At a time when Israeli soldiers are fighting and dying to defend the country, Knesset members from Shas and United Torah Judaism recently sought to advance legislation that would have defined Torah study as a form of national service equivalent to serving in the IDF.

Following public criticism and objections from within the governing coalition, the proposal has now reportedly been revised.

While the bill's sponsors may have intended to bring honor to one of Judaism's most sacred values, the fierce public backlash demonstrates how easily efforts to legislate the status of Torah study can become entangled in political controversy.

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On a quiet street in Asmara, Eritrea's capital, stands a striking synagogue that seems almost frozen in time.

Its doors remain closed most days. The pews are largely empty. The voices that once filled the sanctuary with prayer have long since faded away. Inside, original Torah scrolls, Italian-era plaques and rows of wooden benches still stand. They appear to be waiting for a congregation that left but never returned.

Yet the building endures, serving as a silent witness to a remarkable and largely forgotten chapter in Jewish history.

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When Israel made the historic decision late last year to recognize Somaliland, it did something few nations are willing to do: it acted on principle and strategic interest rather than diplomatic convention.

After more than three decades in which Somaliland has maintained its own institutions, elections, security forces, and governing structures – including multiple competitive presidential elections with peaceful transfers of power – Israel became the first country to acknowledge Somaliland's claim to sovereign statehood.

That decision mattered.

But recognition alone is not enough.

Now comes the harder part: turning a symbolic breakthrough into diplomatic momentum.

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For decades, Sudan stood at the forefront of Arab rejectionism toward Israel. It was in Khartoum, after all, that the Arab League gathered in the aftermath of the Six-Day War in 1967 and issued the infamous "Three No's": no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel and no negotiations with Israel. Yet hidden beneath that history lies a lesser-known story, one that is at once poignant, remarkable and deeply Jewish.

It is the story of Sudan's forgotten Jewish community.

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Every year on Jerusalem Day, as Israeli flags flutter proudly across the skyline and Jews celebrate the reunification of their eternal capital, the same falsehoods about Jerusalem inevitably reappear.

We are told that Jews have no historic connection to the city. That Jerusalem was never the capital of a Jewish state. That the Temple is a Zionist invention. That Israel is an "occupier" with no legitimate claim to the city.

But slogans are not facts, and propaganda is not history. And repetition does not transform fiction into truth.

So this Jerusalem Day, amid the noise and distortion, it is worth returning to something increasingly rare in discussions about Israel: facts.

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