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A Muslim family saved a Jewish one from the Nazis. 50 years later, the Jewish family returned the favor in Sarajevo.
(JTA) — In 1941 Sarajevo, a Muslim woman hid her Jewish friend from fascist roundups. Half a century later, that same Muslim woman was trapped in the besieged capital during the 1992-1995 Bosnian War — and her Jewish friend made sure she got out.
These real events inspired “Sevap/Mitzvah,” a short film directed by Sabina Vajrača that won the 2023 Humanitas Prize, among other awards, and has qualified to be considered for the 2024 Oscar for best live action short.
The film has been shown across the world, including at the Cleveland International Film Festival and the Joyce Forum Jewish Short Film Festival in San Diego. Upcoming screenings include the Centre Film Festival in Phillipsburg, Pennsylvania, on Nov. 1; the Ojai Film Festival in Ojai, California, on Nov. 5; and the Lake County Film Festival in Grayslake, Illinois, between Nov. 3-12.
The Arabic word “Sevap” and the Hebrew word “Mitzvah” translate to the same meaning: A good deed.
“I wanted to tell a story about Jews and Muslims coexisting peacefully and happily, and helping one another, which is the narrative that we don’t really hear,” Vajrača told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. Vajrača herself escaped the Bosnian War as a teenager, arriving in the United States as a refugee.
As the Nazis invaded Yugoslavia in April 1941, Sarajevo was heavily bombed, its synagogue looted and 400-year-old Torah scrolls burned. The Jewish Kabiljo family was among those who fled to the forests and returned to find their home destroyed.
A couple of Muslim friends and neighbors, Mustafa and Zejneba Hardaga, offered the Kabiljos shelter in their home. At the risk of their own execution, the Hardagas hid Josef Kabiljo, his wife Rifka and their two children from the Gestapo and the Ustaša — the fascist movement that ruled the regions of Croatia and Bosnia and Herzegovina during World War II.
According to their faith, the women in the Hardaga family covered their faces with a veil in front of men who were not their family. But to signal that the Kabiljos were welcome, Mustafa Hardaga told Zejneba and her sister-in-law Bachriya that they could remove their veils before Josef Kabiljo.
Josef later testified to Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial authority: “Never before had a strange man stayed with them. They welcomed us with the words: ‘Josef, you are our brother, and your children are like our children. Feel at home and whatever we own is yours.’”
The Ustaša set out to purge its state of Serbs, Jews and Roma through labor and death camps. By the end of the war, they succeeded in murdering 12,000 of Bosnia’s 14,000 Jews. But the Kabiljo family survived, eventually making their way to Israel.
Filmmaker Sabina Vajrača was 14 during the Bosnian War. (Joshua Sarlo)
Fifty years later, 76-year-old Zejneba Hardaga found herself at the center of another genocide in Sarajevo. (By that time, her husband had died.) Serb forces embarked on a campaign to rid Bosnia of non-Serbs, the majority of whom were Bosnian Muslims, also known as Bosniaks. Sarajevo was blockaded from food, water and power between April 1992 and February 1996 — the longest siege in modern history.
Hardaga sheltered in a basement with her daughter, son-in-law and granddaughter, subsisting for weeks at a time on soup made of grass they picked nearby. Outside, Sarajevo was shelled daily and snipers targeted people leaving their homes. Over 11,000 people were killed during the siege.
In Jerusalem, Rifka Kabiljo and her family were watching Bosnia’s devastation on the news. They contacted an Israeli journalist who was covering the war, asking him to confirm that Hardaga was alive.
Upon learning she was still in Sarajevo, the Kabiljos appealed for help from Yad Vashem, which had recognized Hardaga and her family as Righteous Among the Nations in 1984.
Yad Vashem’s authority did not sway the president of Bosnia, so the Kabiljos took their case all the way to Israeli Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin.
In early 1994, the Hardagas joined 300 others in a convoy of six buses leaving Sarajevo — the last rescue of mostly Jewish refugees organized by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee and Sarajevo’s Jewish community. The family was given a choice of destinations, and Zejneba chose to join her friend Rifka in Israel. She died there a year later.
