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Filmmakers Behind Israel’s 2024 Oscar Submission Focus New Film on All-Female IDF Tank Unit That Battled Hamas
A female Israeli soldier. Photo: Reuters / IDF.
The filmmaking team behind Israel’s submission to the best international film category of the 2024 Academy Awards is working on a movie inspired by the true story of an all-female Israel Defense Force (IDF) tank unit that engaged in combat against Hamas terrorists on Oct. 7 in southern Israel.
Jewish-Israeli director Ayelet Menahemi, whose comedic drama Seven Blessings will compete in this year’s Oscars, is directing the film, and writer-actress Eleanor Sela, who wrote and starred in Seven Blessings, is writing the script, according to Deadline. The film will be produced by Ehud Bleiberg’s Los Angeles-based Bleiberg Entertainment (In the Land of Saints, The Band’s Visit) and Ronen Ben Tal, who also worked on Seven Blessings. Filming is expected to begin in fall 2024.
The female tank unit that defended Israel against the Hamas massacre that took place on Oct. 7 marked the first time in history that an all-female armored unit took part in combat, Deadline reported. The filmmakers told the publication they will also highlight in their new film the unit’s founding and how the women soldiers had to fight to be respected by male soldiers in the IDF, who sometimes discriminated against the female unit.
“Amidst the inconceivable stories of bravery since October 7, this is one of the exceptional and heroic ones,” Menahemi and Sela said in a joint statement. “It shows what happens when women take matters into their own hands after men cast doubt on their right and ability to fight. These young women made history, twice.”
The IDF said in November that a group of female tank operators, young women in their early 20s from the Paran Brigade who fought in active battle against Hamas on Oct. 7, killed roughly 50 terrorists during 17 hours of continuous combat and helped to clear out terrorists from the kibbutz of Holit. Meanwhile, Israeli Caracal commander Lt.-Col. Or Ben-Yehuda told The Jerusalem Post that her battalion, made up of mostly female soldiers, killed around 100 Hamas terrorists during the terror group’s deadly rampage on Oct. 7, in which 1,200 people were murdered and 240 taken as hostages to Gaza.
The post Filmmakers Behind Israel’s 2024 Oscar Submission Focus New Film on All-Female IDF Tank Unit That Battled Hamas 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.