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Montreal’s weekly walk calling to free the hostages coincides with the release of three held for 470 days
As the literal first breaths of the hostage release saw three young women released into the aching arms of their families and nation, participants in the Bring Them Home Montreal march gathered for their 54th Sunday walk in the city’s west end with renewed vigour and purpose.
For more than a year, people of all ages have routinely walked through Hampstead, Côte Saint-Luc and Snowdon, chanting for the freedom of the hostages and saying their names.

This week, some 80 marchers sported orange ribbons in honour of the second birthday of Kfir Bibas, who was kidnapped on Oct. 7 from Kibbutz Nir Oz at eight months old with his 4-year-old brother Ariel, and parents Shiri and Yarden.
The mood on this frigid day—where wind chill neared minus-20 as marchers made their way down ice-covered sidewalks, under police escort as always—was mixed, a combination of elation to see three daughters of Israel return and angst over future stages of the deal and the fate of the remaining hostages.

Between all the smiles and tears, co-organizer Keren Zach told The CJN the feeling right now “is it’s making a deal with the devil. But we need our people home, they deserve to be home, and right now, Emily, Romi and Doron are on their way to see their moms in the next few minutes. And this is the reason why we’re doing this right now, and we’re going to continue marching until every single one of them are home.”
Asked if this is the beginning of a semblance of justice for Israel, Zach said, “I can’t tell you. We deserve it. I wish it to be yes. But no, not by the way the world is acting. It’s as if we don’t matter.”
She pointed to the extremist language of anti-Israel demonstrators in Montreal the very night the deal for the hostage release and ceasefire were announced, as the crowd chanted calls for intifada and shouted praise in honour of Yahya Siwar and other terrorist leaders.
Philip Greenstein was among the marchers on this historic day. “You can’t be human without being happy that daughters will be returned to their mothers and fathers,” he said. “We understand that the price that Israel has already paid from Oct. 7 on, and you realize that cynically said, that there’s really no justice in the world.
“We’re going to have to take a very, very long view of how these people, these families, will never know justice, the families who now have to watch murderers being returned into Gaza with glee.”
Zach lost friends at the Nova music festival, including Dor Malka, “a really sweet guy who loved soccer and always had a smile,” and worked on Kibbutz Holit with Youssef Ziyadne, whose body was recently recovered from Gaza. She cautioned others to “watch news, but don’t watch the news. Try to keep away from it, and don’t set proper expectations, just hope for the best and expect the worst. Don’t overthink it, because they (Hamas) love to do psychological operations.”
As for the questions of who’s alive and who’s not, “These people will only be free once their feet are in Israel. Once they are in Israel, I will breathe for them.”
Greenstein thanks the universe daily “for making me a Jew in this time. Because this is when it counts. This is when it matters to be Jewish. This is how we show we have to transcend words. I wake up at night thinking about hostages, I wake up in the morning thinking about Israel.” Every day, he said, “you walk by people with keffiyehs. I mean, you know, your head explodes.”
“We have to plant our feet firm, and we don’t know whether this is the first or the last wave of what is just the beginning of a multi-generational war for the survival of Judaism. So more than ever we have to be united. We’re just a big bag of humans but there’s something transcendent about being Jewish and that’s what brings us together. And I hope we can remember that now and act like a tribe, like a people who need to be very connected.”
Hampstead city councillor Jack Edery, a frequent marcher in the group, has encountered the extreme rhetoric of anti-Israel protesters—who have been invited by Montreal mayor Valérie Plante and her colleagues to voice their opinions on pro-Israel politicians at Montreal’s agglomeration council.
Edery likened the current mood to how “Yom HaZikaron is always followed by Yom Haatzmaut, one moment we’re crying and one moment we’re celebrating. So today, we celebrate that they’re home, but we cry that the rest of them aren’t. It’s psychological warfare. We don’t know if Kfir Bibas is going to come back alive or if he is going to come back dead. Personally, I think we need to do everything we can to bring back every one of the hostages, and then after they’re all back, we’ll deal with Hamas.”

Bring Them Home Montreal co-organizer Ruben Hassan moved the crowd with a stirring speech about the hostages—whether released or waiting to come home—with a special message for now 2-year-old Kfir Bibas.
“We want to tell you and your brother that you are not alone, every candle lit today represents a prayer for your return, a promise to never stop fighting, for you, for your family and for all those who are still held hostage in Gaza. You are the hope of this nation, the faces of a future where life always triumphs.
“Let this birthday be the last spent far from at home. We are waiting for you with hearts full of love and arms wide open. Happy birthday. Ariel, we are also thinking of you, you are our strength, our hope, and soon you will be back among us.”
The post Montreal’s weekly walk calling to free the hostages coincides with the release of three held for 470 days appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Huckabee Calls for Israeli Investigation Into ‘Criminal and Terrorist’ Killing of Palestinian-American in West Bank
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Scandal-Plagued UN Commission Disbands Amid Increasing US Pressure Against Anti-Israel International Organizations

