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Candace Owens Barred From New Zealand After Facing Similar Ban From Australia for Comments on Jews, Holocaust
Right-wing political commentator Candace Owens speaks during an event held by national conservative political movement ‘Turning Point’, in Detroit, Michigan, US, June, 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
Right-wing American political commentator and YouTube content creator Candace Owens has been denied a visa to enter New Zealand because she was banned from the nearby country Australia, immigration officials reportedly said on Thursday.
Owens was scheduled to embark on her first speaking tour across Australia and New Zealand in February and March of next year. The tour includes a stop in Auckland, New Zealand, on Feb. 28 and tickets remain on sale online.
Australia rejected her request for a visa last month. Australian Immigration Minister Tony Burke said the decision was made because of Owens’s past remarks, including her apparent denial that Nazis forcibly did medical experiments on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.
“From downplaying the impact of the Holocaust with comments about [Nazi doctor and war criminal Josef] Mengele through to claims that Muslims started slavery, Candace Owens has the capacity to incite discord in almost every direction,” Burke said at the time. “Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else.
Jock Gilray, a spokesperson for New Zealand’s immigration agency, said on Thursday that Owens was refused an entertainer’s work permit for New Zealand because visas legally cannot be granted to someone who have been banned from another country, The Associated Press reported on Thursday. New Zealand officials did not refer to Owens’s past comments when announcing the denial of her visa.
Owens and the Australia-based promoter behind her speaking tour, Rocksman, have yet to comment on news regarding the ban from New Zealand but said in October that they will file a legal appeal to a federal judge in response to the ban from Australia. Owens commented on Burke’s decision to deny her a visa for Australia and blamed it partially on the alleged influence of the global “Zionist media empire.”
Owens, who has over 3 million subscribers on YouTube and hosts the podcast titled “Candace,” has promoted conspiracy theories and made numerous antisemitic comments about Israel, Jews, Zionists, and the Holocaust. She has also made controversial comments against Black Lives Matter, feminism, vaccines, and immigration.
The post Candace Owens Barred From New Zealand After Facing Similar Ban From Australia for Comments on Jews, Holocaust first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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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.