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The Missing Man of Kissufim

An Israeli soldier keeps guard next to an entrance to what the Israeli military say is a cross-border attack tunnel dug from Gaza to Israel, on the Israeli side of the Gaza Strip border near Kissufim, Jan. 18, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Jack Guez/Pool

JNS.orgWhat do you yearn for? For Shlomo Mansour, it was not a flashy career or riches, just a peaceful and happy life.

In 1941 Iraqi Muslims, in alliance with the Nazis, launched the Farhud pogrom. The then-leader of the Palestinian Arabs, Amin al-Husseini, was in Iraq and deeply involved in the violence. Shlomo was a 3-year-old celebrating Shavuot with his family in Baghdad. In the ensuing massacre, hundreds of Jews were slaughtered and many more were raped and assaulted. Shlomo’s family thankfully survived.

With no desire to wait around for the next pogrom, nor to live in an increasingly antisemitic country, the Mansour family joined over 100,000 other Iraqi Jews and moved to Israel. Jews were one-third of the population of Baghdad on the eve of the Farhud but, within a decade, only a few thousand were left.

Shlomo lived most of his life in the bucolic farming collective of Kissufim, nestled in the Negev desert. For much of the community’s history, the mantra was socialism, with luxuries such as televisions and even disposable diapers considered too bourgeois. People made it their home because they yearned for social and economic equality in a communal setting and to make the desert bloom.

And they did. Established in 1951, the first inhabitants encountered a harsh and unforgiving landscape, a glimpse of which was filmed in 1956. Today, pine forests hug Kissufim, expanded every year on Tu B’Shevat, along with fields of blooming anemones and orchards.

Israelis are relatively familiar with Kissufim. This is not due to the 1,500-year-old archeological sites in the vicinity—complete with Hebrew inscriptions—nor to the 1,700-year-old remains of a church. For many, it is because of the award-winning cult Israeli comedy “Operation Grandma,” based on a true story from director and writer Dror Shaul’s youth in Kissufim. The film even includes a scene with an actor playing the part of Shlomo. Shaul followed this up with his darker but still award-winning film “Sweet Mud,” about his experiences in Kissufim in the 1970s. Topping it all off is Keren Nechmad’s movie “Kissufim.” Filmed on location, it won Best Foreign Film at multiple festivals in 2023.

However, most Israelis are familiar with Kissufim due to the frequent terrorist attacks in the immediate area.

As Shlomo tended chickens and worked in his carpentry shop over the years, he enjoyed the relative tranquility of his life. However, since Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, his neighborhood has become subject to increasing violence.

Palestinian terrorist groups frequently broke ceasefires. Tunnels were found in the vicinity, complete with handcuffs and other equipment for taking hostages. Kites with incendiary devices were flown into the fields, burning in the hot dry summers, causing intense smoke and ruining crops. Rocket attacks increased in frequency, and bomb shelters multiplied like mushrooms after the rain.

Residents adapted to this new reality. In recent years, Kissufim began to grow, peaking at more than 300 people. Israelis from all over were drawn to communal living in this beautiful oasis. Its residents never gave up on investing in peace. They took part in various initiatives, including “Another Voice,” aimed at strengthening connections and technology partnerships with both Israeli Bedouins and Palestinians.

This progressive population celebrated Jewish and secular American holidays alike—from Pride Month to Halloween. They hadn’t even had a chance to take down their sukkahs when, on Oct. 7, 2023—some 82 years after Shlomo survived the Farhoud—he encountered people in his neighborhood on a mission, once again, to slaughter Jews.

Kissufim was a microcosm of the horrors unleashed by Hamas throughout the western Negev. Although the village rented land to an IDF base, on the morning of Oct. 7 it, too, was overwhelmed.

Sgt. Ilay Noam Ben Mucha and Sgt. David Mittelman found themselves on guard duty, facing a horde of 50 terrorists. Fighting to the death, they held off the terrorists for 20 minutes, buying crucial time for the other soldiers to prepare.

The terrorists did not stick to military targets. Impersonating IDF soldiers, they searched door to door for civilians. Ordinary citizens, such as high-tech worker Shai Asher, found themselves heroically repelling dozens of Hamas terrorists in firefights lasting hours.

