Jerusalem News Now. News and Views Regarding Israel and the World from a Brit-Am Perspective.16 December 2025, 26 Kislev 5785.
Contents:
1.'It is simply too hot to handle': 2024 was Arab region's hottest year on record.
2. Massacre in Australia: Hanukkah in the Shadow of Terror.
3. CHANUKAH TERROR: SHOOTING ATTACK IN AUSTRALIA KILLS AT LEAST 16, INCLUDING TWO CHABAD SHLUCHIM.
4. ASIO Probed Sydney Terrorist For ISIS Ties Years Before Chanukah Massacre
5. 'Heroic' bystander who wrestled gun from Bondi Beach attacker is son of refugees and father to two.
6. Immigrant from Syria Wrestles with Terrorist.
7. Albanese: Shocked by Anti-Semitism While Generating It.
8. Why Allow Him 6 Guns?
9. How the Jews Helped Save Ireland and no-one recognized it!
Most Irishmen do not even know about it!
10. Another detail about the Sydney beach terror attack
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1. 'It is simply too hot to handle': 2024 was Arab region's hottest year on record, first-of-its-kind climate report reveals
https://www.livescience.com/planet-earth/climate-change/the-arab-region-a-swath-from-morocco-to-the-united-arab-emirates-just-had-its-hottest-year-on-record?utm_term
The Arab region - a vast swath of 22 countries in northern Africa and the Middle East -had its hottest year on record in 2024, according to a first-of-its-kind climate report. In 2024, the region had an alarmingly high average temperature that was 1.9 degrees Fahrenheit (1.08 degrees Celsius) higher than the annual average temperature from 1991 to 2020, the report found.
The rate of warming in the region is accelerating alongside an increase in climate-related events such as flooding and heatwaves, according to the first State of the Climate in the Arab Region report, published by the World Meteorological Organization (WMO) on Dec. 4.
"2024 was the hottest year on record for the Arab region -a continuation of a long-term trend," WMO Secretary-General Celeste Saulo said in a statement. Some heat waves, she said, are "pushing society to the limits. Human health, ecosystems and economies can't cope with extended spells of more than 50 degrees Celsius [122 F] it is simply too hot to handle."
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2. Massacre in Australia: Hanukkah in the Shadow of Terror
https://aish.com/massacre-in-australia-hanukkah-in-the-shadow-of-terror/?src=ac
Extract:
The light of Hanukkah this year is dimmed and diminished even before it is lit. The news of a horrific terror attack at a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach in Australia has shaken us to the core. Eleven innocent people were murdered at the time of this writing, among them the Chabad Rabbi, Rabbi Eli Schlanger. Australia has become a hotbed of antisemitism, met far too often with a grossly insufficient response by government and authorities.
Hanukkah begins with a painful reminder that when our enemies march to the chant of 'globalize the intifada,' they mean it. And they must be confronted.
It is far too soon to truly process or respond to such a heinous crime, but anyone with a sensitive soul cannot avoid the question that rises unbidden in the heart. How do we light candles, gather with family, sing songs of gratitude, spin the dreidel, and eat latkes in the shadow of such devastating loss and tragedy?
Two years ago, six holy hostages held captive by the evil Hamas terrorists gathered around a makeshift menorah fashioned from paper cups to light Hanukkah candles. In an act of cruelty meant to compound the suffering of the hostage families, their wicked captors recorded the moment on video. That footage was later discovered by the IDF in Gaza, shared privately with the families, and only recently released in time for Hanukkah this year.
The video shows each of the hostages thin, weakened, but still alive. Some even smile at the camera. Among them is Hersh Goldberg Polin, missing the lower half of his left arm, blown off by a grenade on October 7.
In the video, almost impossible to comprehend, the hostages can be heard singing the blessing of Shehechiyanu, thanking God for enabling them to reach that moment. Ultimately, all six, Hersh Goldberg Polin, Eden Yerushalmi, Ori Danino, Alex Lobanov, Carmel Gat, and Almog Sarusi, were brutally murdered by their captors in a tunnel in Rafah on August 29, 2024. Their bodies were discovered by Israeli troops two days later.
