Israel’s Iron Beam system, which intercepts missiles with lasers, will be delivered to the IDF for initial operational use at the end of the month, Brig.-Gen. (res.) Daniel Gold, head of the Israeli Ministry of Defense Research and Development Directorate, said at the International DefenseTech Summit at Tel Aviv University on Monday. 

“With development complete and a comprehensive testing program that has validated the system’s capabilities, we are prepared to deliver initial operational capability to the IDF on Dec. 30, 2025. Simultaneously, we are already advancing the next-generation systems,” Gold said.

According to Gold, “the Iron Beam laser system is expected to fundamentally change the rules of engagement on the battlefield.”

Former Israeli Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz, chairman of Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, which developed and produced the Iron Beam system, told the Misgav Mideast Horizons Podcast in an episode to be released Wednesday that the new missile defense system represents a “laser revolution.” (Jewish Insider’s Lahav Harkov co-hosts the podcast.)

“For the first time in human history, we are able to shoot down missiles, rockets, even artillery shells, mortar shells, cruise missiles, airplanes as well — not with projectiles, not with missiles or artillery shells, but with light,” Steinitz said. 

According to Steinitz, American, Chinese, British, German and Russian companies have tried to develop effective laser weapons for decades. 

“We managed to do it and we already intercepted [projectiles] in tests,” he said, noting that Lite Beam, a smaller version of the Iron Beam system, was successfully used in October 2024 to intercept roughly 50 UAVs shot at Israel by Hezbollah from Lebanon. 

“This is revolutionary, and I am confident that this is just the beginning,” he added.

Iron Beam will initially be used to shoot down short and long-range missiles from Lebanon and Gaza, and the combined use of Iron Beam and the Iron Dome and David’s Sling missile defense systems, also produced by Rafael, will bring Israel close to 100% interception, Steinitz said. 

He does not expect Iron Beam to fully replace Iron Dome nor David’s Sling in the coming years, because factors such as poor weather conditions and very large barrages could make the laser systems less effective.

The use of the laser system will also drastically lower the costs of missile defense, Steinitz said, because each use of the Iron Beam system costs around $3, as opposed to about $50,000 per Iron Dome interceptor. As such, it will cost less for Israel to intercept a rocket than it costs for its enemies to produce them, at $5,000-10,000.

In addition, Steinitz said that the Iron Beam system works faster than the Iron Dome.

“Once the [rocket] is rising over Gaza, interception will start immediately, because the laser can reach the incoming rocket at the speed of light,” he said. “With the Iron Dome, it’s two missiles flying, one from Gaza and one from Tel Aviv to meet each other midway.” 

Shooting down rockets over Gaza will also mitigate the need for Israelis to run to shelters and safe rooms due to falling missile and interceptor fragments.

“We won’t sound the alarm in Tel Aviv, because we should be able to see [an interception] immediately if we succeed to intercept, and if we fail to intercept, we will have another opportunity, and then we shall put on the alarm,” Steinitz explained.

Steinitz also said that in the coming years, Rafael is likely to develop laser-based systems to intercept longer range missiles, such as those shot at Israel by the Houthis from Yemen and by Iran in the last two years.

Hamas returned the remains of Lt. Hadar Goldin on Sunday, over 11 years after he was killed in battle in Gaza.

Israel confirmed the body was Goldin’s through DNA testing, four hours after it was returned. 

Goldin was 23 when he fought in Operation Protective Edge in Gaza and took part in a mission to destroy a Hamas tunnel in Rafah on Aug. 1, 2014, during a 72-hour ceasefire. Hamas terrorists killed two Israeli soldiers, taking Goldin’s body with them.

Goldin’s parents, Leah and Simcha, publicly advocated for his return, but did not support the release of living terrorists in exchange for their son’s remains. They repeatedly suggested that humanitarian aid to Gaza be reduced or stopped as long as the remains of their son and Oron Shaul, another soldier whose body was taken in 2014, were held in Gaza. 

After Goldin’s remains were returned, Leah said her family “took for granted that the State of Israel would not leave soldiers behind. It took us 11 years to bring him home through the IDF and security forces. … We faced many disappointments. We cannot give up on who we are, and we will prevail through our values. …Thank you for walking with us all the way.”

