Israelis lose even more sleep as clocks move forward for daylight saving

Already exhausted by nearly four weeks of missile fire overnight from Iran and Lebanon, Israelis lose an hour of sleep overnight Thursday-Friday, with clocks jumping forward one hour, from 2 a.m. to 3 a.m., marking the start of daylight saving time.

Daylight saving time will end on October 25, 2026.

Israel made the move nearly three weeks after the US, where most locations changed the clocks on March 8.

In 2013, the Knesset passed legislation extending daylight saving time from the last Sunday in March to the last Sunday in October.

Before that, standard time would begin the Saturday night before Yom Kippur, so that the day’s fast, which is pegged to nightfall, would end — but also begin — an hour “earlier.”

Because the Hebrew calendar is lunar, Yom Kippur can fall between mid-September and mid-October, which used to mean that Israelis returned to standard time as much as a month and a half before most other countries.

As a result, the issue of the seasonal time transition became contentious and was caught up in political tensions between religious and secular parties before the 2013 standardization was implemented.