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IDF Asks That Kids Avoid Using Toy Explosives During Purim Celebrations to Protect Soldiers
Ayla Mirakhor, 1, from left, Carmen Gavilan-Fraum, 7 months, and Elka Levitin, 20 months, celebrate Purim during the Daled Arts Family Hamantash Bake, March 18, 2024 at Alef Preschool in Palm Beach. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect
IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari released a video on Friday, shortly before Shabbat, calling on Israelis to avoid using toy explosives and other noisy objects during the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim.
“Don’t throw explosives on the holiday. We in the IDF will continue to do everything to embrace the soldiers wounded in body and soul and their families. You have fulfilled your duty; now we will fulfill our duty,” Hagari said.
Purim — which commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from annihilation at the hands of Haman, an official of the Achaemenid Empire — is told in the Book of Esther. It is known as an especially joyous and fun holiday when people dress up in costumes.
The video also included soldiers from various units injured in battle speaking about the issue.
“I have never been in favor of explosives,” one solider said. “There are many soldiers that it can hurt them from the same sounds and noises that sound like real explosions. Every small sound we hear takes us back [to Gaza]. We don’t want to be there.”
The soldier continued: “We experienced wounded and killed, and it brings us exactly to the same spot. We don’t want to be there. Moments of blood, explosions, and screams. Think of me as your big brother. Would you want your big brother to hear something explode and it makes him jump? Of course not.”
The soldier concluded: “Every small explosion can bring you back to the hardest moments you have ever experienced. Your sensitivity can help us not to return to that place. Especially this year, don’t throw explosives on the holiday.”
According to professionals, mental health has emerged as a critical challenge facing the IDF and Israeli society as a whole since the Gaza war’s outbreak. Due to the war — which began with the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists killed over 1,200 people and took 253 as hostages — the entire country is considered in a state of trauma, according to a leading psychologist group.
According to a study released last week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following the war. Many of those at risk are soldiers. The IDF has taken extra measures to look after their mental health, including army-mandated therapy sessions for all soldiers who served in Gaza or in the north at the border with Lebanon.
The IDF also opened a new mental health center at the army’s Tel HaShomer base in February specifically geared for soldiers leaving Gaza. Per IDF numbers at the time of the opening, more than 30,000 reservists had met with mental health professionals, with 202 soldiers being released from service due to mental health issues discovered and an additional 1,700 referred for advanced screening and treatment.
With Purim set to begin on Saturday evening, there have been fears that costumes or loud noises could startle soldiers who left service and may be suffering from discovered or under-the-surface mental health stresses due to what they saw.
Amid such concerns, there have been calls for those celebrating to avoid dressing as soldiers and carrying fake guns. The call by Hagari goes further, however, asking them not to use popular toy explosives — which, though harmless, can make loud and sudden noises, sometimes accompanied by a quick flash.
The toy explosives are usually thrown by kids in the various street parties and at synagogues when the name “Haman” is said.
The post IDF Asks That Kids Avoid Using Toy Explosives During Purim Celebrations to Protect Soldiers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site
FILE PHOTO: The atomic symbol and the Iranian flag are seen in this illustration, July 21, 2022. REUTERS/Dado Ruvic/Illustration/File Photo
JNS.org – The Israeli airstrikes on Iran last month destroyed a secret nuclear weapons research facility in Parchin, 19 miles southeast of Tehran, Axios reported on Friday.
The clandestine site held sophisticated equipment used for testing explosives needed to detonate nuclear devices, the report read, citing three US officials, one current Israeli official and one former Israeli official.
The Washington-based Institute for Science and International Security acquired high-resolution satellite imagery of the facility, which showed that it was completely destroyed in Israel’s Oct. 26 attack.
Israeli and US intelligence agencies began noticing activity in the Taleghan 2 facility in the Parchin military complex in early 2024, which had been largely inactive since 2003, when the Islamic Republic froze its military nuclear program, according to Axios.
One unnamed US official quoted in the report said: “[The Iranians] conducted scientific activity that could lay the ground for the production of a nuclear weapon. It was a top secret thing. A small part of the Iranian government knew about this, but most of the Iranian government didn’t.”
Although President Joe Biden asked Jerusalem not to target Tehran’s nuclear facilities, the site in Parchin was chosen as a target because it was not part of Iran’s declared nuclear program.
This placed the mullah regime in a position where admitting a hit to the site would expose its efforts to resume activity forbidden by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons.
Moreover, “The strike was a not so subtle message that the Israelis have significant insight into the Iranian system even when it comes to things that were kept top secret and known to a very small group of people in the Iranian government,” the report cited a US official as saying.
Last week, Rafael Grossi, the director of the United Nations’ International Atomic Energy Agency, visited Iran for the first time since May.
He is expected to meet with his agency’s board of governors in Vienna this week for a vote on a resolution to censure Tehran for its lack of cooperation with the U.N. nuclear watchdog.