Simcha Goldin credited IDF “soldiers [who] fought to bring warriors back from the battlefield. The IDF brought Hadar back to his homeland — no one else. … What this war has proven is that when we fight for our soldiers, we succeed. Victory means bringing home the hostages and bringing home our soldiers to Israel.”

Goldin’s body is the 24th that Hamas has returned since the ceasefire began on Oct. 13 this year, after which all of the remaining hostages, both living and deceased, were meant to be returned within three days. However, the terrorist group has drawn out the return of the remains, and four more hostages have yet to be handed over to Israel: Meny Godard, Master Sgt. Ran Gvili, Dror Or and Sudthisak Rinthalak, a Thai national.

IDF Chief of Staff Eyal Zamir visited the Goldin family on Saturday night. Hamas and the Red Cross were permitted to search for his body in the areas of Gaza controlled by Israel, Hebrew media reported.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced earlier Sunday that Hamas was expected to return Goldin’s body. 

“Lt. Hadar Goldin fell in a heroic battle in Operation Protective Edge 11 years ago,” Netanyahu said. “His body was taken hostage by Hamas, who refused to return him throughout this entire period. This entire time, Israeli governments made a great effort to return him. Naturally, this has been amid the great agony of his family, which will now be able to give him a Jewish burial.” 

Netanyahu added that Israel has “a tradition from the establishment of the state … to bring back our soldiers who fell in battle, and we are doing it. Sometimes it takes a long time … It is a holy value. It expresses our mutual responsibility with the citizens of Israel and first and foremost the soldiers and fighters of Israel.” 

Goldin’s return was reportedly tied to the fate of 200 Hamas fighters currently hiding in a tunnel in the Israel-controlled half of Gaza. 

According to Israel’s Channel 12, the White House reportedly suggested a plan by which, after Goldin’s remains are returned, the terrorists would lay down their arms and surrender, and Israel would allow them to go into exile or to the Hamas-controlled half of Gaza. The IDF would then destroy the tunnel in which they were hiding.

An Israeli official said last week that Netanyahu “would not allow safe passage for 200 Hamas terrorists.” 

The IDF found and returned the bodies of U.S.-Israeli citizens Judith Weinstein-Haggai and Gad Haggai, who were killed in the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attacks, the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office announced on Thursday.

The Haggais were murdered in Kibbutz Nir Oz during Hamas’ onslaught targeting Gaza border communities. Their bodies were held by Hamas, the PMO said.

The couple was on a morning walk when they were shot by terrorists on motorcycles. Weinstein-Haggai called emergency medical services, but the ambulance that was traveling to help them was hit by a rocket, according to her daughter. 

Gad was 72 and Judith, a New York native who also held Canadian citizenship, was 70; they are survived by four children and seven grandchildren.

The Weinstein-Haggai family released a statement via the Hostage and Missing Families Forum, saying that their return “is painful and heartbreaking, yet it also brings healing to our uncertainty. Their return reminds us all that it is the state’s duty to bring everyone home, so that we, the families, together with all the people of Israel, can begin the process of healing and recovery … A grave is not a privilege. A grave is a basic human right, without which personal and national recovery is impossible.”

The family called on leaders to “do everything necessary to reach an agreement that will return all 56 remaining hostages — the living for rehabilitation and the deceased for burial.”

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu thanked the IDF soldiers and Shin Bet fighters who recovered the bodies and added, “We will not rest until we bring all of our hostages home, living and deceased.” 

Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz sent condolences to the Weinstein-Haggai family and said that “the State of Israel is morally and nationally committed to returning our brothers and sisters, living and not living, and we will continue acting with determination until the mission is complete.”

The bodies of two American hostages, Itay Chen and Omer Neutra, remain in Gaza, out of a total of 56 hostages, 20 of whom are thought to be alive.

One of Hamas’ top three sources of funding is the U.K., where it is a banned terrorist organization, an investigation from Israel’s Channel 12 found. That funding includes 25% of Hamas’ donors from non-state actors, as well as tens of millions of dollars from the government of the U.K. to a UNICEF program whose beneficiaries are determined by Hamas.

