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CBS News
24-06-2025
- CBS News
UM students recount harrowing escape from Israel amid missile strikes
Nearly two dozen University of Miami students who were trapped in Israel on Jewish heritage trips are back home safe. "I still am processing all of this and how to feel. I'm so glad to be back here in America, but my heart is still in Israel and with all of my brothers and sisters out there," said Ariella Green. Green was among the group of UM students who were trying to get out of Israel as missile strikes between Israel and Iran escalated. All flights to and from the country were canceled. "We drove to one of the ports in Tel Aviv and we took a boat to Cyprus and Cyprus had about 1000 kids trying to get in and stamp passports and all that," Green said. From Cyprus they were able to fly home through Europe to MIA on Sunday. "We had students from FSU with us, students from UCF, USF, U Miami, it was all of us together and it just that connection that we formed were all trauma bonded now forever," Green said. Her mother, Elizabeth Green, said she is happy to have her daughter home with her in Boca Raton. "I was so elated it was so elated it was just pure joy," Elizabeth said. "I never wanted her to be frightened there, so I always tried to be reassuring to her in the scariest of times. I was very scared." After having to rush to the bomb shelters multiple times, Ariella said it was just a taste of normal life in Israel. "The fear of like, oh my gosh it's off, get your shoes on, get your bag and let's go and make sure everyone is accounted for, that was scary," Ariella said.
Al Arabiya
18-06-2025
- Business
- Al Arabiya
Repatriation flights start for Israelis stranded abroad
Flights took off for Israel on Wednesday from Cyprus, airport sources and web flight tracking sites showed, ferrying home Israelis stranded abroad during the conflict with Iran. Israel's airspace has been closed since the two countries began trading attacks on Friday, stranding tens of thousands whose flights to Tel Aviv were cancelled. Israel announced special flights for the repatriation of its nationals on Tuesday. One flight operated by Arkia left Cyprus's Larnaca airport at 07:25 a.m. (0425 GMT) for Tel Aviv. Nine more were expected to depart Wednesday for Haifa, and four for Tel Aviv, carrying about 1,000 people, sources in airport operator Hermes said. Israel's Transportation Ministry has said as many as 150,000 Israelis are abroad, with about a third trying to get home. Large numbers have converged on Cyprus, the European Union member nation closest to Israel. Earlier on Wednesday, a cruise ship arrived in Cyprus carrying 1,500 participants in a Jewish heritage program who had left Israel on Tuesday.
Reuters
18-06-2025
- Business
- Reuters
Repatriation flights start for Israelis stranded in Cyprus
NICOSIA, June 18 (Reuters) - Flights took off for Israel on Wednesday from Cyprus, airport sources and web flight tracking sites showed, ferrying home Israelis stranded abroad during the conflict with Iran. Israel's airspace has been closed since the two countries began trading attacks on Friday, stranding tens of thousands whose flights to Tel Aviv were cancelled. Israel announced special flights for the repatriation of its nationals on Tuesday. One flight operated by Arkia left Cyprus's Larnaca airport at 07:25 a.m. (0425 GMT) for Tel Aviv. Nine more were expected to depart Wednesday for Haifa, and four for Tel Aviv, carrying about 1,000 people, sources in airport operator Hermes said. Israel's Transportation Ministry has said as many as 150,000 Israelis are abroad, with about a third trying to get home. Large numbers have converged on Cyprus, the European Union member nation closest to Israel. Earlier on Wednesday, a cruise ship arrived in Cyprus carrying 1,500 participants in a Jewish heritage programme who had left Israel on Tuesday.
