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A cookie-wielding mother, a gun-toting grandfather, a fearless young woman: Meet Israel’s newest heroes

(JTA) — When Hamas terrorists broke into her home early Saturday morning, Rachel Adari didn’t have any guns.
But she had another kind of weapon: cookies, which she offered to the men who held her and her husband captive for the next 15 hours, as her city of Ofakim and dozens of other towns in southern Israel faced a brutal invasion by Hamas from Gaza.
“I could see they were angry,” Adari told Israel’s Channel 12. “I asked them if they were hungry. I prepared them coffee and cookies.”
“She drove them crazy,” her husband David said. “She kept asking them if they want something.”
The snacks helped buy the couple enough time for their sons, both police officers, to join an operation that resulted in their liberation, a rare moment of rescue on a day marked primarily by loss.
Her insistence on snacks — archetypal Jewish mother behavior deployed at a dissonant moment — has also turned Rachel Adari into something of a national hero, one of several to emerge in the wake of the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust.
As the country mobilizes a military response and reckons with the unanswered questions about how such a breach could have happened in the first place, stories of individual people’s bravery and pluck in the face of unimaginable danger have provided a welcome counterpoint.
Major General (Ret.) Noam Tibon speaks to thousands of Israeli left-wing activists during a rally in Rabin Square, Tel Aviv, calling for talks with Palestinians and in support of the two-state solution, May 27, 2017. (Gili Yaari/Flash90)
In addition to Adari, there is Noam Tibon, a retired general who was already well known for his military leadership, which included commanding the Israel Defense Forces in the north, and his participation in this year’s pro-democracy protests.
On Saturday, Tibon learned that his son, the journalist Amir Tibon, was trapped with his family in their home on Kibbutz Nahal Oz, a short distance from the Gaza border. He grabbed his single pistol and, with his wife, drove from Tel Aviv toward Nahal Oz.
Their journey — the stuff of action movies — has been thoroughly documented in Israeli media, including in an account by Amir Tibon. First, Tibon encountered survivors of Hamas’ attack on a rave and drove them north, away from his son. Then, he ran into soldiers with no apparent mission and convinced one of them to join him. Before getting to his son’s kibbutz, they met injured soldiers and, once again, drove the opposite direction to take them to safety. Finally, Tibon arrived at Nahal Oz and, with a handful of soldiers, killed the Hamas attackers outside his son’s home.
Then he knocked on the window. Inside, Amir Tibon’s 3-year-old daughter responded using the Hebrew word for grandfather: “Saba is here.”
Noam Tibon is not the only retired general to burst into action without receiving orders. Yair Golan, who was previously also a left-wing lawmaker, has drawn attention for making multiple heroic rescues. First, Golan retrieved a journalist trapped in his home after his father posted on social media that the army and police were not acting to save him, according to a report on the Israeli news site Walla.
Yair Golan, a candidate with the Meretz party, arrives to casts his vote during the party primaries at a polling station in Tel Aviv, Aug. 23, 2022. (Avshalom Sassoni/Flash90)
Later, Golan learned about three young men who were in hiding after running from Hamas attackers at the nature party at Kibbutz Re’im where 260 Israelis died and others were taken hostage. There, too, the army had not attempted a rescue, according to an account from Rani Gaon, the father of one of the young men, that the family posted on Facebook.
“Suddenly, out of nowhere, the angel arrives at the location of my son and his friends, calls my son, calls him by name, tells him ‘Hello, Major Yair Golan is speaking, come to me,’” Gaon wrote.
He said his son told him, “‘Golan came to collect us. He will bring us all the way to you’ and so it was. This person, this hero, this angel, came and rescued them from the area, simply unbelievable. I have no words to thank and salute you, Yair Golan.”
On Monday, a new name entered the pantheon of last weekend’s heroes: Inbal Rabin-Lieberman, a 25-year-old woman who is being credited for the survival of everyone on her kibbutz even as many of the neighboring kibbutzes suffered heavy losses.
According to viral social posts, Rabin-Lieberman noticed early on that someone was trying to infiltrate Kibbutz Nir-Am and ran from house to house to raise the alarm, becoming sort of an Israeli Paul Revere who mustered a strong enough defense that dozens of Hamas attackers were killed before they could do any damage.
“When it’s all over, this woman will receive the Israel Prize,” one post by a user named Ziv Rubinstein said. “The story of her heroism is a story that will enter the Israeli myth for generations.”
In Ofakim, the Adari home has become something of a pilgrimage site for Israelis who want to connect with a story of survival. Several people stopped by with their own deliveries of sweets, although the Adaris are staying with their son because their home is too damaged to be habitable, according to a report in the Times of Israel.
Her neighbors say they are unsurprised by her heroism. “If there’s one person in Ofakim who could charm even Hamas terrorists, then it’s Rachel,” one told the Israeli news site. “She told me she’d fed them because she knows a hungry man is more dangerous than a recently fed one. She also knew these young men believed they would die and were probably missing their mothers. It was not a bad idea to become that person.”
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The post A cookie-wielding mother, a gun-toting grandfather, a fearless young woman: Meet Israel’s newest heroes appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Iran Says Eight Arrested for Suspected Links to Israel’s Mossad Spy Agency

