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American-Israeli Amit Elor Makes History as Youngest US Wrestler to Win Gold at Olympics
Amit Elor of the United States celebrates winning gold against Meerim Zhumanazarova of Kyrgyzstan in the women’s freestyle 68kg wrestling finals of the 2024 Paris Olympics on Aug. 6, 2024. Photo: Reuters/Arlette Bashizi
American-Israeli wrestler Amit Elor won the gold medal on Tuesday at the Olympics Games in Paris in the women’s freestyle wrestling 68-kg finals, making her the youngest wrestler in the history of the US to win a gold at the Olympics and also a first-time winner.
The 20-year-old, who is competing in the Olympic Games as part of Team USA, extended her five-year winning streak and also became the third woman from the US to win Olympic gold in wrestling, as well as the youngest US woman to medal in wrestling at the Olympics.
She beat Meerim Zhumanazarova of Kyrgyzstan 3-0 at the Champ-de-Mars Arena in Paris after taking a lead early on in the match with a takedown and defending herself against her opponent’s attacks throughout the remainder of the match. Zhumanazarova became the first Kyrgyz athlete to win two Olympic medals in any sport. The bronze medal went to Buse Cavusoglu of Turkey.
Elor was born in California on New Year’s Day 2004. She lives in New York, is the youngest of six siblings, and started wrestling at the age of four. Her late father Yair and mother Elana are both from Ashkelon and immigrated to the United States from Israel in the 1980s. Her brother Oshry was killed in a home invasion in 2018 and Yair died in 2022 at the age of 64.
Amit spoke only Hebrew until she was two years old and has trained in Israel while visiting family. She said in 2022, “I love Israel. In some ways I feel like I am representing them also [when competing].” Both of her grandfathers are Holocaust survivors.
After her Olympic win, the athlete admitted that before her match, she said affirmations to herself about becoming an Olympic champion.
“You know what I did today actually, which is also going to sound crazy, to help myself — I constantly, throughout the day, told myself ‘You’re gonna become an Olympic champion today.’ Literally, again and again and again. I did not stop,” she said.
“Normally I don’t do that in competitions,” she added. “But today, I was like, I don’t wanna get in my head. So I was like, again and again, ‘You’re gonna become an Olympic champion.’ And I was like, I don’t care if it’s crazy. I need to believe this. I need to go out there confident. And it helped me. I was able to go out there, and get my ties and not get in my head too much.”
At the 2022 World Wrestling Championships in Belgrade, Amit won gold and became the youngest US wrestler, male or female, to become a world champion. She is a two-time world champion in the 72-kg category — which she also won in 2023 — and won senior, under-23, and under-20 world titles in the span of three months in 2022, making her the youngest American world champion at the age of 18. She retained her titles in 2023 when she won the Pan American Championships.
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Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
The American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee (ADC) filed a lawsuit challenging as unconstitutional the Trump administration’s actions to deport international students and scholars who protest or express support for Palestinian rights.
The lawsuit, filed on Saturday in the US District Court for the Northern District of New York, seeks a nationwide temporary restraining order to block enforcement of two executive orders signed by US President Donald Trump in the first month of his term.
The lawsuit comes after the detention of a Columbia University student, Mahmoud Khalil, a 30-year-old permanent US resident of Palestinian descent, whose arrest sparked protests this month.
Justice Department lawyers have argued that the US government is seeking Khalil’s removal because Secretary of State Marco Rubio has reasonable grounds to believe his activities or presence in the country could have “serious adverse foreign policy consequences.” Rubio on Friday said the United States will likely revoke visas of more students in the coming days.
Trump vowed to deport activists who took part in protests on US college campuses against Israel’s war on Hamas in Gaza following the October 2023 attack by the Palestinian terrorists.
The ADC lawsuit was filed on behalf of two graduate students and a professor at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, who say their activism and support of the Palestinian people “has put them at serious risk of political persecution.”
“This lawsuit is a necessary step to preserve our most fundamental constitutional protections. The First Amendment guarantees the freedom of speech and expression to all persons within the United States, without exception,” said Abed Ayoub, national executive director of the ADC.
Chris Godshall-Bennett, the group’s legal director, said the litigation seeks immediate and long-term relief “to protect international students from any unconstitutional overreach that stifles free expression and deters them from fully engaging in academic and public discourse.”
The lawsuit centers on three Cornell University plaintiffs: a British-Gambian national and PhD student with a student visa; a US citizen PhD student working on plant science; and a US citizen novelist, poet, and professor in the Department of Literatures in English.
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Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week
Israel’s Shin Bet chief Ronen Bar speaks at Reichman University in Herzliya on Sunday, September 11, 2022. Photo: Screenshot
i24 News – Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Ronen Bar, the head of the Shin Bet security agency, that he will bring a vote before his government to dismiss him next week.
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Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes
Newly recruited fighters who joined a Houthi military force intended to be sent to fight in support of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip, march during a parade in Sanaa, Yemen, Dec. 2, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
i24 News – The Houthis claimed on Sunday that they targeted the aircraft carrier USS Harry Truman and other vessels in the northern Red Sea with 18 ballistic and cruise missiles and a drone. Military spokesperson Yahya Saree said that the US-led attacks against the Houthis on Saturday comprised of more than 47 airstrikes on seven governorates, with the death toll expected to rise.
“The Yemeni Armed Forces will not hesitate to target all American warships in the Red Sea and in the Arabian Sea in retaliation to the aggression against our country,” Saree said, vowing the Houthis “will continue to impose a naval blockade on the Israeli enemy and ban its ships in the declared zone of operations until aid and basic needs are delivered to the Gaza Strip.”
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