News Digest — 5/22/26
Life Returns To Gaza Border Area As Communities Record Dozens Of Newborns
The community of Shlomit is located in the southern Gaza border region, a short distance from the Gaza Strip and about a kilometer from the Egyptian border. According to the Tkuma Directorate, 20 babies were born in the community of about 600 residents during 2025.
One of the families that joined the community is the Amar family. Oshrit and Nissim Amar, parents of baby Ari, moved to Shlomit over the past year.
‘When we passed through the entrance gate to the community, I told Nissim, ‘This is where I want to live,’” Oshrit said. “There was something special about the atmosphere and the place, even before we met the residents.
“We completed the acceptance process, bought a plot of land in 2023 and were supposed to begin construction right after Simchat Torah, but the October 7 attacks happened.”
After October 7, family and friends tried to talk us out of it. They said we were crazy. I won’t lie and say there wasn’t fear, but then suddenly we felt even more committed to this place and to our country. Nissim always says that if everyone says they are afraid, in the end there will be no army and no state here.”
Their fifth son was born on March 25, 2026. “Who would have believed we’d return to the Gaza border region and bring children into the world in a time like this? We are strong. We will build homes here, bring children into the world and make the bleeding land flourish. The people of Israel live on.”
Other Gaza border communities also recorded significant birth rates in 2025, a total of 107 babies were born in small communities nearby Gaza.
The Be’eri community, which has still not returned home, welcomed 18 babies during 2025, while the Kfar Aza community welcomed 11 newborns. As of Thursday (21st) the Tkuma Directorate reported that about 93% of residents had returned to live in the Gaza border region.
Meanwhile, dozens of new immigrants who arrived in Israel over the past year and were absorbed at the absorption center in Kibbutz Merhavia in the Jezreel Valley were set to celebrate their first Shavuot in the country on Thursday (21st). In recent days the immigrants learned about the agriculture traditions of the pioneers, practiced in the valley for more than 100 years.
Shavuot is the holiday of the valley. A holiday of land, fields and a living, growing community,” said Shlomit Shihor-Reichman, head of the Jezreel Valley Regional Council. “To see new immigrant families choosing to build their homes in the valley is a moving reminder of the power of an embracing community and the hope that continues to grow here every day.”
IDF Chief Of Staff Visits Wounded Soldiers Ahead Of Shavuot
IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir visited wounded soldiers on Thursday (21st) at the Beit Levinstein Rehabilitation Center and the Rambam Health Care Campus, where he met with IDF personnel injured in combat.
During the visit, Zamir emphasized that the Israel Defense Forces continues to operate on all fronts and remains on high alert and fully prepared ahead of the Shavuot holiday.
Zamir toured several hospital departments, spoke with wounded soldiers and their families, and expressed support for the medical staff as well as members of the IDF casualty and rehabilitation system, including Unit RAM2.
In his remarks, he praised “the strength of the people of Israel” and highlighted the spirit of volunteerism, mutual responsibility, and resilience demonstrated by soldiers, families, and medical teams since the beginning of the war.
At Beit Levinstein, the Chief of Staff met with Lieutenant Colonel A., commander of battalion 52, who was wounded in Lebanon. He later visited Rambam Hospital, where he met with Colonel Meir Biderman, commander of the 401st Brigade, along with other wounded personnel, including operational documentation soldier Staff Sergeant S., who was injured on Wednesday (20th) in Lebanon.
“The strength and determination that you and your families are showing throughout the recovery and rehabilitation process from these complex combat injuries is inspiring to the entire people of Israel,” Zamir told the wounded soldiers.
He added that “even during the Shavuot holiday, the IDF remains on the highest level of alert and continues operating decisively across all sectors, with high readiness and full preparedness for every mission.”
IDF Supplies 724,000 Desserts To Soldiers For Shavuot
The Israel Defense Forces supplied approximately 724,000 desserts to soldiers ahead of the Jewish holiday of Shavuot, the military said on Wednesday (20th).
The IDF Technological and Logistics Directorate, together with the Defense Ministry’s procurement administration, prepared for Shavuot so that “even in the field, service members will receive high-quality, varied and festive food provisions,” according to the statement.
The military said special emphasis this year was placed on desserts and sweets “to provide troops with a real holiday atmosphere during an intensive operational period.”
The dessert packages included cheesecakes, kanafeh-style kadaif pastries, and chocolate mousse.
In addition, around 84 tons of fish and 90 tons of baked goods were delivered to IDF bases, outposts, and units stationed in the field ahead of the biblical holiday, which commemorates the revelation of the Torah to Moses at Mount Sinai and began on Thursday (21st) at sundown.
Additional food items distributed included sweet potato fries, fish and chips, shakshuka pastries, and vegetable patties aimed at providing “rich, nutritious, and diverse” meals for soldiers, the IDF said.
More than 6,000 dedicated field cooking kits were also distributed to soldiers operating on the front lines, the army said.
The kits include pasta, sauces, spices, and cooking pots intended to allow troops to prepare holiday meals.
Shavuot, also known as the Feast of Weeks, is a major Jewish holiday marking the end of the seven-week counting period following Passover.
Traditionally associated with the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai and the biblical wheat harvest, the holiday is widely observed in the Jewish State by eating dairy-based meals, including cheesecakes, and other dairy products, as well as by family gatherings and overnight religious studies.