The Mossad recruitment ad. Photo: Screenshot.
Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said on Saturday they had arrested eight people suspected of trying to transmit the coordinates of sensitive sites and details about senior military figures to Israel’s Mossad, Iranian state media reported.
They are accused of having provided the information to the Mossad spy agency during Israel’s air war on Iran in June, when it attacked Iranian nuclear facilities and killed top military commanders as well as civilians in the worst blow to the Islamic Republic since the 1980s war with Iraq.
Iran retaliated with barrages of missiles on Israeli military sites, infrastructure and cities. The United States entered the war on June 22 with strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities.
A Guards statement alleged that the suspects had received specialized training from Mossad via online platforms. It said they were apprehended in northeastern Iran before carrying out their plans, and that materials for making launchers, bombs, explosives and booby traps had been seized.
State media reported earlier this month that Iranian police had arrested as many as 21,000 “suspects” during the 12-day war with Israel, though they did not say what these people had been suspected of doing.
Security forces conducted a campaign of widespread arrests and also stepped up their street presence during the brief war that ended in a US-brokered ceasefire.
Iran has executed at least eight people in recent months, including nuclear scientist Rouzbeh Vadi, hanged on August 9 for passing information to Israel about another scientist killed in Israeli airstrikes.
Human rights groups say Iran uses espionage charges and fast-tracked executions as tools for broader political repression.
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Body of Idan Shtivi, Murdered on Oct. 7, Retrieved from Gaza in Special IDF Operation

Idan Shtivi. Photo: Courtesy of the family
i24 News – The body of Idan Shtivi, a 28-year-old murdered by Palestinian jihadists at the Nova music festival on October 7, 2023, was recovered in a joint operation by the IDF and Shin Bet in central Gaza, it was cleared for publication on Saturday.
Shtivi’s remains were returned to Israel alongside the body of Ilan Weiss, another hostage killed during the October 7 massacre.
“Idan Shtivi was abducted from the Tel Gama area and brutally murdered by Hamas terrorists after acting to rescue and evacuate others from the Nova music festival on October 7th, 2023. He was 28 years old at the time of his death,” read an IDF press release.
“Following an identification process conducted at the National Center for Forensic Medicine, along with the Israel Police and the Military Rabbinate, the Hostages and Missing Persons Headquarters notified his family.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Shviti “was a gifted student of sustainability and governance, and a courageous individual” who acted heroically on October 7, helping others flee.
“He was killed in the process and his body was abducted to Gaza by Hamas. My wife and I send our heartfelt condolences to the Shtivi family. So far, 207 hostages have been returned, 148 of them alive. We will continue to act tirelessly and decisively to bring back all our hostages—living and deceased.”
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Woman Stabbed at Ottawa Grocery Store in Latest Antisemitic Attack

A social media post by the alleged attacker, Joseph Rooke of Cornwall, Ontario. Photo: Screenshot via i24
i24 News – The stabbing of a Jewish woman at an Ottawa grocery by a man with a long history of antisemitic posts on social media, the latest antisemitic hate crime in Canada, sparked outrage and prompted condemnation from officials including the prime minister.
Both the victim and the attacker are in their 70s. The woman is reportedly in serious condition.
The suspect was identified as Joseph Rooke, who has authored a series of lengthy rambling screeds on social media, ranting against Israel and Jews.
“Judaism is the world’s oldest cult,” he writes in one post, going on to say “over time jews have become insidious in governments, businesses, media conglomerates, and educational institutions in order to do what they do better than anyone else. Jews are the world’s masters of propaganda, gaslighting, demonization, demagoguery, and outright lying. Using their collective wealth they have become masters of reprisal.”
“I am under no obligation whatsoever, legal, moral, or otherwise, to like jews and I do not. If that means I meet the jewish definition of an anti-semite, so be it.”
Canada has seen a steep spike in antisemitic attacks over the past two years, including a recent incident in Montreal where a Hasidic Jew was beaten in front on his children.
After Prime Minister Mark Carney condemned the incident, many, including former Israel’s ambassador the US Michael Oren, pointed out that Carney’s rhetoric and policies contribute to the increasing insecurity of Canada’s Jewish community through uncritical embrace of outrageous and easily disprovable allegations that Israel and its supporters were guilty of the worst crimes against humanity.