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An IDF soldier killed a civilian who shot at terrorists, raising hard questions about vigilante culture in Israel
TEL AVIV (JTA) — When he spoke with a news anchor on Thursday night, Israeli reservist Aviad Frija was hailed by right-wing politicians and commentators as a hero for his role in responding to a terror attack at a Jerusalem bus stop earlier that day.
By Monday, Frija was arrested by the IDF and under investigation. The man he had shot was not a suspected terrorist but an Israeli civilian who had himself played a role in halting the attack.
According to video from the scene, Frija had shot the man, a 38-year-old lawyer named Yuval Doron Castleman, after Castleman had gotten on his knees, dropped his gun and put his hands in the air to show that he was not a threat. Castleman, a former police officer turned lawyer, was initially left bleeding on the ground and later died of his wounds, a day shy of his 38th birthday.
Castleman “did everything he needed to do so they could identify him. He went down on his knees, opened his jacket to show he didn’t have any explosives on him, yelled at them, ‘Don’t shoot, I’m Jewish, I’m Israeli,’ and they continued to shoot him,” his father, Moshe Castleman, said on Israeli Army Radio.
Castleman’s death has drawn scrutiny to the ways in which Israel’s right-wing government has encouraged everyday Israelis to own guns and fight terror themselves — a gambit to boost security that, critics say, has instead led to the spilling of more Israeli blood. And Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — who already faces widespread public disapproval over his handling of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel — has come in for more criticism in recent days over what some say was a flippant response to Castleman’s death.
“This has allowed a jungle in terms of everything related to distributing weapons, using weapons,” Eran Etzion, a former deputy head of Israel’s National Security Council, said on Kan, Israel’s public broadcaster. “This is a terrible thing that will have far-reaching consequences… an atmosphere where everyone will take a weapon, and use it.”
The family of Israeli Yuval Castleman mourns at his house in Kiryat Tivyon, in northern Israel, on Dec. 3, 2023. (Gil Cohen-Magen/AFP via Getty Images)
Castleman’s family is also castigating officials for their response. His father and sister Shaked have called his death an “execution,” while his sister Noga said the family did not hear from the police until several hours after the incident and did not get the chance to comfort Castleman in his final hours of life.
“We carried on with our lives as he was fighting for his life,” Noga said, according to Kan. “We weren’t there to caress him, to call to him. I wouldn’t wish upon anyone that they hear what happened to a loved one in such an unclear way.”
After his death, said Shaked, “instead of mourning, we find ourselves in a war for justice.”
For more than a year, Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s far-right national security minister, has encouraged private citizens to own guns and has made Israel’s historically strict gun-control requirements more lenient. He has also pushed to loosen open-fire regulations for police officers, whom he oversees. Earlier this year, he praised an Israeli settler who killed a Palestinian in an altercation. (Frija is a member of the Hilltop Youth, a group of young extremist settlers, as well as a reservist in the IDF.)
Since Oct. 7, Ben-Gvir said in a recent government hearing, more than 260,000 people have applied for gun licenses. “When the war started, we knew that we were right when we said that every place that has a weapon can save a life,” he said at a recent meeting of his party, Otzma Yehudit or Jewish Power.
But Ben-Gvir’s policies have faced backlash. In recent weeks, Israeli media reported that U.S. officials were threatening to stop supplying guns to Israel if they continued to wind up in the hands of civilians. (The Department of State declined to comment, with an official telling JTA the department does not comment as a matter of policy on “the status of licensed direct commercial defense sales activities.”) On Monday, the head of Israel’s Firearm Licensing Department resigned in protest of the loosened gun ownership requirements.
And critics of Netanyahu’s government have drawn a link between Ben-Gvir’s policies and Frija’s shooting of Castleman, even though Frija was in uniform at the time.
