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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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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.
The post Rights Group Files Lawsuit to Block Trump Deportations of Anti-Israel Protesters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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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.
The post Netanyahu Informs Shin Bet Chief to Vote on His Dismissal Next Week first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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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.”
The post Houthis Claim to Attack US Aircraft Carrier, Retaliating for Strikes first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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