Monday 27 Sivan – US bombs Fordo, 2 other nuclear facilities, joining Israels war in Iran – Shock in Stamford Hill: Sifrei Torah Thrown to the Floor – Israel presses airstrikes across Iran as US attacks bring battle to turning point

Journey from Israel via Jordan – A Practical Guide

As many are seeking safe routes out of Israel during this critical time, I’d like to share our recent travel experience from Tel Aviv to London via Jordan. Here are the key details that might help others:

We left Tel Aviv at 6 AM and reached the King Hussein Bridge around 8:30 AM. The border opened then and the whole process took around four hours. It was bureaucratic, but calm and organized. (Note: it’s closed on Shabbos.)

Visas are issued on the spot (no need to apply in advance), costing about 40 Jordanian Dinar (~£40). I recommend having at least £100 worth of dinars per person, including the ~140 shekel border fee. Try to change money before arriving, as the exchange rate at the border is poor.

It was extremely hot, and the first queue is outdoors. Bring a wide-brimmed hat, water, and sunscreen. Our taxi from Tel Aviv cost 1,800 shekels (6-seater, air-con, WiFi, chargers). Message me if you want the driver’s number.

Taxis are easy to find on the Jordanian side. The drive to Amman’s Queen Alia Airport is about 2 hours and cost around £120. We stayed at the Intercontinental (~£150/night) to rest before our flight.

We took Royal Jordanian RJ111 to Heathrow (~£650). One surprise: we heard sirens in Jordan too.

– Ruti 

The Yidden of Stamford Hill awoke to heartbreak and horror this morning, after discovering that a Shul in Stamford Hill had been broken into overnight.

The aron kodesh was pried open, and several sifrei Torah were disgracefully thrown to the ground. Personal lockers of mispallelim were also broken into, and damage was caused throughout the premises.

Mispallelim who arrived early in the morning immediately rushed to lift the sifrei Torah with great care and emotion, many with tears in their eyes.

London police were called to the scene and have since launched an investigation.

Baruch Hashem, the suspect was quickly located and taken into custody.

According to police sources, the individual appears to have broken in with the intention of stealing money, mistakenly believing there would be valuables stored in the aron kodesh.

This deeply disturbing incident has left the kehillah shaken, but also united in their kavod for the Torah and their commitment to strengthen kedushas beis Hashem.

Palestine Action is to be proscribed as a terrorist organisation after its activists breached security at an air base to damage two RAF planes.The organisation will be banned, alongside groups like Hamas, al-Qaeda and the Islamic State, in a move that will leave supporters facing up to 14 years in jail.

The Government announced the move hours after two vandals broke into RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire and sprayed red paint into the engines of two Airbus Voyager aircraft.

Counter-terror police are leading the investigation into the attack, which saw two unidentified activists riding electric scooters up to the planes before escaping undetected, in footage posted online by the group on Friday morning.

One of the planes seen in the video, painted with a Union flag, has previously been used to transport prime ministers and members of the Royal family to official engagements abroad.

The UK is arranging charter flights to return British nationals from Israel once Israeli airspace re-opens, the foreign secretary has said.

David Lammy confirmed the government was working with the Israeli authorities to provide flights out of Tel Aviv airport, the number of which will be based on demand.

Israeli airspace is currently closed due to the ongoing conflict with Iran. The two nations have exchanged waves of air strikes since Israel targeted military and nuclear sites, as well as military commanders and nuclear scientists, a week ago.

The statement came as Lammy arrived in Geneva for talks with Iran, in the hopes of negotiating an agreement on Tehran’s nuclear programme.

The US carried out a “successful attack” on the Fordo, Natanz and Isfahan nuclear sites in Iran, US President Donald Trump announced early Sunday.

“A full payload of BOMBS was dropped on the primary site, Fordo,” Trump wrote on Truth Social, referring to the difficult-to-destroy underground site, which has been characterized as integral to the Islamic Republic’s rogue nuclear weapons program and the most impregnable of its nuclear facilities.

“All planes are now outside of Iran air space [and are]… safely on their way home,” he wrote. “Congratulations to our great American Warriors. There is not another military in the World that could have done this.”

