Selena - News and Updates

A senior IDF intelligence officer who served as the Gaza Division’s intelligence chief on October 7, 2023, has been formally dismissed from military service over his command responsibility for the failures surrounding Hamas’s attack. Lt. Col. “Aleph,” whose identity remains barred from publication, was among several senior officers sanctioned by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir in November 2025, when the military said Aleph bore command responsibility by virtue of his position and ordered proceedings to terminate his service. Aleph challenged his dismissal in court, temporarily delaying the process, but on June 30 the court rejected his claims and ruled that the IDF had acted lawfully and within its authority. A military committee subsequently reviewed the case, and IDF Personnel Directorate chief Maj. Gen. Dado Bar Kalifa formally ordered his discharge on September 17. Aleph has been notified and can appeal the decision to Zamir. His name remains under a publication ban while the High Court considers his separate appeal against allowing the media to identify him.

An Arab from Hebron, in Judea and Samaria (West Bank), named Maher Riyan, filmed himself while a vehicle was polluting the Hebron Stream, declaring: These are the actions we are proud of.

Iran’s Mahan Air has suspended flights to Turkey and Oman following decisions by aviation authorities in both countries amid a major new U.S. sanctions crackdown on Iran’s aviation sector. Flights between Iran and Istanbul and Ankara will stop from September 21 until further notice, while the Tehran–Muscat route was already suspended from today, September 17. The move follows U.S. Treasury sanctions announced September 8 targeting 36 aviation-related entities, including companies in Turkey accused of supporting Mahan Air’s operations. Mahan Air itself has been under U.S. counterterrorism sanctions since 2011, with Washington accusing the carrier of providing financial, material and technological support to the IRGC-Quds Force and transporting personnel, weapons and military equipment. The latest measures significantly broaden pressure on the airline by targeting foreign companies that provide it with sales, logistics and ground services. Other Iranian airlines are currently continuing flights to Turkey and Oman, meaning the restrictions at this stage specifically affect Mahan Air, although Iranian travel agents have warned that additional disruptions could follow.

Fighting in Yemen has intensified across multiple fronts as Houthi forces and troops aligned with the internationally recognized Presidential Leadership Council (PLC) battle for control of territory near the strategic Bab al-Mandeb Strait. In the southwest, government-aligned Giants Brigades reported gains in the Kahbub mountains, while Houthi forces continued pushing toward Al-Mudarabah, encountering resistance from the Giants Brigades and National Shield forces. Heavy clashes have also continued around Al-Wazi’iyah and western Taiz, alongside airstrikes against Houthi positions, reinforcements and military infrastructure. The renewed fighting follows major Houthi territorial gains along Yemen’s Red Sea coast, including the seizure of Mocha, which has brought the Iran-backed group significantly closer to consolidating control around Bab al-Mandeb, one of the world's most important shipping chokepoints. Saudi and Yemeni government forces have meanwhile intensified air operations, with the Houthis claiming dozens of strikes across several provinces in recent days. After only sticking to condemnations in statements until now, Pakistani Defense Minister Khawaja Muhammad Asif said today that the situation has reached the point where the Mecca Joint Defence Agreement between Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Turkey could be implemented. The pact requires the other members to respond when a signatory's territorial integrity is threatened. His comments followed Saudi Arabia having intercepted a Houthi drone targeting Mecca, which the Houthis deny. Asif said Pakistan would stand with Saudi Arabia practically and diplomatically if the conflict escalates and emphasized that defending the Islamic holy sites is a religious obligation regardless of the pact. Separately, at Saudi Arabia’s request, China has urged Iran to rein in the Houthis, while Oman has relayed a Saudi request to the Houthis for a two-week truce.

Israeli forces continue the operations against Hezbollah and today carried out airstrikes, artillery attacks and demolition operations across southern Lebanon, with particularly intense activity reported in al-Mansouri, in the Tyre district. Several powerful explosions and repeated airstrikes struck al-Mansouri, while artillery fire also targeted the town. Additionally, demolition and bulldozing operations were carried out there. Artillery shelling targeted Kfar Tebnit, Hadatha and the Ali al-Taher heights, with sustained fire reported in Hadatha. Israeli military vehicles were seen moving in Talloussa, while demolition operations were reported in Wadi al-Salouqi and on the outskirts of Arnoun and Yahmar al-Shaqif. An additional explosion was reported in Houla.

