Afghani nationals on a flight to Tirana, Albania earlier this month after escaping the Taliban regime thanks to assistance and aid from an Israeli rescue team. (Boaz Arad)

There is no perfect science to rescuing desperate people fleeing a band of theocratic terrorists. That is at least one of the lessons learned from an operation last month to extract 167 Afghan nationals from the Taliban takeover of their country. Another is that trust can be built among strangers, even with people whose governments are sworn enemies and whose religious beliefs are supposedly at odds. Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash reports on the rescue operation.

Dreams of freedom: This is a story of an international consortium of diplomats, Jewish philanthropists, an Israeli aid organization and a random set of individual Israelis, who suddenly found themselves working feverishly together to help an eclectic mix of progressive, educated and once hope-filled Afghanis escape the clutches of a repressive and murderous regime. To tell this dramatic tale, which spans dinner parties in Manhattan to safe houses in the Afghan province of Kunduz and features dispossessed ambassadors printing fake passports and former high school buddies-turned-gun-toting fanatics, as well as two special groups of young Muslim women refusing to give up on their dreams of freedom, I will begin on a private jet making its way from Tel Aviv to the Albanian capital, Tirana, last Thursday. (JI was a guest of Israeli-Canadian businessman and philanthropist Sylvan Adams.)

Lost everything: There is something very humbling about meeting refugees, people who have been forced to flee their homes, due to circumstances beyond their control. Most often, they must make the decision to leave at a moment’s notice, because staying could mean the difference between freedom and imprisonment — or even life and death. Without a thought, those fleeing their homes up and leave behind them the fullness of a life built and invested in over many years. “Moving to another country is hard, it is not home,” Mohammed Javed Khan, 27, told JI. “If I was single, I would have let the Taliban kill me, but I have a daughter and I didn’t want her to grow up without a father, so we left…. Thirty years of life and we lost everything in one day,” he sighed. “We had to leave everything behind.”

Waiting for the world: For now, the refugees remain in the Albanian resort, waiting for the world to decide their fate. Some would like to resettle in Europe, others have their sights set on Canada. One group of young men told me gleefully that their dream is to play for Canada’s national cricket team. “I think they could be with us for many years,” said Albanian Prime Minister Edi Rama, who met with Adams during our whirlwind visit to the country. “I don’t think we have done anything tremendous,” said Rama. “I know there aren’t too many countries in the world that have been willing to take in these people, but I think it should be the most natural thing in the world, especially for the countries who worked in Afghanistan. This is about human morality.”

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Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid looks to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) as he gives remarks after being welcomed by her at the U.S. Capitol on October 12, 2021 in Washington, D.C.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) said Thursday that she and Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid clashed during their meeting in Washington last week about the value of the 2015 nuclear agreement with Iran and the consequences of the U.S. withdrawal from the deal, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Consequences: “I have a good rapport with our ally. Israel is a close friend of ours, but they were still talking about, ‘What are we going to do? [Iran is] so far down the line,’” Pelosi said, recounting her conversation with Lapid. “We’re like, ‘Well, yeah, that’s why we had the agreement.’ But they just don’t seem to see that walking away from the agreement enabled the Iranians to be farther down the line.” Pelosi’s comments came during a virtual event on Thursday organized by the Ploughshares Fund regarding U.S. nuclear policy and nuclear security. Ploughshares raised, and paid out, significant sums to activists and news organizations to support the deal in 2015, and reportedly requested $750,000 from George Soros’s Open Societies Foundation for their efforts.

Rallying support: Other top House Democrats also spoke out in support of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action during the Ploughshares event. Armed Services Committee Chair Adam Smith (D-WA) called the agreement “very effective.” Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA), a top member of the Progressive Caucus and a member of Democratic Caucus leadership, said he felt the administration hasn’t been aggressive enough in pursuing reentry, and should have been more willing to roll back sanctions to facilitate such a move. Rob Malley, the administration’s special envoy for Iran, was “kept off the field” for too long, Khanna added.

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Florida Sen. Perry E. Thurston Jr. speaks, Tuesday, April 27, 2021, during a legislative session at the Capitol in Tallahassee, Fla.

The crowded special House election to succeed the late Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-FL) next month in South Florida remains difficult to read. But state Sen. Perry Thurston, who previously served as House minority leader, is the only candidate in the race to have served in both legislative bodies — and he argues that years in public office have strongly positioned him for success. “Quite frankly, I’m the most qualified candidate if you look at relevant past service and leadership,” Thurston, 60, told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel. “I served in a [divided] body similar to what we’re looking at in D.C. But not only have I served in that capacity, I’ve led in that capacity.”