Itamar Ben-Gvir, Israel’s minister of national security, attends the scene of a terror shooting attack at the entrance to Jerusalem, Nov 30, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Moshe Yaalon, a former Netanyahu ally and defense minister, posted online that Ben Gvir’s “populist calls” to loosen open-fire regulations “contributed to the tragic result.” Yaalon and others also linked the shooting to a 2016 incident in which IDF soldier Elor Azaria shot dead a disarmed Palestinian terrorist who was lying on the ground. Azaria was tried and convicted but also became a hero to some on the right.
Netayahu’s critics have also chided him for his initial response to the incident, in which he defended Ben-Gvir’s policy though he acknowledged that it posed potential dangers.
“We know that in the waves of terror in the last decade and earlier, the presence of armed civilians often saves the situation and has prevented a huge disaster,” he said. “I think that in the present situation we need to continue this policy. I fully support that. It may be that we will pay a price for this, and that’s life.”
The “that’s life” comment particularly irked critics, and on Sunday, Netanyahu offered a more sympathetic message in a video shared to his social media in which he said he had spoken to Castleman’s father.
“Yuval Doron Castleman is a hero of Israel. In a supreme act of bravery, Yuval saved many lives,” Netanyahu said. “However, unfortunately, a terrible tragedy occurred there – and the man who had saved others was killed. There must be a thorough inquiry.”
Yuval Castleman, 37, died after an IDF soldier shot him as he responded to a terrorist attack in Jerusalem, Nov. 30, 2023. (Courtesy)
In the days following the incident, the IDF has released several statements indicating that its rules of engagement forbid firing upon suspects with their hands raised, and announced on Monday that Frija is being detained and questioned in what is called a “preliminary arrest.” Since his initial interview, Frija has subsequently claimed that he was acting out of fear for his own life.
Critics of the shooting on the left do not see it as an isolated incident, but as the result of a culture that has been nurtured for years on the Israeli right. Avner Gvaryahu, director of the Breaking the Silence, an anti-occupation group focused on the experiences of combat veterans, described a “years-long campaign led by the right-wing politicians, organizations, spokespeople, and journalists to ‘not tie the hands of our soldiers’” when they face a threat — though he noted that it was impossible to know what Frija was thinking in the moment.
Gvaryahu, whose organization leads tours in the West Bank, said he sees that culture taking hold there as well. He said, from what he’s witnessed, rules of engagement for soldiers are “becoming more flexible, basically, making it easier to shoot.”
In the face of the criticism, Ben Gvir and others on the right have portrayed the incident as a horrible accident. In an online post, right-wing journalist Yotam Zimri called the shooting a “terrible tragedy” and implied that it was wrong to place blame on Frija.
“There are no bad guys in this story except for the two Arab murderers,” he said, referring to the two Hamas-affiliated terrorists who perpetrated Thursday’s attack. “If you’re looking for other bad guys, there’s something wrong with you.”
But during a visit with Castleman’s family on Monday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog acknowledged that the state bore some responsibility for his death.
“I have come here not as a private citizen but as the president of the state of Israel, to ask forgiveness and express great appreciation for a hero of Israel who did something great and courageous,” Herzog said, adding that Castleman “paid with his life in what I see as the worst and most outrageous way possible.”
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The post An IDF soldier killed a civilian who shot at terrorists, raising hard questions about vigilante culture in Israel appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Black Muslim Leaders Call on Supporters Not to Vote for Kamala Harris Due to Gaza, Israel Policy
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, US, Aug. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Erica Dischino
Black Muslim leaders across the United States are calling on their supporters to withhold their vote from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, accusing the incumbent US vice president of facilitating a so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
In a letter published by the Middle East Eye on Monday, 50 black Muslim leaders called on members of their community to embrace the legacy of “black liberation” by only voting for candidates who support a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms blockade on Israel. The coalition of Muslim leaders urged their followers to reject the notion that Harris would be better on domestic issues and that a Donald Trump presidency would pose greater danger to Palestinians.
