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Hamas killed her mother and niece. Her children are hostages in Gaza.
TEL AVIV (JTA) — Hadas Calderon flung a printed picture of her mother, Carmela Dan, an American-Israeli who was reported kidnapped by Hamas on Oct. 7, to the floor.
“She’s dead. There’s nothing I can do about her anymore. I don’t even have a minute to think about mourning,” Calderon told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
“But I can save the living. I can fight to save my children.”
Calderon’s comments came as she participated in a press conference in Tel Aviv organized as part of a sweeping, sustained effort to draw local and global attention to the more than 200 Israeli captives now held in Gaza. Thursday’s event focused on just one subset of the group: the children.
Neither Israel nor the Hostages and Missing Families Forum will give an estimate of how many of the captives are children. But videos shared by Hamas and pictures shared by their relatives have seared the faces of several into the international consciousness.
One of the children to gain widespread attention is Calderon’s 12-year-old niece, Noya Dan, who had slept over at Carmela’s home on Kibbutz Nir Oz the night of the attack. A quarter of the kibbutz’s population is now dead or missing; her mother and sister are among the survivors.
A picture of Noya dressed as Harry Potter circulated widely on social media, even drawing amplification from the character’s creator, J.K. Rowling, after Israel asked the British author to publicize her disappearance.
This beautiful 12 year old girl with autism was kidnapped from her home by Hamas terrorists and was taken to Gaza.
Noya, is sensitive, kind, funny and a massive Harry Potter fan. @jk_rowling can you help us get her story out?
Share this and help us bring Noya home … pic.twitter.com/MW4jKnz7Uc
— Israel ישראל (@Israel) October 15, 2023
On Wednesday, Hadas Calderon celebrated her mother’s 80th birthday in her absence. She said the gathering was full of hope that Carmela would be soon released. The following day at 10 p.m. she received a phone call from the army telling her that Carmela’s and Noya’s bodies had been identified. She said she still does not know the circumstances surrounding their death — including on what side of the border they were killed. She wonders whether Noya’s autism might have played a role.
“We don’t know what happened. Maybe [Carmela] couldn’t walk with her anymore so they killed her,” Calderon said. “Which makes us so worried for the others.”
The others include Calderon’s own children, 16-year-old daughter Sahar and 12-year-old son Erez, who were also on the kibbutz that night with their father.
“I can hear every night my son screaming to me, mom, save me,” she said, crying.
Hadas Calderon holds up a picture of her children, Sahar and Erez, at a press conference about child hostages of Hamas in Tel Aviv, Oct. 19, 2023. (Deborah Danan)
She said the army told her that they are likely in Khan Younis, a southern Gazan city just six miles from Nir Oz. With the Israeli army preparing for what it says could be an extended ground invasion of Gaza, she knows her family is at risk.
“Stop immediately any military action” until the hostages are released, she said. “And then make the war. You can’t make a war at the expense of children and babies.”
Some reports have emerged of back-channel negotiations around freeing the hostages, but Calderon joins other families of captives in believing that Israel should be doing more. She assailed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for saying that “bringing back the hostages was part of the goals” of Operation Iron Sword, the army’s name for the war.
“It’s not ‘part of the goal,’” she said. “It’s the only goal.”
Yifat Zailer told JTA that hearing Calderon become so impassioned made her believe she should be doing more to get her family’s message across. Zailer is advocating for her niece and nephew, Ariel and Kfir Bibas, and their family members. Ariel, 4, and Kfir, 10 months, were taken with their mother Shiri, Zailer’s cousin; their father Yarden; and Shiri’s parents, Yossi and Margit Silverman.
Shiri Silberman-Bibas and Kfir Bibas are visible in footage taken by Hamas after they were taken captive on Oct. 7, 2023. (X)
Shiri, Ariel and Kfir became some of the earliest faces of the hostage crisis, historic in its scope, after footage of them aired on Palestinian news and circulated online within hours of the attack. Shiri can be seen crying while carrying Kfir.
All are Argentinian citizens; the family received a picture of Yarden being driven on a Hamas motorcycle, with an obvious severe head wound, and have also advertised that Margit has advanced Parkinson’s Disease and needs medication.