IDF Reconnaissance Unit Hunts Hezbollah – Elisha Ben Kimon
The television in the living room of the house on the outskirts of Bint Jbeil in southern Lebanon was still on. On a table lay three loaded Kalashnikov rifles. “When you find a regular weapons cache, the weapons are usually unloaded and packed away,” said Maj. D., 24, commander of the Golan reconnaissance company. “When you find a weapon with a round in the chamber, you understand terrorists were here just moments earlier.”
“Inside the closets, we found Iranian-made explosive devices still wrapped in their original plastic packaging, ready for use along with anti-tank missiles. In another incident, we found a huge anti-aircraft machine gun meant for firing at helicopters. I had never seen a weapon like that in my life.”
One of the main threats was explosive drones. “We assigned several fighters whose only job was to look at the sky and detect drones, and in one case we also managed to bring them down. Beyond that, correct positioning behind cover and movement through concealed terrain with large spacing make it very difficult for the enemy to identify us.
Cpl. Gur Aryeh described the operational atmosphere in Lebanon. “You enter with a certain fear, but alongside it there is a sense of power from the size of the mission. A lot of people told us they had not seen fighters with this kind of fire in them. We would say, ‘let’s capture another house and another house.’ We are a foot unit that walks dozens of km, with bags and equipment on our backs. That was the peak for every fighter. That is what we trained for, and we didn’t think about the cost.”
Gur Aryeh was wounded i n the Bint Jbeil area and evacuated to a hospital. “You see that everyone from the unit who was wounded only wants to return and go back inside,” he said. (Ynet News )
Documents Show That Hamas Leaders Saw Themselves As An Integral Part Of Iran’s Regional Alliance – Khaled Abu Toameh
Documents captured by the Israel Defense Forces in Gaza show that on the morning of the Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of Israel, Hamas leaders sent a message to Hezbollah Secretary-General Hassan Nasrallah requesting support for the attack that had begun. They demanded active participation from all parties in the Iran-led “axis of resistance,” noting that “the cost of any hesitation will be high and unbearable, both in terms of our plan and concerning you and the Islamic Republic [of Iran]”
The newly uncovered message reveals that the Oct. 7 invasion was never intended to be a limited terrorist attack. It was conceived as the opening phase of a much broader regional war aimed at destroying Israel. It shows that Hamas leaders believed they were launching a grand strategic campaign involving Hezbollah in Lebanon, the Houthis in Yemen, Iran-backed militias in Iraq and Syria, and other jihadist organizations aligned with Tehran to overwhelm Israel’s defenses from all sides.
A new secret letter sent by Hamas leaders to Iran’s current Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei called for coordinated military escalation on “all fronts” simultaneously against Israel. For years, many Western diplomats and analysts insisted that Hamas was primarily a local Palestinian movement focused in Gaza. The documents show that Hamas leaders viewed themselves as an integral part of Iran’s regional military alliance.
The documents demonstrate that ceasefires and negotiations with Hamas do not alter the group’s core objective of Israel’s destruction. So long as Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Iranian regime continue to exist in their current form, the chances of another Oct. 7-style massacre remains dangerously high.
Israel Established Elite Task Force To Hunt Down Terrorists Who Took Part In Oct. 7- Report
After the October 7 massacre, Israel established an elite task force to track down and kill or capture every Hamas terrorist who participated or planned the attack, from the most minor participants to their leadership, the Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday (20th).
The task force is called NILI, an acronym of “Netzach Yisrael Lo Yeshaker” (“The Eternal One of Israel does not lie”), signifying that no victim of the attack would be forgotten.
“The clear message to all future enemies is to think again about the price of a terrorist operation like that,” said Shalom Ben Hanan, a former senior official in the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency).
NILI has a long list of “thousands of names” of terrorists involved in the massacre, the WSJ reported, of which many have already been crossed off. No individual is too insignificant or too powerful to be targeted – the WSJ describes a man who drove a tractor through the border fence being killed in an airstrike two years afterward, while ,walking down a narrow urban street, as well as the recent assassination of Izz ad-Din al-Haddad, whom IDF Chief of Staff LTG. Eyal Zamir had said was “one of the chief perpetrators of the October 7 massacre and was the head of Hamas’ military wing.”
Current and former Israeli officials said that, once two pieces of evidence are found that an individual took part in the October 7 massacre, they are marked for death without trial.
Among the methods used to identify and locate terrorists are facial recognition programs based on videos posted on their social media pages, cellphone location data, and the interrogation of Gazan detainees.
Michael Milstein, a former senior Israeli military intelligence officer on Palestinian affairs, said that “revenge is an important part of the discourse” in the Middle East.
“It is about how serious anyone in your environment sees you,” he explained. “Unfortunately this is the language of this neighborhood.”
In addition to striking terrorists in Gaza, the task force has also assassinated Hamas leaders in Iran and Lebanon.
One security official told the WSJ that the task force prioritized terrorists whose deaths would console victims’ family members in what they called “treatment for the soul.”
The WSJ reported that, since the ceasefire with Hamas began, the task force has been reduced to a small number of operatives who pass information on targets to commanders responsible for operations in Gaza.
