Turkey’s Erdoğan deserves to be insulted. He’s an authoritarian idiot. Read it at The Local.

I’m proud to be an Israeli Jew and I’m proud of everything Zionism has done for the Jewish people. ❤️🇮🇱✌️

After Hamas’s terror attack on 7 October 2023, the myth of “blood libel” persists in the media coverage of Gaza violence. Read Howard Jacobson at the Guardian.

Good news! Lebanese President Joseph Aoun says that the nation’s army now controls more than 85% of the south after clearing it. Read it at Arab News.

Now I’m back in Malmö. It was nice to visit the Swedish capital. No Palestinian flags in every window reminding me of how people’s “solidarity” is restricted to everyone but Jews.

The Israeli government has promised retaliation. Read it at the Times of Israel.

This is bad news for Europe. There’s nothing Putin wants more than a divided Europe. Read it at the Guardian.

Hamas is not interested in engaging in ceasefire talks with Israel as long as the war in Gaza continues. Shouldn’t come as a surprise to anyone. Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

The world is getting difficult for the terrorists. Read it at the Times of India.

The vote Seems more political than ever. Read it at Vatican News.

The spacecraft, dubbed Kosmos 482, is predicted to reenter Earth’s atmosphere sometime overnight between 9 and 10 May. Read it at Science News.

“Effort underscores seriousness of Trump’s intent to acquire the island from Denmark.” Madness! Read it at the Wall Street Journal.

The drink is a unique blend of probiotics that can positively impact the microbiome, the unseen community of microorganisms that live by the trillions in the human gut. Read the study at Scientific Reports.

The first ever American-born pope. Read it at Vatican News.

It’s been vandalised, but it’s still a fascinating piece of art.

I guess it’s what’s expected. Read it at the Associated Press.

According to a new survey, 84% of Israelis believe that a victory in the Gaza Strip is impossible without the return of the remaining 59 hostages still held captive. Sadly, I think they’re right. Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

“The Canaries and the Balearics, both extremely popular tourist destinations, have seen property prices and rents spiral in recent years, with locals priced out as an ever-increasing number of foreigners have bought up real estate.” Read it at The Local.

“A city official in Stockholm has said the municipality has no plans to comply after one of its offices received a letter seeking to impose Donald Trump’s rollback of diversity measures, in what is believed to be the first such missive sent to a foreign government.” Read it at the Guardian.

Scientists have discovered cannabidiol, a compound in cannabis known as CBD, in a common Brazilian plant. Read it at Science Alert.

I forgot to post the flag on 9 May as I normally do. Here it is, a day too late, but it’s always worth to be displayed.

Edan Alexander, an Israeli-American soldier kidnapped on 7 October 2023, is set to be released tomorrow. Read it at the Guardian.

“Israel’s Public Broadcasting Corporation filed a complaint on Sunday with Swiss police following an incident in which a man wearing a keffiyeh and holding a Palestinian flag made a throat-slitting gesture towards Israel’s Eurovision contestant, Yuval Raphael, and spat at members of the Israeli delegation.” Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

The key is to make noice so that the bear knows you’re there. Read it at The Local.

From The Economist:

A programme at Harvard Divinity School aspired to “deZionize Jewish consciousness”. During “privilege trainings”, working-class Harvard students were instructed that, by being Jewish, they were oppressing wealthier, better prepared classmates. A course in Harvard’s graduate school of public health, “The Settler Colonial Determinants of Health”, sought to “interrogate the relationships between settler colonialism, Zionism, antisemitism, and other forms of racism”: Will these findings by Harvard’s task-force on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias, released on April 29th, shock anyone? Maybe not. Americans may be numb by now to bulletins about the excesses, not to say inanities, of some leftist academics.

The Students for Justice in Palestine is about something completely different than the group’s name suggests. Read it at The Lid.

“A senior Western diplomat with first-hand knowledge of the ICC case describes Karim Khan’s motivations in issuing arrest warrants for Israeli leaders.” Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

“Two-thirds of the incidents where innocent people were victims took place during 2023. So far in 2025, police estimate that five people have been injured and one killed who were not themselves involved in a criminal gang.” Read it at The Local.