“As black Muslims, we also know that the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza is a war on Islam,” the letter read. “The Israeli government and its unhinged army of cowardly criminals have filmed themselves destroying mosques, burning Qurans, and slandering our sacred religious figures. The supremacist Israeli government has also destroyed churches and attacked the Palestinian Christian community.”
The black Muslim leaders condemned the Biden administration for supporting Israel’s defensive military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza. The coalition also slammed Harris for not taking a more adversarial position against the Jewish state since she replaced US President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket.
“All of this has occurred under the watch of the Biden-Harris administration, which has provided steadfast military, financial, diplomatic, and rhetorical support for the Israeli government’s war crimes for four years, including at least $18 billion since the start of the genocide,” the group wrote.
The Muslim leaders lambasted Harris over her repeated refusals to implement an arms embargo against Israel. In recent months, anti-Israel activists have attempted to pressure Harris into agreeing to block weapons transfers to the Jewish state. In August, the her campaign released a statement denying any support for such a move and affirming Harris’s commitment to ensuring “Israel is able to defend itself.”
“Vice President Harris has explicitly opposed an arms embargo on the Israeli government even though US law requires it. She has refused to lay out any plan whatsoever to force [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal in Gaza that ends the genocide,” the letter stated. “She has validated the Israeli government’s efforts to spark a regional war with Iran, leading to instability in the region and the world at large. Just this week, she said that she would not have done anything differently than President Biden over the past four years.”
The coalition attempted to draw a parallel between the experience of black Americans and Palestinians, arguing that the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank are subject to brutal racial discrimination.
“As Muslims obliged to uphold justice and as black Americans whose ancestors experienced the worst of crimes, genocide must be our red line,” the letter added.
“There’s a false narrative that is being pushed that the majority of Muslims who are black are Kamala Harris supporters,” Imam Dawud Walid, a Muslim leader from Michigan, told the Middle East Eye. “There’s this narrative that is trying to divide the community to say that the majority of Muslims who aren’t black are supporting third party, but the majority of Muslims who are black are somehow divided from the rest of the community, and that’s not true.”
In the final stretch of the 2024 presidential election cycle, the Harris campaign has scrambled to coalesce support among Muslim voters. Despite aggressive overtures toward the Muslim American community, recent polls indicate that the vice president could experience a collapse of support among the demographic. Some polling data has shown Green Party nominee Jill Stein leading Harris among Muslim voters in the critical swing state of Michigan, while other polls show Harris and Trump tied with Muslim voters across battleground states.
Moreover, many Arab American leaders have continued to urge their community to withhold their votes from Harris, arguing that the Democratic party deserves “punishment” for supporting Israel. Groups such as “Abandon Harris” have encouraged Arab American voters to only throw their support behind anti-Israel candidates. Other groups such as the “Uncommitted Movement” have also pushed voters, especially in the Arab and Muslim communities, to refuse to cast a ballot in favor of Harris.
The post Black Muslim Leaders Call on Supporters Not to Vote for Kamala Harris Due to Gaza, Israel Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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On Simchat Torah, We Mourn — But Also Hope
In his 2016 book Essays on Ethics, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, “A people that can know insecurity and still feel joy is one that can never be defeated, for its spirit can never be broken nor its hope destroyed.”
This year, as Simchat Torah draws near, we are painfully reminded that joy and suffering often coexist. While it is a staple of the human condition for Jews, this paradox echoes relentlessly throughout our history.
In the Diaspora, we will feel this contrast differently. Shmini Atzeret — a day marked by solemnity with Yizkor and the prayer for rain — falls on the anniversary of October 7th. Only the second evening transitions into the joy of Simchat Torah.
In Israel, however, the two days merge into one, with the solemnity of Shmini Atzeret intertwined with the joy of Simchat Torah. This year, embracing the usual high spirits will be incredibly challenging for Israelis. The weight of national grief hangs heavy; indeed, no Simchat Torah will ever be the same again.
When we danced with the Torahs last year, despite knowing that a terrible attack was unfolding, the full extent of the horror was not yet clear. It was only after Simchat Torah ended that the devastating truth began to emerge: 1,200 people tortured, murdered, and mutilated; families torn apart; and hostages dragged into Gaza.