Shlomo turns 86 today. Unfortunately, it is far from a happy day for him. He holds the distinction of being the oldest person held captive by Hamas. After Shlomo was beaten in his home, he was led away in handcuffs in full view of his wife, who miraculously escaped.

Gina Semiatich, 90, was dragged to her living room and shot in the head. She was perhaps the oldest victim of the Oct. 7 massacre. She had lived in Kissufim since making aliyah from Chile in her early 20s.

Reuven Heinik may have been the last civilian to have been attacked by the terrorist invaders. He was murdered on Oct. 9 while tending to Kissufim’s famished cows. He is survived by his wife and three daughters.

The Zaq family were burned to death as they hugged each other in their home. Tom Godo was murdered on Oct. 8 in front of his wife and children, who managed to escape. They had just recently moved to Kissufim. Thai workers, the breadwinners for their families back home, were slaughtered. Even pet dogs were shot to death during the rampage. These are just a few of too many tragic stories.

Survivors endured hearing screams for hours. Many saw their friends and loved ones suffer. More than 50 children remain traumatized. Some of those hiding went days without food, water or contact with the outside world.

Kissufim is where I spent the first few wonderful years of my life. I didn’t know what a bomb shelter was or how to lock a door. At the age of 5, I would bike alone in the dark from my friend’s house across the kibbutz back to my home. Will children ever know those tranquil evenings with the air soaked with the intoxicating blended aroma of manure and pine?

Kissufim for the time being is no more. The survivors are at a hotel by the Dead Sea and are currently in the process of moving to temporary housing in Omer. They have been touched by people all over the world coming together to help them rebuild through donations from helpkissufim.com or fundraising drives held by various Jewish communities in North America, such as Oak Park Temple in Illinois, the Jewish Federation of Cleveland and JNF Canada.

Shlomo’s wife of 60 years, as well as his children and 15 grandchildren, are longing for his return home. Kissufim, which translates in Hebrew to “yearning,” has taken on a whole new meaning for the Mansour family and millions of others around the world.

Among the remains of Shlomo’s home lies his garden, the plants brown and shriveled after five months without Shlomo’s love. A bullet-riddled ceramic survives. The Hebrew inscription reads: “Life is happy here.”

The post The Missing Man of Kissufim first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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‘Who Is the Biggest Bastard?’ Belgian Politician Equates Israel With Hamas After Refusing Jewish New Year Greeting

Matthias Diependaele, Minister‑President of Flanders, has faced backlash after declining to send a Rosh Hashanah message to Belgium’s Jewish community. Photo: Screenshot

A senior Belgian politician who recently refused to send a Jewish New Year message has once again sparked outrage for equating Israel with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas.

Matthias Diependaele, Minister‑President of Flanders — the Dutch-speaking region in northern Belgium — was speaking before the Flemish Parliament on Tuesday when he argued the world’s lone Jewish state and only democracy in the Middle East was no better morally than an international designated terrorist group.

“How do you explain who is the biggest bastard?” he asked. “On the one hand, you have an innovative, modern country that should be based on Western standards, but uses disproportionate force and commits human rights violations without any compassion. On the other hand, you see a terrorist organization that doesn’t hesitate to hide behind a human shield. Who is the bigger bastard? The one who shoots at children? Or the one who uses them as a human shield? I don’t know. I choose the innocent victims, and I want to think about how best to help them.”

Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the ongoing war with their invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, when they murdered 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages while perpetrating widespread sexual violence. In response, Israel has waged a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.

Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths during its war effort to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication. However, Hamas, which rules Gaza, has in many cases prevented people from leaving, according to the Israeli miitary.

Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

Diependaele belongs to the New Flemish Alliance (N-VA), the same center-right party led by Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever. His parliamentary remarks prompted immediate backlash.

“The Flemish Alliance has completely surrendered to leftist pressure and no longer has a moral compass. He compares a free society and democratic state, existentially threatened, to a gang of murderous Muslim terrorists,” said Sam van Rooy, a lawmaker from the right-wing Vlaams Belang party, according to multiple reports. “This is why I continue responding to the anti-Israeli debate, constantly fed by leftist parties and traditional parties — it causes masks to fall. Israel is a litmus test. Now we know that, unfortunately, Flanders is controlled by a prime minister who cannot distinguish between good and evil.”

