US President Barack Obama announced Wednesday night that America is going back to war, this time against the global terror group ISIS, the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, known in Arabic as “Da’esh.”

Obama made the announcement in a 15 minute nationally televised address on the eve of the 13th anniversary of the September 11th attack on America by the international Al Qaeda terrorist organization.

“I want the American people to understand how this effort will be different from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Obama said in his address. “It will not involve American combat troops fighting on foreign soil,” he promised.

Nevertheless, the president made it clear that the U.S. would wage a “relentless” military campaign to “degrade and destroy” the terrorist group that beheaded two American journalists, including one with dual Israeli citizenship.

The U.S. will rely heavily on air strikes to get the job done, Obama explained – including air strikes inside Syria, for the very first time. The four-part strategy includes air strikes, support to other forces battling the terrorist organization, counter terrorism efforts to prevent attacks and weaken the group, and continued humanitarian assistance to civilians.

A senior administration official carefully told reporters in a pre-speech briefing that attacks in Syria would be carried out at a ‘time and place of our choosing.” He added that no specific information would be provided to the media, in order not to “telegraph our punches by being specific about the time and nature of the target. We will do that as necessary, as we develop targets and as we continue what is a systematic air campaign that is not going to be restricted by a geographic border that, frankly, has very little meaning anymore, given [the group’s] operations in both Iraq and Syria.”

The official added that the formation of a new Iraqi government was what had allowed the U.S. to expand its support for a war against ISIS. Following the insertion of military advisers into Iraq earlier in the summer, the president said in June that “he would do more when the Iraqi cabinet was appointed. That has now happened and the next phase will be more offensive,” the official said.

The president cited support by what he said were dozens of “coalition” partners to “roll back this terrorist threat” in what will be an open-ended timetable. Several hours before going on the air, Obama authorized Secretary of State John Kerry to allocate $25 million in Foreign Assistance Act funds to train, educate and provide military assistance to the Iraqi and Kurdistan Regional governments in their fight against ISIS. Another 475 U.S. military troops will be sent to the region next week, bringing the total deployed to some 1,600 soldiers thus far.

To date, the U.S. has conducted 153 air strikes against ISIS terrorists in Iraq. The official who briefed journalists prior to the president’s speech said Obama is authorized to move from a humanitarian to offensive campaign against the terrorists without Congressional approval, based on the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF) passed by Congress following the 9/11 terror attack by Al Qaeda. The legislation allows the president to use all “necessary and appropriate force” against any entity he believes “planned, authorized, committed or aided” the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks.

The legislation expires when U.S. forces leave Afghanistan.

The chief of Philippine armed forces says it will ask for an investigation of the commander of United Nations peacekeeping troops in the Golan Heights who asked his troops to lay down their arms and ‘raise the white flag’ under fire. Two groups of United Nations peacekeepers — both of them Filipino — managed to elude capture by Syrian rebels in the Syrian side of the Golan Heights during the past 24 hours.

The head of the Philippine armed forces, General Gregorio Pio Catapang, told journalists in Manila that a group of 32 kidnapped Philippine peacekeepers trapped by the rebels in the Syrian side of the Golan Heights had been rescued.

“We may call it the greatest escape,” he said.

“Everyone is in a safe position,” UNDOF Philippine commander Lt. Col. Ramon Zagala, said, according to the BBC. “We left our [former] position but we brought all our arms.” In addition, a second group of 40 UNDOF peacekeepers – apparently also from Philippines – managed to escape a seven-hour siege by the rebels after returning fire in self-defense.

The Philippine government has announced it will recall its force of 331 troops in October due to the deterioration of security in the Golan Heights.

A third group of 44 Fijian UN peacekeepers was kidnapped last Wednesday near Quneitra by the Al Qaeda-linked Jabhat al Nusra terror group (Al Nusra Front). The terror organization said in a statement posted on the internet that the captives were “in a safe place, and they are in good health, and that we have given them what they need of food and treatment.”

Jabhat al Nusra seized control of the Quneitra crossing with Israel — the only border crossing with Syria — last week. The group claimed it had carried out the abductions because the UN ignored “the daily shedding of the Muslims’ blood in Syria.”

The Philippine military is planning to demand a probe of the commander of the United Nations Disengagement Observer Force (UNDOF) on allegations of endangering the safety of Filipino peacekeepers on active duty. (UNDOF was established May 31 1974, the day Syria and Israel signed a disengagement agreement to end the 1973 Yom Kippur War.)

Gen. Catapang told the BBC that Lt. Gen. Iqbal Singh Singha, of India, ordered Philippine UN peacekeepers to lay down their arms to ensure the safety of the Fijian peacekeepers abducted by the Syrian rebels. In addition to laying down their firearms, the general said the Filipino troops were also ordered by Singha to ‘raise the white flag,’ according to the BBC.