“I can feel the Calderon mother’s pain, and I think maybe I’m not fighting as much or being as militant,” Zailer said. “Because I think my heart is too broken, you know?”
She added, “I’m trying to speak about them in present tense. I’m fighting the natural [instinct to say,] they lived, they used to. But I know they will come back. They were kidnapped alive and they’ll come back alive.”
Zailer, too, said she was concerned that a military operation could put her relatives at risk, though she said she hadn’t come up with an alternative.
“I’m not a politician so I don’t have the right answer,” she said. “I just want no casualties. … Someone needs to intervene, to mediate this differently. And Hamas needs to be taken down.”
Noya Dan and her grandmother, Carmela Dan, were very close. They were murdered together during Hamas’ attack on Israel. (Courtesy Hadas Calderon)
Calderon said she would advocate incessantly until her family is returned, calling on not just Israeli authorities to rescue them but also on the United States, which is trying to broker the situation; Qatar, which reportedly has discussed the hostages with Hamas; and more.
“I’m even asking Hamas: At this moment you have the opportunity to show that you still have humanity,” she said during the press conference.
“I want to believe that Hamas are taking care of them like they would their own children,” she said.
Exactly how much impact the press conference and the other components of the campaign, including “Kidnapped” posters that are being put up around the world, could have remains unclear. But Calderon said she would not relent until her children were home.
“The whole world has to scream,” she said. “Scream until the skies open, ‘Bring our children home.’ They are not soldiers. They have been picked up in their pajamas from their beds.”
—
The post Hamas killed her mother and niece. Her children are hostages in Gaza. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Students of Columbia University Affiliate School Petition Administration to Hire Pro-Hamas Professor
The “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” at Columbia University, located in the Manhattan borough of New York City, on April 25, 2024. Photo: Reuters Connect
Students of the Union Theological Seminary (UTS), an affiliate school of Columbia University, are pushing the institution to hire an academic who was just terminated for defending the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel.
Dr. Mohamed Abdou, a visiting professor in modern Arab studies who defended Hamas after the terrorist group slaughtered over 1,200 people and kidnapped about 250 others during its Oct. 7 onslaught, was reportedly relieved of his duties at Columbia University as of Sunday. Following Abdou’s firing, UTS students circulated a petition calling on the seminary to extend the anti-Israel academic an offer of employment.
“We condemn Columbia University’s efforts to stifle any mobilization around [the Palestinian] cause and its repressive, anti-Palestinian victimization of Dr. Abdou,” the petition reads.
“We ask the UTS administration to hire Dr. Abdou for the 2024-2025 academic year,” the petition continues.
During a US congressional hearing on campus antisemitism in April, Columbia President Minouche Shafik promised lawmakers that the university would terminate Abdou at the conclusion of the school year, citing his repeated public endorsements of violence against Israel and endorsement of terrorist groups.
During a Jan. 5 interview with Revolutionary Left Radio, Abdou heaped praise on Hamas, referring to the terrorist organization as a “resistance” and dismissed criticism of the terrorist organization as “white supremacy.” In the aftermath of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks, many pro-Palestinian groups have similarly defended Hamas a a “resistance” group and referred to the Oct. 7 atrocities as “self-defense.”
On Jan. 16. the Columbia Middle East Institute tapped Abdou to serve as lead instructor for a course on “Decolonial-Queerness & Abolition.” According to the course description, students analyzed “Euro-American informed modernity animated by (neo)liberal-Enlightenment values (free will/humanity, secularism, racial capitalism)” and “contemporary conceptualizations of family, kinship, and friendship in Black, Indigenous, and People of Color (BIPOC) communities within the context of settler-colonial societies (as the U.S./Canada) as well as in postcolonial nations and regions (as Southwest Asia, Africa, and the Middle East) that arguably never underwent adequate decolonization.”
Abdou faced intense criticism after a student recorded and circulated a course lecture in which he denounced Israel as a “settler colonial” entity that was inspired by American-style beliefs on private property, gender, and sexuality.
Following Shafik’s congressional testimony, Abdou claimed that the Columbia president “lied” about his firing and accused her of “misrepresenting” his opinions. He reiterated his support for Islamist terrorist groups such as Hamas and Hezbollah, both of which are backed by Iran.
