Jerusalem Dispatch: Israel This Week

August 15-21, 2026

I am writing this aboard a train from Krakow to Prague where I will spend a few days before going to southern Germany to finally meet my new and only grandchild, Eitan Schrauger. As I go, I cannot help but reflect on visits to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration-death camps just two days ago.

Nothing prepares you for the scale of Birkenau. I had seen photographs of the rail spur running through the main gate for years. Standing at the far end of that platform, looking back at watchtowers and barracks receding almost to the horizon, is different. This camp swallowed nearly a million Jewish men, women and children, along with tens of thousands of Poles, Roma, and Soviet prisoners of war. It was built to erase lives and do so on a scale that outruns the mind’s ability to comprehend.

They tried to erase the evidence, too. Before retreating, the SS dynamited Crematoria II and III, hoping the ruins would say nothing. I walked past those collapsed slabs of concrete the way I walked past Treblinka’s empty field a week earlier. Different method, same intention.

But it is a house, not a ruin, that has stayed with me most. A few hundred meters outside the Birkenau wall stands the home where camp commandant Rudolf Höss raised his children — a garden, a nursery, ordinary domestic life running in full view of the smoke. It has since reopened as a research center on hate and extremism. Sitting in that garden, I kept thinking: the machinery of erasure always needs ordinary rooms from which to operate. It needed people willing not to see what was literally in view from their bedroom windows.

That is what this week’s news keeps proving, in far smaller ways. A seventeen-year-old Israeli, Yotam Budnik, won a gold medal at an international science olympiad in Uzbekistan and had it stripped — not for cheating, but for wearing his country’s flag on the podium. In Florida, two Senate candidates who built campaigns on classic antisemitic tropes lost their primary badly this week, and yet believe, in their own words, that “victory” is still near. A man now faces federal hate crime charges for attacking a 63-year-old woman during Shabbat services at a Manhattan synagogue.

None of it is Auschwitz. All of it is the same instinct: decide someone’s identity is the problem, then treat its visibility as something to be punished.

We should not need forty-four years, or a stripped medal, to notice that pattern. We should call it early, and call it by its right name.

Against that, I keep returning to a different name. This week, after forty-four years, Israel brought home the remains of Sgt. Yehuda Katz, missing since a 1982 battle in Lebanon — the last of three soldiers lost together at Sultan Yacoub finally accounted for. Auschwitz took names and gave numbers. Katz’s family got a name back, and a grave to put it on.

We need to let both facts sit together: an empire built specifically to make people disappear, and a nation that still spends four decades, if that is what it takes, refusing to let one soldier stay lost. That refusal is not sentiment. It is Biblical. It is what it looks like to insist, against every erasing machine history has built, that every name still matters to Someone.

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Be sure to note the order of this week’s stories — and the categories into which they are divided. The reason for the order of stories, and their different categories, is to help us understand the story behind the story, to see the arc, or the movie of the news, not just a single frame.

This is the lineup below:

• Jewish Life Today

• Analyses and Commentary

• Top Stories of the Week

• Antisemitism in the News – and already where we live

• On a Lighter Note: Satire and Humor (because we need this too)

• Biblical Reminders

Don’t stop reading here!...

Abba, I come to You from the far edge of a camp built for one purpose: to turn a person into a number. Thank You that You have never once needed a number. You call each of us by name, and You have not forgotten a single one who was taken from this earth by that machine, or by any machine like it since.

Forgive me for the times I have been like an ordinary room in which the wrong thing was allowed to operate: conversations I allowed to pass, silence I excused to avoid conflict. Give me, please, the courage of those who hid strangers instead of watching. Extract from me the deliberate complacency of those who tended their garden while the ashes of incinerated millions rose from a chimney next door.

I bring to You specific people who are on my heart this week. I bring You a teenage Israeli whose gold medal was stripped for showing his own flag, and I ask You to guard how his heart understands justice from this. I bring You the woman struck during Shabbat prayers in a Manhattan synagogue, and every congregation now watching its own door more closely. I bring You the Katz family, who waited forty-four years for a name to come home, and I thank You that Mali and Liel Yahalomi are safe and no longer among the missing.

