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There are 240 hostages in Gaza. One is Uriel Baruch.
Uriel Baruch works in construction, selling sand and other supplies to contractors. At his wedding in Jerusalem six years ago, guests danced until 3 a.m. He is 35 years old, a fan of techno music, and the sort of person who invites someone dining alone in a restaurant to join his table.
For his son Ofek’s 5th birthday yesterday, there was a blue-and-white balloon arch, a mural featuring a life-size unicorn and many, many cakes.
The only thing missing was Baruch. He has not been home since Oct. 7, when Israeli officials believe he was abducted by Hamas terrorists from the Nova Music Festival.
“We are wearing the shirts with pictures of Uriel — we want him to stay with us, so we have the pictures on the shirts,” Baruch’s father-in-law, Dan Anteby, told me.
“We prepare ourselves for everything. I hope he will come back alive, but you don’t know.”
I’d never heard or seen Baruch’s name until last Sunday, when I covered a vigil for the hostages in Montclair, the New Jersey suburb where I’ve lived since 2016.
Local Israeli ex-pats spent more than three hours meticulously setting a long Shabbat-themed table on the street I walk down to get to the train into the city, between two cafes where I sometimes meet friends for breakfast. The plastic plates and goblets were taped down in case of wind. There were bottles of grape juice, candles, fresh red roses and 240 empty chairs, each with the photo, name, age and nationality of a hostage believed held in Gaza.
The kids’ places had highchairs and sippy cups.
The idea of these displays — whether at the Tel Aviv art museum or the Lincoln Memorial — is to shock viewers with the staggering number of innocent people who were abducted. It is effective but also overwhelming. I walked slowly around the table before the vigil began, trying to absorb the information on each of the 240 KIDNAPPED signs, trying to imagine each individual’s story. But the faces blurred together in my mind; I couldn’t remember the names.
Then the organizers handed out wallet-sized cards, each with a single hostage’s picture, name and age on one side, and a short prayer on the other. Rabbi Elliott Tepperman, who leads the Reconstructionist synagogue in town, urged us to each tuck our card into a pocket or tack it up on a bulletin board, to stick it in the frame of a bathroom mirror or carry it in our wallet.
To learn whatever we could about the person — and to tell others about them.
“Our tradition teaches that every human life is holy — that to take a single life is to destroy the world, and to save a single life is to save the world,” Tepperman said, referencing one of the most cited lines from the Talmud.
“Keep these cards in the way you might treat a sacred text,” he added. “It might not be possible to think about all 240, but to think about this one person, to pray the prayer. To do what we can to save that person and that world.”
My card said Uriel Baruch, 35 years old, kidnapped by Hamas.
He is the third of four sons who grew up in Tiberias, Kfar Saba and Jerusalem. He is the father of two boys; the older one, Shalev, is 7. And he is the husband of Rachel, a hairdresser who also works as a secretary at the catering company where Anteby, her father, is a chef. She has not been to either job since Oct. 7.
“She stopped crying,” Anteby told me, because she has run out of tears. “She is doing nothing, nothing. She is waiting at home. And looking for him.”
Nobody is even sure Uriel Baruch is in Gaza.
He went to the all-night desert dance party in Kibbutz Re’im with a neighbor. Around 9:30 or 10 a.m. on what Israelis now call Black Shabbat, Anteby said, the family saw videos on social media showing Baruch’s car — “and his friend dead inside the car.”
“And we saw Uriel on the ground, but we don’t know if he’s alive, dead, shot, not,” he told me. “It’s very short,” he said of the video clip. “We saw him near the car on the ground. Later, he disappeared.”
For the next 11 days, Anteby said, “nobody tells us nothing.” Uriel’s brothers and Rachel went “to all the hospitals in Israel,” he said, imagining — hoping — that he might be lying in one of them, unconscious and without identification.
“In the north, in the south, in the west, in the east,” Anteby said. “In Beersheva, in Ashkelon, in Ahdod, in Haifa, in Jerusalem, all the hospitals, to look, maybe he’s there.”
He was not.
Eleven days after the attack, Anteby said, the army finally called, and then came to see the family. They had identified the body of the friend Baruch had been with. They’d found no blood on the road next to the car where Baruch had been lying, so they thought he was alive. But there were no photos or video showing him being taken.