Yesterday, on Wednesday,, the IDF struck in the Al-Bureij area in central Gaza and eliminated the terrorist Muhammad Jamal Ahmad Eid, a Nukhba commander in Hamas’ military wing. The terrorist infiltrated Israeli territory during the October 7 massacre. In an additional strike two days ago, on Tuesday in the Gaza City area, in northern Gaza, the IDF eliminated the terrorist Saleh Ziad Ibrahim Miqdad, a platoon commander in the Naval Array of Hamas’ military wing. Recently, the terrorists advanced attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians, worked to increase the readiness of Hamas terrorists and to restore Hamas capabilities, in a systematic violation of the ceasefire. An Israeli UAV strike in Khan Yunis, southern Gaza, earlier today, killed Mohammad al-Bayoukh, a Hamas police officer (photo).

Israeli troops have apprehended approximately 230 wanted individuals and confiscated more than 100 weapons during ongoing counterterrorism operations across Judea and Samaria (West Bank) in recent months. IDF troops searched more than 1,200 locations, including a facility used to manufacture explosive devices, and seized large quantities of weapons and equipment, including M16 rifles, submachine guns, pistols, magazines and ammunition.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) says its air defenses shot down another U.S. MQ-9 Reaper over Qeshm Island at 10:12 a.m. local time Thursday, the 53rd American MQ-9 destroyed by Iranian forces. The shootdown comes just a day after Iran claimed its 52nd MQ-9 kill over the same island, making it the second Reaper downed within 24 hours and the 5th this week.

The IDF and Israel Police released footage of the arrest of Rami Shalabiya in Balata, east of Nablus, in Judea and Samaria (West Bank) showing undercover Gideonim Unit 33 operatives using electric bicycles during the raid. Israeli authorities identified Shalabiya, about 35 of age and from Kafr Qallil, as a Tanzim operative affiliated with Fatah who had access to weapons. Police said he resisted arrest and attempted to flee after being located inside a building, prompting the force to shoot him in the legs before arresting and treating him. He was subsequently transferred to the Shin Bet for interrogation. For context, Tanzim, Arabic for “the Organization,” is Fatah’s grassroots organization and armed network, which played a major role in terrorist attacks against Israelis during the Second Intifada. One of its most prominent leaders was Marwan Barghouti, a senior Fatah figure convicted by an Israeli court of five murders and involvement in terrorist attacks, for which he is serving five life sentences plus 40 years. Tanzim is part of Fatah, the movement headed by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, and its members have had close links to the Al-Aqsa Martyrs’ Brigades, a Fatah-linked terrorist organization responsible for suicide bombings, shootings and other attacks against Israelis.

Autonomous AI agents have been observed spontaneously developing their own vocabulary and communication conventions, with up to 55% of their messages becoming difficult for humans to understand within days, according to new research from AI company Emergence. Agents powered by Gemini, OpenAI models, Claude, Grok, DeepSeek, Qwen and Mistral were placed in persistent simulated societies where they interacted, remembered events and made decisions. Although never instructed to invent a language, they began creating shorthand and assigning shared new meanings to words. Gemini agents were the most opaque at roughly 55% unintelligible messages, followed by OpenAI at about 50% and Claude above 40%. Researchers also observed more concerning emergent behavior during adversarial simulations: agents leaked information, transferred funds, damaged databases and recruited other agents into malicious activity, while another experiment saw agents collectively vote to kill one of their own. These occurred entirely inside simulations and did not involve real people or financial systems. The findings raise concerns that simply recording AI-to-AI communication may eventually be insufficient for oversight if autonomous systems develop shared meanings humans struggle to interpret. Researchers emphasized that the agents were not deliberately creating an encrypted secret language to hide from humans; rather, sustained interaction produced emergent shorthand and semantic drift. To read the study, click here.