“NOW IS THE TIME FOR PEACE!” Trump added.

He then shared a post from an open-source intelligence account claiming that “Fordo is gone.”

The president announced the US attack hours after he had indicated that the matter of US involvement in Israel’s campaign against Iran’s nuclear program was as yet undecided.

Trump’s decision to directly involve the US in the war came after more than a week of strikes by Israel that damaged Iran’s nuclear facilities, eradicated the country’s air defenses, and took out many of its military brass and top nuclear scientists. Iran, in retaliation, has launched dozens of ballistic missile barrages at Israel.

Trump provided more details about the US operation in a televised address from the White House at 10 p.m. local time (5 a.m. Israel time), flanked by Vice President JD Vance, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.

“Our objective was the destruction of Iran’s nuclear enrichment capacity and a stop to the nuclear threat posed by the world’s number one state sponsor of terror,” Trump said.

“Tonight, I can report to the world that the strikes were a spectacular military success,” he said. “Iran’s key nuclear enrichment facilities have been completely and totally obliterated.”

Iranian nuclear sites sustained “extremely severe damage and destruction” in air strikes, the US has said – a stance mostly supported by the UN’s nuclear watchdog.

General Dan Caine, chairman of America’s joint chiefs of staff, told reporters that the destruction wrought by Operation Midnight Hammer will take “some time” to assess.

But he added that “initial battle damage assessments indicate that all three sites sustained extremely severe damage and destruction”.

The sites are Fordow, Natanz and Isfahan.

Fordow is a secretive nuclear facility buried about 80m below a mountain and one of two key uranium enrichment plants in Iran, along with Natanz.

Isfahan features a large nuclear technology centre and enriched uranium is also stored there, diplomats say.

At Fordow, satellite images taken after the attack show holes in the mountain in which the nuclear site was situated.

Images of Natanz, which is also suspected of having an underground facility, appear to show a new hole in a rocky area.

Following the U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear sites, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu held a press conference Sunday night, delivering a powerful message to Klal Yisroel.

He began by recalling a personal moment from his first term in office: “When I visited Auschwitz during the March of the Living, I wrapped myself in a tallis and said Shema Yisroel.” He added that just ten days ago, before Israel launched its major attack on Iran, he again wrapped himself in a tallis—this time at the Kosel—and davened for the safety of Am Yisroel and its defenders.

He placed a kvittel in the Kosel with the posuk: “Hen Am K’Lavi Yakum” – the very name given to the current military operation.

With deep emotion, he declared: “The most important party in the Knesset is Siyata Dishmaya.”

Netanyahu noted that although Israel had strategic partnerships and strong fighters, it was the Ribbono Shel Olam who guided every step.

He emphasized that Israel is close to completing its mission—to eliminate the Iranian threat, bring home the hostages, and defeat Hamas.

“We will not be dragged into endless war,” he said. “With Hashem’s help, better days are ahead—of unity, strength, and peace.”

An Iranian ballistic missile barrage injured dozens of people in Israel on Sunday morning as nearly 30 projectiles targeted the country, causing widespread destruction to residential areas in Tel Aviv and the central town of Ness Ziona.

An air defense interceptor, meanwhile, malfunctioned and impacted the northern city of Haifa, causing damage and slightly wounding three people. No sirens had sounded in the city during the incident.

The Health Ministry reported that among those who arrived at hospitals were two in moderate condition, 77 in good condition, four victims suffering from acute anxiety, and three more people who were undergoing medical evaluation and whose condition had not been immediately determined.

Ichilov Medical Center in Tel Aviv said there were two children among the five people who arrived at its emergency room with minor injuries.

The injuries were largely at the two impact sites in Tel Aviv and its Ness Ziona suburb, according to medical officials. One man was moderately hurt by shrapnel on the Route 431 highway, near Be’er Yaakov in central Israel.

The Iranian attack came hours after the United States bombed three key nuclear sites in Iran, joining an Israeli air campaign against Iran’s nuclear and military infrastructure that began on June 13.

Iran has responded to the Israeli attacks with near-daily barrages of missiles at cities, killing 24 people and wounding thousands, according to health officials and hospitals.

