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Israeli Athletes Win 6 Medals During First Few Days of 2024 Paralympics in Paris
Israeli para athletes have already won six medals at the 2024 Paralympic Games in Paris that began less than a week ago, including gold, silver, and bronze medal wins on Sunday.
Ami Omer Dadaon won silver in the men’s 150-meter individual medley SM4 disability class on Sunday. The 23-year-old Kiryat Ata resident also won gold, and set a Paralympic record, on Friday in the men’s 100-meter freestyle S4 disability class with a finish time of 1:19:33.
Dadaon, who has had cerebral palsy since birth, began swimming at the age of six. When he was 20, he became the youngest Israeli athlete to win a medal at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo, where he won medals in three events.
Also on Sunday, Israeli para rowing athlete Moran Samuel won the gold medal in the women’s single sculls, after winning a bronze medal in Rio 2016 and silver at Tokyo 2020. The Paralympic medalist and world champion, 42, suffered a spinal stroke at age 24 that left her in a wheelchair. Samuel, who is a mother of three, began rowing in 2010 and represented Israel in non-para basketball prior to her spinal stroke. She began playing wheelchair basketball after her impairment, but she switched to para rowing because she wanted to represent Israel at the Paralympic Games. She went on to become the first rower from Israel to win multiple medals at the Paralympic Games when she took home silver in the women’s PR1 single sculls at the 2020 Games in Tokyo.
Para rowing duo Shahar Milfelder and Saleh Shahin on Sunday won bronze in the mixed double sculls. In 2005, Shahin — a 41-year-old Druze father of two from the Arab city of Shfaram in northern Israel — was working as a security guard at the Karni border crossing on the Israel-Gaza border when he was injured while protecting others from a deadly terrorist attack, in which six Israelis were killed and several others were wounded. Milfelder, 26, was diagnosed with cancer as a teen and had to have a portion of her pelvis removed.
On Saturday, Mark Malyar, 24, won bronze in the men’s 100-meter backstroke. Malyar was born with cerebral palsy and started swimming at the age of five. He won two gold medals and one bronze at the 2020 Paralympic Games in Tokyo. He competes in para swimming for Israel alongside his twin brother Ariel.
Israeli taekwondo athlete Asaf Yasur, 22, won Israel’s first medal at the Paralympics this year when he secured the gold medal on Thursday in the under-58 kg category in the men’s K44 disability class.
The 2024 Paralympic Games had its opening ceremony on Aug. 28 and ends Sept. 8. Twenty-eight athletes are representing Israel in the Paralympics this year, including a survivor of the Oct. 7 terrorist attacks.
The post Israeli Athletes Win 6 Medals During First Few Days of 2024 Paralympics in Paris first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.