Israel Update 24.12.25

AFTERMATH OF BONDI ATROCITY

Heroism

An Israeli, Gefen Biton, 30, ran towards the gunfire to help others and was critically wounded. His friend Tom Cohen said, “The video shows Gefen’s mentality. He was unarmed, but he chose to confront the danger, put himself in the line of fire and try to save others. He had already gotten out of harm’s way and could easily have fled to save himself, but he chose to go back and help more people….. Now we’re waiting for him to wake up.”

Ahmed al Ahmed who disarmed one of the terrorists, survived the attack despite severe injuries. Tragically, among those murdered while attempting to stop the terrorists were Boris & Sofia Gurman and Reuven Morrison.

Reports herehere& here

Palestinians react

After the West Bank-based Ramallah News outlet shared a story about the life-saving actions taken by Ahmed al Ahmed, 43, many of the outlet’s readers trashed the Muslim hero and prayed that he would not recover from his serious injuries. While Ahmed’s heroism served as a “feel-good story” for most of the world, at least 75% of more than 1,000 comments on the Ramallah News post were hostile.Reports herehere& here

ENVIRONMENTAL TERRORISM

Israeli Government ministers have defined the threat posed by Palestinian waste-burning fires in Judea and Samaria as a “harm to national security,” following an emergency meeting with local authority heads affected by the problem.
Officials were presented with “a troubling situation assessment indicating that this is a far more widespread and severe phenomenon than previously described, constituting a serious and ongoing harm to the environment, quality of life, and public health of residents in the area, including dangerous exposure to toxic and polluting substances.” The Defence Ministry will work with contractors to extinguish fires and remove waste, and to establish a waste disposal site in the area. “We will not allow residents of communities near the seam line to inhale smoke that poisons and harms their health.”Report here

GAZA

“Project Sunrise,” is the Trump administration’s pitch to foreign governments and investors to turn Gaza’s rubble into a futuristic coastal destination. A team led by top White House aides Jared Kushner and Steve Witkoff have developed a draft proposal to convert the enclave into a gleaming metropolis. In 32 pages of PowerPoint slides, the plan outlines steps to take Gaza residents from tents to penthouses and from poverty to prosperity.
However, Steven Cook, a senior fellow for the Middle East at the Council on Foreign Relations, said, “Nothing happens until Hamas disarms. Hamas will not disarm, so nothing will happen.”   Report here (paywall)

President Trump’s phased peace plan for Gaza is hitting obstacles in Hamas’s refusal to disarm and Israel’s unwillingness to retreat from the enclave until that happens. The second phase of the plan requires Hamas to give up governance, disarm and transfer control of the territory to an international force of troops and a technocratic committee of Palestinians who would run it.
But Hamas still controls half of Gaza and refuses to disarm. Most countries won’t send troops into Hamas territory as long as the terrorist group remains there. In Trump’s eagerness to secure a deal that would stop the fighting, analysts said Washington was willing to move ahead without a clear commitment from Hamas to disarm.Report here (paywall)

U.S. Senator Lindsey Graham said recently that Hamas must be given a deadline for relinquishing its weapons, after which Israel should have a green light to return to combat operations across Gaza.The envisioned multi-national International Stabilization Force for Gaza has no chance of success until “Hamas has been disarmed,” said Graham. “There’s no international stabilizing force that’s going to come in here and fight.” Report here

The IDF has acknowledged that tens of millions of dollars have been raised by Hamas and transferred to their military wing over the past year. Report here

IRAN

Israeli officials have grown increasingly concerned that Iran is expanding production of its ballistic missile programme, and reportedly are preparing to brief President Trump about options for attacking it again. Left unchecked, Iran’s production of ballistic missiles could increase to as many as 3,000 per year. “The threat of the missiles is very real, and we weren’t able to prevent them all last time,” said a former Israeli official. Report here

DEFENCE

In a major battlefield revolution the IDF Artillery Corps  has taken held delivery of its first domestically produced wheeled self-propelled howitzer. The wheeled SIGMA 155, produced at an Elbit Systems plant in Yokneam, combines automation with long-range precision and marks the IDF’s forst major new ground combat platform since the Merkava tank.Report here

REGIONAL CO-OPERATION

Israel, Greece, and Cyprus reaffirmed their commitment to mutual support and shared strategic interests at a meeting between their leaders in Jerusalem on Monday. They discussed cooperation in many fields including energy, technology, connectivity and  security. Report here