Miloon Kothari, member of the United Nations Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and Israel, briefs reporters on the first report of the Commission. UN Photo/Jean Marc Ferré
The Commission of Inquiry (COI), a controversial United Nations commission investigating Israel for nearly five years, has collapsed after all three of its members abruptly resigned days after the United States sanctioned a senior UN official over antisemitism.
Commission chair Navi Pillay resigned on July 8, citing health concerns and scheduling conflicts. Her fellow commissioners, Chris Sidoti and Miloon Kothari, followed suit days later. While none of the commissioners directly linked their resignations to the U.S. sanctions, the timing suggests mounting American pressure played a decisive role.
The resignations came just one day before the Trump administration announced sanctions on Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur on the Palestinian territories. Albanese was sanctioned over what the State Department called a “pattern of antisemitic and inflammatory rhetoric.” She had previously claimed that the U.S. was controlled by a “Jewish lobby” and questioned Israel’s right to self-defense. The sanctions bar her from entering the U.S. and freeze any assets under American jurisdiction.
The resignations mark a major victory for critics who have long viewed the inquiry as biased and politically motivated.
Watchdog groups, including Geneva-based UN Watch, celebrated the swift collapse of the Commission of Inquiry (COI), which they say had long operated with an open mandate to target Israel. “This is a watershed moment of accountability,” said UN Watch Executive Director Hillel Neuer. “The COI was built on bias and sustained by hatred. Its fall is a victory for human rights, not a defeat.”
The COI had faced heavy criticism since its formation in 2021. In July 2022, Commissioner Miloon Kothari, made comments about the undue influence of a so-called “Jewish lobby” on the media, said the COI would “have to look at issues of settler colonialism.”
“Apartheid itself is a very useful paradigm, so we have a slightly different approach, but we will definitely get to it,” he added.
The Commission was established in 2021 year following the 11-day war between Israel and Gaza’s ruling Hamas group in May. COI is the first UN commission to ever be granted an indefinite period of investigation, which has drawn criticism from the US State Department, members of US Congress, and Jewish leaders across the world.
Following the resignations, Council President Jürg Lauber invited member states to nominate replacements by August 31. However, it is unclear whether the commission will be reconstituted or quietly shelved. UN Watch and other groups have urged the council to disband the COI entirely, calling it irreparably biased.
The post Scandal-Plagued UN Commission Disbands Amid Increasing US Pressure Against Anti-Israel International Organizations first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Twitter AI’s Spree of Antisemitic Answers Provokes European Union Meeting as US Military Signs Deal With Company

European Union flags flutter outside the EU Commission headquarters in Brussels, Belgium, on June 17, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Yves Herman
Following an update earlier this month to xAI’s Grok chatbot which resulted in a wave of antisemitic and pro-Hitler responses to users on X/Twitter, the European Commission summoned representatives from billionaire Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence company to a Tuesday meeting to explain themselves.
The move comes after Italian parliament member Sandro Gozi urged for the Commission to begin a formal inquiry, as “the case raises serious concerns about compliance with the Digital Services Act (DSA) as well as the governance of generative AI in the Union’s digital space.”
Poland’s Minister of Digital Affairs Krzysztof Gawkowski had also called for the Commission to take action and said that the Polish government would consider banning the app.
Due to the size of the X platform, the site falls under the European Union’s DSA which requires transparency about operations. Musk’s app already faces multiple investigations by the Commission.
On Wednesday, following the initial antisemitic statements from Grok, X’s Linda Yaccarino, the company’s CEO, announced her resignation.
On Monday, xAI announced a $200 million deal to provide Grok to the US military. The company stated that “under the umbrella of Grok For Government, we will be bringing all of our world-class AI tools to federal, local, state, and national security customers.” Customers in the plan could “use the Grok family of products to accelerate America – from making everyday government services faster and more efficient to using AI to address unsolved problems in fundamental science and technology.”
The Pentagon also announced on Monday other AI companies would receive contracts, including Anthropic, Google and OpenAI.
Douglas Matty, chief digital and AI officer at the Defense Department, said that “leveraging commercially available solutions into an integrated capabilities approach will accelerate the use of advanced AI as part of our Joint mission essential tasks in our warfighting domain as well as intelligence, business, and enterprise information systems.”
Also on Monday, Musk unveiled a new release to the AI capabilities on X. The Companions feature will allow users to interact with cartoon characters, including a mischievous fox and an anime-style goth girl named Ani.
On Tuesday, xAI put out a statement explaining that it had “spotted a couple of issues with Grok 4 recently that we immediately investigated & mitigated.” The company said it had “tweaked the prompts and have shared the details on GitHub for transparency. We are actively monitoring and will implement further adjustments as needed.”
The post Twitter AI’s Spree of Antisemitic Answers Provokes European Union Meeting as US Military Signs Deal With Company first appeared on Algemeiner.com.