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3. CHANUKAH TERROR: SHOOTING ATTACK IN AUSTRALIA KILLS AT LEAST 16, INCLUDING TWO CHABAD SHLUCHIM
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/general/2485653/%f0%9f%9a%a8-chanukah-terror-shooting-attack-in-australia-kills-at-least-16-including-two-chabad-shluchim.html
Extract:
Two gunmen attacked a Chanukah celebration on Sydney's Bondi Beach on Sunday, killing at least 16 people in what Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called an act of antisemitic terrorism that struck at the heart of the nation.
The massacre at one of Australia's most popular beaches followed a wave of antisemitic attacks that have roiled the country over the past year. It is the deadliest shooting in almost three decades in a country with strict gun control laws.
One gunman was fatally shot by police and the second was arrested and in critical condition, authorities said. Police said one gunman was known to security services, but there was no specific threat.
At least 40 people were confirmed wounded, including two police officers, said Mal Lanyon, police commissioner for New South Wales state, where Sydney is located.
'This attack was designed to target Sydney's Jewish community,' New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said.
The violence erupted at the end of a summer day when thousands had flocked to Bondi Beach, including hundreds gathered for the Chanukah by the Sea event celebrating the start of Chanukah.
Chabad identified one of its shluchim, Rabbi Eli Schlanger hyped, as one of the murdered victims. Rabbi Schlanger was the assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and an organizer of the event.
Israel's Foreign Ministry confirmed the death of an Israeli citizen, but gave no further details.
Police said emergency services were called to Campbell Parade in Bondi about 6:45 p.m. responding to reports of shots being fired. Video filmed by onlookers showed people in bathing suits running from the water as shots rang out. Separate footage showed two men in black shirts firing with long guns from a footbridge leading to the beach, as sirens wailed and people cried out in the background.
One dramatic clip broadcast on Australian television showed a man appearing to tackle and disarm one of the gunmen, before pointing the man's weapon at him, then setting the gun on the ground.
Minns called the man, named by relatives to Australian media as fruit shop owner Ahmed al Ahmed, a 'genuine hero.'
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4. ASIO Probed Sydney Terrorist For ISIS Ties Years Before Chanukah Massacre
https://www.theyeshivaworld.com/news/israel-news/2486158/asio-probed-sydney-terrorist-for-isis-ties-years-before-chanukah-massacre.html
Extracts:
Australia's domestic intelligence agency, ASIO, began monitoring one of the Bondi Beach terrorists six years ago due to his connections to an Islamic State (ISIS) cell operating in Sydney, according to a report by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC).
On Sunday, Naveed Akram, 24, and his father, Sajid Akram, 50, murdered 15 people at a Chanukah celebration at Bondi Beach. Sajid was killed by the police, and Naveed was wounded and is still hospitalized under police guard.
Sajid arrived in Australia from Pakistan in 1998 on a student visa and later became an Australian citizen. Naveed was born in Australia. Six years ago, he studied Quran for one year at the Al Murad institution in Sydney.
... Investigators from the Joint Counter Terrorism Team (JCTT) believe that the father and son had pledged allegiance to ISIS.
Two ISIS flags were discovered in their vehicle at Bondi Beach, including one that was clearly visible on the hood in footage captured at the scene.
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5. 'Heroic' bystander who wrestled gun from Bondi Beach attacker is son of refugees and father to two
https://edition.cnn.com/2025/12/15/australia/bondi-beach-shooting-bystander-hero-intl-hnk
By
Laura Sharman, Jessie Yeung
A bystander who wrestled a gun from one of the alleged attackers during a mass shooting at Bondi Beach has been identified as Ahmed al Ahmed, whose refugee parents had just arrived from Syria, according to Australian officials and media.
Ahmed, a 43-year-old father to two girls, risked his life by tackling an alleged shooter and seizing the gun during Sunday's attack.
He was later shot [and wounded] by one of the two gunmen, a father and son duo whose beachside rampage targeting a Jewish gathering and beach-goers killed at least 15 people and wounded dozens of others.
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6. Immigrant from Syria Wrestles with Terrorist.
https://www.aa.com.tr/en/world/ahmed-global-hero-who-disarmed-australian-beach-shooter-was-shot-4-to-5-times/3771558
Ahmed was 'shot four to five times in his shoulder, with several of the bullets still lodged inside him,' said his Syrian parents, Mohamed Fateh Al Ahmed and Malakeh, who landed in Australia a few months ago.