The officials said Baruch was “missing,” not that that was news. Another week passed, Anteby said, before Baruch was officially added to the list of the kidnapped. Remember when the numbers kept going up?
Anteby, who is 60, said Baruch is more like a son than a son-in-law, always asking if he can help the older man with things around the house. He recalled the vacations he takes the young family on every year to a hotel on the Sea of Galilee. He said Baruch once told him he cannot handle seeing blood.
And he told me this story: About a week before the attack, before the start of the Sukkot holiday, Uriel and his brother Ohad — who was visiting from his home in New York — went to a restaurant for dinner, and saw a woman sitting alone. Uriel went over to the woman and asked why she was alone. The woman said she was celebrating her birthday.
“He said, ‘Alone?’ She said, ‘Yes, this is my life,’’’ the father-in-law recounted. “He said, ‘No, you’re not alone.’ He said come to my table. He got a cake for her, they sang ‘Happy Birthday to You,’ she said thank you and cried.”
Ofek, Baruch’s son, was also not alone for his birthday. Volunteers poured into Giv’at Ze’ev, a settlement of about 20,000 people a few miles from Jerusalem in the occupied West Bank, to make the party and dozens of children attended. There was a bouncy house, music, games, bundles of snacks adorned with Ofek’s picture, and a cake with a picture of Noa Kirel, an Israeli pop star who placed third in Eurovision last spring with a song called “Unicorn.”
Anteby said Kirel herself was coming to sing to Ofek this weekend.
It will be hard to top this birthday. Unless, when Ofek turns 6, Uriel is there to celebrate with him. No unicorns necessary.
Uriel Baruch’s son, Ofek, celebrated his 5th birthday this weekend. Courtesy of Dan Anteby
The post There are 240 hostages in Gaza. One is Uriel Baruch. appeared first on The Forward.
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A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai
Around 200 people gathered for a pro-Israel demonstration at University of Toronto’s downtown campus at King’s College Circle—which was the site of one of Canada’s largest pro-Palestinian encampments during May […]
The post A pro-Israel rally at the University of Toronto was headlined by Columbia University professor Shai Davidai appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters
A statue of George Washington tied with a Palestinian flag and a keffiyeh inside a pro-Hamas encampment is pictured at George Washington University in Washington, DC, US, May 2, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Craig Hudson
The campus group National Students for Justice in Palestine (NSJP) is waging a campaign to gut Jewish life in academia, calling for the abolition of Hillel International campus chapters, the largest collegiate organization for Jewish students in the world.
“Over the past several decades, Hillel has monopolized for Jewish campus life into a pipeline for pro-Israel indoctrination, genocide-apologia, and material support to the Zionist project and its crimes,” a social media account operating the campaign, titled #DropHillel, said in a manifesto published last week. “Across the country, Hillel chapters have invited Israeli soldiers to their campuses; promoted propaganda trips such as birthright; and organized charity drives for the Israeli military.”
It continued, “Such actions reveal Hillel’s ideological and material investment in Zionism, despite the organization’s facade as being simply a ‘Jewish cultural space.’”
DropHillel claims to be “Jewish-led,” although only a small minority of Jews oppose Zionism, and the group has been linked to and promoted by Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapters.
Hillel International has provided Jewish students a home away from home during the academic year. However, NSJP says it wants to “weaken” it and “dismantle oppression.”
The idea has already been picked up by pro-Hamas student groups at one college, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, according to The Daily Tar Heel, the school’s official student newspaper. On Oct. 9, it reported, a member of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) unveiled the idea for “no more Hillel” during a rally which, among other things, demanded removing Israel from UNC’s study abroad program and adopting the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement. Addressing the comments to the paper days later, SJP, which has been linked to Islamist terrorist organizations, proclaimed that shuttering Hillel is a coveted goal of the anti-Zionist movement.
“Zionism is a racist supremacist ideology advocating for the creation and sustenance of an ethnostate through the expulsion and annihilation of native people,” the group told the paper. “Therefore, any group that advocates for a supremacist ideology — be it the KKK, the Proud Boys, Hillel, or Heels for Israel — should not be welcome on campus.”
The #DropHillel campaign came amid an unprecedented surge in anti-Israel incidents on college campuses, which, according to a report published last month by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), have reached crisis levels.
Revealing a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena, the report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.