More in Swedish at Sveriges Radio.

This is a cool way to protest. From the Guardian:

Earlier this year, Utah and Idaho’s Republican-controlled legislatures passed bans on flying the rainbow pride flags and other “unofficial flags” on government property.

Leaders in both states’ capital cities, Salt Lake City and Boise, recently devised an inventive workaround—changing their official flags.

Salt Lake City’s mayor, Erin Mendenhall, proposed the adoption of three new city flags, which were unanimously approved by the city council. All three have the city’s traditional sego lily design, respectively imposed over a pride flag, a trans flag and a Juneteenth commemoration flag.

From The Local:

Just a few hours after Thyberg was named as the government’s new national security adviser, he turned down the position – after the Dagens Nyheter (DN) asked questions about a picture they had found of Thyberg, which they described as being of a “sensitive” nature.

“These are old pictures from an account I previously had on the dating site Grindr. I should have informed [the government] about this but I didn’t. I have therefore said I do not intend to take up the position as national security adviser,” Thyberg told DN in a comment.

The pictures, it later transpired, had been sent by an anonymous and apparently unidentifiable source both to the senior political aide responsible for Thyberg’s recruitment, and also to several different newspapers.

Personally, I can’t see how a nude photo can disqualify someone from public office. It’s not like foreign intelligence agencies can blackmail an openly gay man for being on Grindr.

Read Ethan Schwartz at the Times of Israel.

Pope Leo XIV today hailed Christian communities in the Middle East who “persevere and remain in their homelands, resisting the temptation to abandon them” despite war, marginalisation, or persecution. Read it at Arab News.

Seymour Martin Lipset, who witnessed the occasion, wrote about it in his article “The Socialism of Fools”. It was published in the literary magazine Encounter in December 1969. A quote:

Shortly before he was assassinated, Martin Luther King, Jr. was in Boston on a fund-raising mission, and I had the good fortune to attend a dinner which was given for him in Cambridge. This was an experience which was at once fascinating and moving: one witnessed Dr. King in action in a way one never got to see in public. He wanted to find what the Negro students at Harvard and other parts of the Boston area were thinking about various issues, and he very subtly cross-examined them for well over an hour and a half. He asked questions, and said very little himself. One of the young men present happened to make some remark against the Zionists. Dr. King snapped at him and said, “Don’t talk like that! When people criticize Zionists, they mean Jews. You’re talking anti-Semitism!”

Good luck with that. No other country on earth will allow you to study full-time on life-long benefits. Read it at the Times of Israel.

I don’t care too much about Eurovision, but I like that the people of Europe ignored the haters and voted for the song they really liked.

It’s old news by now, but two days ago, Swedish journalist Joakim Medin, who has been jailed in Turkey for nearly two months on a charge of insulting President Erdoğan, was released and returned to Sweden. Read it at The Local.

“Biden was seen by doctors last week after urinary symptoms and a prostate nodule were found. He was diagnosed with prostate cancer on Friday, with the cancer cells having spread to the bone.” Read it at the Associated Press.

Good news! Starvation is not a legit war method. Read it at the Times of Israel.

New study suggests the answer is a tie. Read the study at JAMA Network Open.

This is really cool stuff. Read it at Science News.

Multiple large Jewish communities warn of global anti-Semitism rising. Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

As always, he claims it wasn’t anti-Semitism but anti-Zionism. Read it at the Guardian.

Who could have guessed that Banksy had a Zionist Jews in his crew. Read the interview at Ynetnews.

“According to the Jordanian education system, treachery is a ‘natural Jewish quality’, and the peace agreement was signed ‘in order to curb Israel’s known greedy aspirations’.” Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

“Israel is on the path to becoming a pariah state among the nations, like the South Africa of old, if it does not return to behaving like a sane country,” Israeli opposition leader Yair Golan told KAN in an interview. Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

Straight Russians must be the most fragile people on the planet. Equality makes them shiver with fear. Read it at Pink News.