Ace up his sleeve: Thurston may also be better situated than the rest of the field because he is the sole candidate in the race who represents Tamarac, home to the massive Kings Point condominium complex whose approximately 9,000 residents have historically played a consequential role in determining election outcomes. The complex, whose residents include a sizable and politically active Jewish community, sits in the 20th District. “I think that they’re receptive,” Thurston said, who is Black, assessing his standing among Jewish voters in Kings Point and elsewhere in the district.

Eye on Israel: “I am committed to Israeli security and believe that Israelis should live in safety and peace,” Thurston writes in an Israel position paper provided to JI by his campaign. “As an American, I am proud our government invested in Israel’s Iron Dome system, which has saved countless Israeli lives and is now deployed to protect our own U.S. service members. I believe Israel has a right to defend itself and that the United States must continue to help Israel retain its qualitative military edge.”

Hastings’s legacy: Thurston said he would seek to uphold Hastings’s pro-Israel legacy if he is elected. “He’s been the number one advocate of a strong U.S.-Israel relationship, and I would hope to continue that,” Thurston, who has never been to Israel but said he intends to go at some point, told JI. “Certainly, I would do everything I can to continue it.”

‘Divided’ politics: Thurston has served in the Senate since 2016, a period he described as particularly treacherous for Democrats as they have battled with Republicans over issues like health care and voting rights. “Our politics are divided like they are on a national level, and quite frankly, I think that I’ve been able to get a lot accomplished notwithstanding being in the minority party in the House and the Senate,” he said. “I think that type of leadership is missing when I see people like my good friend Congressman Hastings passing away.”

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Bonus: Eight Democratic candidates competing in South Florida’s upcoming special House primary — including state Sen. Perry Thurston, state Rep. Bobby DuBose, former state legislator Priscilla Taylor, author Elvin Dowling, retired Naval officer Phil Jackson, healthcare executive Sheila Cherfilus-McCormick and Broward County Commissioners Dale Holness and Barbara Sharief — filled out questionnaires solicited by JI ahead of the start of early voting this Saturday. The election is scheduled for Nov. 2.

Cyber security and cyber attack concept background color image

When an Israeli hospital was thrown offline last week, sending it back to the pre-digital age of pen and paper, the country was forced to grapple with what its National Cyber Directorate described as a major ransomware attack — a challenge that many countries have had to tackle in recent years. At the same time as Israeli doctors were contending with the ramifications of the significant blow to their health system, the White House National Security Council was convening a virtual conference on the topic of countering ransomware. Over 30 countries, including Israel and the United Arab Emirates, participated, Jewish Insider’s Tamara Zieve reports.

Growing risk: As the world has become ever more dependent on the internet since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic a year and a half ago, the threat of cyberattacks is higher than ever. “We’re all very vulnerable, and especially as our dependence on cyberspace and our digital identities becomes greater and greater, our vulnerability to cyberattacks is liable to increase,” Deborah Housen-Couriel, the chief legal officer for Konfidas, a cybersecurity company based in Tel Aviv, told JI. A joint statement released at the NSC conference’s conclusion said the participants recognized that ransomware is “an escalating global security threat with serious economic and security consequences.”

Breaking barriers: Amit Ashkenazi, legal advisor of the Israel National Cyber Directorate (INCD), was part of the Israeli contingent that participated in the conference. “The fact that we have like-minded countries around the table helps us talk about something that we at the INCD have been talking about over the last few years, more openly,” he told JI. He said the effort can help reduce barriers between countries when it comes to information sharing and recovery techniques, and can create technical, legal and policy vehicles to enable swift cooperation.

Digital drawbacks: Israel’s digitized health system, which was touted during the coronavirus pandemic for enabling a speedy and efficient vaccination campaign, is also somewhat of an Achilles heel when it comes to vulnerability in the face of cyberattacks. Doctors at Hillel Yaffe Medical Center in Hadera, where the ransomware attack took place, have been forced to piece together patients’ medical histories, which are usually readily available online. They asked patients to bring in any records they have at home, and are now building up physical folders from scratch. Full communication among staff has been key to enabling the current manual work system to function well, Internal Medicine Department Director Nina Avshovich told JI. “They promise us that in a few weeks we will partially be able to see lab results, X-rays and imaging digitally,” Avshovich said. When hospital staff will return to work as normal is not yet clear.

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