RSS
Operation Israel: How a New Jersey Woman Is Providing the IDF With Millions of Dollars of Specialized Gear
Adi Vaxman, second from right, with others in support of Operation Israel. Photo: Courtesy of Operation Israel
Like most Israelis and Jews living in the diaspora, Adi Vaxman turned on the news on Oct. 7 to complete shock and horror. The scenes of Hamas terrorists rampaging across southern Israel — where they murdered 1,200 people and took 240 more as hostages — immediately seared itself into the Jewish psyche.
Vaxman, though, jumped into action to help her people, succeeding in the most remarkable ways with her nonprofit Operation Israel.
“I was traumatized and upset, but within 10 days [after Oct. 7] we had the nonprofit registered and everything was operating,” she told The Algemeiner from her home in New Jersey.
Operation Israel, which has raised more than $7.25 million since the war started, has been shipping essential gear to Israel’s soldiers fighting Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah to the north by the Lebanese border, and Palestinian terrorists in the West Bank.
Vaxman, a business operations consultant, said new ideas for the organization started immediately out of necessity.
“I had family members drafted to the army, but people reported to duty drafted or not,” she explained. In her case, helping to fulfill the desperate needs of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) in the early days of the war, woefully unprepared for the immediate call up of over 350,000 reservists to duty, was the top priority.
Operation Israel set up an online intake form where units could request exactly what they needed. “In the beginning, it was ceramic vests and ceramic plates, then different types of gear,” Vaxman said. “We were researching what to buy, where to buy it — can it be bought in Israel?”
Today, the organization is focused on more specialized gear such as “drones, special communication equipment, medical supplies, tactical protective gear, tents, heaters, and other items.
The resultant work has led Operation Israel to now be partners with specific units dealing with drone training and anti-terrorism — and the success the nonprofit is bringing the units is evident in the daily antidotes that come from the field. “The drones are saving lives, being flown into tunnels before soldiers … If something is blown up it is the drone, not a soldier or dog,” Vaxman said. She told one story from last week when 14 soldiers were saved after being stuck in frigid temperatures, keeping themselves warm with the blankets provided by Operation Israel.
Other stories Vaxman’s team has received are of soldiers whose lives were saved by the ballistic goggles they have been providing. “These are the stories that make it all worth it,” she said.
Currently, the organization has dozens of volunteers both in the US and Israel working around the clock to fulfill the needs of Israel’s frontline fighters. To date, they have shipped more than $7 million worth of gear — more than 66,000 pounds combined — to over 900 units, comprising more than 10,000 soldiers. This included 2,500 ballistic glasses, 2,000 bulletproof vests, 2,000 tactical sunglasses, 1,000 rescue blankets, and countless other gear.
Boxed up gear ready to be sent to Israeli soldiers. Photo: Courtesy of Operation Israel
The requests are not simple, and they come in daily. For example, some drones can cost anywhere from $1,500 to $10,000, meaning sourcing the right gear is critical.
“I wish we didn’t have to do the work, but I am proud to,” Vaxman said. “God gave me a gift in my abilities to do so.”
One effect of the Israel-Hamas war that she did not expect was how it would impact her and her family, specifically as it pertains to long-term planning and where they would live. On Jan. 1, Vaxman was walking in the American Dream Mall in New Jersey with her husband, 16-year-old daughter, 12-year-old son, and her daughter’s friend. Proud of their heritage, her daughter was wearing an IDF jacket, leading hostile pro-Hamas agitators to approach her family and yell profanities.
“We started hearing all from behind us: Free Palestine, f—k Israel, f—k you bi—h, f—k you wh—e,” all directed at her daughter, Vaxman said. “My husband got between them and us, telling them to leave her alone, saying she is just a child.” However, the agitators continued the antisemitic harassment, cursing and threw her phone to the ground.
Vaxman, who was raised by Holocaust survivors, said the incident shook her daughter, who has been struggling since. “They were going at her in a vile, horrible way,” Vaxman said. The family submitted the video to the nonprofit watchdog group StopAntisemitism, which is active on social media, where the clip went viral. The watchdog found the main assailant, who claimed to be Palestinian in the video, although it turned out she was Hispanic.
