Inside Israel News

Week of April 29, 2025

In This Week’s Issue

Volunteers of Project “Garden & Tower” Restore Kibbutz Misgav Am Neglected During the War
Jewish Worshippers Can Now Pray and Prostrate at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem
Thousands of Elite IDF “Talpiot” Program Alumni Call for a Ceasefire and Hostage Release
Israeli Artists, Professionals and Former Hostages Petition for an End to the War and the Release of the Hostages

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Volunteers of Project “Garden & Tower” Restore Kibbutz Misgav Am Neglected During the War

Volunteers help rehabilitate the Misgav Am community. (photo credit: Courtesy)

Volunteers help rehabilitate the Misgav Am community. (photo credit: Courtesy)

The Iron Swords War that broke out on October 7, 2023 forced the emergency deployment of thousands of regular IDF and reservist troops to the battlefields near Gaza in the south and close to the border of Lebanon up north.

As many of the soldiers were kibbutz residents, numerous settlements across Israel were left largely abandoned for months at a time. One of these was Kibbutz Misgav Am (“The People’s Fortress”) located in the Upper Galilee Regional Council just south of Odaisseh, Lebanon. As it lay directly in the line of fire of Hezbollah rockets, it has been almost entirely neglected since the southern Lebanon-based terrorists began bombarding northern Israel on October 8, 2023.

Earlier this year, the National Movement for Neighborhoods in Israel (“Making Neighborhoods”) and the Jewish National Fund (JNF) collaborated to plan and execute “Garden & Tower”, a community-driven project rehabilitating deteriorating settlements in the northern frontier of Israel—beginning with Misgav Am. Over 150 young volunteers from across the nation converged on the kibbutz to repair the façades of houses, private gardens, and public spaces.

Having rendered the settlement fit to be reinhabited by its displaced residents, the JNF and Making Neighborhoods will disburse the tens of thousands of dollars in their project budget to dispatch volunteers who will restore some of the many other kibbutzim adjacent to the Israel-Lebanon border.

Pray for the safety and protection of the volunteers and the kibbutz residents as they work to reanimate the settlements damaged and left idle by 18 months of war. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all Israel that only the true Peacemaker, Yeshua the Messiah, Prince of Peace, can bring.

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Jewish Worshippers Can Now Pray and Prostrate at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

Orthodox Jews pray outside the Temple Mount, in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City, during the Passover holiday, April 17, 2025. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)

In 2011, Member of Knesset (MK) Zvi Sukkot, leader of the Religious Zionism Party, was summarily arrested simply for prostrating in prayer at the Temple Mount. Since Israel seized East Jerusalem from Jordan in the Six-Day War of June 1967, the site remained under Israeli security control, but was administered by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf and under Jordanian Hashemite custodianship.

The Waqf forbade worship there by practitioners of any other religion except Islam. In fact, the Temple Mount—designated Haram-al-Sharif by Muslims and Har HaBayyit by Jews—is the third and first holiest site in the world according to the former and latter, respectively.

Last year, MK Itamar Ben-Gvir, leader of the far-right, ultranationalist Otzma Yehudit Party and Minister of National Security, relaxed police surveillance and restrictions on Jewish worship at the Temple Mount, and for the first time in thirty years, haredim and Orthodox Jews could pray and prostrate there unfettered and with no fear of detention or incarceration.

MK Ben-Gvir had the full support and assistance of Rabbi Shimshon Elbaum, self-appointed director of the right-wing Temple Mount Administration. Nevertheless, the Netanyahu Government and the Likud Party have not been so sanguine about these actions; in fact, the Prime Minister insisted that the longstanding limitations imposed on Temple Mount worshippers be restored to their status quo.

The moderate, centrist Likud was already at loggerheads with the more conservative Shin Bet Security Services with which MK Ben-Gvir was affiliated. Prime Minister Netanyahu fired Ronen Bar, the Director of Shin Bet, and Likud Party officials feared that Israeli National Security could be harboring subversive far-right extremists.

Pray for peace at the Temple Mount, in Jerusalem, and in all Israel. Pray that Jews and Gentiles in the Holy Land who do not yet know the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ, would be united through a saving knowledge of Him.