The U.K., France and Canada threatened Israel last week with “concrete actions” if it does not lift restrictions on humanitarian aid and work with United Nations agencies to distribute it.

The U.K., Canada and the European Union — of which France is a member— as well as Switzerland, Norway, Sweden, Mauritius and Croatia, sponsored a project through UNICEF, the U.N. Children’s Emergency Fund, for which a Hamas-run ministry provides a list of people to receive funding.

The program provides cash payments of $200-$300 per month to 546,000 needy people in Gaza. UNICEF said that it works with a “beneficiary list from the MoSD,” meaning the Hamas-controlled Ministry of Social Development, to determine who receives the cash. The program uses a digital platform funded by USAID to distribute the cash. UNICEF published an update on the program as recently as November 2024. 

MoSD is led by Ghazi Hamad, a member of Hamas’ politburo, designated a “senior Hamas official” by the U.S. Treasury Department. 

A 2022 document from the U.K. Foreign Office, uncovered by NGO Monitor, showed that London was aware of Hamas’ involvement with the program and that it had the potential for “severe” reputational damage. 

“The cash assistance component will be implemented in coordination with the Ministry of Social Development MoSD. The MoSD in Gaza is affiliated with the de facto authorities and thus UK Aid can be linked directly or indirectly with supporting the de facto authority (Hamas) in Gaza which is part of a proscribed group,” the document reads.

The U.K. gave about $23.1 million to UNICEF projects in the West Bank and Gaza in 2024, and $4.8 million in 2023. 

NGO Monitor’s legal Advisor, Anne Herzberg, noted that it is unclear how much of that funding went to the Gaza cash program.

“There is very little detail from the U.K. side about how much is going in, what oversight is in place, what exactly they are doing to mitigate the risk” of money going to Hamas, Herzberg told Jewish Insider on Sunday. “A lot of countries are giving funds to the U.N. and just leave it in their hands.” 

Herzberg said that while a lot of attention has gone to UNRWA, the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees and their descendants, which was recently banned from Israel after some of its employees participated in the Oct. 7, 2023, attacks, “UNRWA is just the tip of the iceberg, because 13 U.N. agencies are operating in Gaza. There is very little information into how these other U.N. agencies are operating.” 

“Aid diversion is the main problem and why there have been so many issues with humanitarian aid in Gaza,” she said. “It’s inconceivable to me that these governments refuse to deal with this issue. They claim they want to help Palestinians, to end the conflict and bring peace, yet they don’t want to tackle this issue.” 

Beyond government aid going to Hamas, what qualifies the U.K. as the leading non-Muslim country funding Hamas is nongovernmental contributions, Channel 12 reported.

In 2001, Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Sheikh Yusuf Al-Qaradawi founded the Union of Good, a coalition of 50 Islamist charities with connections to Hamas and other proscribed terrorist groups. The group raised hundreds of millions of dollars for Hamas during the Second Intifada.

The organization was banned in the U.S. and U.K., and Qaradawi, who is Egyptian and lives in Doha, Qatar, has been barred from the U.S., U.K. and France.  

Yet the organizations making up the Union of Good continued their fundraising activities.

The Channel 12 report names specific Hamas operatives based in the U.K., including Zahar Birawi, who is the head of the Palestinian Return Center in London, leads Hamas activities in Great Britain and has been instrumental in organizing weekly anti-Israel protests in London. Issam Yusef Mustafa, a former member of the Hamas politburo, is a U.K. citizen and is the biggest fundraiser for Hamas in Europe as the head of “Interpal,” a former Union of Good group sanctioned by the U.S. and Israel.

Herzberg explained that many of the organizations funneling money to Hamas are registered as businesses so they can avoid scrutiny from the Charity Commission.

“The monitoring in the U.K. does not seem as robust as what you see in the U.S., where there are many more investigations going on at the governmental level and more reporting, even though the U.K. government says it has robust control in its laws,” Herzberg said. “It’s unclear how those laws are being enforced.” 

Erez Noy, a former Shin Bet official dealing with terror funding, told Channel 12 that “Hamas is strong in Britain because over the years they got used to being able to do almost anything they want there, compared to other countries in Europe … For years, Britain, for whatever reason, did not handle preventing and taking care of these systems [to fund terror]. When Hamas realizes there is a permissive arena, it tests the limits.” 