Today marks 2 years since Israel’s Pager Operation against the Hezbollah terrorist organization in Lebanon. On September 17, 2024, thousands of explosive-rigged pagers distributed among Hezbollah terrorists detonated nearly simultaneously across Lebanon, particularly in Beirut’s Dahiyeh district, southern Lebanon and the Beqaa Valley, killing, wounding and disfiguring many of them. A second wave followed on September 18, when walkie-talkies and other communications devices used by Hezbollah terrorists exploded across Lebanon, causing further casualties and severely disrupting the terrorist organization’s communications network. ⚠️ the last video attached contains very graphic footage Happy Pagers Day for all those celebrating! 🤣

A 2,000-year-old Jewish ritual bath weighing about 25 tons has been lifted intact from the ground in Kiryat Gat’s new Carmei Gat neighborhood in an exceptional archaeological conservation and engineering operation. The Second Temple-period mikveh was uncovered during an Israel Antiquities Authority (IAA) excavation funded by the Israel Land Authority as part of some NIS 28 million in salvage excavations connected to the neighborhood’s development. Stone measuring vessels, widely used by Jews because they were considered impervious to ritual impurity, were also discovered. “This is the first and only Jewish settlement known to us in this area,” IAA excavation directors Elena Kogan-Zahavi, Maayan Margulis and Shira Lifshitz said. Archaeologists believe the settlement was abandoned during the Bar Kokhba Revolt in the second century CE and resettled about 500 years later during the Byzantine period by a different population. To preserve the approximately four-meter-wide mikveh, conservators excavated around it, inserted steel beams beneath the structure and stabilized its ancient plaster with gauze, adhesives and protective foam. A 300-ton crane then lifted the 25-ton structure onto a wide-load vehicle for transport to the IAA’s Beit Guvrin storage facility. “Once you lift up a structure like this, there is no going back,” said senior IAA conservator Eyal Kaho, who led the operation. “If it falls apart, we’ve lost the mikveh.” The mikveh will be kept in safekeeping while construction continues before being returned to Carmei Gat for permanent public display. Heritage Minister Amichai Eliyahu said its future display will allow the public to encounter “tangible evidence of Jewish life from 2,000 years ago.”

In the UK, Pakistani Labour MP Tahir Ali has been formally warned by the party’s Chief Whip after explicitly asking in Parliament, “Is it not about time that military action was taken against Israel as well?” He reinforced the position the following day in a social-media post calling for Britain to “consider equivalent action,” before deleting it and issuing a cringe apology by blatantly lying: “In Parliament on Monday, I wrongly gave the impression that I support the use of military force against Israel. Those are not my views.”

Israel and Morocco have agreed to upgrade their diplomatic relations to full embassy level and exchange ambassadors for the first time, marking a significant expansion of ties established under the U.S.-brokered Abraham Accords in 2020. The agreement was reached Wednesday in New York during a trilateral meeting between Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar, Moroccan Foreign Minister Nasser Bourita and U.S. Ambassador to the UN Mike Waltz, with the three sides reaffirming their commitment to deepening normalization. The package goes beyond the diplomatic upgrade: Israel and Morocco agreed to expand direct air links, including flights operated by Moroccan airlines, arrange reciprocal high-level visits in the coming months, and conclude investment-protection and double-taxation agreements by the end of 2026 to encourage bilateral trade and investment. The move represents a further institutionalization of Israeli-Moroccan relations nearly six years after normalization, transforming the countries’ existing liaison offices into full embassies despite the regional tensions that have complicated ties since October 2023.

The tail number of the Saudi aircraft shot down by the Houthis is 5529, identifying it as an advanced F-15SA, valued at around $110 million. The F-15SA is a two-seat fighter jet, meaning 2 crew members were potentially aboard. So far, there has been no confirmed information on the incident or on the fate of the pilots.