Vajrača, a Bosnian Muslim, started thinking about stories of Jews and Muslims who rescued each other during a conversation with her late grandmother — who admitted that she was haunted by her failure to save a childhood best friend. One morning in 1941, when she was about 9 years old, she watched from a window as her Jewish friend who lived next-door was rounded up with her family. Vajrača’s grandmother tried to run outside but her parents held her back, saying it was dangerous outside. The Jewish girl and her family died in a concentration camp.
“She said to me, ‘I remembered it because 50 years later, they knocked on my door and came for me,’” recounted Vajrača, whose grandmother survived the Bosnian War. “‘They took me, and I thought, perhaps if we had saved them 50 years ago this wouldn’t have happened.’”
Vajrača was 14 years old when her northern Bosnian town was overrun by Serb forces. Her family was quickly targeted, as her father worked in humanitarian aid for victims of the war. In retaliation, the Serbs threatened to take Vajrača to a concentration camp, where women and girls were systematically raped. Her parents asked everyone they knew for help getting her out of the country.
“In the end, the people who saved me were two women, both Christian — one Croatian and one Serb,” Vajrača told JTA. “They’re the ones who saved my life, even at the risk of their own. So the story that I tell in this film is personal in that way, that it happened to me as well.”
Zejneba Hardaga’s daughter, Sara Pecanac, still lives in Jerusalem. She converted to Judaism and worked at Yad Vashem for many years.
In a 2013 interview, Pecanac recalled how her mother asked to meet Rabin a few months after their arrival. After a bit of chatting, Hardaga said she wanted to offer Rabin some advice.
“The whole place went quiet,” said Pecananc. “Who was this old woman to give advice to the prime minister of Israel? He said ‘OK,’ and she said, ‘Please, try to make peace in the Middle East. Don’t let Jerusalem become Sarajevo.’”
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The post A Muslim family saved a Jewish one from the Nazis. 50 years later, the Jewish family returned the favor in Sarajevo. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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CNN Fires Hamas-linked Gaza Freelancer Exposed by HonestReporting
CNN announced Wednesday that it would no longer use a Gaza freelancer, whose ties to Hamas were exposed by HonestReporting.
Abdel Qader Sabbah photographed himself with a senior Hamas leader, served in a Hamas-run body to which he also provided work, praised terrorists, and shared anti-Israeli propaganda online, an HonestReporting investigation revealed.
Throughout the Israel-Hamas war, CNN has given a prominent platform to news reports by Sabbah, who has also worked for the Associated Press, and the exposure of his links to the terror group casts a long shadow over the network’s vetting procedures and journalistic standards.
“This freelance journalist has provided material used in stories for us and other outlets over the past nine months, during which time our own journalists have been barred from entering Gaza independently,” a CNN spokesman told HonestReporting. “We have reviewed this material carefully and are comfortable that it meets our standards. However, we were not aware of this individual’s historical social posts and recognize that they are highly offensive. In light of this, we will no longer be using his material going forward.”
Sabbah is the 11th journalist reassigned, suspended, or fired due to HonestReporting since August 2022.
The following details are based on a survey of Sabbah’s social media activity, predominantly on Facebook, where his connections and bias have been hidden in plain sight.
Abdel Qader Sabbah’s Links to Hamas
Sabbah, who describes himself on Facebook as a freelance journalist, director, and photographer, has proudly shared posts showing he had connections to Hamas figures and institutions run by the terror group.
In 2018, he posted a selfie taken with none other than senior Hamas leader Mahmoud A-Zahar, who had called for world domination with “no Zionists.”
In the photo, the two men are seen smiling, and the post caption reads in Arabic: “This morning, with commander Abu Khaled Al-Zahar, literature teacher…”
Sabbah — whose Facebook bio mentions “military service” in 2013 — also posted a photo of himself wearing the uniform of the “General Training Directorate,” a body that’s officially under the Palestinian Authority’s police and Interior Ministry. In Gaza, however, these government agencies are de facto run by Hamas.
In 2013, then Hamas prime minister Ismail Haniyeh paid an official visit to the training directorate, where he scrutinized an honor guard and “praised the role of the General Directorate … in developing and qualifying the cadres of the Ministry of Interior and National Security.”
