Israel News. Reports and Observations. 24 August 2026, 11 Elul 5785.
Contents:
1. American Jews bore brunt of religion-based hate crimes in 2025, FBI data shows.
2. Where is the Ark of the Covenant today? A Torah scholar weighs in on the leading theories
3. Turkey practices Population Expulsion and Transfer Against Kurdish and Yezidi Populations.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
1. American Jews bore brunt of religion-based hate crimes in 2025, FBI data shows
https://israel365news.com/420714/american-jews-bore-brunt-of-religion-based-hate-crimes-in-2025-fbi-data-shows/
Extracts:
Jews were the target of 1,528 hate crime incidents in the United States in 2025, according to FBI data released this week, accounting for 63 percent of all religion-based hate crimes reported nationwide despite making up roughly two percent of the American population.
The figures place Jews seven times ahead of the next most targeted religious group, Muslims, who were the victims of 205 hate crime incidents last year. Black Americans were the most targeted group overall, with 2,811 hate crimes recorded against them, though the FBI noted the Black population in the US is roughly six times the size of the Jewish population.
Overall hate crime incidents in the United States fell from 11,679 in 2024 to 10,881 in 2025, a decline the FBI attributed to a broader drop in violent crime. Anti-Jewish hate crimes fell alongside that trend, dropping 21 percent from a record 1,938 incidents in 2024. Even with that decline, 2025 was the third-highest year for anti-Jewish hate crimes on record, and the total still worked out to an antisemitic hate crime somewhere in America every six hours.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said the decline in raw numbers should not be mistaken for improvement. �Behind every one of these numbers is a person who was targeted simply for being Jewish, whether through vandalism, intimidation, or violence,� Greenblatt said
Greenblatt noted that 2025 was the deadliest year for antisemitic attacks in the Jewish diaspora in more than three decades, with 20 people murdered worldwide simply for being Jewish
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
2. Where is the Ark of the Covenant today? A Torah scholar weighs in on the leading theories
https://israel365news.com/420591/where-is-the-ark-of-the-covenant-today-a-torah-scholar-weighs-in-on-the-leading-theories/
Adam Eliyahu Berkowitz
Extracts:
Palvanov�s class opened by tracing a history of Jewish temples far broader than the First and Second Temples most people learn about. The Northern Kingdom�s King Jeroboam built two rival temples at Dan and Bethel, complete with golden calves, specifically to keep his subjects from pilgrimaging south to Jerusalem. The Samaritans, whom Palvanov describes as descendants of populations resettled in the land who later adopted a modified version of the Torah, built their own temple on Mount Gerizim, one the Hasmoneans eventually destroyed. Centuries later, in Ptolemaic Egypt, a priest named Onias built a functioning Jewish temple at Leontopolis, near Alexandria, that operated for roughly two hundred years until the Romans destroyed it in 73 CE, three years after the fall of Jerusalem�s own Temple. An even older Jewish temple, according to archaeological evidence Palvanov cites, stood on the island of Elephantine in the Nile, likely built by Jewish soldiers stationed there, until the Persians destroyed it around 410 BCE. �There�s so much more to the history of Jewish temples than we know,� Palvanov said. �It�s not just the First and Second Temple, and that�s it.�
�Throughout Tanakh, the cherubim are described as warriors with swords� they�re not cute babies with bird wings,� he said, citing the composite lion, eagle, ox, and human features Ezekiel assigns them in his vision of the divine chariot. He noted the striking resemblance to armored guardian figures found across the ancient Near East, including Babylonian and Assyrian temple sculptures known as lamassu and shedu.
Jewish tradition splits on this from the outset. Palvanov noted that the Mishnah�s own wording, describing the Ark as having been �taken� rather than �hidden,� has led some Sages to conclude that it was seized and destroyed by the Babylonians when the First Temple fell, and that its fate thereafter remained unknown. The competing position, codified by the Rambam, holds that King Solomon foresaw the Temple�s eventual destruction and had a hidden chamber built beneath the Temple Mount to conceal the Ark during times of crisis. Palvanov pointed to a passage in Divrei HaYamim describing King Josiah, one of the last kings before the First Temple�s destruction, instructing the Levites to �bring the Ark� back to its place. In Maimonides� reading, this is evidence that the Ark was still on-site centuries after Solomon, simply hidden rather than gone.
... a long-standing account involving Rabbi Shlomo Goren, the IDF�s chief rabbi who blew the shofar at the Western Wall in 1967, and Rabbi Yehuda Getz, longtime rabbi of the Western Wall. According to the account Palvanov relayed, the two rabbis, digging in tunnels beneath the Temple Mount around 1981, located a hidden chamber and reported seeing the Ark itself inside it. Palvanov was careful to frame this as an unverified legend rather than confirmed fact.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
3. Turkey practices Population Expulsion and Transfer Against Kurdish and Yezidi Populations.
Background.