In the months since, every painful detail has come to light, making it nearly impossible to embrace the unrestrained joy that typically defines Simchat Torah. How can we celebrate when every smile is shadowed by memory, and every song tinged with sorrow?
And yet, my late mother’s story comes to mind — her first Simchat Torah after the Holocaust, celebrated in the city of her birth: Rotterdam, Holland. It offers a profound lesson for us today.
My mother was born in 1941, a year after my grandparents married during the Nazi occupation. The Nazis invaded Holland in May 1940, and began deporting Jews to concentration camps in 1942.
Fearing for their lives, my grandparents went into hiding, spending more than two years in a cramped space behind a closet in the home of a gentile friend. My grandfather, active in the Dutch resistance, emerged only at night to carry out covert missions against the Nazis — knowing the risks but refusing to submit to despair.
Meanwhile, my mother was taken in by a Christian couple who raised her as their own, shielding her from the terrors outside. After the war, they returned her to her parents.
When the Nazis were defeated by the Allies in May 1945, Jewish life in Rotterdam began to re-emerge, although only a fraction of the community remained — 75% of Dutch Jewry, more than 100,000 people, had perished in Auschwitz, Sobibor, and other camps.
That fall, the synagogue reopened, and Simchat Torah was celebrated once more. The Torah scrolls my grandfather had hidden with gentile friends were retrieved. Miraculously, Rabbi Levie “Lou” Vorst, who had survived Bergen-Belsen and the infamous “Lost Train,” stood at the helm of the diminished community.
But the celebration was bittersweet. Almost everyone in the synagogue had lost parents, siblings, spouses, or children. My grandparents had lost their parents, siblings, and their second child, my uncle Yitzchak, who had died of malnutrition during the war.
And yet, they danced. Survivors — many without homes or families — clung to the Torah scrolls as if their lives depended on it. My mother, only four years old, stood quietly in the synagogue, receiving candy from weeping survivors. With each piece placed in her open mouth, the message was clear: the future must be sweet, even when the past has been unbearably bitter.
When she was born in 1941, during the Nazi occupation, her parents named my mother Miriam Chana, but they also added a third name: Tikva — hope. Naming her Tikva was a bold act of defiance and a statement of faith that they would live to see better days.
Many Dutch Jews from Rotterdam later made their way to Israel, realizing the ultimate Tikva—the dream of building a new life in the Jewish homeland.
Today, some of my mother’s friends from Rotterdam reside at Beth Juliana, a residential retirement complex in Herzliya for Dutch immigrants. But even there, the echoes of violence persist. Just two weeks ago, during Yom Kippur, a Hezbollah drone from Lebanon struck the building.
Though no one was injured, the drone destroyed an apartment filled with precious heirlooms and decades of memories. Miraculously, the resident had sought shelter moments before the impact — a stark reminder that even now, nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, the shadow of antisemitic hatred still looms over Israel.
As we mark the first anniversary of October 7th, I find myself returning to the image of those weeping survivors dancing with the Torahs in Rotterdam. If they could dance, surely we can too.
But just like them, our dancing this year will be different. Maybe it will be slower, or perhaps more enthusiastic — but whatever it is, it will be infused with memory, sorrow, and, most importantly, defiance. Our celebrations will not deny the pain but embrace it, just as my mother’s community did all those years ago.
The joy of Simchat Torah is not naïve happiness; it is the joy that comes from standing together, united in faith, knowing that despite everything, we are still here. Just as my grandparents emerged from hiding to rebuild, and just as the Torahs were salvaged from the ruins of Rotterdam, we too will lift the Torahs this Simchat Torah and say to our enemies: We are still here.
And we will hope. For without hope, there is no future. My grandparents named their daughter Tikva, believing in a day when evil would be defeated. We, too, must carry the torch of hope into the future. We will dance, and we will cry.