“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” the report said. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US-designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”
The report added that 10 campuses accounted for 16 percent of all incidents tracked by ADL researchers, with Columbia University and the University of Michigan combining for 90 anti-Israel incidents — 52 and 38, respectively. Harvard University, the University of California – Los Angeles, Rutgers University New Brunswick, Stanford University, Cornell University, and others filled out the rest of the top 10. Violence, it continued, was most common at universities in the state of California, where anti-Zionist activists punched a Jewish student for filming him at a protest.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Not Welcome’: New Pro-Hamas Campaign Aims to Abolish Hillel Campus Chapters first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza
Former US President Donald Trump is seen at a campaign event in South Carolina. Photo: Reuters/Sam Wolfe
The “Muslims for Trump” organization has officially launched initiatives to help elect Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump to the White House, arguing that he would be more likely to end the war in Gaza than Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris.
In a statement released on Monday, the group said it will focus on recruiting Muslim voters in key battleground states such as Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, and North Carolina. The organization both praised Trump for his supposed “peace-focused” approach to ending the war in Gaza and condemned Harris for helping facilitate a so-called “genocide.”
“After meeting with President Trump, it was clear to me he is the right leader for Muslims to get behind,” Rabiul Chowdhury, co-founder of Muslims for Trump and former co-chair of the “Abandon Harris Movement,” said in a statement.
Chowdhury added that during his discussions with Trump, the former president vowed to “ending the escalation of wars and bringing peace to war-torn regions.” In contrast to Trump’s promise to stop the “bloodshed” in Gaza, he claimed, Harris has “recklessly pushed us toward World War III.”
Chowdhury, a self-described “peace advocate,” urged the Muslim community not to fall victim to supposed “misinformation” campaigns by the media and Democrats that paint the former president as hostile to immigrants. He claimed that the former president’s focus is on “ending war, not dividing families through false immigration claims.”
Samra Luqman, chair of the Michigan chapter of Muslims for Trump, underscored the need to punish the Biden administration for what he described as supporting a “genocide” in Gaza.
“The goal of this election is to hold the Biden administration accountable for a genocide. No amount of fear mongering or scare tactics will persuade my community into forgiving the mutilation, live-burning, and genocide of over 200,000 people,” he said.
According to data produced by the Hamas-controlled Gaza Health Ministry, roughly 40,000 people have died in Gaza since the war began last October. Israel has said that its forces have killed about 20,000 Hamas terrorists during its military campaign.
Israel says it has gone to unprecedented lengths 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.
On the organization Muslims for Trump’s official website, it claims that the Abraham Accords, a series of historic, Trump administration-brokered normalization agreements between Israel and several countries in the Arab world, helped stabilize the Middle East. It also says that had Trump not lost the 2020 presidential race, the so-called “genocide” could have been prevented.
“Under Trump’s leadership, the Abraham Accords were brokered, fostering peaceful relations between Israel and several Arab countries. Supporters might argue that Trump’s diplomacy prioritized peace and stability in the Middle East, reducing the likelihood of large-scale conflicts like genocide,” the group wrote.
Over the course of his campaign, Trump has repeatedly touted his support for the Jewish state during his singular term in office. Trump has boasted about his administration’s work in fostering the Abraham Accords, promising to resume efforts to strengthen them if he were to win November’s US presidential election.
Harsh US sanctions levied on Iran under Trump crippled the Iranian economy and led its foreign exchange reserves to plummet. Trump and his Republican supporters in the US Congress have criticized the Biden administration for renewing billions of dollars in US sanctions waivers, which had the effect of unlocking frozen funds and allowing the country to access previously inaccessible hard currency.
Trump also recognized Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights, a strategic region on Israel’s northern border previously controlled by Syria, and also moved the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, recognizing the city as the Jewish state’s capital.
Despite Harris’s repeated efforts to woo Muslim voters, polling data indicates that the demographic has made a dramatic swing away from the Democratic Party. Polling data from the Arab American Institute reveals that Trump slightly edges Harris among Muslim voters by a margin of 42 to 41 percent. A report from the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR) shows that Green Party candidate Jill Stein leads Harris and Trump with Muslim voters in the key swing states of Michigan, Wisconsin, and Arizona.
The post ‘Muslim for Trump’ Launches Initiatives in Key Battleground States, Says Candidate Will Bring ‘Peace’ to Gaza first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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