Abdou’s public support for terrorism has caused a firestorm of controversy with Columbia students and alumni, calling into question the university’s commitment to fostering a tolerant and safe environment for Jewish and Israeli students.
Abdou indicated gratitude for the petition on X/Twitter, saying that he is “indebted for this generous initiative.” He called on his supporters to sign and spread the petition “as far [and] as wide as possible.”
The post Students of Columbia University Affiliate School Petition Administration to Hire Pro-Hamas Professor first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australian War Memorials Vandalized With Pro-Hamas Graffiti
A war memorial in Canberra was vandalized by anti-Israel graffiti. Photo: Screenshot
Multiple memorials near the Australian War Memorial have been defaced with anti-Israel graffiti as Australian policymakers grapple with how to manage a rise in antisemitism that has continued unabated since the start of the Israel-Hamas conflict.
Located on Anzac Parade — named in honor of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) — near downtown Canberra, vandals spray-painted pro-Hamas messages onto sites dedicated to those who died fighting for Australia in war. The messages included “Free Palestine,” “Free Gaza,” “Blood on your hands,” and “From the river to the sea” — the last of which is a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists calling for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
The Australian National Korean War Memorial, Australian Vietnam Forces National Memorial, and the Australian Army National Memorial were all targeted over the weekend, as well as a wall between the memorials along Anzac Parade.
The incidents sparked outcry among Australian lawmakers and members of the Jewish community. In parliament, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the vandalism as “criminal” and called for the perpetrators to “get exposed publicly as well for who they are. We know what they are — they’re unworthy of having any respect and any leniency as a result of their own actions.”
The Australian Jewish Association wrote on X/Twitter in response to the desecration of the war memorials, “The anti-Israel movement is one of the ugliest Australia has ever seen.”
Condemnation of the vandalism by Australia’s politicians was not universal, however. On the far left, Green Party Senator Jordan Steele-John refused to support a motion from a fellow lawmaker condemning the memorials’ desecration. “War memorials are not politically neutral spaces,” Steele-John argued to the Senate.
Adam Brandt – the leader of the Green Party who days after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel condemned “Israel’s occupation — declined to comment on whether vandalism is a legitimate form of protest.
Over 17,000 ANZAC soldiers fought in Korea and 60,000 in Vietnam. ANZAC forces also participated in the Gallipoli campaign of World War I.
Australia’s Senate has faced growing calls to recognize a Palestinian state. Recently, Fatima Payman — a newly elected senator and member of the majority Labour party — was suspended by Albanese after voting against the Labour Party’s official position when she supported a Green Party motion for Palestinian statehood.
Meanwhile, the city council of Sydney — one of Australia’s largest and wealthiest cities — last week passed a motion calling on lawmakers to review its investment portfolio to determine whether it is linked to companies which provide arms and other services to the state of Israel. Sydney Lord Mayor Clover Moore, who is not formally affiliated with any political party, backed the idea to move toward adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.
Such political steps have come amid a surge in antisemitic incidents across Australia.
In just the first seven and a half weeks after the Oct. 7 atrocities, antisemitic activity in Australia increased by a staggering 591 percent, according to a tally of incidents by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
In one notorious episode in the immediate aftermath of the Hamas onslaught, hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters gathered outside the Sydney Opera House chanting “gas the Jews,” “f—k the Jews,” and other epithets.
The explosion of hate also included violence such as a brutal attack on a Jewish man in a park in Sydney in late October.
Pro-Hamas sentiment has also led to vandalism. Last month, the US consulate in Sydney was vandalized and defaced by an unidentified man carrying a sledgehammer who smashed the windows and graffitied inverted red triangles on the building. The inverted red triangle has become a common symbol at pro-Hamas rallies. The Palestinian terrorist group, which rules Gaza, has used inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “the red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence.”
The post Australian War Memorials Vandalized With Pro-Hamas Graffiti first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Rabbi Tory Candidate Berated Outside British Mosque, Called a ‘Snake’ and ‘Child Killer’
Illustrative: A pro-Hamas march in London, United Kingdom, Feb. 17, 2024. Photo: Chrissa Giannakoudi via Reuters Connect
A rabbi and Tory parliamentary candidate in England was berated with accusations of “smiling like a snake” and supporting the murder of children during a recent visit to a mosque in Greater Manchester, which has become a hub of antisemitic activity since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks on Israel.