“Until the attack it hadn’t crossed my mind to live anywhere else,” Vaxman said. “But the rise of antisemitism and the way it has become acceptable, I don’t know if we are going to be here.”
Antisemitism has skyrocketed to historic levels worldwide, including in the US, since Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel.
At the same time, Vaxman’s kids have shown a deeper appreciation for their Jewish heritage, no doubt in part due to their mother, who said she was committed to working on behalf of the Jewish people and Israel, providing IDF soldiers with all their needs as they come in.
“I am never going to stop advocating for the Jewish people and Israel,” she said.
The post Operation Israel: How a New Jersey Woman Is Providing the IDF With Millions of Dollars of Specialized Gear first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
RSS
Belgian Doctor Lists ‘Jewish (Israeli)’ as Child’s Medical Problem as Antisemitism Crisis in Health Care Spreads
Illustrative: Demonstrators hold a giant Palestinian flag and anti-Israel signs during a protest against the Israeli offensive on the Gaza Strip, in central Brussels, July 27, 2014. Photo: REUTERS/Francois Lenoir
A Belgian doctor recently diagnosed a nine-year-old patient by listing “Jewish (Israeli)” as one of her medical problems on his report, continuing a troubling wave of antisemitism in health-care spaces leaving Jewish patients feeling concerned in Western countries.
The Israeli publication Israel Hayom initially reported last week that after the young girl came for treatment at a hospital in the town of Knokke in Belgium, a doctor of Middle Eastern origin with Arabic-language content against Israel on his Facebook page wrote “Jewish (Israeli)” in his detailed report under the section where her medical problems were to be listed. The newspaper noted that JID (the Jewish Information and Documentation Center), a Belgian nonprofit that combats antisemitism, investigated the incident and would be filing a formal complaint with law enforcement authorities and the medical establishment in the country.
A censored version of the letter then circulated on social media over the weekend, revealing that a radiologist, Dr. Qasim Arkawazy of AZ Zeno Campus Hospital in Knokke-Heist, filled out the medical report.
In the “Current Problem” section, Arkawazy wrote of the patient: “Pain in the left forearm, fell from the climbing structure to the ground; a man fell on top of her.”
The doctor then noted in the nine-year-old girl’s report that she had no allergies before adding “Jewish (Israeli)” for apparently no medical reason.
In Belgium, a doctor examined a sick young girl.
In the “medical issues” section, right after allergies, the antisemitic doctor wrote: “Jewish.”
What’s next, refusing to treat Jews?
This is beyond unacceptable. But after this summer, sadly, nothing surprises me anymore. pic.twitter.com/7acuxeEumZ
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) August 31, 2025
X/Twitter user SwordofSaolomon, who conducts open-source research into allegedly antisemitic individuals, found that Arkawazy has shared several antisemitic posts on Facebook. These posts include a cartoon of several babies decapitated by the point of a Star of David and an AI-generated image depicting Hasidic Jews as vampires about to eat a sleeping baby. The doctor is a native of Baghdad, Iraq and a Shi’ite Muslim, according to multiple reports.
SIGNALEMENT : Le Dr. Qasim Arkawazy, radiologue d’origine irakienne
exerçant à l’hôpital AZ Zeno dans la station balnéaire de Knokke-Heist, relaie des dizaines de contenus antisémites, islamistes chiites et antisionistes.
Parmi ces publications : un montage ignoble… pic.twitter.com/IDTBYM5j1e
— SwordOfSalomon (@SwordOfSalomon) August 31, 2025
“We are outraged by the report of a Belgian doctor who listed ‘Jewish (Israeli)’ as a medical problem in a child’s emergency file,” the European Jewish Congress (EJC) said in a post on X. “This is blatant antisemitism: dehumanizing, discriminatory, and utterly unacceptable.”
The group, which for decades has functioned as the representative umbrella organization of national Jewish communities in Europe, argued that such actions cause Jewish patients to fear being mistreated, even in medical settings.
“This is not just unethical; it’s dangerous. No parent should fear that their child’s care might be compromised because of their Jewish identity,” the EJC said. “We call on Belgian authorities to take immediate disciplinary action and make clear: antisemitism has no place in healthcare — or anywhere.”