Diependaele has even received criticism from other members of Belgium’s five-party federal government coalition.

Sammy Mahdi, head of the Christian Democratic and Flemish party (CD&V), described the remarks in an Instagram post as “shameful” and indicative of “a lack of common sense.”

CD&V and Vooruit, another political party in the coalition, said on Wednesday that Diependaele was not speaking on behalf of the government, according to Belgian media.

Diependaele’s comments came after he declined a request last week by the Belgian Jewish newspaper The Centrale to provide a Rosh Hashanah message. Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, will take place in late September this year.

“After internal deliberation, we regret to inform you that, given the current situation and sensitivities concerning the tensions in the Middle East, we cannot follow up on your request,” the statement from Diependaele’s office read.

“Anything that bears even the slightest connection to this conflict is being closely monitored and examined under a magnifying glass. For that reason, we do not deem it opportune to go into this any further,” it continued.

According to the Jewish newspaper, requesting a Rosh Hashanah greeting from Belgium’s leaders for the country’s Jewish citizens has been a long-standing tradition.

“This year, even that became radioactive,” The Centrale wrote.

Shortly after the newspaper published Diependaele’s response, which drew widespread outrage from Belgium’s Jewish community, the politician rejected claims of antisemitism and attempted to defend his earlier statement.

“My refusal is purely based on the principle that, for more than 15 years in my role as a representative of the people, I have not supported religious activities,” Diependaele wrote in a new letter sent to The Centrale.

“I have also never accepted invitations for the Eid. I have also never taken part in a Te Deum for Catholics,” the Flemsih leader continued. “By this I am in no way passing judgment on any religion or on the people who practice it. It is, however, my conviction that no religion — including my own — has any role to play in the exercise of my mandate.”

However, the paper rejected Diependaele’s new letter, arguing that his shift from “too sensitive right now” to a “timeless principle” was an attempt to mask his initial fear of public backlash.

The World Jewish Congress denounced Diependaele’s actions as a clear act of antisemitism.

“Holding Jews in the Diaspora collectively accountable for the actions of Israel – is antisemitic. To be a political leader, and to refuse to acknowledge the traditions and culture of your country’s Jewish community – because of Israel – is antisemitic,” the organization said in a statement. “What transpired is quite clear: A political leader declined to acknowledge their Jewish citizens because of Israel and the perceived public backlash about engaging with Jews.”

While members of the Belgian government have been pushing for a tougher stance against Israel amid the Gaza war, the country has been less critical of the Israeli military campaign in recent months than other European countries.

In late April, for example, De Wever rejected a journalist’s claim that Israel is committing “genocide” in Gaza and argued it is premature to recognize a “Palestinian state.”

Weeks earlier, Belgium announced it would not enforce the International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over alleged war crimes in Gaza, should he visit Brussels.

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Palestinian Activist Ahed Tamimi Says ‘We Are Fighting the Jews, Not Zionism’

Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi attends the annual festival of Greek Communist Youth in Athens, Greece, Sept. 22, 2018. Photo: REUTERS/Costas Baltas

Palestinian activist Ahed Tamimi said on a podcast earlier this month that she is fighting Jews, not Zionism, and that she wishes for World War III.

“I was raised [to believe] that Judaism means occupation, and today, tomorrow, and a million years from now, I will continue to say that Judaism [should] be presented to the children of Palestine – children of my age and younger – as occupation, and that we are fighting the Jews, not Zionism,” Tamimi, now 24, said on “The Enlightenment Podcast” on YouTube on Aug. 8.

Tamimi’s comments were flagged by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), which reported on and translated her remarks.

“The whole world needs to shut up, when a Palestinian is talking,” she said. “We are superior to the entire world, because we are the only ones in the world fighting injustice, at the expense of our lives, and the expense of our humanity.”