SYRIA

The government of Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa has apparently given de facto recognition to Israeli control and sovereignty over the Golan Heights, dropping the strategic plateau from an updated state map of Syria. Report here

KABYLIA

Kabylia is a mountainous region in northern Algeria inhabited predominantly by Amazigh (Berber) populations, estimated at 3-4 million people, possessing a distinct language and a continuous collective identity.   Following Algeria’s independence in 1962, efforts by the Amazigh population to secure autonomy, decentralization, or constitutional recognition were consistently rejected. On December 14, 2025, the government-in-exile of the Movement for the Self-Determination of Kabylia (MAK) proclaimed the independence of Kabylia in Paris. Kabylia is secular, pro-Western, and opposed to political Islam. Its leadership has expressed solidarity with Israel, including following the events of October 7, 2023. Reports here & here

MEDICAL RESEARCH

Researchers from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have discovered a tiny RNA molecule that can potentially lead the way toward treatments against antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Called PreS, the molecule enables a bacteria-eating virus known as a bacteriophage — or phage, for short — to take control of a bacterial cell and use it for its own growth, eventually destroying the bacterium. Report here

How an Israeli peanut snack “Bamba” helped crack the problem of peanut allergies. In the early 2000s, researchers spotted that Israeli children, whose consumption of Bamba is widespread,  had a tenth of the peanut allergy rates of British Jewish children. In 2015 a study looked at whether high-risk children were less likely to develop allergies if you gave them peanuts early. The results were stunning: a huge drop in allergies. Across the world, advice changed. In parallel, we also increased investigations into whether, for those already suffering allergies, the best approach was not avoidance but controlled, careful exposure.Today, the NHS is running trials of “allergy immunotherapy” , a posh title for giving people with peanut allergy very small amounts of peanut. It works. Report here (paywall)

BUSINESS

US chip giant Nvidia has announced that it will build a “multibillion-shekel” research and development campus in the northern town of Kiryat Tivon, bringing thousands of jobs to a region outside Haifa with designs of creating a tech hub. Construction on the 160,000-square-metre tech campus is expected to begin in 2027 and be completed by 2031, Nvidia’s eighth such centre in the country. Report here

SEASONAL

After Israel’s conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon forced the annual Liturgical Festival of religiously themed classical music to relocate to Jerusalem last year, the event has returned to its home city, Nazareth with 5 concerts held over 3 days in 2 churches performed by the Galilee Orchestra along with Christmas markets and walking tours of Nazareth.

Polyphony is the first classical music conservatory in Israel’s Arab community, and besides introducing Nazareth’s youth to classical music and performance, the conservatory has created youth ensembles of Arab and Jewish teens who play chamber music together and participate in dialogue sessions through music. Report here

The Jerusalem Municipality held its annual distribution of free Christmas trees to the city’s Christian residents in December 2025.Short video “Festive Cheer in Jerusalem” shows distribution. Video here

The KKL-JNF also resumed its traditional distribution in 2025 after a hiatus, providing trees mainly to diplomatic missions, embassies, and Christian organizations. Report here

COMMENT & OPINION

JPost Editorial: Saudi Arabia cannot ask the world to treat it as a partner for peace while a sermon broadcast from Mecca vilifies Jews and sanctifies their enemies. In an op-ed on Dec. 17, Dr. Edy Cohen, an expert in the Arab world, described the weekly sermon delivered from Islam’s holiest site where Sheikh Salih bin Abdullah bin Humaid called on God to punish the Jews.
Such sermons provide moral justification, telling millions of listeners that hostility to Jews is righteousness. Saudi authorities have long regulated mosque preaching – including requiring imams to commit to not using Friday sermons for inflammatory remarks – and dismissing preachers who cross official redlines. What is said from those pulpits should be treated as state-signalled messaging.
Before normalization, Saudi Arabia must first end official, or state-tolerated, antisemitic incitement, especially from platforms tied to the holy sites. If the price of normalization is to normalize the idea that Jews may be cursed from the world’s most revered pulpit, while diplomats applaud “progress,” then the deal is not peace; it is a mirage, and it will not protect anyone Editorial here

Khaled Abu Toameh: If you want to disarm Hamas and other Palestinian terror groups and promote peace and coexistence between Palestinians and Israelis, Pakistan is the wrong choice. Pakistan, which does not recognize Israel, has already made it clear that it is “not ready” to disarm Hamas…Pakistan – one of the greatest sponsors of cross-border terrorism and a hub of global Jihadist organisations – contributed to the military build-up of Hamas…. Hamas has its ideological roots in Pakistan. Article here