody Told You
Every date harvest, farmers sort their crop by quality. Grade A goes to the fancy stores. Grade B, somewhere a step down. And then there's Grade C — dates that are identical in sugar and quality to the export-grade fruit, just not pretty enough to make it to a shelf. For years, they went straight in the trash.
Zoara’s founder Arnon Enoch looked at that waste and saw an opportunity instead.
"We're a distillery that makes alcohol from dates," he told me. "All the drinks we make are based on Medjool dates. We distill the dates and create Date Spirit. There's a very large amount of waste of dates that simply aren't beautiful enough to make it to the stores," he said. "But their sugar is perfect."
One industry's surplus becomes another's raw material — that's the whole business model in a sentence. And there's a lot of surplus to work with.
Israel isn't just a date producer — it's the world's largest exporter of Medjool dates, supplying somewhere between 50 and 60 percent of the entire global Medjool market. Total production runs around 67,000 metric tons, most of it grown along the Syrian-African Rift Valley — the Arava Desert, the Jordan Rift Valley, the Megillot region by the northern Dead Sea, and right here in the Valley of Springs. At that scale, even a small percentage graded "not pretty enough" adds up to an enormous amount of fruit with nowhere to go. That's the gap Zoara stepped into.
And they've done more with it than you'd expect from a single fruit. From one base spirit, Zoara now produces half a dozen different drinks — gin, arak, limoncello, date brandy and a mandarin liqueur among them — each one infused differently with botanicals pulled from the surrounding land.
A History That Vanished — and Came Back
The tradition of making alcohol from dates disappeared almost two thousand years ago.
So what happened? Empires happened. "It was interrupted because there were successive empires here, including the Romans, and then Muslims who grew dates but didn't drink alcohol," Enoch explained.
Long before that, he told me, people across the region — Jews in Babylon, Iraq and Morocco — made their own arak from dates at home. It just never got past the kitchen table. "And now we've arrived in modern Israel, and this is an opportunity to create a historical full circle."
It's the same instinct that turned rice into sake in Japan, or agave into tequila in Mexico — just with a few-thousand-year gap in the middle. Enoch actually founded the company back in 2021 under the name Jordan Spirits, before it became Zoara — years of research and experimentation into how to bring a lost craft back to life. He's been making alcohol for sixteen years total; this particular obsession is five years old.
Inside the Tanks
The process itself: Zoara buys the rejected dates — which, at over 60 percent sugar, are basically nature's sugar capsules — and ferment them with wine yeast to make an elegant date wine. That gets slowly distilled into a crystal-clear eau de vie, smooth and aromatic, carrying the dates' own natural notes of cocoa, caramel and vanilla. What comes off that still is a jaw-dropping 88 percent alcohol. I felt that one in my bones.
By the time it hits the bottle, it's cut down to around 40 percent for the gin and arak. And unlike whiskey or brandy, it doesn't need years in a barrel to get there — this spirit can be shaped while it's still young.
From there, every spirit takes its own path — infused with botanicals pulled straight from the surrounding land. Sage and tarragon from the Jordan riverbanks. Mulberry from the slopes above. Wild herbs foraged from the hills of Gilboa. Heritage mandarin peel from the valley itself. Nothing imported, nothing generic — fourteen different plants go into the gin alone.
That mandarin, by the way, has its own story — a heritage Jaffa variety that's basically extinct in commercial orchards now. Enoch's team knows the handful of surviving trees personally and hand-picks them each season, leaving the peels in the alcohol for their essential oils before distilling.
And people are noticing. The gin won a silver medal at the London Spirits Competition in 2024 — in, Enoch told me, one of the toughest categories there is.
What's Actually in the Glass
I didn't just hear about this — I tasted my way through it. There's a daiquiri built on date brandy and cardamom. A seasonal gin infused with mulberry and grapefruit peel, the mulberries grown in a nearby moshav. A cocktail called Jasmine, mixing the gin with that mandarin liqueur. And, of course, arak — because you can't do a spirit tasting in Israel without it.