Speaking about the tensions between Israel and Iran, Grossi said during a news conference in Tehran on Thursday that the Islamic Republic’s “nuclear installations should not be attacked.”
Earlier in the week, Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz suggested that Iran’s nuclear facilities may be targeted.
Iran is “more exposed than ever to strikes on its nuclear facilities. We have the opportunity to achieve our most important goal—to thwart and eliminate the existential threat to the State of Israel,” Katz said.
Israel’s two assaults against Iran’s air defense system this year have left the country vulnerable to future attacks, with all four of Tehran’s Russian-made S-300 surface-to-air missile batteries destroyed, according to U.S. media.
On April 19, Israel took out one of the S-300 systems in response to Tehran’s first-ever direct attack against the Jewish state. On Oct. 26, in response to a second Iranian attack, Israel targeted 20 sites in Iran, destroying the remaining three.
“The majority of Iran’s air defense was taken out,” a senior Israeli official told Fox News.
The post Israel Destroyed Top Secret Iranian Nuclear Weapons Site first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat
Houthi-mobilized fighters ride atop a car in Sanaa, Yemen, Sept. 21, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Khaled Abdullah
Yemen’s Houthi forces attacked “a vital target” in Israel’s Red Sea port city of Eilat with a number of drones, the Iran-aligned group’s military spokesperson Yahya Saree said on Saturday.
The terrorist group has launched dozens of attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea region since November in solidarity with Hamas.
“These operations will not stop until the aggression stops, the siege on the Gaza Strip is lifted, and the aggression on Lebanon stops,” Saree added in a televised speech.
The Houthi attacks have upended global trade by forcing ship owners to reroute vessels away from the vital Suez Canal shortcut, and drawn retaliatory U.S. and British strikes since February.
The post Yemen’s Houthis Say They Attacked ‘Vital Target’ in Israel’s Eilat first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks
US Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL) in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US, Sept. 10, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Evelyn Hockstein
JNS.org – Muslim leaders in the United Stated who called for supporting President-elect Donald Trump at the expense of Democrat runner Kamala Harris are deeply disappointed with the former president’s Cabinet nominees, Reuters reported on Thursday.
“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” Abandon Harris campaign co-founder Hassan Abdel Salam, a former professor at the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, said about Trump’s recently announced picks.
“We were always extremely skeptical. … Obviously we’re still waiting to see where the administration will go, but it does look like our community has been played,” Abdel Salam told Reuters.
Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the Abandon Harris campaign in Pennsylvania and co-founded Muslims for Trump, was cited as saying: “Trump won because of us and we’re not happy with his secretary of state pick and others.”
Some political strategists believe that the Muslim vote for Trump, or the renunciation of Harris, helped tilt several swing states such as Michigan in the favor of the Republican candidate.
“It seems like this administration has been packed entirely with neoconservatives and extremely pro-Israel, pro-war people, which is a failure on the side of President Trump, to the pro-peace and anti-war movement,” said Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of the American Muslim Engagement and Empowerment Network.
On Wednesday, Trump named Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) as his choice to be secretary of state.
Rubio is known for his staunch pro-Israel stance, including calling on Jerusalem earlier this year to destroy “every element” of Hamas and dubbing the Gaza-based terrorist organization as “vicious animals.”
Rubio joins a slew of pro-Israel officials Trump has tapped since he won the U.S. election, including former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel and Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) as his U.N. ambassador with a seat in the Cabinet.
Blaise Misztal, vice president for policy at the Jewish Institute for National Security of America (JINSA), told JNS that Trump’s focus so early in the transition process on Israel-related foreign policy picks is a mark of how his second administration will approach the region.
“That, in and of itself, signals that President Trump and his administration are going to take the region, the Middle East, the threats confronting Israel, seriously and take the U.S. friendship with Israel seriously,” Misztal said.
“The people that we’ve seen are known to be tremendously strong friends of Israel, first and foremost, but also very clear-eyed about the threats that the United States and Israel face together in the region.”
Before the election on Nov. 5, Trump promised Arab and Muslim voters he would restore stability in Lebanon and the Middle East, while criticizing the current administration’s regional policies during campaign stops targeting Muslim communities in Michigan.
Trump recently addressed Lebanese Americans, stating, “Your friends and family in Lebanon deserve to live in peace, prosperity and harmony with their neighbors, and this can only happen when there is peace and stability in the Middle East.”
Israel has been at war for more than a year on its southern and northern borders, ever since Hamas led a surprise attack on communities near the Gaza Strip border on Oct. 7, 2023, murdering some 1,200 people and abducting 251 more into the Palestinian enclave. A day later, Hezbollah joined Hamas’s efforts by firing rockets into Israel’s north.
The post Muslims from ‘Abandon Harris’ Campaign Gutted by Pro-Israel Cabinet Picks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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