Thousands of Elite IDF “Talpiot” Program Alumni Call for a Ceasefire and Hostage Release

IDF soldiers in a swearing in ceremony. February 27, 2025. (credit: Jonathan Shaul/Flash90)

After more than eighteen consecutive months of war and forcible civilian confinement, many reserve, regular army, and elite special ops members of the Israel Defense Forces are understandably and justifiably experiencing battle fatigue in addition to post-traumatic stress disorder.

Currently, 59 Israeli hostages remain in Gaza. According to the IDF and spokespersons for the Netanyahu Administration, 35 of the captives are already deceased. Hamas terrorists swarmed and attacked the Supernova Festival and several settlements near the Gaza Strip in southern Israel, killing 1,200 and abducting another 250.

Sluggish negotiations have resulted in transient, short-lived truces and the incremental release of nearly 200 living and dead captives. However, subsequent efforts to end the war and return all prisoners to their homes and families have been repeatedly stonewalled. The signatories went so far as to say that prolonging the Iron Swords War only serves political and personal interests rather than national security.

Earlier this year, however, IDF Air Force reservists collaborated on a letter demanding that the Israeli government immediately and totally recover all Gazan hostages and end all hostilities. Inspired by the bold move of the Air Force reservists, members of the elite Talpiot programme of the IDF teamed up to compose a similar missive insisting that the Ministry of Defense bring the hostages and the troops home once and for all.

Talpiot provides fifteen years of combined academic and military training to qualify the brightest and the best for senior R&D positions in the IDF. This month, nearly 2,000 Talpiot alumni—regular army, reservists, and active and retired officers—signed the aforementioned letter urging the government of Benjamin Netanyahu to finalize an integrated ceasefire/hostage release deal.

Regular army and reservist medics, former Mossad operatives, and officers have leveraged electronic, print, and social media to appeal to the authorities to terminate the horrible legacy of the conflict instigated by Hamas and escalated by Hezbollah in early October 2023.

Pray that the Government of Israel would heed the cries of those serving their country to bring home safely all military personnel and Gazan captives. Pray for the peace of Jerusalem and all Israel through a saving knowledge of the Prince of Peace, Jesus Christ.

Israeli Artists, Professionals and Former Hostages Petition for an End to the War and the Release of the Hostages

A passerby looks at photos of the hostages in Tel Aviv's Hostages Square, January 23, 2025. (Miriam Alster/FLASH90)

After 18 months of the Iron Swords War and the confinement of living and deceased prisoners in Gaza, there is a growing consensus among both the civilian and military subpopulations of Israel that a cease-fire/hostage release accord must be put into action straight away.

Since the beginning of this year, various interest groups have independently and collaboratively mobilized to draft petitions protesting the ongoing violence and the slothful response to the hostage crisis. They leveraged electronic, print, and social media to disseminate these missives to the relevant elected officials and MKs under the Netanyahu Administration.

Protest letters have been composed and dispatched by over 200 rescued captives and their relatives, more than 350 Israeli fiction writers, poets, and playwrights, another 1,700 performing and graphic artists and cultural figures, 600 architects and engineers, and an unspecified number of healthcare professionals, regular army, reservists, special forces, and retired officers.

The letters reminded readers that nearly all signatories are serving or have already served in the IDF, can personally attest to the fog and horror of war, and are demanding the immediate return of all prisoners in Gaza—living and dead—to their homes and—even if it means a complete cessation of any hostilities or retaliation against Hamas.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu emphatically insisted that he will not tolerate the refusal of any IDF member to respond to the call of duty at such a time as this when Israel must do everything in her power to maintain a strong stand against her enemies. In fact, he denounced the signatories of the aforementioned letters as “fringe extremists” who are determined to “bring down the government [of Israel]” and “do not represent the soldiers or the public”.

Pray that the Israeli government would listen to the objections of its civilian and military citizens and ensure the release and return of all living and deceased Gazan hostages. Pray for peace among the combatants on both sides of the conflict through a saving knowledge of Jesus Christ, Prince of Peace.

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