Day 594 - Shock after 2 Israel embassy staffers killed in DC

The Times of Israel Daily Briefing

The Times of Israel

News

4.4 • 864 Ratings

🗓️ 22 May 2025

⏱️ 23 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Welcome to The Times of Israel's Daily Briefing, your 20-minute audio update on what's happening in Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish world.

Political correspondent Tal Schneider and legal reporter Jeremy Sharon join host Jessica Steinberg for today's episode.

Following the tragic shooting of two Israeli embassy staffers at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, Schneider reviews what we know about the victims and the shooter, as well as security at public Jewish institutions in the US.

Schneider also discusses the implications of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Wednesday night press conference, his first with the Israeli press in at least six months. The prime minister discussed key issues, including the government's demand that Gazans be relocated in its ongoing negotiations for the hostages. Schneider points out that the hostage families strongly criticized the prime minister for his statements regarding the talks. Netanyahu was also taken to task for his mistaken remarks about one Gaza envelope kibbutz and what happened to the community on October 7, as well as his downplaying of the Hamas terrorists who invaded Israel on October 7, remarking that they were wearing flip-flops and weren't a heavily armed force.

Following Wednesday's High Court ruling that Netanyahu's firing of the Shin Bet chief was improper due to a conflict of interest, Sharon discusses the immediate implications of the ruling, commenting that the Shin Bet's independence is crucial for Israel's democratic governance and the government faces a potential constitutional crisis following the court's ruling.

This conversation can be viewed here:

Check out The Times of Israel's ongoing liveblog for more updates.

For further reading:

Two Israeli Embassy staffers killed in shooting attack at Washington, DC, Jewish Museum

Netanyahu sets implementation of Trump’s Gaza relocation plan as new condition for ending war

High Court rules Shin Bet head’s dismissal ‘unlawful’, PM had ‘conflict of interest’

Subscribe to The Times of Israel Daily Briefing on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode was produced by the Pod-Waves and video edited by Thomas Girsch.

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, welcome to the Times of Israel's Daily Briefing. It's Thursday, May 22nd, and I'm Jessica Steinberg.
0:08.9	I'm speaking today with political correspondent Tal Schneider and legal reporter Jeremy Sharon.
0:15.2	Hi, good morning to you both. Good morning, Jessica. Good morning. It is day 595 of the war.
0:23.3	Two Israeli embassy staffers were killed in a shooting at the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.
0:29.2	The assailant has been arrested. In Israel, the IDF successfully downed a missile from Yemen,
0:35.4	as sirens sounded in central Israel around 3.30 this morning,
0:40.3	waking large swaths of that area. Hostage families warned the government that Israel is increasingly
0:46.4	at risk of missing the opportunity of a deal from us for the return of the remaining captives
0:51.9	and end to the war, referring to the Prime Minister's statements at a Wednesday night press conference.
0:57.6	We'll discuss what Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said last night,
1:01.5	as well as the Prime Minister's comments about a High Court ruling on Wednesday
1:05.3	in which it said that the Cabinet's decision to fire the Shenbetchi from Anbar was made improperly.
1:11.9	We'll cover all that and some more. Stay with us.
1:20.5	Tolkien's trilogy was a perfect book to send to a POW.
1:26.2	Very well-defined good and evil. And it was a great escape from the
1:31.8	physical environment that we were in. It's November 16, 1973, and we're at the military section
1:38.2	of the Lode airport. A red and white, DC-6 passenger plane lands, and out of it comes a stream of young men.
1:45.0	Ten men known collectively as Shvuyay Milhomethattasha, the POWs of the War of Attrition.
1:52.0	All of them had been held, most of the time together, in an Egyptian prison for more than three and a half years.
1:59.0	So it was very much a kibbutz.
2:01.9	I want to draw your attention to a small, tattered bag, Menachem Eini is holding.
2:06.7	That brown knapsack actually held a treasure.
	...

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