Bless the soldiers and airmen who make that homecoming possible, and guard every leader who stands exposed simply for standing where they stand. Protect Jerusalem itself, which Your Word says every nation will eventually gather against — and which Your Word also says will not be abandoned.

Where erasure is being attempted again, in ways large or small, do not let me be silent, and do not let me look away. Let me be one who insists, the way Auschwitz’s own witnesses insisted, that every name still matters to You.

In the Name of Your precious Son, Yeshua, Amen.

MISSING ISRAELI MOTHER AND DAUGHTER FOUND SAFE IN ARGENTINA. Mali and Liel Yahalomi, missing since their hotel room was found empty in Vienna, were located aboard a bus in Buenos Aires; police said they had left voluntarily amid personal circumstances and were released after questioning found no wrongdoing. Source: https://vinnews.com/2026/08/14/israeli-police-say-missing-yahalomi-mother-and-daughter-found-alive-in-argentina/

AFTER 44 YEARS, ISRAEL BRINGS HOME THE REMAINS OF SGT. YEHUDA KATZ. Katz went missing in the 1982 Battle of Sultan Yacoub in Lebanon; his recovery, led by Military Intelligence in coordination with the Mossad, closes the case of all three soldiers lost together in that battle. Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/remains-of-yehuda-katz-idf-soldier-who-went-missing-in-1982-battle-returned-to-israel/

SHAARE ZEDEK WELCOMES THREE SETS OF TRIPLETS WITHIN ONE MONTH. Nine babies in all, born at the Jerusalem hospital within four weeks of one another; one set of girls shared a single placenta, a rare and medically complex condition. Source: https://vinnews.com/2026/08/19/shaare-tzedek-welcomes-three-sets-of-triplets-within-one-month/

FDD ANALYSIS: ISRAEL IS DRAWING THE LINE AGAINST TURKEY IN SYRIA. Source: https://www.fdd.org/analysis/2026/08/19/israel-is-drawing-the-line-against-turkey-in-syria/

ANALYSIS: ISRAEL, TURKEY MANEUVER TOWARD POTENTIAL CLASH OVER INFLUENCE IN SYRIA. Comment: worth reading for the reminder that this week’s strike was not a one-off, but the latest move in a rivalry neither side is stepping back from. Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-906034

TRUMP DECLARES “ECONOMIC D-DAY” ON IRAN, WARNS ANY COUNTRY AIDING TEHRAN WILL PAY. Source: https://www.foxnews.com/politics/trump-threatens-unprecedented-economic-consequences-any-nation-aiding-iran

ISRAEL STRIKES SYRIAN AIR BASE TO BLOCK A TURKISH MILITARY DEPLOYMENT. Eight strikes hit the runway of the Abu Duhur air base in Idlib province; Netanyahu said he warned Turkey beforehand that Israel would not allow it to establish a foothold there. Sources: https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-confirms-striking-syrian-air-base-saying-turkey-was-planning-to-deploy-forces/ and https://www.timesofisrael.com/dont-netanyahu-says-he-warned-turkey-before-israel-struck-syrian-base/

ISRAEL AND THE BOARD OF PEACE AGREE TO WORKING GROUPS ON GAZA DISARMAMENT. Following an hours-long meeting between Netanyahu and White House envoy Jared Kushner, both sides agreed a Hamas weapons handover, supervised by an American general, must come before any IDF withdrawal from Gaza. Source: https://jewishinsider.com/2026/08/israel-board-of-peace-gaza-working-groups-netanyahu-kushner-mladenov-herzog/

IDF STRIKE ON HAMAS’S NUKHBA FORCE KILLS SIX NEAR GAZA CITY PORT. The IDF said the strike targeted a meeting of commanders from the unit that led the October 7 invasion, killing four Nukhba commanders from its Beit Lahia Battalion. Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/idf-says-it-hit-meeting-of-elite-hamas-commanders-near-gaza-port-six-reported-dead/