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7. Albanese: Shocked by Anti-Semitism While Generating It
https://www.wizo.org/news/albanese-shocked-by-anti-semitism-while-generating-it/
Albanese is a veteran anti-Semite, who can be found in local television archives from the past participating in anti-Semitic demonstrations (or in their disingenuous name "pro-Palestinian"), shouting slogans into a megaphone while Israeli and American flags burn around him. It's no wonder that in the past year, under his leadership, anti-Semitism is raging throughout Australia without any firm response from the government.
In fact, the Australian government is leading and generating anti-Semitism in the country. Its foreign policy is similar to countries like Ireland, Turkey, and Spain, taking extreme positions against Israel. For example, recently it supported the UN resolution for 'ending Israel's illegal presence in occupied Palestinian territory.' Because the anti-Semite is only interested in international law when it comes to Jews. From his perspective, our people 'who were illegally exiled from their land, illegally expelled from country to country, illegally murdered and persecuted, and are still attacked time after time illegally ' should sit politely and legally, quietly waiting for their destruction. And not only that, but also hear moral lectures from the country that symbolizes white colonialism more than any other.
... something very bad hovers over the Jewish community in Australia, which numbers 116,000 people.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has condemned a deadly shooting at a Jewish holiday celebration in Sydney and says he had warned his Australian counterpart that the government's support for Palestinian statehood would fuel anti-Semitism.
Gunmen opened fire during an event marking the first night of Hanukkah at Sydney's Bondi Beach, killing at least 11 people in what Australian officials described as a targeted anti-Semitic attack.
One of the suspected gunmen was also killed.
Netanyahu said the shooting was "cold blooded murder".
He added that in August he had told Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a letter that the Australian government's policies were promoting and encouraging anti-Semitism in Australia.
"I wrote: 'Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the anti-Semitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets'," Netanyahu said in a speech.
Albanese said on August 11 that Australia would recognise a Palestinian state at September's United Nations General Assembly, a move that followed similar announcements by France, the United Kingdom and Canada.
In his speech on Sunday, Netanyahu accused Albanese's government of "doing nothing to stop the spread of anti-Semitism in Australia".
"You let the disease spread and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today," he added.
Albanese convened a meeting of the country's national security council on Sunday and condemned the attack, saying the evil that was unleashed was "beyond comprehension".
"This is a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah, which should be a day of joy, a celebration of faith," he said.
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8. Why Allow Him 6 Guns?
Naveed Akram, 24, and his father, Sajid Akram, 50, were the murderers.
Sajid had been suspected of ties with ISIS.
He was also ALLOWED to hold six guns under license!
What use could he possibly have had for 6 guns other than a terror attack?
See Also:
Goldie Ghamari
Bondi Beach Islamic Terrorist Attack in Australia - At least 16 Jews murdered
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSYp2u01zEs
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9. How the Jews Helped Save Ireland and no-one recognized it!
Most Irishmen do not even know about it!
Extract from:
Quora.
Posted by
Roberto Velazquez
Ireland's nineteenth-century history contains a chapter whose absence from the official narrative is as revealing as the facts themselves: the scale of Jewish aid during the Great Famine aid without which Ireland's national continuity might not have survived, and the contrast between that documented reality and the way state memory is deployed today.
Ireland, Selective Memory and Managed Gratitude
The Great Irish Famine, known in Irish as An Gorta Mor, was a humanitarian catastrophe that devastated the country between 1845 and 1852. Its immediate trigger was the appearance of potato blight (Phytophthora infestans), which destroyed the staple food of the poorest sectors, but its lethal magnitude resulted from British political decisions that aggravated, prolonged, and ultimately overwhelmed the crisis. Over those seven years, roughly one million people died and another million were forced to emigrate,' producing a demographic and social transformation without precedent in Irish history.
In 1847, the worst year of the disaster,a collection organized by poor Jewish immigrants in New York raised 1,175 dollars, equivalent today to nearly 90,000 dollars.
Even more decisive was the contribution of British MP Lionel de Rothschild, who donated up to 50,000 pounds sterling to the Irish cause, - a figure that corresponds, in modern values, to more than 20-025 million dollars.
Rothschild was also one of the driving forces behind the British Relief Association, then the largest humanitarian effort of the nineteenth century, which gathered more than 500,000 pounds (about 75 million dollars today). Its leadership, direction, and funding were disproportionately Jewish.