Al Queda (Islamic State) was created in Peshawar, Pakistan, mainly by Sunni Arab veterans of the Soviet�Afghan War (1979-1989). Osama bin Laden was one of its leaders.
In 1998, al-Qaeda conducted the US embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people. The U.S. retaliated by launching Operation Infinite Reach, against al-Qaeda targets in Afghanistan and Sudan. In 2001, al-Qaeda carried out the September 11 attacks, resulting in nearly 3,000 deaths, long-term health consequences of nearby residents, damage to global economic markets, the triggering of drastic geo-political changes as well as generating profound cultural influence across the world. US forces retaliated and Ben Ladin was killed in May, 2011.
The branch of Al-Queda in Iraq became the Islamic State of Iraq after 2006. It was responsible for numerous sectarian attacks against Shias during the Iraqi insurgency.(2003-2011) meaning the US invasion of Iraq.
Meanwhile the Islamic State was created in Iraq in 1999 and affiliated itself with Al-Queda in 2004. Later it separated itself from Al-Queda and hostilities broke out between the two. Meanwhile, the Syrian Civil War (2011-2024) erupted out as part of the wider Arab Spring. The ruler of Syria Bashar al Assad was an Alawi. The Alawis were were strong in the northwest of Syria and were aided by Muslims from the Damascus area. The Alawis were recent converts to Islam and were mistrusted by most Muslims.
The Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), and by its Arabic acronym Daesh, came to occupy a significant amount of territory in Iraq and Syria from 2013 to 2016, In 2014, the group proclaimed itself to be a worldwide caliphate and claimed religious and political authority over all Muslims worldwide, a claim not accepted by the vast majority of Muslims. By the end of 2015, its self-declared caliphate ruled an area with a population of about 12 million.
Isis lost most of its territory between 2017 and 2019. Isis was ground down by the forces surrounding it especially those backed by the USA and the Russians.
This brings us to Kurdistan.
Consisting of 30�45 million people, the global Kurdish population is largely concentrated in Kurdistan, but significant communities of the Kurdish diaspora exist in parts of West Asia beyond Kurdistan and in parts of Europe, most notably including: Turkey's Central Anatolian Kurds (these spread through Eastern Anatolia in 1923 following the Armenian genocide in what was then Western Armenia), as well as Istanbul Kurds; Iran's Khorasani Kurds; the Caucasian Kurds, primarily in Azerbaijan and Armenia; and the Kurdish populations in various European countries, namely Germany, France, Sweden, and the Netherlands.
Kurds comprise anywhere from 18 to 25% of the population in Turkey, The total number of Kurds in 1991 was placed at 22.5 million, with 48% of this number living in Turkey, 24% in Iran, 18% in Iraq, and 4% in Syria.
In the region of southern Turkey bordering on Syria the majority population is, or was, Kurdish. Yezidis (often considered part of the Kurds) are also important. So too, the neighboring areas of Syria and Iraq are also Kurdish or Yezidis. These areas have now been occupied by Turkey and many of their Yezidi and Kurdish inhabitants deported. Turkey employed former Isis operatives in these operations. By 2025,in March 2025, the Syrian Civil War had killed over 600,000, Both Syria and Turkey have an interest in removing Kurds and Yazisi from their border regions and that is what they are doing. The province of Afrin in southern Turkey is mainly Kurdish but is now experiencing anti-Kurdish policy of deportation by the Turkish authorities of Erdogan (pronounced "Erdowan")..
Northern Syria borders Turkey.
https://israel365news.com/420597/should-palestinians-be-relocated-to-syria-turkey-already-thinks-so/
Extracts:
What followed bears out Turkey�s stated intention. Rudaw reported in 2020 that Afrin�s Kurdish population share had collapsed from 97 percent to 34.8 percent in under two years, citing the same Afrin-based Human Rights Organization: roughly 298,700 Kurds remaining against 458,000 people resettled from Arab-majority Idlib, Ghouta, Homs, and Deir ez-Zor. Spanish journalist David M. Ma��, who specializes in Kurdish affairs, gave an independent, lower estimate to the reporting outlet IPS in 2023: barely 20 percent of the original Kurdish population remains. The two figures, arrived at separately, describe the same collapse. More than 20 new settlements have been built in Afrin alone, part of roughly 100 across the Turkish-occupied areas of northern Syria, according to data from North Press Agency cited in that same IPS report.
Shekh Qamber, a Yazidi farmer who fled the village of Qastel Jindo, told The Independent in 2018 that Islamist fighters allied with Turkey forced Yazidis to convert to Islam under threat of death and destroyed Yazidi temples and places of worship.
One further claim in the file, reported by Medya News in 2023 and citing the Kurdish-aligned Hawar News Agency, alleges an organized effort to relocate roughly 250,000 Gazans, some Hamas-linked, into camps in Afrin and Al-Bab as part of a coordinated arrangement between Turkey, Qatar, and Hamas.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^