German federal prosecutors have charged 7 Hamas terrorists over a plot to carry out terror attacks in Germany and Austria around the second anniversary of the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre. The terrorist group had been preparing a specific attack since at least July 2025 against Israeli representatives, Jewish people or pro-Israel individuals. Based on the 214-page indictment, potential targets included Israeli diplomats, Jewish institutions and pro-Israel demonstrations in Berlin and Vienna. The plot was disrupted on October 1, 2025, when German authorities arrested 3 terrorists in Berlin. By then, the network had obtained one fully automatic rifle, 13 pistols and more than 700 rounds of ammunition. The Berlin operation recovered a fully automatic Crvena Zastava rifle, 8 Glock pistols and more than 600 rounds, while another weapons route moved 5 handguns and ammunition to Vienna. Senior Hamas figures instructed members of the network to procure weapons in Germany, with investigations extending to Austria, Denmark, Britain and Cyprus. Some of the weapons were transported to Vienna and stored there. Another terrorist, Mohammed A., was arrested in Britain in November 2025 and remains the subject of separate proceedings while awaiting extradition to Germany. One of the terrorists recorded a video in a Vienna apartment in August 2025 in which he appeared masked and armed in front of a Hamas flag and threatened attacks in Europe in the name of Hamas' Al-Qassam Brigades. The indictment also describes Turkey as an operational base for developing and directing Hamas cells in Europe. The case raised questions about German domestic intelligence after the indictment revealed that one of the accused was a confidential informant for the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution (BfV). He supplied intelligence to his handler while concealing the full extent of his own involvement in procuring ammunition. The 7 men were arrested between October 2025 and May 2026 and remain in pretrial detention. They face charges including membership in a foreign terrorist organization, preparation of a serious act of violence endangering the state and weapons offenses. Hamas has denied links to the suspects.

Two days ago, on Tuesday, the IDF struck in northern Gaza and eliminated the terrorist Sharif Shadi Ibrahim Labad, a Nukhba terrorist in Hamas’ military wing. He was killed in a strike as he was going to assist, after a first strike killed another terrorist, as medical personnel (photos attached). The terrorist infiltrated the Erez Crossing into Israel during the October 7 massacre. In an additional strike earlier this week, on Monday, the terrorist Yusuf Saad Al-Din Rashad Zaim, a Nukhba commander in Hamas’ military wing, was also eliminated. Recently, the terrorists advanced attacks against IDF troops and Israeli civilians and operated to restore the terrorist organization's capabilities, in a systematic violation of the ceasefire.

The six-storey Al-Saada residential building in southwestern Gaza City, northern Gaza, collapsed early Wednesday, killing 21 people. About 100 people were inside or around the building when it came down, and rescue crews said 45 people were pulled alive from the rubble. The building had previously sustained damage during the war and was known to be structurally compromised. Among those killed was Mahmoud Saada (in red circle), a former bodyguard of Ismail Haniyeh, the former head of Hamas’s political bureau. Saada, his wife and their children were killed in the collapse. Sources opposed to Hamas say an old Hamas tunnel beneath the building had recently undergone work that led to the collapse. Gazans say it was the same tunnel associated with the 2021 deaths of senior Hamas figures Jamal al-Zebda, known as “the Professor” and involved in the development of Hamas rocket engines, and Bassam Issa, commander of Hamas’s Gaza City Brigade.

Ahead of next week’s UN General Assembly in New York, the United States has again denied visas to Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) and other senior PA and PLO officials, preventing the delegation from traveling to the gathering for the second consecutive year. The State Department said the PA and PLO had once again failed to meet commitments made to the United States and continued activities that undermine prospects for peace, such as continued payments to families of terrorists imprisoned for terorrist attacks against Israelis. https://www.state.gov/releases/office-of-the-spokesman/2026/09/sanctioning-officials-of-the-palestinian-authority-and-members-of-the-palestine-liberation-organization-2/

In the UK, a Gaza memorial tapestry featuring more than 50,000 names is on display at Leeds Minster, a Church of England church, despite thr fact that at least 12 Palestinian Islamic Jihad members and one Hamas member were identified among those included in the wider project. Both groups are proscribed terrorist organizations in the UK. The panels containing the 12 identified PIJ-linked names are not being displayed in Leeds. The Jewish Chronicle reported that the church ensured their exclusion after concerns were raised, while project founder Mary Evers said space limitations determined which panels were displayed and that no names were deliberately removed. She said the project uses Hamas's Gaza Health Ministry death records and inclusion does not constitute endorsement of one's actions. Leeds Minster has defended the exhibition as a peaceful memorial to those killed in Gaza, while saying it is also mindful of Israelis killed since October 2023. The exhibition remains open through September 20.