Enoch makes the case that arak and dates were always meant to find each other: "It's anise-based, round and oily, and that's exactly what the date alcohol needs. It's very Mediterranean." He's not wrong.
Where It's Headed
Zoara is already making tens of thousands of bottles a year and just started exporting to Japan. Enoch's hoping the United States is next.
What struck me most, though, was something he said almost in passing — that Israel and its Arab neighbors are basically the only places on earth where Medjool dates grow at this scale. And since most of those countries don't produce alcohol, Zoara has, as Enoch put it, "essentially found ourselves sitting on the mother lode of dates."
The Bigger Picture
Zoara isn't a one-off, either. Michal Akerman, Deputy Head of the Valley of Springs Regional Council, told me the idea behind this distillery- turning waste into magic- is exactly the kind of thinking the region is trying to build around — because the old way of farming here isn't going to survive climate change.
The Valley of Springs has been an agricultural region since before the state existed — the kibbutzim here go back to the "Tower and Stockade" period. But it sits on the Syrian-African Rift, one of the most ecologically sensitive stretches of land in the country, and Akerman says climate change is hitting it hard. Traditional farming, done the traditional way, isn't going to cut it.
"We want to bring a new, younger generation into agriculture, because farmers are getting older," she said. "And for that, we need to be very creative."
She pointed to Zoara as the textbook example. "This valley grows a huge amount of dates... there's Grade A, Grade B, Grade C. Grade C usually goes in the trash. What the young people you're about to meet did was take the Grade C dates and turn them into an alcoholic beverage made from dates. That's innovation. That's creativity."
It's not just dates, either. The same region is turning discarded olive pits — which cause real problems in the soil if left to rot — into flour for bread and crackers. Fish farmers who used to raise carp, mullet and tilapia are now growing sea bream, sea bass and the first blue-and-white Israeli salmon. Different products, same logic: stop throwing away what doesn't fit the old model, and find a new one.
And none of it stops at the border. "Agriculture has no borders," Akerman told me. "It's not a country. When there's a pest, it crosses. When there's something good, that can cross too." Farmers here share water and pest data with Jordan constantly — because a date pest doesn't check passports.
So next time someone hands you a gin and tonic, ask where the gin's from. If it says Zoara — you're drinking two thousand years of history, and one region's bet on reinventing itself, dressed up as a night out with friends.
Israel is holding discussions ahead of a new flotilla expected to depart Italy in late October, while the IDF has already begun initial preparations to stop it.
Israel's defense establishment has begun operational discussions in recent days ahead of an expected new protest flotilla from Europe to the Gaza Strip, Channel 12 News reported.
Organizers of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition (FCC) announced recently that they intend to launch another flotilla toward the Gaza Strip in October.
The planned voyage will first make stops in Spain, Portugal and Italy before proceeding toward Gaza. Organizers said the flotilla will seek to breach what they described as "the illegal and deadly blockade imposed by Israel on Gaza."
Israeli intelligence officials currently assess that the initiative is relatively small in scale, involving just a few vessels and dozens of pro-Palestinian Arab activists.
However, the defense establishment is preparing for the possibility that the flotilla could grow in size as its departure date approaches.
In response to the intelligence, the IDF has begun making preliminary preparations. Discussions on the matter established a clear policy that Israel will not allow the vessels to breach the maritime blockade.
If the participants refuse to comply with instructions and warnings issued by security forces, it is believed that Shayetet 13 naval commandos could be required to board and take control of the vessels at sea.
In a previous flotilla attempt in June, the Global Sumud flotilla sought to breach the Israeli naval blockade of the Gaza Strip. Israeli Shayetet 13 naval commandos intercepted the vessels and arrested those aboard.
The Global Sumud flotilla consisted of 57 vessels and departed from Marmaris, Turkey, carrying hundreds of anti-Israel activists.
Among those detained was the sister of Ireland's President Catherine Connolly. The Irish President subsequently said she was “very proud" of her sister.