What is usually absent from Ireland's public discourse is that, while Jewish communities across Europe were facing persecution, expulsion, and impoverishment, many of them organized substantial relief for Ireland. Aid came from Dublin, New Orleans, Jamaica, and Canada, donations which, in today's terms, would total tens of millions of dollars.
Without these funds, the demographic, health, and political impact of the famine would have been far more devastating.
Yet the Irish state narrative has preferred to highlight a much more modest episode: the assistance of Sultan Abd' lmecid I of the Ottoman Empire, valued at 1,000 pounds - roughly 150,000-200,000 dollars today.
A sum hundreds of times smaller than Rothschild's personal contribution and thousands of times smaller than all Jewish aid combined.
Nevertheless, Ireland has dedicated streets, plaques, and official tributes to the Ottoman gesture. It has been celebrated in public ceremonies and is taught in schools as an example of international solidarity. Jewish contributions, by contrast, occupy a space close to invisibility in the state's memory practices.
The asymmetry between the actual magnitude of the aid and its public recognition has gained new dimensions in the twenty-first century. While the Jewish role in helping save the country remains virtually unknown at the institutional level, Ireland has taken notable diplomatic positions:
it was the first EU member state to recognize 'Palestine' as a state,
it has promoted symbolic boycotts of Israeli products,
it maintains a prominent presence in UN missions in Lebanon, where contingents have been criticized for their operational proximity to Hezbollah,
and its media ecosystem frequently adopts a markedly adversarial stance toward Israel.
None of this is illegitimate per se; states can choose their geopolitical alignments. What grates, however, is the contrast between the official memory (which exalts a minor contribution) and the omitted memory (which effectively erases those who made the largest financial effort to avert a humanitarian collapse). It is a textbook case of gratitude managed according to political convenience.
A modest Ottoman gesture has been elevated into a pedagogical myth, while the crucial intervention of Jewish communities, from impoverished immigrants to philanthropists like Rothschild, has been relegated to a footnote, if not quietly erased.
History has its ironies: acts of generosity that saved lives can end up rewarded with oblivion. But that does not change who gave, and who chose to forget.
Notes
Mortality and emigration during the Great Famine: widely accepted estimates by historians.
Jewish Committee of New York, 1847 collection; approximate conversion to current values based on historical U.S. inflation indices.
Donations by Lionel de Rothschild documented in British parliamentary archives and studies on nineteenth-century Jewish philanthropy.
Figures from the British Relief Association published in its 1847-1848 reports.
Demographic assessments of the famine.
Ottoman donation to Ireland according to British and Ottoman diplomatic records; the exact figure ranges between 1,000 and 1,200 pounds.
Criticisms of UNIFIL operations based on Israeli security reports and analyses by European think tanks.
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10. Another detail about the Sydney beach terror attack
Ego Kar
.Extract from Quora.
The Sydney Morning Herald reports new information that two more unarmed civilians, in addition to Ahmed al-Ahmed, attempted to stop the terrorists. These three selfless heroes paid with their lives.
The first to spot the black ISIS flag were Boris and Sofia Gurman, a Russian-speaking Jewish couple walking along Campbell Parade at the very moment Sajid Akram exited his car. Boris and Sofia, residents of North Bondi, attempted to stop one of the bloodiest terrorist attacks in Australian history before the first shot was fired.
Dashcam footage from a passing car shows that Boris didn't hesitate for a second. When Akram opened the car door, Boris lunged at him, knocked him to the ground, disarmed him, and wrestled the shotgun from him. While other passersby hid behind the bus stop, Boris picked up Akram's weapon and pointed it at the terrorist.
Footage shows Boris momentarily gaining the advantage, threatening Akram with his own weapon. His wife, Sofia, joined him; together they tried to force the gunman to retreat and thwart his planned attack. But Akram lunged at Boris, then grabbed another rifle. The dashcam footage ends there.
The events are then reconstructed from footage from a different angle, filmed moments later. The terrorist shot Boris and Sofia point-blank. Boris and Sofia were the first victims of the attack, which killed 13 more people. Drone footage shows the couple huddled next to a car with an ISIS flag, while Sajid and Naveed Akram shoot people from the bridge.