It appears that Sabbah also provided work to the Hamas-run body. In March 2023, he boasted online about making a promotional video for the Directorate’s academy, which according to MEMRI, trains members of Hamas’ security apparatuses. His video was shared on the official page of the Hamas-run interior ministry.
Anti-Israeli Propaganda
But Sabbah did not just share personal posts and selfies on his social media. He also regularly praised terrorists, shared propaganda videos by Hamas’ armed wing, and expressed anti-Israeli slurs.
In 2014, he praised as a “hero” Hamas suicide bomber Izz A-Din Al-Masri, who had blown himself up in a Jerusalem restaurant in 2001, killing 16 people, including children.
Sabbah’s praise came as Israel returned the terrorist’s body to the Palestinian Authority 13 years later.
And in 2013, he posted a commemoration photo for Hamas’ “Khan Younis martyrs:”
Sabbah also had no qualms about sharing media censorship instructions during the 2021 conflict with Israel. One of the guidelines he had shared read in Arabic: “Not filming the sites of the fighters, and the places where rockets and mortar shells are launched.”
A few days earlier, he shared a post that read in Arabic: “May God curse the raped Zionists.”
And in April 2023, six months before Hamas’ deadly October 7 massacre in southern Israel, he posted — with green and black heart emojis — a propaganda video by the group’s armed wing, titled “Ready.”
No Due Diligence?
We asked CNN whether it did a background check of Sabbah before hiring him, keeping in mind that there are only two bad answers to this question:
Yes, which means the network knowingly uses biased reporters.
No, which means the network hasn’t done its due diligence.
Their answer indicated the latter.
The network disturbingly said it was “comfortable” with Sabbah’s agenda-driven work, which included faulty reports on the non-existent Gaza “famine” or on the death toll of Gazan journalists, without mentioning that some were affiliated with Hamas and other proscribed terror organizations
We have asked and not yet received answers to the same questions from AP, which according to its database used Sabbah’s photos from Gaza in October-November 2023. These included destroyed buildings and wounded Palestinians in a hospital. It’s unclear whether Sabbah still works for the agency.
What’s clear is that someone like Abdel Qader Sabbah cannot be considered an objective journalist. His posts expose him as a Hamas mouthpiece, at best, or a serviceman affiliated with a proscribed terror group, at worst.
A respectable news outlet should not trust his reports, let alone pay him for them.
HonestReporting is a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post CNN Fires Hamas-linked Gaza Freelancer Exposed by HonestReporting first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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One Person Killed, Another Wounded in Terror Attack in Israeli Mall
Israeli security personnel stand at the entrance to a shopping mall following a stabbing attack in Karmiel, northern Israel, July 3 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Avi Ohayon
One person was killed and another wounded in a stabbing attack in an Israeli mall on Wednesday, in which the assailant was shot dead, Israeli police and medics said.
Police said it was a suspected terrorist attack.
“A terrorist who arrived on foot entered the mall and stabbed two civilians,” said Shuki Hacohen, commander of the Israel Police’s Northern District. “One of them managed to shoot the terrorist and neutralize him. The terrorist was neutralized at the scene; the two injured civilians were evacuated.”
Israel‘s Ynet news site named the accused attacker as Joud Rabia from Nahaf, an Israeli town where many members of its Arab minority live.
There was no claim of responsibility from any group, though terrorist group Palestinian Islamic Jihad in a post on the Telegram site described the attack as a “heroic operation.”
Israeli medics told Reuters one of the two victims was pronounced dead after being rushed to hospital, and the attacker died at the mall in Karmiel, northern Israel.
Medics said earlier on Wednesday they had treated two men in their 20s, one in very serious condition and the other fully conscious.
Video shared on social media and seen by Reuters showed two men lying motionless on the floor of the mall while people tried to give them medical attention. At least one of the men receiving care was wearing a green uniform, the video showed.
A third man, not in uniform, was lying motionless a short distance away.
Israel is conducting a military offensive in Gaza following the deadly Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 last year.
Violence in the West Bank, already on the rise before the war in Gaza, has escalated further, with stepped-up Israeli military raids and Palestinian street attacks.
In January, a Palestinian ramming attack in central Israel killed one woman and injured 12 others.
