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An Israeli first responder recalls tending to the body of a baby burnt in an oven
(JTA) — It was on the fourth day of the war between Israel and Hamas, Asher Moskowitz recalled, that he saw the baby among the corpses at Camp Shura.
Moskowitz had come to Shura, a military base near the central Israeli city of Ramle, as a volunteer with the United Hatzalah emergency response corps. The base had been transformed into a center for identifying those killed in the Oct. 7 massacre by Hamas, the terror group that controls Gaza, and Moskowitz was soon pulled into the gruesome task of helping to unload and transfer dozens of bodies that arrived there.
The baby came from Kibbutz Kfar Aza, one of the communities hardest hit in the attack. It arrived in a small bag whose contents told a grim story: a tiny body, burnt and swollen, with the telltale marks from being pressed against a heating element.
“They took the baby and put it, literally, in a kitchen oven,” Moskowitz said in a video testimony recounting the assessment of professional staff at the base.
The video was recorded at Hatzalah’s request to preserve a firsthand account of what Moskowitz saw, and it was shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency on Tuesday. The video, one of several recordings of Hatzalah volunteers describing what they saw, had not been made public as of Tuesday afternoon.
“The body hardened and, unfortunately, appeared to have also swollen,” he said. “And really, the heating element of the oven was on the body itself.”
The list of atrocities that has emerged from Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel is so long as to feel endless. First responders and survivors have related stories of burnt bodies, of people tied up and murdered, of partygoers gunned down en masse at a music festival.
But the story of the baby burnt in an oven has attracted particular attention this week for a number of reasons, in addition to the tender age of the victim. The presence of an oven evokes the horrors of the Holocaust in graphic terms, creating a link between the antisemitic genocide of 80 years ago and Oct. 7, which was the bloodiest day for Jews since then.
The story has also drawn attention because it was shared publicly for the first time when Hatzalah’s founder and president spoke at an American political convention in Las Vegas.
“We saw a little baby in an oven,” Eli Beer, the founder and president of Hatzalah, said in a speech to the Republican Jewish Coalition’s annual conference on Saturday night.
As the story spread on social media, some responded with shock that there were yet more revelations to come about atrocities committed on Oct. 7. At least one prominent Palestinian voice drew condemnation for responding with a joke. And a few people wondered aloud whether the story was true, given that it had not previously been reported.
The Israeli government has been engaged in efforts to head off or refute claims that the massacre and its attendant atrocities were fabricated or exaggerated. In the days after the massacre, Israel invited foreign journalists to tour Kfar Aza and other ravaged communities, and last week, it showed them 43 minutes of raw footage from Oct. 7 to counter what a government spokesperson called “a Holocaust denial-like phenomenon evolving in real time.”
Beer said he’s aware that people are denying that the atrocities took place, or are casting doubt on their scale — something he considers akin to Holocaust denial given the depth and breadth of evidence. But he said he had “not at all” worried about people denying this story because of the time that had elapsed since Oct. 7.
“I wasn’t concerned,” he said. “I don’t understand why people think this is the worst. This is not even the worst. Why is an oven the worst? Why is [it] not murdering children in front of their parents?”
Destruction caused by Hamas in Kibbutz Kfar Aza, near the Israeli-Gaza border, in southern Israel, Oct. 10, 2023. (Chaim Goldberg/Flash90)
Speaking to JTA on Tuesday, Beer said he learned of the atrocity from at least two of his volunteers. He first heard of it soon after it occurred, from a volunteer who was on the scene on Oct. 8 when a team of first responders discovered the baby’s body, along with the bodies of the murdered parents. Moskowitz then called Beer “a day or two” after he saw the body at Shura.
That story was swirling in his head, Beer said, along with hundreds of others, as the days went by and more victims were identified. While that was happening, Beer continued his work with Hatzalah while under Hamas rocket fire. In addition, two Hatzalah volunteers were killed in Hamas’ attack, and many more are suffering post-traumatic stress, he said. His son is serving i the Israeli military.
Only on his trip to Las Vegas, Beer said, was he able to get a good night’s sleep and clear his head a bit. On the day of the speech, he thought of the story of the baby burned in an oven and decided to include it in his remarks.
“I said, you know what, I heard these stories, and people have to hear it,” he said. “And even so, it’s hard to believe that all these tragedies were happening. But it happened. All these bad things happened.”
There is still much that is unknown, and that may never be known, about the baby’s death — including, for now, the child’s name and age. The parents were killed alongside the baby, and the house was torched, Beer said. According to a Washington Post report on Tuesday, Israeli officials have yet to identify some 200 bodies because they were mutilated or burned.
That paucity of knowledge leads, Beer said, to a number of gruesome questions: Did Hamas terrorists put the baby in the oven, then kill the baby as they turned the oven on? Did the baby’s parents hide the child in the oven to keep them safe from the attackers, only to burn as the house was set aflame? When was the baby killed?
“They have many bodies that aren’t identified yet,” Beer said. “Luckily today there is technology that they can do DNA and everything, but what happens when the whole family are murdered?”
He added, “A lot of the stories will never be told because the people that saw it and witnessed it are not with us anymore.”
In his video testimony, Moskowitz also recognized the need to counter denial of the massacre’s horrors.
“In the context of these horrors we need to show the world and tell the world that it is impossible to deny what they did,” he said. “They raped women, they killed bodies, they killed living people. They amputated limbs, cut off heads — horrors that have already been seen. But this is a horror that we must tell the world.”
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The post An Israeli first responder recalls tending to the body of a baby burnt in an oven appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.