News Digest — 8/1/25
US Envoy Steve Witkoff, Amb. Mike Huckabee tour GHF aid distribution site in Rafah
US Special Envoy Steve Witkoff and US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee visited the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF) aid distribution site in Rafah on Friday morning.
The visit follows Witkoff’s arrival in Israel on Thursday and meeting with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as ceasefire negotiations with Hamas have stalled.
Huckabee later wrote that he went to Gaza and observed the humanitarian food program by the US-launched GHF.
“Hamas hates GHF b/c it gets food to ppl w/o it being looted by Hamas.”
“Over 100 MILLION meals served in 2 months,” Huckabee wrote.
Both countries agreed that a shift in negotiation tactics and framework is needed due to Hamas‘s unwillingness to compromise, an Israeli senior official told The Jerusalem Post after the meeting.
Topics discussed during the meeting are believed to have included the Gaza ceasefire talks, returning hostages from Hamas captivity, and Iran.
Witkoff’s visit comes as Israeli officials warn that if there is no progress in the coming days on a deal to release the hostages, Israel may be forced to take further action on the ground in Gaza.
US imposes 15% tariff on goods from Israel as part of sweeping new trade policy
The White House announced on Thursday evening that a 15 percent tariff will be imposed on goods from Israel as part of the Trump administration’s new trade policy that has seen rates raised on countries across the globe.
The decision is part of an executive order signed by US President Donald Trump, imposing higher tariffs on dozens of countries in his latest bid to reshape global trade in favor of US businesses. The measure will go into effect on August 7.
In response, Israel’s Finance Ministry tried to downplay the move, noting that the 15% rate is “at the lowest level among countries that have a trade deficit with the US,” which it said “reflects the ongoing dialogue between Israel and the administration with the aim of reaching an improved agreement.”
Counterterror sweep: IDF finds dozens of weapons in Judea and Samaria
Troops of the IDF, ISA, and the Israel Police continue to operate to dismantle terrorist infrastructure in the Central Command region.
This week, the troops thwarted terrorist activities involving the production, smuggling, and possession of illegal weapons. During the counterterrorism activities, approximately 30 weapons were located and confiscated throughout the Central Command region.
In the areas of the Judea and Etzion regional brigades, two ‘Carlo’ type weapons, various weapon parts, and additional weapons were found.
During a battalion-level activity in Anabta, in the Ephraim Regional Brigade, the troops confiscated several weapons. In the village of Al-Ram, in the Binyamin Regional Brigade, a hunting rifle was located. In Odala, in the Samaria Regional Brigade, a handgun and additional combat equipment were found. In the Menashe Regional Brigade, seven weapons were confiscated.
How the ‘neutral’ UN is helping Hamas oppress Gazans and fool the world—By Andrew Tobin, The Washington Free Beacon
Every day this week, hundreds of U.N. trucks stacked with pallets of humanitarian aid have exited Israeli-patrolled routes and rumbled into population centers across the Gaza Strip, where Israel has implemented daily pauses in military operations.
Many of the trucks, though traveling under enhanced Israeli protections introduced on Sunday, have not reached U.N. warehouses, according to Gazans on the ground.
Once the trucks have arrived in the population centers, armed Hamas terrorists have hijacked the cargo, the Gazans said, and what aid has arrived at the warehouses has disappeared into a patronage system controlled by Hamas.
Most Gazans have been forced to buy the aid at exorbitant prices from merchants handpicked and heavily taxed by Hamas.
“Fifty trucks arrived yesterday at warehouses in Gaza City, and Hamas stole all of the aid,” Moumen al-Natour, a 30-year-old lawyer in the northern Gaza capital, said on Tuesday. “Today, the aid went on sale in the black markets at very high prices.”
Al-Natour said a childhood friend, seeking to feed his family, joined a hungry mob trying to loot the trucks and was trampled to death along with a number of other civilians.
(continue reading at worldisraelnews.com)
Rare coin shows Jewish rebels’ shift from hope to desperation
A bronze coin minted by Jews in Jerusalem during the final year before the Second Temple’s destruction, in the closing stages of the Great Revolt against the Romans, has been uncovered in excavations conducted by the Israel Antiquities Authority, in collaboration with the City of David and the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Quarter, at the Jerusalem Archaeological Garden – Davidson Center. The rare coin, discovered near the southwestern corner of the Temple Mount, north of the City of David, bears the words in ancient Hebrew script “for the redemption of Zion.”
According to Esther Rakow-Mellet, archaeologist with the Israel Antiquities Authority, “In the last few days, an unexpected gift was discovered: Yaniv David Levy, our coin researcher, came here and to his great surprise found a coin, covered in dirt. Already then, we thought from the looks of it that it might be a rare coin. We waited anxiously for several days until it came back from cleaning, and it turned out that it was a greeting from the Jewish rebels in the Year Four of the Great Revolt.”
According to Dr. Yuval Baruch, excavation director for the Israel Antiquities Authority and one of the site’s researchers for about 25 years, “The inscription on the coin – ‘For the Redemption of Zion,’ replacing the earlier ‘For the Liberation of Zion’ – indicates a profound change of identity and mindset, and perhaps also reflects the desperate situation of the rebel forces about six months before the fall of Jerusalem on Tisha B’Av, the 9th of the Hebrew month of Av; in August of the year 70 CE. It would seem that in the rebellion’s fourth year, the mood of the rebels now besieged in Jerusalem changed from euphoria and anticipation of freedom at hand, to a dispirited mood and a yearning for redemption. It is also possible that the representatives of the ritual “Four Species’ depicted on the coin, which are symbols of the Sukkot Festival and the ritual national pilgrimage to the Temple, were intended to evoke among the rebels a sense of redemption and anticipation of a hoped-for miracle and happy times.
