Yom Kippur (the Jewish Day of Atonement) begins tonight, at sunset, which is about 6.30pm in Sweden. I’m taking two days off. Logging out from, well, everywhere. I’m back online on Friday, 3 October.

Using a car to ram into the grounds of the Manchester synagogue, 35-year-old Jihad Al-Shamie then stabbed worshippers in a six-minute rampage that only ended when armed officers shot at him twice, fearing he also had an explosive device tied to his chest. Read it at the Guardian.

According to all meteorologists, a storm named Amy will hit Scandinavia tomorrow morning. We’ll see if I’m still here on Sunday.

It’s Friday evening.

שבת שלום!

I don’t think there’s much more to do to Gaza. It’s practically flattened. Eradicating Hamas can probably only been done when the terrorists feel safe enough to leave the tunnels. Read it at the Times of Israel.

The world is indeed turning back to the 1930s’ Jew-bashing pastime. Read it at the the New York Post.

“The populist centre-right party overtook current ruling coalition Spolu by a wide margin in a contentious election that saw high voter turnout.” Read it at Expats.

“New restrictions on sharing footage of Ukrainian air attacks are making it tougher than ever to figure out what is going on in Russia.” Read it at the Kyiv Independent.

Anti-Semitism is back in full force. Read it at Ynetnews.

Some people in Italy never really learned from the Second World War. Read it at Ynetnews.

Scientists have developed a new multi-layered metalens design that could revolutionise portable optics in devices such as smartphones, drones, and satellites. Read the study at Optics Express.

Researchers in Alberta uncovered a fossil fish that rewrites the evolutionary history of ostariophysians, which today dominate fresh-water ecosystems. Read the study at Science.

Among other things, he says he was kept in a family home for a while and realised that the children know nothing about Israel and the outside world. They were brainwashed by terror propaganda. Read the interview with Sharabi at the Jerusalem Post.

Exactly two years ago, Hamas launched the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. Human Rights Watch assesses that 815 of the 1,195 people killed by Palestinians terrorists were civilians. Hamas took another 251 civilians as hostages and brought them to Gaza.

I left Israel the day before the attack. I flew to Spain in the evening and woke up in the morning by a mobile phone that wouldn’t stop buzzing. I remember reading the many text messages in disbelief. I put the television on and the details were simply overwhelming. How could this have happened?

I was naive in thinking that the world would now realise what monsters Hamas and its Palestinian allies really are. I should have known better. The world did what it always has done—finding a way to blame the Jews for the violence inflicted on Jews. People in media, and people I met in person, were eager to put the massacre into context, explaining to me how desperate the Palestinians were after decades-long ill-treatment from Israel. Hamas, I was told, was only fighting for freedom. They just had to kill, maim, and rape people who were dancing at a music festival. They were really a bunch of nice guys who were forced to act bad.

Since October 2023, people all over the world have forgotten or diminished Hamas’s terror onslaught. Instead, we’re told that Israel is guilty of genocide and that the Israel Defense Forces kill children for pleasure. Unlike Hamas, who only killed toddles like 9-month-old Kfir Bibas to liberate Palestine.

I’m disappointed in the international community. I’m fed up with all the anti-Semitism masked as human-rights activism. I fully understand that people are upset about the many innocent civilians being killed in Gaza, but sympathy and empathy cannot be reserved for the civilians on one side only. Seeing children being killed in Gaza upsets me as much as seeing children in Israel being killed. If you can’t care for all children, stop pretending to care about human rights.

Today, Jews throughout the world mourn the people we lost on 7 October 2023. We demand that the remaining hostages are let free, that they are brought back to Israel.

Trump has managed to present a peace plan that both Europe and the Arab world have rallied behind. The world is waiting on Hamas’s response. If the terrorists in Gaza agree to peace, we could soon see our loved ones back home. Perhaps even an end to the conflict and a chance for Gaza to blossom.

Donald Trump announced late last night that Israel and Hamas have signed off on the “first phase” of his plan to secure the release of all hostages and end the Gaza war. Read it at the Times of Israel.

A new market research has found that younger Europeans are drinking less alcohol. Read it at Reuters.

The Hungarian novelist wins the prize. I must admit that I know nothing about him and that I have never read anything by him. That might change now. Read it at Expressen.

“Someone who says ‘I’m against abortion but says I am in favour of the death penalty’ is not really pro-life,” Pope Leo XIV says. And he’s right. Read it at Religion News Service.