Sam van Rooy, a lawmaker in Belgium’s parliament, expressed similar sentiments in a social media post.
“How can a Jewish person whose medical file is being handled by this doctor now feel at ease?” he wrote on social media.
The incident in Belgium comes amid a surge in medical professionals expressing antisemitism or even outright death threats against Israelis.
Last month, for example, two medical workers in Italy filmed themselves discarding Israeli-made medicine in protest against the Jewish state at their workplace. A doctor and a nurse who work at a community hospital in Pratovecchio Stia, near Arezzo in Tuscany, posted on social media the video of dramatically throwing away products from Teva Pharmaceuticals, an Israeli company.
Meanwhile, a doctor in the UK was allowed to return to work last month after praising Nazi leader Adolf Hitler during an antisemitic rant and making racist comments about a colleague.
Other troubling incidents have drawn attention in the UK. The University College London Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust (UCLH Trust) recently issued an apology following a patient’s complaints about the placement of anti-Israel posters at a facility. These posters — which read “Zionism is Poison,” called for a “Free Palestine,” and accused Israel of wantonly starving and killing Palestinians — led a patient to reach out to the group UK Lawyers for Israel, expressing fear of receiving subpar treatment if the hospital staff discovered she was Jewish. The chief executive of UCLH Trust released a statement apologizing for the posters.
In a separate incident, midwife Fatimah Mohamied, who resigned from her position after UKLFI highlighted her anti-Israel social media posts, has now filed a claim against Chelsea and Westminster Hospital NHS Foundation Trust, alleging a violation of her rights. Mohamied’s posts included her defending and celebrating the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion and massacre across southern Israel.
Other Western countries have seen health-care providers’ antipathy toward Israel manifest as violent threats.
In the Netherlands, police opened an investigation into Batisma Chayat Sa’id, a nurse who allegedly stated she would administer lethal injections to Israeli patients.
Although Sa’id denied making the comments, claiming someone was “pretending to be me,” an account under her name also posted threatening messages aimed at Jewish people last year, including “Your time will come — don’t spare anyone,” and another in which she described the burial of Israelis in Gaza as “a dream come true.”
The nurse’s alleged threat mirrors a similar incident in Australia, in which video showed two nurses — Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh — posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements. The widely circulated footage showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
“Now they actually brag online about killing Israeli patients,” Shira Nussdorf, a US-born Jewish woman who moved from Israel to Australia six years ago, told The Algemeiner earlier this year when the video first emerged. “I don’t know how safe I would feel giving birth at that hospital.”
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities in Australia suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They were also charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, they face up to 22 years in prison.
The issue of antisemitism in medical facilities also extends to North America.
A December 2024 study by the Data & Analytics Department of StandWithUs, a Jewish civil rights group, found that 40 percent of 645 Jewish American health-care professionals surveyed reported experiencing antisemitism in the workplace. A similar study of Canadian Jewish health workers conducted last year reached 80 percent.
This issue has been especially pervasive at institutions of higher education. In May, a separate study by the StandWithUs Data & Analytics Department contained survey data showing that 62.8 percent of Jewish health-care professionals employed by campus-based medical centers reported experiencing antisemitism, a far higher rate than those working in private practice and community hospitals.
Last week, US lawmakers announced an investigation into antisemitic discrimination at three institutions: the University of California, Los Angeles’ (UCLA) David Geffen School of Medicine, the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine.
RSS
Pro-Palestinian Rioters Splatter Israeli Singer With Red Paint, Try to Storm Stage at Concert in Poland
Illustrative: Anti-Israel protesters hold a banner that says, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” standing in front of the president’s palace in Warsaw, Poland, on Nov. 5, 2023. Photo: IMAGO/Marek Antoni Iwanczuk via Reuters Connect
Anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian demonstrators threw red paint on Israeli singer-songwriter and composer David D’Or and tried to storm the stage with a Palestinian flag during his performance in Warsaw, Poland, on Sunday night.
