Police say Israeli man was held captive, beaten and left to die in Los Angeles home invasion.

By World Israel News Staff

The Los Angeles Police Department announced the arrest of three suspects for their alleged involvement in the murder of an Israeli citizen on Saturday.

Alexander Modebadze, 47, was discovered dead in his Woodland Hills home early Saturday morning.

Modebaze immigrated to Israel from the former Soviet republic of Georgia. He held Israeli citizenship but moved to the United States years ago.

“LAPD Marshal’s Taskforce officers, with the assistance of the FBI, located the suspects hours after the incident,” the police said in a statement.

In a media statement, police identified the suspects in Modebadze’s murder as 38-year-old Paata Kochyashvili, 46-year-old Zaza Otarashvili and 52-year-old Besiki Khutsishvili. According to Hebrew-language news reports, all three are believed to be members of the Georgian-Jewish community.

According to police, the trio were involved in an ongoing financial dispute with Modebadze. They reportedly broke into his home, holding him captive for several hours while assaulting him.

Eventually, the men were said to have stolen Modebadze’s property before fleeing the home, leaving him to die of his wounds.

Residents of Modabadze’s neighborhood said they were disturbed by the grisly slaying.

“[There’s a] school right across the street and kids playing… it’s a good neighborhood,” Maceo Allen, a neighbor, told Fox 11 News. “I just pray for the victim’s family to seek justice for what happened. It’s really sad.”

Another neighbor, Toni Witte, described Modebadze as a “very nice guy, always out with his dog.”

Witte added that she was “very sad” about his murder.

“These are people we knew who prayed with us in the synagogue,” a community member told Hebrew-language outlet Mako. “It’s hard to believe that something like this happened among us.”

Shlomi Eldar, the Israeli consul in Los Angeles, told Mako that he is providing support and assistance to Modabadze’s family.

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Nearly 60,000 Israelis permanently left the country in 2024.

By World Israel News Staff

A report recently presented in the Knesset revealed that tens of thousands of Israelis have emigrated from the country since October 7, 2023, raising concerns around the country’s growth rate.

According to the report by the Central Bureau of Statistics, around 82,700 Israelis left the country in 2024, with just 23,800 returning, indicating a net loss of nearly 60,000 residents.

Notably, nearly half of those who emigrated were born outside of Israel, and 15 percent of them had spent less than five years in the country.

In 2024, Israel’s population growth rate plunged from 1.6% in 2023 to 1.1%.

According to earlier data released in December 2024 by the Central Bureau of Statistics, the number of new immigrants to Israel has fallen sharply.

The startling statistics were discussed by the Knesset’s Aliyah, Absorption, and Diaspora Committee on Monday.

Research by the committee members also found that Israel is ranked as one of the least attractive destinations for entrepreneurs and potential immigrants with advanced academic degrees.

“Despite the wave of antisemitism around the world, the Israel-Hamas War is discouraging new olim from coming to Israel,” said MK Oded Forer (Yisrael Beytenu) during the discussion, according to a summary of his remarks published on the Knesset website.

Forer added that he believed unnecessary government bureaucracy and red tape around recognizing potential immigrants’ professional qualifications – such as a lengthy process for doctors to obtain local medical licenses – were a major factor in discouraging educated immigrants from moving to Israel.

Others cited the general economic downturn caused by the war as a reason for the drop in Aliyah.

“Hi-tech professionals love the country and want to live here, but the decline in investors in the Israeli market is harming their ability to stay,” said Irit Touitou, co-founder and partner of Tech For Israel.

“If the trend does not change, Israel will lose its social and economic advantage. The government must restore the business sector’s confidence in Israel.”

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While the exact day the Jews landed in New York is not known, records indicate it occurred during the week before Rosh Hashanah, which that year was on Sept. 12, 1654.

By Julia Gergely, JTA

Three hundred and seventy years ago this week, a group of 23 Sephardic Jews arrived on the shores of New York — then called New Amsterdam — and created the first organized Jewish community in the city.

What a difference a few centuries make: Today, New York City is home to the largest Jewish population of any city in the world.

On Thursday, the City Council will vote on a resolution to honor both, turning Landing Day from an event marked by a few Jewish leaders into an official date on the city’s calendar.

The resolution says it aims to “commemorate the arrival of the first Jewish community in New Amsterdam in 1654 and to celebrate the continuing importance of the Jewish community in the City of New York.”

Landing Day has been commemorated in the city several times throughout history, most recently last year at a ceremony to recognize the 369th anniversary of the community.

That event was held at the Jewish Tercentenary Monument at Peter Minuit Plaza in Battery Park, erected by the State of New York in 1954.

The small memorial includes a flagpole adorned with a plaque that explains its purpose is “to honor the memory of the twenty three men, women and children who landed in September 1654 and founded the first Jewish community in North America.”

Still, Landing Day — and the existence of this early New York Jewish community — is not widely known among Jews or New Yorkers, which is one of the reasons that Gale Brewer, who represents the Upper West Side on the City Council, sponsored the bill to give it the city’s sign-off.

“When the City Council passes something like this, it’s official,” Brewer told the New York Jewish Week. “It goes into the city record and becomes part of the city’s history. It’s not a holiday, per se, but it is recognized, and it gives it legitimacy.”

The resolution was spearheaded by Howard Teich, the founding chair of the Manhattan Jewish Historical Initiative, who organized last year’s commemoration and partnered with Brewer to bring the resolution before the City Council.

“We just have to change the narrative of the community right now,” Teich said about the ceremony last year, adding that he felt Jewish communal discourse was too often focused on fear and division.

“We’ve got to spread a positive message of who we are, what we’ve accomplished, how we’ve worked with other people, what we’ve started, the difference we’ve made in the time we’ve been here and, really, what America has meant to us as a people.”

If the resolution passes, the city will recognize Landing Day every year throughout the second week of September. While the exact day the Jews landed in New York is not known, records indicate it occurred during the week before Rosh Hashanah, which that year was on Sept. 12, 1654.

That year, nearly two dozen Sephardic Jews arrived in New York after fleeing persecution in Recife, Brazil, which had recently been colonized by the Portuguese.

Three Ashkenazi Jews — Jacob Barsimson, Solomon Pietersen and Asser Levy — had arrived from Europe weeks earlier and helped advocate for the group to stay in New York when Peter Stuyvesant, the Dutch director-general of New Amsterdam, rejected the new refugees because he wanted to establish a colony solely for Dutch Reformed Christians.

With urging from the Dutch West India Company — which, at the time, operated heavily in what was known as New Netherland, and which had many Jewish investors — Stuyvesant was overruled and the group remained.

They went on to establish the first Jewish congregation in the United States, the Mill Street Synagogue. The congregation was later renamed Congregation Shearith Israel, the Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue, and moved uptown to West 70th Street in 1897.

The resolution has 22 sponsors in City Council, including Eric Dinowitz, the chairman of the city council’s Jewish Caucus, as well as fellow caucus members Lincoln Restler, Inna Vernikov, Julie Menin and Lynn Schulman and several non-Jewish City Council members.

Brewer first introduced the resolution in May. On Tuesday, the Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations signed off. It now moves to a council-wide vote.

“Three hundred and seventy years later, there are more than million Jews in New York City — more than any other city worldwide — and it kind of started with this group,” Brewer said.

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