“He (Singha) said that if we were attacked we should raise the white flag. I said no way. That means our soldiers will also be held hostage,” said Catapang. The troops defied Singha and informed AFP Peacekeeping Operations Center chief Col. Roberto Ancan instead.

UNDOF is comprised of 1,223 peacekeeper troops from six nations — but it is not clear who will replace the Philippine troops in October.

“I’m having a hard time now, but I will try to speak,” Chulda Sofer, Aharon’s mother, began in a trembling voice, in a heartbreaking video plea to the public for help in finding her son.

Aharon Sofer, 23, went missing on Friday, Aug. 22, while hiking with a friend in the Jerusalem Forest. A student who is learning in Jerusalem at Reb Tzvi Kaplan’s Yeshiva, he is one of 10 children, the son of a rabbi and a mother who works in a school office. He disappeared after taking a diverging path while heading down a steep incline in the forest while hiking with his friend last Friday. When he didn’t re-appear by 6 pm in time to prepare for Sabbath, Sofer’s friend knew something was wrong.

Few are willing to voice the fear that Sofer was kidnapped by Arab terrorists. Fewer dare to even think the unthinkable: as with three Israeli teens who were kidnapped and murdered by Hamas terrorists on June 12, the awful silence that has followed this yeshiva student’s disappearance may not mean good news. There have been terrorist murders in the Jerusalem Forest before. An Arab teen was kidnapped and killed there in a revenge attack for the Hamas murders of the three Israeli teens. A Christian woman, Kristine Luken, was attacked with her friend by a Palestinian Arab terrorist in 2010 in the same forest. Her friend managed to escape, but Luken was murdered.

Seen in the video clutching a poster bearing a photo of her son with the word MISSING printed in heavy black letters in Hebrew and English, Chulda Sofer is clearly beside herself. She tearfully beseeches, “Please, please, please, I beg of you, beg you, please, if anyone sees, anything about Aharon, please call the police immediately.”

The video at that point is apparently spliced, probably for brevity; Rabbi Moshe Sofer, the young man’s father, is then seen reading his own statement in a calm, firm voice.

“Our son Aharon was taking a walk in the Ya’ar Yerushalayim (Jerusalem Forest) on Friday, August 22, and was last seen at 12 pm in the area of Yad Vashem.

“The police are working tirelessly on all fronts and all options are being strongly investigated. We would like to thank the American Consulate, the Office of the Consul-General and the FBI and the Israeli Police and ZAKA for all their efforts in trying to find our dear son Aharon.

“There is a reward of NIS 100,000 for any finder of Aharon,” he concludes, faltering slightly on the final sentence.

One of Aharon’s cousins from the United States tried to organize a ‘group think’ effort to brainstorm ways to help via Facebook.

“Below is a list of phone numbers you can call in order to get updates on my cousin’s situation, provide ideas and different ways of helping, and also to get a list of tehillim (psalms) to say as we are all trying to finish the whole sefer tehillim (Book of Psalms) over and over and over again,” he wrote. “Please spread the word, pass this on and make those calls. thank you!!!!”

A yeshiva student who joined the thousands of searchers in the Jerusalem Forest, A*, said he has spent the past three days combing the hills for his friend. “I have been up since 5 am,” he said, “and we haven’t found anything. Not a single thing. Those earlier rumors of things that were found were false reports, I think. But in a way, that’s good, right? Because it means he might still be alive.” The student added that his friend has been in Jerusalem since early last autumn, and is no novice to the area.

Ahmed Jibril, the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine – General Command, has reportedly died in Damascus.

Conflicting reports surrounded the death. Initial reports indicated that Jibril suffered a stroke, while others said he was killed by a roadside bomb detonated by the al-Qaeda-linked Jabha a-Nusra terror group. Israel Radio reported that Jibril was known as a supporter of the Assad regime in Damascus.

Born in Yazur, Mandatory Palestine in 1938, Jibril was one of the Palestinins’ most notorious killers. He was responsible for a 1974 attack on the city of Kiryat Shemona, during which three members of PLFP-GC infiltrated Israel from Lebanon and murdered eleven civilians in their homes. The same year, a terror cell under Jibril’s command committed the Ma’alot massacre the same year, followed by the Savoy Hotel Attack and Kfar Yuval hostage crisis in 1975. In 1976, Jibril’s followers hijacked an Air France to Entebbe Airport in Uganda, sparking Israel’s legendary rescue operation on July 4 of that year, claiming the life of IDF soldier Yoni Netanyahu (brother of the current prime minister) and knocking the United States’ bicentennial celebration off newspaper front pages around the world.

Security officials have decided enough is enough: four terror attacks on the Jerusalem Light Rail in 12 hours has ended the route through the capital’s northern neighborhood of Shuafat, at least for now.

Jerusalem Arab terrorists hurled firebombs and rocks at the Jerusalem Light Rail in two separate attacks in less than an hour on Monday night as the train passed through the capital’s Arab neighborhood of Shuafat. Two other attacks occurred earlier in the day.