Hamas petitioned the U.K. last month to be removed from the country’s list of banned terrorist organizations. 

According to Udi Levy, the former head of the Mossad’s department for fighting terrorism funding, “these are businesses that raise funds under the guise of humanitarian aid, and reach Hamas in Gaza, Judea and Samaria [the West Bank] and anywhere else around the world.”

Levy told Channel 12 that “total victory over Hamas is not just in the Gaza Strip. We are making a huge mistake because even if we kill every last ‘soldier’ in Gaza, there is still a massive Hamas infrastructure that will continue to act and even rehabilitate its activities, unless we start taking care of it.” 

The British Embassy in Israel said in response to a query from JI that “Hamas is a proscribed terrorist organization in the U.K. and funding or supporting it is a crime. We categorically reject the false and irresponsible allegations in the Channel 12 investigation that the UK Government funds Hamas run agencies in Gaza. No UK funding was provided to the Ministry of Social Development in Gaza … We are clear that Hamas must play no role in the future of Gaza. FCDO [the Foreign Office] conducted a thorough due diligence assessment of UNICEF, and we identify how U.K. funds are transferred until they reach the final beneficiaries.”

The embassy interpreted the claim made by the U.K. Foreign Office that “U.K. Aid can be linked directly or indirectly with supporting the de facto authority (Hamas) in Gaza which is part of a proscribed group,” as referring to the Ministry of Social Development in Ramallah run by the Palestinian Authority.

In addition, the embassy stated that it does “not recognize the claim that 25% of Hamas’s non-state funding comes from the U.K. To our knowledge, no official Israeli body has ever made such a claim.” 

Twenty-six Republican members of Congress signed onto Rep. Jeff Duncan’s (R-SC) letter to Secretary of State Mike Pompeo urging the State Department to pressure the government of Ukraine to allow Jewish pilgrims to visit the town of Uman for the holiday of Rosh Hashanah.

The announcement of the final list of signatories comes after a two-day extension of the signing deadline. Among the letter’s signatories are House Minority Leader Rep. Kevin McCarthy (R-CA), Foreign Relations Committee Ranking Member Rep. Joe Wilson (R-SC) andRep. Steve King (R-IA) — who was sidelined within the Republican caucus after controversial comments regarding white supremacy. Reps. Lee Zeldin (R-NY) and David Kustoff (R-TN), the only two Jewish Republicans in Congress, also signed onto the letter.

Duncan told Jewish Insider that he took up the pilgrims’ cause out of a desire to protect religious freedom.

“I have a deep respect for all people of faith, and I believe Ukraine had good intentions in crafting their travel restrictions,” he said in a statement. “But I also believe they need to find creative ways to accommodate people of faith in a safe and commonsense manner. Governments don’t have to choose between allowing religious expression and public safety, and believe this letter makes it clear that common sense steps can be taken to achieve both goals.”

“Even during times of uncertainty, governments should continue to allow maximum flexibility for religious expression and practice,” he added.

None of the other signatories responded to requests for comment.

The political consulting firm Stonington Global had circulated the letter around Capitol Hill to gather additional signatures from other members of Congress. 

Stonington founder and Republican lobbyist Nick Muzin has deep ties to South Carolina, Duncan’s home state.

Muzin, an Orthodox Jew, previously served as a policy advisor and chief of staff for Sen. Tim Scott (R-SC), beginning more than a decade ago when the senator was a congressional candidate. Muzin advised Scott during his tenure in the House, and stayed with him after his appointment to the Senate in 2013. Muzin was also previously married to Andrea Zucker, whose mother, Intertech Group CEO Anita Zucker, is the wealthiest individual in the state of South Carolina.

“This is a religious freedom issue, and Jeff Duncan has always been a champion of religious freedom and Judeo-Christian values,” Muzin explained to JI. 

Muzin dismissed health concerns raised by Ukrainian and Israeli government officials over this year’s pilgrimage.

“These travelers have offered to adhere to every health precaution that others who have been granted exemptions by the Ukrainian government are taking, so we hope that even in these challenging times, the Ukrainian government will respect American citizens’ right to worship,” he said.