But above all, we will hope. Because even after the darkest of nights, the sun will rise again. And when it does, we will be ready to rebuild — one dance step at a time.
The post On Simchat Torah, We Mourn — But Also Hope first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany’s Eurovision Contestant Calls Out ‘So Much Hate’ Against Israeli Singer Eden Golan During Competition
The representative of Germany Isaak at the Eurovision Song Cotest entering the main stage on May 11, 2024 in Malmo, Sweden. Photo: Sanjin Strukic/PIXSELL/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Germany’s representative in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest shared his thoughts in a recent interview about the hatred and booing that Israeli singer Eden Golan received while competing on behalf of Israel in the international competition earlier this year.
“I can definitely understand why everyone was booing, but I think the Eurovision Song Contest says we are all ‘united by music’ and I didn’t see no unity,” German singer Isaak, 29, said in an interview with Irish blogger allthingsadam.ie, referring to the official slogan of the Eurovision competition. He further said of Golan: “It’s a young musician performing quite well and everyone f—ked her off. There was so much hate in this room, and hate shouldn’t be a place in the Eurovision Song Contest.”
Isaak finished in 12th place in the Eurovision finals this year in Malmo, Sweden, while Golan finished in fifth. The Israeli singer competed with a song called “Hurricane,” a reworded version of her original song “October Rain,” which was disqualified for being too political since it referenced the Hamas massacre in Israel that took place on Oct. 7, 2023.
Golan made it to the top five of the Eurovision contest despite being booed on stage by anti-Israel audience members, facing death threats, and having a Eurovision jury member refuse to give her points because of his personal feelings against Israel’s military actions during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Golan also said she had to conceal her identity outside her hotel room in Malmo because of the threats she received from anti-Israel activists angry about the Jewish state’s participation in the contest.
Isaak told Irish blogger allthingsadam.ie that he believes Golan was bullied during the competition. He then criticized people for wrongfully targeting Golan with hatred when they have issues with the state of Israel but not the singer herself. The German singer then said the animosity was misguided and it was wrong for Golan to face such abuse just for her affiliation with Israel. He said a personal experience like what Golan faced can deeply scar a musician
“Do you know how young she is?” Isaak asked about the 21-year-old Israeli singer. “This is your life goal and you wanna be part of Eurovision Song Contest and you’re going on that stage … just image Germany f—ks up in some point. And I’m German and I wanna be part of the Eurovision. And I’m just a random musician, I just wanna show them my music. I’m not the f—k president. I’m just a random musician, I just wanna make a small kid’s dream come true. And then I go on that stage and no matter how good I am, no matter how f—k amazing I can sing, the people just see my country and they just boo me out. I think that would be the most terrible thing that could maybe ever happen to me. I think that can definitely leave scars.”
Isaak also talked in the interview about his experience backstage with the other singers at the Eurovision competition. “You didn’t really have that feeling [that] we are all ‘united by music.’ It was a little bit sad behind the stage, that’s what I think. There could have been more love, more connectivity, and more passion,” he said.
The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Basel, Switzerland, in May. Bakel Walden, chairman of the Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group, discussed in a recent interview with Swiss media some changes to next year’s competition. He said the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the competition, “will pay more attention” to the well-being of artists in the future and stated that it is vital for the competition to maintain political neutrality. He insisted that “antisemitism has no place at the ESC.”
“The ESC stands for freedom of expression. The artists can comment on anything and also demonstrate in front of the hall. But on stage you need certain rules,” he said. “We want an ESC in which everyone puts their heart and soul into it. We cannot solve the many wars and conflicts in the world during the ESC. But it is a strong statement if we treat each other fairly, peacefully, and respectfully.”‘
Walden added that for next year’s competition the EBU will also have a crisis management team and “retreat rooms” for artists to relax where there will be no filming allowed.
The post Germany’s Eurovision Contestant Calls Out ‘So Much Hate’ Against Israeli Singer Eden Golan During Competition first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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