Rabbi Arnold Saunders, the Conservative candidate for the heavily Jewish seat of Bury South, was invited last week to Bilal Mosque, located in the town of Prestwich, by its elders. During his visit, however, a member of the mosque began aggressively shouting at the elderly rabbi, who uses a cane, according to video circulated on X /Twitter.
“You are a snake”
WATCH the threatening way Rabbi Arnie Saunders was treated when he was invited to the Bilal Mosque in Prestwich, Manchester in his role as the Conservative candidate for Bury South by the mosque elders. That he was allowed to be abused, intimidated and have his… pic.twitter.com/X4PZTsteLq
— NW Friends of Israel (@NorthWestFOI) June 30, 2024
In the video, the enraged worshiper can be seen demanding that Saunders “condemn the IDF [Israel Defense Forces] in the strongest terms” for its military campaign targeting Hamas in Gaza.
“Don’t come to the house of Allah and try to engage with us when we know that what when you’re in your own places you’re saying that it is good that they are killing children,” the man continued.
“He’s happy that children are dying. Ask him to go,” he told mosque officials. “We don’t want to engage with these people.”
Muslim worshipers berate Rabbi Arnold Saunders outside of a mosque in Greater Manchester, England. Photo: Screenshot
“You come here and smile like a snake,” the protestor screamed at the rabbi as he stood up to leave.
Saunders attempted multiple times to respond to the man’s accusations but was repeatedly cut off. According to the video, other members of the mosque watching the exchange did not attempt to defend the rabbi.
British Jewish organizations quickly condemned the abuse of Saunders.
“We are disgusted by the abusive treatment of Rabbi Arnold Saunders … the footage clearly shows the rabbi was being targeted in this fashion due to his religion,” the UK’s main Jewish organization, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said in a statement. “We urge all who care about the health of our democracy to call out this bigotry.”
The Jewish Representative Council of Greater Manchester & Region (JRC) similarly lambasted the treatment of Saunders.
“Rabbi Saunders is a much respected communal figure and we unequivocally condemn his treatment in this video. It is unquestionably antisemitic and we expect action to be taken,” the organization posted to social media. “The fact he has been attacked emphasizes how individuals are importing the tragic conflict taking place in Israel and Gaza onto the streets of the UK.”
North West Friends of Israel, an organization supporting Jews in the northwestern UK condemned the scene as well.
“That he was allowed to be abused, intimidated and have his personal space invaded is disgraceful and shocking,” the group said. “He must have feared for his safety. By contrast two of the mosque elders were recently invited to the Jewish Community of Manchester Bury South Hustings and treated with nothing but courtesy and respect.”
Saunders’ opponent for the British parliamentary seat in Bury South, Labour lawmaker Christian Wakeford, wished the rabbi his best. “Despite political disagreements, Rabbi Saunders and I have always had an excellent relationship and I hope he is OK following this incident.”
Recently, Manchester has evolved into somewhat of a hub for antisemitic and anti-Israel activity following the Hamas terrorist attacks of Oct. 7.
Earlier this year, two Israeli survivors of the Oct. 7 atrocities were detained and subjected to discrimination while being processed at Manchester Airport. According to the JRC, the two individuals, who were traveling to the UK to discuss narrowly escaping the Hamas onslaught, were singled out upon presenting their Israeli passports and explaining why they were there. British Border Force officers allegedly forced the Israelis to submit to two hours of “detention and interrogation,” as well as abusive comments.
More recently, a world map on the wall of Manchester’s Airport was removed by airport authorities after they were notified by the organization UK Lawyers for Israel (UKLFI) that the Jewish state was crossed out and instead labeled “Palestine.”
“While we are very grateful to Manchester Airport for its swift action, we are concerned that people are unable to walk past a map that mentions ‘ISRAEL’ without deleting its name,” ULKFI said of the incident. “This shows an extremely worrying attitude to the world’s only Jewish state.”
The post Rabbi Tory Candidate Berated Outside British Mosque, Called a ‘Snake’ and ‘Child Killer’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.