The post One Person Killed, Another Wounded in Terror Attack in Israeli Mall first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Al-Shifa Hospital’s Terror Links Ignored as Its Director Released From Israeli Prison
November 2023: An Israeli soldier helps to provide incubators to Al Shifa Hospital in Gaza. Photo: Screenshot
Many are up in arms about the director of Gaza’s Al-Shifa Hospital, Dr. Mohammed Abu Salmiya , being released from Israeli prison on Monday.
There wasn’t a question of why he was detained in the first place. Instead, it was clear to all that the IDF raided the hospital based on correct intelligence, and because Hamas weas operating inside and underneath Gaza’s largest hospital.
But when international media outlets picked up on the story of the release, the focus shifted to the alleged torture prisoners claimed to have endured over the last several months. In tandem, IDF proof that Al-Shifa Hospital was a confirmed Hamas location was often ignored, creating the perception that the IDF raided a hospital and arrested doctors without cause.
While this CNN report starts with a reunion of released detainees with their families in Gaza, reporter Nada Bashir quickly moves on to discuss the alleged torture they endured at the hands of Israeli security personnel and prison guards.
Just before she brings in Abu Salmiya to the story, she questions the legitimacy of the detainees’ arrests: “Why they were detained in the first place, we may never know.”
We do know.
These people were suspected of aiding and abetting Hamas terrorists and their activities in a civilian area — for instance, a hospital — and the IDF had every right to investigate. Did Bashir miss the memo? How could she not know?
Abu Salmiya is specifically responsible as the hospital’s director for allowing — or turning a blind eye to — Hamas operating inside and underneath the hospital. Bashir chooses to brush over this minute detail, most likely to fit a narrative.
That’s obvious since during the entire report, she neglects to mention al-Shifa’s role in Hamas’ war against Israel, and instead presents a personal story of poor, allegedly-beaten doctors who were detained for no reason by Israel.
The New York Times covered this similarly, claiming that Israel took Abu Salmiya into custody in November “as he took part in an effort to evacuate patients from the hospital, which at the time was under siege by the Israeli military.”
This is noteworthy since they conducted their own investigation into al-Shifa Hospital in February:
While @nytimes can’t understand why the director of al-Shifa Hosptial could possibly have been detained by Israel “as he took part in an effort to evacuate patients from the hospital,” here’s a reminder of what The Times itself reported in February: https://t.co/UvKmhEhJvq pic.twitter.com/yAtqI2JEkX
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 2, 2024
Indeed, Abu Salmiya was detained and investigated with cause, under suspicion of allowing Hamas to use the hospital as its headquarters. In December, he even had three hearings, according to The Jerusalem Post. What the Post report does say, however, is that “an indictment was never produced.” [emphasis added]
The Guardian went so far as to say that the IDF “alleged” there was an “elaborate” Hamas command center, and then completely understated IDF discoveries underneath al-Shifa, claiming that the IDF raided the hospital without supportive evidence of intelligence. This, in addition to highlighting the abuse of Abu Salmiya and other released prisoners allegedly experienced:
When Israel raided al-Shifa Hospital in November, the IDF uncovered a tunnel likely connecting to the larger tunnel network used by Hamas in Gaza City, and included underground bunkers, living quarters, and a room that appeared to be wired for computers & communications… pic.twitter.com/SwFyohexzQ
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 2, 2024
It’s also appalling that The Washington Post continues to attempt to dispel proof that Hamas was operating out of al-Shifa Hospital, and to claim that any weapons found or video footage of hostages inside the hospital were merely circumstantial evidence.
Actually, as we noted at the time, @washingtonpost‘s “investigation” was “nothing more than a (un)sophisticated hit piece that omits important context” & the reporting was “neither groundbreaking nor conclusive. It’s simply a lazy attempt to vilify Israel and absolve Hamas.” 1/2 https://t.co/MGYUgVktKg pic.twitter.com/sXekreQkN0
— HonestReporting (@HonestReporting) July 2, 2024
HonestReporting debunked The Washington Post’s investigation back in December.
Did the IDF raid al-Shifa and arrest the hospital director for no reason? Perhaps the better question here is: why would any respectable media outlet risk their credibility by choosing not to be transparent with their readers?
The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.
The post Al-Shifa Hospital’s Terror Links Ignored as Its Director Released From Israeli Prison first appeared on Algemeiner.com.