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Model Gigi Hadid Falsely Says Israel Guilty of Organ Harvesting After Accusing Jewish State of ‘Abduction, Rape, Torture’
Gigi Hadid seen during a photo shoot at Guest In Residence in Soho, New York City on October 18, 2023. Photo: MAGO/MediaPunch via Reuters Connect
Model Gigi Hadid made a series of false accusations about Israel and its treatment of Palestinians, while also promoting an antisemitic blood libel, to her more than 79 million Instagram followers over the weekend.
On Sunday, the 28-year-old shared on her Instagram Story a reel in which a user named Umme Murtaza (umme_murtazaa) tells her followers to “watch this disturbing video, where health officials admitted that Israeli authorities had harvested the organs of dead Palestinians for years without their consent.”
Accusing Israel of organ theft has been widely criticized as an antisemitic blood libel rooted in medieval conspiracies charging that Jews murdered Christian children and drank their blood during the Jewish holiday of Passover. The organ harvesting claim has been debunked several times in the past.
Two days earlier on Friday, Hadid shared on her Instagram Story a post about a Palestinian named Ahmad Al-Manasra who, the post claimed, had been imprisoned in Israel since he was 12. It further said that the youth has a “severe health condition” and like “hundreds of Palestinian children remain detained, suffering in Israeli jails.”
Hadid wrote in the caption of her Instagram Story about Al-Manasra: “Israel is the only country in the world that keeps CHILDREN AS PRISONERS OF WAR.” She then accused Israel of the “abduction, rape, humiliation, torture, [and] murder of Palestinians years and years and years before Oct. 7, 2023,” referring to the day when Hamas terrorists infiltrated southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and took more than 240 others as hostages back to Gaza.
Hadid did not mention that Al-Manasra was jailed for carrying out, with his cousin, a stabbing attack in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Pisgat Ze’ev in 2015 that injured two Israeli civilians — a 13-year-old, who was critically injured, and a 25-year-old, who was moderately injured. Al-Manasra was seriously injured when he was hit by a car as he tried to escape the scene of the attack. Security camera footage from the scene showed the Al-Manasra cousins carrying knives and chasing a man through the streets of Pisgat Ze’ev on Oct. 13, 2015. He carried out the attack when he was 13 and was convicted at the age of 14.
The post was later deleted amid severe backlash.
Also on Friday, Hadid shared on Instagram a news report about Palestinian women and children being released from prisons in Israel as part of the deal made with Hamas for the release of hostages taken by the terrorist organization on Oct. 7. In a caption for that news report, Hadid made the false accusation that Israel “sees any Palestinian as a ‘terrorist,’ any person supporting Palestinian rights as an ‘antisemite,’ and any Jew that is opposed to the government’s actions as ‘self-hating.’”
“So … everyone’s lying and wrong except Israel?!!” she added. “If it wasn’t so evil & disturbing, it would be comedic.”
Just days after Hamas’ massacre on Oct. 7, Hadid posted on Instagram a statement that acknowledged both Palestinian and Israeli suffering while also condemning terrorism and accusing Israel of occupation. Then on Oct. 15, she was blasted by the Israeli government over a meme she shared on Instagram that attacked the country’s response to the Hamas terror attack earlier that month.
Hadid is the sister of fellow model Bella Hadid, who has repeatedly shared anti-Israel posts on social media. In 2021, Bella participated in a pro-Palestinian rally and chanted “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a slogan widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of Israel, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
Their mother is former Dutch model Yolanda Hadid, and their father is Nazareth-both real estate developer Mohamed Hadid, who has also posted several anti-Israel messages on social media.
The post Model Gigi Hadid Falsely Says Israel Guilty of Organ Harvesting After Accusing Jewish State of ‘Abduction, Rape, Torture’ first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels
View of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) building in Rafah in the southern Gaza Strip. Photo: Abed Rahim Khatib / Flash90.
i24 News – Sweden will no longer fund the U.N. refugee agency for Palestinians (UNRWA) and will instead provide humanitarian assistance to Gaza via other channels, the Scandinavian country said on Friday.
The decision comes on the heels of multiple revelations regarding the agency’s employees’ involvement in the October 7, 2023, Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel that triggered the war in Gaza.
Sweden’s decision was in response to the Israeli ban, as it will make channeling aid via the agency more difficult, the country’s aid minister, Benjamin Dousa, said.
“Large parts of UNRWA’s operations in Gaza are either going to be severely weakened or completely impossible,” Dousa said. “For the government, the most important thing is that support gets through.”
The Palestinian embassy in Stockholm said in a statement: “We reject the idea of finding alternatives to UNRWA, which has a special mandate to provide services to Palestinian refugees.”
Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel thanked Dousa for a meeting they had this week and for Sweden’s decision to drop its support for UNRWA.
“There are worthy and viable alternatives for humanitarian aid, and I appreciate the willingness to listen and adopt a different approach,” she said.
The post Sweden Ends Funding for UNRWA, Pledges to Seek Other Aid Channels first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism
Pope Francis waves after delivering his traditional Christmas Day Urbi et Orbi speech to the city and the world from the main balcony of St. Peter’s Basilica at the Vatican, December 25, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Yara Nardi
Pope Francis on Saturday again condemned Israeli airstrikes in Gaza, a day after an Israeli government minister publicly denounced the pontiff for suggesting the global community should study whether the military offensive there constitutes a genocide of the Palestinian people.
Francis opened his annual Christmas address to the Catholic cardinals who lead the Vatican’s various departments with what appeared to be a reference to Israeli airstrikes on Friday that killed at least 25 Palestinians in Gaza.
“Yesterday, children were bombed,” said the pope. “This is cruelty. This is not war. I wanted to say this because it touches the heart.”
The pope, as leader of the 1.4-billion-member Roman Catholic Church, is usually careful about taking sides in conflicts, but he has recently been more outspoken about Israel’s military campaign against Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.
In book excerpts published last month, the pontiff said some international experts said that “what is happening in Gaza has the characteristics of a genocide.”
Israeli Minister of Diaspora Affairs Amichai Chikli sharply criticized those comments in an unusual open letter published by Italian newspaper Il Foglio on Friday. Chikli said the pope’s remarks amounted to a “trivialization” of the term genocide.
Francis also said on Saturday that the Catholic bishop of Jerusalem, known as a patriarch, had tried to enter the Gaza Strip on Friday to visit Catholics there, but was denied entry.
The patriarch’s office told Reuters it was not able to comment on the pope’s remarks about the patriarch being denied entry.
Israeli officials were not immediately reachable for comment on Saturday, the Jewish Sabbath, and the Israeli military did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The post Pope Calls Gaza Airstrikes ‘Cruelty’ After Israeli Minister’s Criticism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile
Iranian-backed Yemeni terrorist leader Abdul-Malik al-Houthi. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – The Israeli military said on Saturday that while the investigation into the failure to intercept the missile that hit Tel Aviv early in the morning was still ongoing, some lessons were already being implemented. The ballistic missile, fired by Yemen’s Houthi jihadists, landed at a playground in a residential area, leading to 16 people sustaining injuries from glass shards.
Israel Defense Forces (IDF) spokesperson said that “some of the conclusions have already been implemented, in regards of both interception and early warning.”
The spokesperson added that “no further details regarding aerial defense activities and the alert system can be disclosed due to operational security considerations.”
The Houthis have repeatedly fired drones and missiles towards Israel in what they describe as “acts of solidarity” with Palestinians in Gaza.
The post IDF Pledges to Implement Lessons from Failure to Intercept Houthi Missile first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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