Tamimi continued, “Every night when I go to sleep, I put my head on the pillow, and I pray to God to protect the humanity left inside me, because I don’t want to become a killer. In this West of yours, if a mother screams at her child, he grows up to become a serial killer.”

“I have reached a point where I wish for a World War III. Whoever dies, dies, and whoever lives, lives. The important thing is that we will be over with this. I have reached this point,” she said. “Let the whole world be destroyed, I don’t care. Let them drop nuclear bombs, and destroy the whole world, so it won’t be just the Palestinians.”

These recent comments are the most recent in a long string of radical remarks by Tamimi. In November 2023, she wrote, in an Instagram post, “Come on settlers, we are waiting for you in all the West Bank cities from Hebron to Jenin – we will slaughter you and you will say that what Hitler did to you was a joke.”

Speaking about Israelis who live in the West Bank, she said, “We will drink your blood and eat your skull. Come on, we are waiting for you.”

Tamimi became famous internationally in 2017 when a video of her, then just 16 years old, slapping, kicking, and yelling at Israeli soldiers went viral as a symbol of both Palestinian resistance to Israel, and the asymmetric nature of the conflict. The soldiers did not retaliate but did later arrest her.

Tamimi was convicted on four counts of assaulting an IDF officer and soldier, incitement, and interference with IDF forces in March 2018, and was sentenced to eight months in prison and eight months of probation.

She was released a few months later, in July 2018. Since then, Tamimi has been hailed as a Palestinian human rights activist, received a book deal from Penguin Random House, and consistently received sympathetic coverage from Western news outlets.

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Trump Administration Reaffirms Opposition to Turkey Rejoining F-35 Program

A Lockheed Martin F-35 aircraft is seen at the ILA Air Show in Berlin, Germany, April 25, 2018. REUTERS/Axel Schmidt

The Trump administration has reaffirmed its opposition to Turkey’s rejoining the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter program, citing Ankara’s possession of Russian S-400 missile defense systems.

In a letter sent on Wednesday to US Rep. Chris Pappas (D-NH), a senior State Department official reiterated that Washington remains committed to enforcing the Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act (CAATSA), which penalizes countries with financial ties to Russia’s defense sector.

“The Trump administration is fully committed to protecting US defense and intelligence assets and complying with US law, including CAATSA,” the letter read

The message, signed by Paul Guaglianone of the Bureau of Legislative Affairs, stated that Washington’s position “has not changed” and that Turkey’s continued possession of the Russian-supplied S-400 remains incompatible with US law and defense requirements. The official stressed that the Trump administration was fully committed to protecting American defense and intelligence assets while maintaining its obligations under the National Defense Authorization Act.

Despite the strained relationship, the letter emphasized that Turkey remains a longstanding NATO ally. US officials framed the relationship as critical to the security interests of both countries and signaled a willingness to maintain dialogue with Ankara.

In 2017, despite several US warnings, Ankara purchased the Russian S-400 surface-to-air missile system, leading to Turkey’s expulsion from the multibillion-dollar fighter jet program in 2019.

“The United States seeks to cooperate with Turkey on common priorities and to engage in dialogue to resolve disagreements,” Guaglianone wrote, while maintaining that Washington has “expressed our disapproval of Ankara’s acquisition of the S-400 and clearly conveyed steps that would need to be taken” in the sanctions review process.

The letter came after a bipartisan coalition of more than 40 US lawmakers pressed Secretary of State Marco Rubio earlier this month to prevent Turkey from rejoining the F-35 program, citing ongoing national security concerns and violations of US law. Members of Congress warned that lifting existing sanctions or readmitting Turkey to the US F-35 fifth-generation fighter program would “jeopardize the integrity of F-35 systems” and risk exposing sensitive US military technology to Russia.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan claimed during a NATO summit in June that Ankara and Washington had begun discussing Turkey’s readmission into the program.

Under Section 1245 of the 2020 National Defense Authorization Act, the Pentagon is prohibited from transferring F-35 jets or related technology to Turkey unless Ankara no longer possesses the Russian-made S-400 system and provides assurances it will not acquire such equipment in the future. Because Turkey continues to retain the S-400, US officials are legally barred from approving its participation in the F-35 program.

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