Finally!!! All twenty of the living Israeli hostages held by Hamas have returned to Israeli territory. Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

• Egypt’s President: Abdel Fattah al-Sisi
• American President: Donald Trump
• Palestinian Authority President: Mahmoud Abbas
• Qatar’s Emir: Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani
• French President: Emmanuel Macron
• Turkish President: Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
• UK’s prime minister: Keir Starmer
• Spanish prime minister: Pedro Sánchez
• Italian prime minister: Giorgia Meloni
• European council president: Antonio Costa
• UN secretary-general: António Guterres
• Arab League secretary-general: Ahmed Aboul Gheit
• Jordan’s King Abdullah II
• Kuwait’s prime minister: Ahmad Al Abdullah Al Sabah
• Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa
• Indonesia’s President: Prabowo Subianto
• Azerbaijan’s President: Ilham Aliyev
• German Chancellor: Friedrich Merz
• Greek prime minister: Kyriakos Mitsotakis
• Armenian prime minister: Nikol Pashinyan
• Hungary’s prime minister: Viktor Orbán
• Pakistan’s prime minister: Shehbaz Sharif
• Canada’s prime minister: Mark Carney
• Norway’s prime minister: Jonas Gahr Store
• Iraq’s prime minister: Mohammed Shia al-Sudani

I don’t know what to make of this. It’s true that Trump cares little about the rule of law and ignores every institution that opposes his policies, but is he really a dictator? Read it at Expressen.

A relief to the families, I’m sure. But it breaks my heart. Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

The terror group has already killed dozens of people across Gaza following the Israeli army’s partial withdrawal. Read it at the Jerusalem Post.

Only in America. Read it at the New York Post.

An interesting thing to note is that the declaration mentions Israel even though Qatar doesn’t recognise the Jewish state.

Mel Gibson can’t get enough of Jesus. Read it at Variety.

“Mayhem is reported to be occurring throughout the Strip as Hamas has begun to launch vicious assaults against its own Palestinian citizens. And local Palestinian clans are fighting back.” Read Richard Pollock.

No one saw this coming, but today Anna-Karin Hatt told journalists at a press conference that she has been threatened and therefore has decided to quit. Read it at Expressen.

It’s beautiful to see them free after two years in hell. Watch it at the Jerusalem Post.

Why talking dirty with software? Doesn’t sound sexy at all. Read it at The Verge.

Not a single venue wants to host the Jewish film festival in Malmö out of fear of violence from pro-Palestinian activists. Read it at Sydsvenskan.

By not answering this very simple question, the most likely next mayor of New York City, Zohran Mamdani, shows that he hasn’t parted with past support for anti-Semitic terrorism targeting civilians in Israel. It’s truly worrying. The future looks grim for what used to be a city with a large and thriving Jewish community.

It’s still early morning. Shabbat will not begin for some hours. However, I’m travelling to Stockholm by train today. Thought I’d take the weekend off. I’m back on Monday. Have a nice weekend!

“The gang entered the Apollo Gallery in broad daylight shortly after 9.30am, once the gallery had opened to the public, and stole nine items including a necklace, a brooch and a tiara.” Read it at the Telegraph.

This is where we are now. Hide your Jewishness or get arrested. Read it at Legal Insurrection.

“There are few horrors a human being can survive that Moumen al-Natour, a Palestinian anti-Hamas activist, has not endured at the hands of the Sunni Islamist terror group that currently rules the Gaza Strip.” Read it at the Daily Mail.

It’s Friday afternoon. Have a nice weekend y’all.

I just came home after attending the first performance of Richard Wagner’s music drama “Lohengrin” at Malmö Opera House. It’s not my favourite Wagner opera—that honour goes to “Parsifal”—but it’s still a spectacular piece of music, poetry, and drama. Tonight was the first time ever this opera was performed in Malmö, and I must say that they pulled it off nicely. That’s a big thing! Malmö is not a big city with an opera house financed by big government and wealthy patrons.

Björn Andrésen is best known for his role as Tadzio in Luchino Visconti’s 1971 film adaptation of Thomas Mann’s novella Death in Venice. He died this past weekend at age 70.

Moscow was unexpectedly attacked by unidentified drones yesterday evening. Explosions were heard across the city. Read it at RBC-Ukraine.

Independent Greens, a fringe extreme-left party, has put up posters in Copenhagen promising to end Zionism and dissolve Israel.

Apparently the first time the brother of a king has lost is right to the style of prince since Richard III. Read it at the Guardian.

Great news! Read it at Dutch News.

Spraying particles into Earth’s atmosphere to try and cool a warming planet might sound like a good idea in theory, but it will only work if it’s done properly, and even then, it could carry risks that might spill beyond human control. Read the study at Scientific Reports.

Construction began in 1882 and is still ongoing. Read it at Deutsche Welle.