D’Or was singing the Hebrew prayer “Avinu Malkeinu” at a finale concert for an annual Jewish cultural festival in Warsaw when an anti-Israel agitator in the audience approached the stage and hurled red paint on him. While the protester was being apprehended by security, another activist emerged from the audience, carrying a Palestinian flag, and tried to storm the stage while reportedly shouting “Free Palestine.” Both activists were quickly removed from the auditorium.
D’Or posted a video of the incident on Instagram and detailed what happened in a Hebrew-language caption.
“In the middle of the prayer our father our king, when I pray for a good year and for peace in the world, I closed my eyes, when I suddenly felt a cold splash on my face, I opened my eyes to see a strong red color, similar to blood,” wrote the singer. “On the clothes on my face and on the stage and the musicians. The playlist was like stained in blood.” He said the stains of red paint reminded him “of the horror sights of October 7th,” referring to the deadly Hamas-led attack in 2023 in which Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and took 251 hostages back to the Gaza Strip, starting the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
D’Or said after he was splattered with red paint, “in the stunned crowd a sound of horror and crying began. I realized that I must pick myself up and encourage them.”
“I continued to sing and asked everyone to close their eyes and pray for the people of Israel,” he added. “It wasn’t easy, my eyes were teary with pain and great sadness from the situation we got to. At the end of the show the audience sang along with me and we came out strong … What terrible days, may God have mercy. Praying for better days.”
D’Or’s performance on Sunday night, accompanied by Sinfonia Viva, closed off the 22nd edition of the Singer’s Warsaw Festival of Jewish Culture. The concert took place at the Moniuszko Auditorium.
D’or’s career spans over 35 years and he has performed with many philharmonic orchestras around the world, including the Vienna Symphonic Orchestra, the Baltimore Symphony, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, and the Philharmonic Orchestras of Rome, London, Moscow, Shanghai, Budapest, Beijing, and Los Angeles. He has 17 gold and platinum albums and previously performed at the Vatican six times, the United Nations, in front of former US presidents Barack Obama and Bill Clinton, and had a close relationship with Israeli President Shimon Peres, who asked for D’or to sing at his funeral.
RSS
Florida Man Sentenced to 25 Years in Prison for Plotting Attacks Targeting Jews, Blacks
An American flag waves outside the US Department of Justice Building in Washington, DC. Photo: Al Drago via Reuters Connect
A man from Margate, Florida, man was sentenced on Friday to 25 years in federal prison for planning attacks against Jewish and Black Americans, the US Department of Justice announced.
John Kevin Lapinski, Jr., 41, previously pleaded guilty to possession of a firearm as a convicted felon, possession of a firearm by a person subject to a court order, possession of an unregistered silencer, and possession of body armor by a violent felon.
On Oct. 31, 2024, officers from the Margate Police Department responded to a call about shots fired in a residential neighborhood and discovered that Lapinski was the shooter. Inside his home, police officers found a shooting target that depicted a Black male covered in bullet holes. They also found Lapinski’s arsenal that included five firearms, more than 3,000 rounds of ammunition, two silencers, body armor, smoke grenades, a Ghillie suit used for camouflage, and tactical gear.
Officers additionally found maps of local schools, parks, and community sites with racial slurs, written by Lapinski, that targeted Black and Jewish people. Lapinski had also compiled a “target list” for attacks based on race and religion and it mentioned a Jewish member of Congress, local synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses, and other religious and ethnically identified sites, according to the Justice Department
“This defendant stockpiled weapons, tactical gear, and detailed attack plans to terrorize Jewish and Black Americans in our communities. His intent was not abstract — it was written on his maps, his targets, and his so-called hit list,” US Attorney Jason Reding Quiñones for the Southern District of Florida said in a statement
“Thanks to the swift work of our law enforcement partners, his plan never became reality,” Quiñones added. “Instead of carrying out acts of racist violence, he will spend the next quarter-century behind bars. Let this sentence serve as a warning: hate-fueled violence will be met with decisive federal prosecution. We will disrupt your plans, seize your weapons, and ensure you never endanger the people of this district again.”
Investigators also linked Lapinski to a shooting in August 2024 that targeted the home and vehicle of a Jewish Florida resident.