The Times of Israel is liveblogging Sunday’s events as they happen.
Israeli-Palestinian film ‘No Other Land’ picks up Spirit Award ahead of Oscars
“No Other Land,” a buzzy movie co-directed by an Israeli-Palestinian filmmaking collective about the destruction of a West Bank village, takes home the Best Documentary prize at the Spirit Awards.
The win puts the film in strong contention for an Oscar at next week’s Academy Award, though the movie still does not have a distributor.
The filmmakers are not in attendance at the awards ceremony in a beachside tent in Santa Monica, California. The Spirit Awards is the shaggier, more irreverent sister to the Academy Awards, celebrating the best in independent film and television.
Even as it remains in cinematic purgatory, “No Other Land” is still making its way to independent arthouse theaters in more than 20 cities. It is also available to stream for free for residents of Israel and the Palestinian territories.
Also at the awards, Kieran Culkin, considered an Oscar favorite, wins the supporting performance award for “A Real Pain,” about two cousins embarking on a Holocaust tour in Poland.
His director, co-star and writer Jesse Eisenberg wins best screenplay for the film.
State Department applauds Israeli response to attempted bus bombings
In what appears to be the Trump administration’s first comment on last week’s bus explosions in central Israel, State Department spokesperson Tammy Bruce tweets that the US “commends Israeli security’s swift response to stop a suspected terrorist attack after three empty buses exploded near Tel Aviv, saving countless lives.”
“Terrorism has no place in society and must be repudiated. The United States’ commitment to Israel’s security is unwavering,” Bruce adds.
Three empty buses exploded in quick succession in parking lots in the Tel Aviv suburbs of Bat Yam and Holon Thursday night and one or two more bombs were discovered on additional buses in Holon. No casualties occurred as a result of the explosions.
There have been conflicting reports on the matter, which is thought to have been a narrowly averted large-scale terror attack, and much of the case is covered by a gag order.
On Friday, the Israel Police and the Shin Bet security agency were reported to have detained a Palestinian and two Jewish Israelis in connection to the bus explosions.
In security consultations following the explosions, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu ordered the IDF to carry out a massive counterterrorism operation in the West Bank, his office said, with the IDF later announcing the deployment of three additional battalions.
Musk gives US federal employees 48 hours to explain what they did last week
Hundreds of thousands of federal workers in the US are being given little more than 48 hours to explain what they accomplished over the last week, sparking confusion across key agencies as billionaire Elon Musk expands his crusade to slash the size of federal government.
“Consistent with President @realDonaldTrump’s instructions, all federal employees will shortly receive an email requesting to understand what they got done last week,” Musk posts on X, which he owns. “Failure to respond will be taken as a resignation.”
Shortly afterward, federal employees receive a three-line email with this instruction: “Please reply to this email with approx. 5 bullets of what you accomplished last week and cc your manager.”
The deadline to reply is Monday at 11:59 p.m., although the email does not include Musk’s social media threat about those who fail to respond.
The latest unusual directive from Musk’s team injects a new sense of chaos across beleaguered multiple agencies, including the National Weather Service and the State Department, as senior officials work to verify the message’s authenticity Saturday night and in some cases, instruct their employees not to respond.
McLaurine Pinover, a spokesperson at the Office of Personnel Management, confirms Musk’s directive and says that individual agencies will “determine any next steps.”
The National Weather Service leadership acknowledges some confusion in a message to employees.
“Within the last few hours, some of us — potentially all of us — received an email message titled ‘What did you do last week?’ Until such time as we can verify that the message that was received at or around 4:46pm ET is authentic, please do not respond,” it reads.
Buenos Aires legislator proposes renaming Palestine street for Bibas family
Yamil Santoro, a lawmaker in Buenos Aires’s municipal legislature, says he is seeking to have the city’s rechristen a street named for Palestine for the Bibas family instead.
A bill recently submitted by Santoro would change Estado de Palestina, or State of Palestine, in the city’s central Almagro neighborhood, to Familia Bibas, in honor of Shiri Silberman Bibas and her two young sons, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, who were kidnapped on October 7, 2023, and murdered in captivity. Their bodies were returned on Thursday and over the weekend.
The mom and her children were dual citizens of Israel and Argentina.
The main obstacle to the name change is an existing law from October 1998 that restricts designating street names for a person until 10 years have passed since their death.
Santoro tells La Nacion newspaper that the law may be circumvented by changing the street to the name of the family.
He adds they have not reached out to the Bibas family yet. “We will wait for a reasonable amount of time to pass before reaching out to talk.”
The streets Estado de Palestina and Estado de Israel famously intersect, drawing onlookers daily.
‘No greater cruelty’: Father decries Hamas forcing hostage son watch others be freed
The families of Eviatar David and Guy Gilboa-Dalal are expressing horror and revulsion at a Hamas propaganda video showing the two hostages being brought to watch other Israelis being released and begging for their own freedom.
“They forced them to watch their friends being released and then returned them to the tunnels. There is no greater cruelty,” Dalal’s father Ilan Dalal says. “They can’t continue. It’s simply inhumane.”
Dalal says he supported the decision for Israeli networks to broadcast the Hamas propaganda clip in hopes it will help illustrate their dire situation and help push through a second stage of the ceasefire deal, which would see the two freed, along with nearly two dozen other living hostages. However, he adds that he assumed the two were coached on what to say, making their words meaningless, though not their body language.
“Guy is thinner, his eyes looked scared, but it was Guy, his voice and his movements were like Guy,” Dalal says.
He notes that neither appeared to be injured, and were likely not as bad off as some others, but were still “relatively thin, and had gone through severe psychological torture.”
Guy Dalal’s sister is quoted by Walla saying in a missive to her brother that she is “heartbroken with longing” for him, but expresses confidence that he and David “will return to us soon. Until then we won’t stop fighting with all our might.”
In the US, Elise Stefanik, President Donald Trump’s nominee for ambassador to the UN, says she was with brothers of Gilboa Dalal and David at a speech by Trump when the video was released.
“Hamas’ evil depravity knows no bounds.” she writes on X. “The inhumane treatment of innocent Israeli hostages forced to watch others return home while they were then taken back into captivity further exposes that this is a war is between good and evil.”
Hamas’ evil depravity knows no bounds. The inhumane treatment of innocent Israeli hostages forced to watch others return home while they were then taken back into captivity further exposes that this is a war is between good and evil.
At the very moment that the video was…
— Elise Stefanik (@EliseStefanik) February 22, 2025
Acknowledging ex-hostages in audience, Trump says it’s important to also return dead captives
Speaking at the Conservative Political Action Committee in Washington, US President Donald Trump notes many of the hostages in Gaza are returning dead, adding that it is important to get them back as well as the living abductees in Gaza.
Trump calls out by name several survivors of Hamas captivity in the audience, including Noa Argamani and Ilana Gritzewsky.
Rapid Response 47 – X, Feb 22, 2025, 2:50 PM.
President Trump recognizes the survivors of captivity under Hamas, including Noa Argamani and Ilana Gritzewsky. ❤️ pic.twitter.com/sq6bcHyA2Q— ???????????????????????????????? ???????? Trump (@MamaBearTrump) February 22, 2025