At least 27 missiles were launched from Iran in Sunday morning’s attack in two salvos, the military said, setting off sirens in north and central regions, as well as Jerusalem, between 7:30 and around 8 a.m.

The first salvo consisted of at least 22 missiles, and the second was made up of five, according to IDF assessments.

Transportation Minister Miri Regev says more than 1,000 passengers are expected to leave tomorrow on special outgoing flights departing from Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion Airport, after departures were effectively barred for the past 10 days, given the ongoing conflict with Iran.

“We expect local airlines to operate 24 incoming repatriation flights arriving from global destinations flying Israelis home on Monday and on each of these flights taking off there will be a limit of 50 passengers leaving on outgoing planes,” Regev says. “We need to limit the number of passengers on planes that are on the tarmac during this challenging period when the airport can be a target.”

“I believe that by the weekend we will be able to weigh whether we are able to increase the number of passengers leaving on outgoing flights, as well as hours of flight operations, subject to the security situation and guidelines by the Home Front Command,” Regev adds.

Starting tomorrow, outgoing flights will operate exclusively from Ben Gurion Airport’s Terminal 3. Entry to the terminal will be permitted only to passengers with valid tickets (with exceptions for those assisting travelers with special needs or unaccompanied minors).

Passengers on outbound flights are advised to arrive by public transportation no more than two hours before their scheduled departure. For those arriving by private car, only quick drop-offs will be permitted. Cafés in the departure hall and near the departure gates will be open. Duty-free shops will remain closed to limit time spent in the terminal.

Israel’s top general said Sunday that the country’s conflict with Iran had reached a pivotal moment following US strikes on key Iranian nuclear facilities, as Israeli planes continued to pound targets in Tehran and western Iran after 10 days of fighting.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Eyal Zamir credited close coordination between Israeli and American diplomatic and military leaders for a series of high-powered strikes on Iran’s Fordo, Natanz, and Isfahan nuclear sites, as Washington stepped into the fray. The US bolstered Israel’s military offensive aimed at destroying Iran’s ability to enrich uranium or build atomic weapons.

“We’ve gotten to a turning point in the battle, after last night, [when] the US military struck central nuclear sites in a lethal, precise and very impressive way,” Zamir said.

“This strike was made possible thanks to the courageous leadership of our partners in the United States and a combined diplomatic and military effort,” he added, noting his close coordination with US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. John Daniel Caine and US Central Command chief Gen. Michael Kurilla.

In the US, President Donald Trump said the dozen 30,000-pound bunker-buster bombs dropped on the key underground uranium enrichment site at Fordo, along with attacks on nuclear facilities in Isfahan and Natanz, had removed the nuclear threat that had longed stalked Israel and the wider region.

“We had a spectacular military success yesterday, taking the ‘bomb’ right out of their hands (and they would use it if they could!)” he said on social media.

But Zamir noted that the campaign was far from over for Israel. “We still have targets to strike and objectives to complete,” he said. “We are continuing to increase the pace of our attacks in accordance with the plan and are prepared to continue for as long as required.”

According to the military, some 30 fighter jets carried out bombing missions in four areas of Iran earlier Sunday, targeting missile and drone sites. A second sortie later Sunday involved 20 planes dropping 30 bombs on various sites, including in the capital, Tehran.

In the first raid, dozens of targets were hit simultaneously in Isfahan, Bushehr, Ahvaz, and, for the first time, also Yazd, according to the IDF.

The IDF added that some 60 munitions were dropped by the fighter jets in the strikes.

“As part of the wave of strikes, fighter jets targeted for the first time the ‘Imam Hussein’ strategic missile headquarters in the Yazd area, where long-range Khorramshahr missiles were stored,” the military said, adding that some 60 missiles had been fired at Israel from the facility.

According to the military, Israeli Air Force fighter jets flew some 2,200 kilometers (1,400 miles) from Israel to strike the site, marking one of its longest sorties yet.

“In broad daylight, we surprised the Imam Hussein missile headquarters in central Iran, the furthest target we’ve struck to date,” said IAF chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar in remarks published by the military.

“We destroyed Khorramshahr missiles before they were launched at Israel and struck tunnels used to store the missiles,” Bar said.

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