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Letter Threatening Netanyahu Found on His Brother’s Grave

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, attends a graduation ceremony for new pilots with Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, left, and Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Galant, in Hatzerim air force base near the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, Israel, Thursday, June 29, 2023. (AP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, attends a graduation ceremony for new pilots with Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, left, and Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Galant, in Hatzerim air force base near the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, Israel, Thursday, June 29, 2023. (AP)
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Letter Threatening Netanyahu Found on His Brother’s Grave

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, attends a graduation ceremony for new pilots with Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, left, and Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Galant, in Hatzerim air force base near the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, Israel, Thursday, June 29, 2023. (AP)
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, center, attends a graduation ceremony for new pilots with Air Force chief Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar, left, and Israel's Defense Minister Yoav Galant, in Hatzerim air force base near the southern Israeli city of Beersheba, Israel, Thursday, June 29, 2023. (AP)

Israeli intelligence said on Friday they found a letter threatening to kill Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu placed on the grave of his brother, Yoni, at Mount Herzl, Jerusalem.

Yoni was killed 47 years ago during the Entebbe Operation. He was an army officer who commanded the elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal during operation to rescue hostages held at Entebbe Airport in Uganda in 1976.

Netanyahu had visited the grave to mark the 47th anniversary of his brother’s death. During a regular security check preceding the PM’s visit, the Shin Bet, Israeli intelligence, discovered the letter, which was addressed to Yoni. The issue is being investigated.

“It's my request to tell your brother, Bibi [Benjamin] Netanyahu, that he has a few rights or a lot of rights, but they have ended. And now, Mount Herzl, this sanctified place, has the clock ticking down, until September 16, 2023, when your brother, thinks he will turn 74,” the author of the letter wrote, referring to the PM’s Hebrew calendar birthday.

The letter demanded of the prime minister to conquer Gaza, and bring back the body of Hadar Goldin (a soldier killed in Gaza in 2014, to whom the letter's author has a stated connection), and the other hostages.

The letter added, “Bibi, you are no Ariel Sharon. Sharon had a stroke and fell into a coma for eight years. To you, I wish worse things.” It ends with “The clock is ticking! You have a little over three and a half months.”

The Palestinian Hamas movement is holding the bodies of Goldin and Oron Shaul, who were both killed in the 2014 Gaza war.

Netanyahu had received several death threats recently. Last week, a 23-year-old suspect, a resident of Beit Shemesh, was arrested for writing what were allegedly threatening messages against Netanyahu in a WhatsApp group.

“Everyone should carry a weapon with them. Then there will be a gun for everyone and an opportunity to put a bullet in Bibi’s head,” he wrote, using the premier’s nickname.

“Whoever wants to buy a gun send me a message. When it’s about your life you don’t need a license. We don’t care about the law,” he added. A police investigation is ongoing.

Three weeks ago, protesters vandalized a memorial of Netanyahu’s late father Benzion Netanyahu with a sign calling the Likud leader a “dictator.”

The PM responded on his Twitter account saying: “Vile people vandalized the memorial in honor of my father today. The time has come for them to stop trampling on every norm of decency.”

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UN Aid Chief Vows 'Ruthlessness' to Prioritize Spending, Seeks $47 Billion

Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, talks to the media about the Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 and the UN annual humanitarian appeal, during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, talks to the media about the Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 and the UN annual humanitarian appeal, during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
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UN Aid Chief Vows 'Ruthlessness' to Prioritize Spending, Seeks $47 Billion

Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, talks to the media about the Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 and the UN annual humanitarian appeal, during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)
Tom Fletcher, Under-Secretary-General for Humanitarian Affairs and Emergency Relief Coordinator, talks to the media about the Global Humanitarian Overview 2025 and the UN annual humanitarian appeal, during a press conference at the European headquarters of the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, Tuesday, Dec. 3, 2024. (Salvatore Di Nolfi/Keystone via AP)

The new head of the UN humanitarian aid agency says it will be “ruthless” when prioritizing how to spend money, a nod to challenges in fundraising for civilians in war zones like Gaza, Sudan, Syria and Ukraine.

Tom Fletcher, a longtime British diplomat who took up the UN post last month, said his agency is asking for less money in 2025 than this year. He said it wants to show "we will focus and target the resources we have,” even as crises grow more numerous, intense and long-lasting.

His agency, the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs, on Wednesday issued its global appeal for 2025, seeking $47 billion to help 190 million people in 32 countries — though it estimates 305 million worldwide need help.
“The world is on fire, and this is how we put it out,” he told reporters on Tuesday.
The office and many other aid groups, including the international Red Cross, have seen donations shrink in recent years for longtime trouble spots like Syria, South Sudan, the Middle East and Congo and newer ones like Ukraine and Sudan. Aid access has been difficult in some places, especially Sudan and Gaza.
The office's appeal for $50 billion for this year was only 43% fulfilled as of last month. One consequence of that shortfall was a 80% reduction in food aid for Syria, which has seen a sudden escalation in fighting in recent days, The Associated Press reported.
Such funds go to UN agencies and more than 1,500 partner organizations.
The biggest asks for 2025 are for Syria — a total of $8.7 billion for needs both within the country and for neighbors that have taken in Syrian refugees — as well as Sudan at a total of $6 billion, the “Occupied Palestinian Territory” at $4 billion, Ukraine at about $3.3 billion and Congo at nearly $3.2 billion.
Fletcher said his office needs to be “ruthless” in choosing to reach people most in need.
“I choose that word carefully, because it's a judgement call — that ruthlessness — about prioritizing where the funding goes and where we can have the greatest impact," he said. “It's a recognition that we have struggled in previous years to raise the money we need.”
In response to questions about how much President-elect Donald Trump of the United States — the UN's biggest single donor — will spend on humanitarian aid, Fletcher said he expects to spend “a lot of time” in Washington over the next few months to talk with the new administration.
“America is very much on our minds at the moment," he said, acknowledging some governments “will be more questioning of what the United Nations does and less ideologically supportive of this humanitarian effort” laid out in the new report.
This year has been the deadliest on record for humanitarians and UN staff, largely due to the Middle East conflict triggered by Palestinian militants' deadly Oct. 7, 2023 attack in Israel.