UK SUMMONS ISRAELI ENVOY OVER TENDER FOR MORE THAN 1,200 E1 SETTLEMENT HOMES. Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called the move “unacceptable and destructive” and pledged a package of measures, including possible sanctions, in the coming weeks. Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/britain-denounces-israels-launch-of-tender-for-e1-settlement-project-summons-envoy/

SA’AR HITS BACK AT UK: “ISRAEL WILL NOT BE A PASSIVE VICTIM.” Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar rejected the “patronising tone” of Britain’s condemnation of the E1 settlement tender, citing the Balfour Declaration and insisting Israel “will not be a passive victim of this policy” but will defend its rights, interests, and people. Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/fm-saar-rejects-patronizing-uk-condemnation-of-e1-settlement-tender/

ISRAEL’S DEFENSE BUDGET SET TO JUMP 20 BILLION SHEKELS—ROUGHLY 6.7 BILLION DOLLARS. The increase, driven partly by a surprise GDP surge tied to Nvidia’s growing footprint in Israel, would push the defense budget baseline from 70 billion to 90 billion shekels. Source: https://www.israelhayom.com/2026/08/19/israel-defense-budget-surge-treasury-objections-idf-procurement/

MAN CHARGED WITH FEDERAL HATE CRIMES FOR ATTACK AT MANHATTAN’S CENTRAL SYNAGOGUE. Larry Montes allegedly disrupted Shabbat services and punched a 63-year-old congregant; he now faces two federal hate crime counts and a charge of damaging religious property. Source: https://www.jta.org/2026/08/19/ny/manhattan-central-synagogue-attacker-faces-federal-hate-crime-charges

TROUNCED IN FLORIDA GOP PRIMARY, ANTISEMITIC CANDIDATES BELIEVE “VICTORY” IS STILL NEAR. Candidates who built campaigns around classic antisemitic tropes lost badly, but the report notes a worrying trend behind the defeat: young Americans increasingly turning against Jews and Israel. Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/trounced-in-florida-gop-primary-antisemitic-candidates-believe-victory-is-still-near/

ISRAELI TEEN STRIPPED OF GOLD MEDAL AT COMPUTER SCIENCE OLYMPIAD — FOR DISPLAYING HIS FLAG. Seventeen-year-old Yotam Budnik won gold at the International Olympiad in Informatics in Uzbekistan, then had his official recognition revoked after wearing the Israeli flag on the podium. Source: https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-905924

HAMAN’S LIES: EXPOSING THE ANCIENT ROOTS OF ANTISEMITISM AND WHY THE SPIRIT OF ESTHER MUST ARISE. Comment: The propaganda assault against Israel is not merely political. It is spiritual. It is the newest expression of an ancient hatred—a hatred that has pursued the Jewish people through every century, every empire, and every civilization. And it carries profound prophetic significance. Source: https://www.amazon.com/Hamans-Lies-Exposing-Ancient-Antisemitism/dp/1960870785

WHAT IS ANTISEMITISM? Be sure to see the video report addressing this question at https://endtimes.substack.com/p/what-is-antisemitism

ARCHAEOLOGISTS UNCOVER A 1,300-YEAR-OLD SHOPPING DISTRICT — AND CAN’T FIGURE OUT WHY IT’S THERE. A salvage dig beneath a new bus terminal in Ramat Gan revealed streets lined with shops, warehouses, and pottery kilns from the early Islamic period — with no city or settlement nearby to explain who built it. Source: https://www.timesofisrael.com/1300-year-old-industrial-hub-uncovered-during-bus-terminal-construction-in-ramat-gan/

Record my misery; list my tears on Your scroll—are they not in Your record?

…Psalm 56:8

But now, this is what Adonai says—he who created you, Jacob, he who formed you, Israel: “Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have summoned you by name; you are mine.”

…Isaiah 43:1

“At that time,” says Adonai, “I will gather you; at that time I will bring you home. I will give you honor and praise among all the peoples of the earth when I restore your fortunes before your very eyes.”

…Zephaniah 3:19-20

“On that day, when all the nations of the earth are gathered against her, I will make Jerusalem an immovable rock for all the nations. All who try to move it will injure themselves.”

…Zechariah 12:3