“New intelligence obtained by the United States suggests that Israel is preparing to strike Iranian nuclear facilities.” Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

From The Local:

Due to the rise of the internet, sex no longer just happens out in the real world, but also online. While much of this is in the form of porn videos, sites like OnlyFans allow buyers to specially order certain types of sexual content, for example paying a sex worker to carry out a specific act.

Under the new law, this is considered as equivalent to paying someone for sex offline.

Specifically, it will no longer be legal to pay for specific content, in the style of “I want you to do X with Y”, but Swedes will still be allowed to subscribe to sex workers’ content, as long as their videos or messages are not tailored to a particular person.

“A vaccine for gonorrhoea will be rolled out in England as part of a world-first programme.” Read it at the Guardian.

“Many of the prime minister’s claims were inaccurate, misleading, contradictory, or conspiratorial.” Read Eliav Breuer’s analysis at the Jerusalem Post.

After the shooting, the gunman, identified by police as Elias Rodriguez, walked into the museum and began chanting, “Free, free Palestine”. Read it at Associated Press.

No surprises there. Murdering Jews is what these people live for. Read it at the Middle East Media Research Institute.

This is wrong. I get that people are upset about the war in Gaza, but to punish Israel while sending aid to Hamas via UNRWA is wrong. Read it at EU Observer.

According to a court document filed yesterday, Elias Rodriguez, the man charged with killing two Jews in Washington, approached police on the scene after the shooting and told them, “I did it for Palestine, I did it for Gaza”. Read it at the Times of Israel.

I’m so sick of this. It’s time to freeze the expansion of settlements and make some kind of efforts in ending hostilities. In an ideal world, Jews should have the right to live wherever in Judea and Samaria, but in practice, this is untenable. Read it at the Guardian.

It’s well before noon, but I’ll begin Shabbat early. Have a nice weekend!

To be more precise, it’s Musk’s Starlink system that gave them access to high-speed internet. Then they just had to watch pornography. Poor tribesmen. Read it at the Daily Mail.

Update: To make things even more bizarre, they are suing the New York Times!

Freed hostage Omer Wenkert on Sunday related the harrowing conditions in which he was held in Hamas’s tunnels. Read it at the Times of Israel.

German foreign minister calls for additional sanctions following large-scale Russian attack on Ukraine. Good! Read it at the Kyiv Independent.

More than 350 explosive drones targeted Ukraine’s cities overnight. Read it at the Wall Street Journal.

“I’ve always had a very good relationship with Vladimir Putin of Russia, but something has happened to him,” Trump has written on his Truth Social platform. “He has gone absolutely CRAZY! He is needlessly killing a lot of people, and I’m not just talking about soldiers. Missiles and drones are being shot into Cities in Ukraine, for no reason whatsoever.” Read it at the Daily Mail.

The Israeli security establishment held discussions on the humanitarian situation in Gaza yesterday, where a senior IDF official stated that there is no famine in Gaza. Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

This is so stupid. Sasan Kazemian, originally from Iran, has been in Sweden since 2021, speaks fluent Swedish, and currently works as a medical resident at Karolinska University Hospital after passing a test 90 percent of applicants fail. He’s also been issued with an order to leave the country because the Migration Agency says he renewed his working permit a few days too late by accident. Read it at The Local.

Last night was crazy. It was my birthday and I celebrated with friends. I appreciate my friends and their love. ❤️

“Wall Street traders have developed a biting new acronym for a strategy that’s become surprisingly lucrative for President Donald Trump’s whiplash-inducing trade policy: TACO—‘Trump Always Chickens Out’.” Read it at Mediaite. 😂

It’s not alway the way it seems. Read David Lange at Israellycool.

Good news! Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

The hubris of this narcissist is unbelievable. Read it at the Independent.

The so-called pro-Palestinians no longer hide their anti-Semitism. Read it at Ynetnews.

No surprise there. Hamas couldn’t care less about the suffering of Gazans. Read it at BBC News.