Yahoo
15-06-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
Fathers Don't Just Protect—They Prepare
The Atlantic Daily, a newsletter that guides you through the biggest stories of the day, helps you discover new ideas, and recommends the best in culture. Sign up for it here. My grandfather was born in 1882 in the small Ukrainian town of Zawale, which was part of the vast, multiethnic Austro-Hungarian empire. In 1914, this mega-state, like so many European nations, threw itself into a world war with frenzied enthusiasm. My grandfather later told my father how puzzled he had been to watch thousands of happy young men—really still just boys—boarding trains in Vienna, cheering as they went off to what was almost certainly their death. He did not volunteer, he avoided conscription, and he survived. His son, my father, was born in Vienna in 1927. He was 6 years old when Adolf Hitler became the chancellor of Germany. Austria still had a few years of freedom left, and my grandfather used them well: Because an archive had burned down, several of his family documents had to be reissued. Through skillful manipulation, he managed to turn himself from a Jew into what the Nazis would later classify as a 'half Jew.' And as Germany's annexation of Austria became inevitable, he came up with an especially daring idea: In a court proceeding, he had his wife, my grandmother, declared the illegitimate daughter of the janitor in her parents' building. He bribed witnesses who testified that her mother had had an affair with that janitor. It worked: My grandmother was officially declared the daughter of an Aryan. And as a result, my family survived. This Father's Day, I find myself reflecting not only on paternal love but on paternal foresight—the clarity and focus it takes to see what others might not, to act before the danger has a name. Raising children is always a challenge, but never more so than in times of deep insecurity about what the future will look like. To meet that challenge, it can help to look at the generations that came before. [Anne Applebaum: This is what Trump does when his revolution sputters] Despite my grandfather's efforts, life for my father quickly changed under the Nazis. In swimming school, two boys nearly drowned him while the lifeguard looked on, grinning. When my father finally emerged, gasping for breath, the lifeguard laughed and said, 'Can't swim, Jew?' Around the same time, the man who lived in the neighboring house began watching my father and his sister with dark, brooding looks. But only after Hitler's army had entered Austria did he begin shouting, each and every time they passed: 'Jewwws!' My father would recount these events with amused detachment. He had already learned as a teenager to recognize the profound absurdity of Nazism—the deep, grotesque nonsense of what Charlie Chaplin and Ernst Lubitsch were turning into dark political comedies at the same time in Hollywood. A few months later, two men came to my grandparents and ordered them to leave their house with their children. They moved into a small apartment, and their home was 'bought'—at a tiny, symbolic price—by the 'Jewww'-shouting neighbor. Corruption is the most corrosive force in a democracy, but in a dictatorship it can save you. Once a month, a Gestapo officer would appear at my grandparents' apartment and take something valuable—a piece of furniture, a porcelain plate, a painting. In return, the file on my grandparents would sink a little lower in the stack on his desk. At my father's school, the boys had to line up, and all those tall enough were asked—in fact, ordered—to volunteer for the SS. My father raised his hand and said, 'Requesting permission to report—I'm one-quarter Jewish!' To which the SS man shouted in disgust, 'Step back!' And so my father was spared from becoming a war criminal in Hitler's service. In almost every situation, having Jewish ancestry was a mortal danger. But in this one instance, it became his salvation. In the final months of the war, my father was arrested after all and spent three months in a concentration camp close to Vienna, constantly at risk of death. But after the war had ended, there was still a striking atmosphere of leniency toward the perpetrators. When he went to the local police station to give a statement about his time in the camp, he was met with scornful dismissiveness. 'It wasn't really that bad, was it?' the officer asked. 