Passengers instinctively ducked, and mothers with babies threw themselves down on to the floor of the train, some of them bursting into tears, according to witnesses quoted by the Hebrew-language 0404 website.

Miraculously, no one on the train was physically injured, although passengers were traumatized and the train itself was damaged in each of the attacks.

One of the passengers in the second attack of the day told 0404, “Suddenly the train was hit by two flaming firebombs… there was great panic and mothers laid down with their babies on the floor of the train. It is absolutely surreal, what we are going through here. Just unbelievable.”

The website noted that three masked Arab terrorists  hurled rocks at another Light Rail train during the first attack of the day.

Depending on size, the CityPass firm that runs the Light Rail must pay NIS 3,000 to NIS 5,000 to replace each window smashed by terrorists hurling rocks and firebombs at the train. Insurance does not cover the cost of replacing equipment damaged in terrorist attacks.

Arab rioters in Shuafat completely destroyed the infrastructure three Jerusalem Light Rail stations in the area at the start of Operation Protective Edge, preventing the train from passing through the neighborhood for a number of days. As it did then, the line will operate — at least temporarily — between Mount Herzl and Ammunition Hill, with the route ending at Ammunition Hill.

The northern Jerusalem neighborhoods of Shuafat, Beit Hanina, Pisgat Ze’ev and Neve Yaakov will thus be deprived of service due to Arab terrorism in Shuafat.  Jews live in at least two of the four neighborhoods, with a Jewish section recently having started in a third neighborhood as well.

Israeli Defense Force personnel gave residents living in a compound in the Al Shati section of northern Gaza at least 24 hours’ notice to evacuate the area for their own safety, before starting an air strike on the area.

The warning came ahead of an attack to destroy rocket launchers that were used to attack Israeli civilians over the weekend.

The rockets were being fired from launchers hidden next to the ‘Shuhada’ medical clinic, a basketball court, the ‘Even Sina’ school and the ‘Zlach Halif’ school in the neighborhood.

Al Shati section of Gaza was pockmarked with concealed rocket launchers, all placed as close as possible to schools, a basketball court and even a medical clinic.

Both of the school were being used as shelters for displaced Gaza residents who were forced out of their homes by terrorists who had used their buildings as rocket launching sites, and to store weapons and other terrorist-related equipment, thus transforming them into military targets.

It is a deliberate use of Gaza’s civilians as human shields, and “intentionally puts civilians and humanitarian structures in harm’s way,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit said in a statement released Monday.

The IDF destroyed the concealed rocket launchers and rocket arsenal concealed within the facility.

“In the aftermath of the strike extensive secondary explosions were revealed, exposing the extent of the arsenal in this location,” the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit noted.

Update: The IDF has released a correction to their previous statement, and no longer state that the rocket that killed Daniel Tragerman came from this specific location.

In two days, a building that six years ago was soaked in blood and tears will instead be filled with light and joy, as Chabad of Mumbai’s Nariman House reopens its doors.

More than 25 Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries will attend the reopening set for Tuesday, August 26 along with other honored guests led by current co-directors, Rabbi Yisroel Kozlovsky and his wife Chaya.

The couple are continuing the work started by Rabbi Gabi and Rivky Holtzberg, who together with four of their guests were murdered in cold blood by Pakistani jihadist terrorists in November 2008. Only their two year old son Moishe, saved by his Indian nanny Sandra, survived the bloodbath. Both were brought home to Israel by Rivky’s parents, Rabbi and Mrs. Shimon Rosenfeld.

Despite the devastation that followed the attack — Nariman House was only one of ten sites that were struck in a city-wide mass casualty attack by the 10-man terrorist cell — Chabad’s outreach to Jews in Mumbai continued.

“We remember what happened, but we are working for the future,” Kozlovsky told Chabad.org this week.

All of the activities that took place at Nariman House prior to the attack will continue, he said, and hopefully the program will expand further. Chabad of Mumbai was established by the Holtzbergs in 2003 to serve Israeli backpackers, international Jewish business people and the local Indian Jewish community, he pointed out.

With funding from the Rohr Family Foundation and strong mentoring from Rabbi Moshe Kotlarsky, vice chairman of Merkos L’Inyonei Chinuch — the educational arm of Chabad-Lubavitch — the Holtzbergs purchased Nariman House and set up their program.

Kotlarsky underlined the importance of never giving in to terror. “We didn’t pause after this great tragedy,” he said. “We regrouped immediately and continued working, never stopping. That was our response to what happened in Mumbai. We build communities… serving the Jews in Mumbai, locals and foreigners, was and continues to be our priority.”

The reopening of the Chabad center is timed to coincide with the regional conference of more than 25 Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries in Asia, organized by Rabbi Yosef Chaim Kantor, regional director and head of Chabad of Thailand. Kantor has been deeply involved in the renewal of Nariman House, as he was involved in the development of the original Chabad center as well.