'Aren't we exaggerating a little?' It was then that my father decided to move from Austria to Germany, paradoxically—because there, under pressure from the occupying powers, some reckoning with the past was taking place. Austria, meanwhile, had successfully cast itself as the war's first victim. [Timothy W. Ryback: Hitler used a bogus crisis of 'public order' to make himself dictator] I tell my son, who never met his grandfather (as I never met mine), that my father was obsessed throughout his life with the idea that what had happened once could happen again—not just to Jews, but to anyone. Of course, my son, raised in a seemingly stable world, feels profoundly safe. And that's a good thing. But we are currently living in the United States, a country that for my grandfather was a refuge impossible to reach, but that is currently in the throes of what some serious scholars now describe as an authoritarian power grab. And even in Germany, where we could easily return, a right-wing extremist party is now so strong that it might come in first in the next election. So I think about the responsibility of raising a child in a time when the future is impossible to predict. I think, more and more, of my grandfather, who in 1914 watched people plunge into war hysteria and decided to resist their excitement, and who would later take very unconventional steps—steps that would, after history took a turn for the worse, ensure his family's survival. My grandfather understood the psychology of fanaticism very early; my father understood the stupidity and mediocrity of the people whom the dictatorship empowered, without mistaking them for harmless clowns. Now, as we watch society once again take a dangerous turn—as books are banned, people are sent to foreign prisons without even a court order, and soldiers are deployed against protesters—I wonder what stories my future grandchildren will one day need to remember. Memory is not a picture book; it's a tool. And fatherhood, especially in times like these, is not just about protection. It is about preparation. Article originally published at The Atlantic
Al Jazeera
04-06-2025
- General
- Al Jazeera
Photos: Iraq's Jewish community saves a long-forgotten shrine
In a bustling district of Baghdad, workers are labouring diligently to restore the centuries-old shrine of a revered rabbi, seeking to revive the long-faded heritage of Iraq's Jewish community. Just a few months ago, the tomb of Rabbi Isaac Gaon was filled with rubbish. Its door was rusted, the windows broken, and the walls blackened by decades of neglect. Now, marble tiles cover the once-small grave, and at its centre stands a large tombstone inscribed with a verse, the rabbi's name, and the year of his death: 688. A silver menorah hangs on the wall behind it. 'It was a garbage dump, and we were not allowed to restore it,' said Khalida Elyahu, 62, the head of Iraq's Jewish community. Iraq's Jewish community was once among the largest in the Middle East, but today has dwindled to just a handful of members. Baghdad now has only one synagogue remaining, but there are no rabbis. The restoration of the shrine is being funded by the Jewish community, at an estimated cost of $150,000. The project will bring 'a revival for our community, both within and outside Iraq', Elyahu said. With the support of Iraqi officials, she expressed hope to restore further neglected sites. There is little information about Rabbi Isaac. During a visit to the tomb earlier this year, Iraq's National Security Adviser Qasim al-Araji stated that the rabbi had been a finance official. Rabbi Isaac was a prominent figure during the Gaonic period, also known as the era of Babylonian academies for rabbis. The title 'Gaon' is likely to refer to his role as the head of one such academy. His name was cited in the 10th century by another rabbi, who recounted a story that is not known from any other source, according to Professor Simcha Gross of the University of Pennsylvania. According to the account, Rabbi Isaac led 90,000 Jews to meet Ali ibn Abi Talib, the fourth Islamic caliph and a relative of the Prophet Muhammad, who is revered by Shia Muslims as the first imam, during one of his conquests in central Iraq. 'We have no other evidence for this event, and there are reasons to be sceptical,' Gross noted. Nothing else is known about Rabbi Isaac, not even his religious views. According to biblical tradition, Jews arrived in Iraq in 586 BC, taken as prisoners by the Babylonian king, Nebuchadnezzar II, after he destroyed Solomon's Temple in Jerusalem. In Iraq, they compiled the Babylonian Talmud. Thousands of years later, under Ottoman rule, Jews comprised 40 percent of Baghdad's population. As in other Arab countries, the history of Iraq's Jews shifted dramatically after the Palestinian Nakba, meaning 'catastrophe' in Arabic, and the founding of Israel in 1948. Soon after, almost all of Iraq's 135,000 Jews went into exile. Decades of conflict and instability — Saddam Hussein's dictatorship, the United States-led invasion in 2003, and subsequent violence — further diminished the community. Today, 50 synagogues and Jewish sites remain in Iraq, according to Elyahu. Most are in ruins, with some repurposed as warehouses.
