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This Bedouin bus driver is credited with saving 30 people from the outdoor party massacre
(JTA) — Every day at 4 p.m., Youssef Ziadna receives a phone call from a psychologist. Every evening, he sits on his balcony drinking coffee, smoking, and replaying in his mind the worst things he has ever seen.
The daily routine would have been unimaginable for Ziadna, a 47-year-old Bedouin Israeli resident of Rahat, just two weeks ago. A minibus driver, he filled his days ferrying passengers around Israel’s southern region.
But on Oct. 7, he was called to pick up one of his regular customers and raced headlong in Hamas’ brutal attack on Israel. He ended up rescuing 30 people, all Jewish Israelis, from the massacre at the outdoor party near Israel’s southern border, dodging bullets and veering off-road to bring them to safety.
“I would never wish on anyone to see what I saw,” Ziadna told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “This is trauma for my whole life. When I sit alone and recollect, I can’t help the tears.”
Ziadna has joined an emerging pantheon of heroes who were able to carry out daring feats of rescue during a chaotic, dangerous and bloody attack in which thousands of Israelis were killed, wounded or taken captive. One of the people he saved posted about him on social media shortly afterwards.
Ziadna is “a larger-than-life man to whom we will forever be indebted,” Amit Hadar wrote in Hebrew in a post that was shared widely starting on Oct. 7. “When, with God’s help, we reach better days, save the number for the next time you need a ride — if anyone deserves it, this person does.”
Yet at the same time, Ziadna is grieving a cousin who was murdered during the attack and worrying about four other family members who remain missing. He also received a threat from someone who claimed to be affiliated with Hamas, vowing retaliation for Ziadna’s efforts to save Jews after they were recounted in a local newspaper. And he is concerned that his fellow Bedouins, a minority that remains marginalized in many ways within Israeli society, are at risk given the lack of bomb shelters in Rahat.
The stress of it all has already sent him to the emergency room with chest pains — but he is determined to press on.
“When I think about it, I ask how did we get out of there,” Ziadna recalled Monday, 10 days after the massacre. “I guess it’s fate that we’re meant to live longer in this world.”
Ziadna started Oct. 7 early, driving Hadar and eight of his friends from the town of Omer to the rave at Kibbutz Re’im at 1 a.m. He left with the instruction to pick them up the following day at 3 p.m.
But at 6 a.m. he received a call for help from Hadar. Believing that the call for help was due to a code red for incoming rockets fired from Gaza, Ziadna raced to his bus.
“I didn’t wash my face, I didn’t even get dressed,” Ziadna said. “This is standard over here in the south.”
A dead body on the grounds of the Tribe of Nova music festival after the Oct. 7, 2023, deadly attack by Hamas. (Ilia Yefimovich/picture alliance via Getty Images)
But as soon as he reached the Sa’ad junction, a mile away from Kfar Aza, one of the Gaza border communities that experienced some of the worst horrors of the Oct. 7 massacre, a new picture began to emerge. A man who had escaped from the party ran towards him, furiously signaling to Ziadna to make a U-turn. Ziadna, not comprehending, exited the minibus to speak to him. Moments later, Ziadna, the man and a woman who accompanied him were caught in gunfire.
“Bullets were flying everywhere,” Ziadna said, adding that the three dived into a ditch on the side of the road. He said, “I raised my head and the guy told me, ‘Why are you doing that? You’ll get a bullet in your brain!’”
Ziadna told the disbelieving couple that he would continue on to the site of the party. “I stared death in the face,” he said. “But I knew I couldn’t give up on my missions. I will go and rescue them.”
Navigating through bullet fire, Ziadna managed to reach his passengers at the scene of the party in Re’im where an inferno of bodies, blood and bullets reigned. “I told them to bring as many as possible,” he said. Twenty-four additional people crammed into the 14-seater vehicle, and on the way, they rescued another couple, one of whom had been shot in the leg. Ziadna says he also caught sight of a motorized Hamas paraglider hovering above, spraying bullets with a machine gun at revelers.
Under constant gunfire, the minibus sped away. Ziadna’s intimate knowledge of the terrain proved lifesaving, and he was able to cut a route through dirt roads, avoiding the main thoroughfare where terrorists were ambushing escapees. Many other cars took his lead and followed the minibus, he said.
Cries of terror and anguish filled his minibus as its occupants nursed their wounds and tried desperately to call loved ones amid jammed cellular signals. They arrived at a roadblock manned by police. Saying there was no way of getting to the hospital to treat the wounded woman because the route was overrun with terrorists, an officer directed them to a nearby kibbutz, Tze’elim, where they remained until the late afternoon when the Home Front Command finally said it was safe to leave.
Hadar confirmed Ziadna’s account but declined to speak further to JTA.
Four hundred people from the party took refuge in the kibbutz and, according to Ziadna, were looked after well. “They gave us everything we needed, food, chargers and even cigarettes,” he said.
A member of the Bedouin community stands next to vehicles destroyed by a rocket fired from the Gaza Strip in the village of Arara in the Negev Desert, Oct. 14, 2023. (Yuri Cortez/AFP via Getty Images)
Finally, Ziadna made it back to Rahat where his home, like the overwhelming majority in the city, has no reinforced safe room. Home to 75,000 Bedouins, Rahat has only 10 public bomb shelters — a fact that its mayor, Ata Abu-Madighem, has lamented for years. On Tuesday, Abu-Madighem filed a request for 60 mobile shelters.
According to Abu-Madighem, who met with Ziadna to thank him several days after the attack together with representatives from the army and the police, three Rahat residents were killed on Oct. 7, two of whom were the mayor’s relatives. One was Ziadna’s: Abed Ruhman was murdered by Hamas terrorists while sleeping in a tent on Zikim beach, Ziadna said.
Seven people from Rahat were wounded, including a second-grader who was shot in the chest. A further five are reported missing, four from the Ziadna family, Abu-Madighem said. (The hundreds of known hostages in Gaza include Bedouins, and Hamas has also been holding an Israeli Bedouin, Hisham al-Sayed, captive since 2015, when he wandered by foot into Gaza.)
The biggest risk, the mayor said, is to those who live in unrecognized tent villages in the region, which have no protection at all from projectiles.
“The state must make a mental switch and start respecting the Bedouin community. It’s also foolish to continue to refuse to plug into the massive manpower we have here,” he told JTA.
Ziadna hopes his actions will prompt greater appreciation and support for the Bedouin community. “After this, the government needs to do a better job of looking after us because we’re also part of this nation,” he said. “We are one people — we are Israelis. We live here together and we need to go hand in hand.”
For now, he is seeking to bolster his mental health and to put aside concerns about the death threat he received. “He told me, ‘You saved 30 Jews’ lives. I’m from Gaza but don’t worry, we’ll get to you,’” Ziadna recounted.
Abu-Madighem confirmed the call to JTA and Ziadna said the Israel Police are investigating its source; police spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment. Other Israeli Arabs who have gained public attention for helping Jewish victims of the attack have faced retribution alongside plaudits.
More substantial than the threats, Ziadna said, have been an overwhelming number of messages of support, which he said have come from all over the world. He made a public appearance alongside Yair Golan, a retired general and former lawmaker who engaged in feats of rescue of his own. He has also been invited by Israel’s embassy in Dubai to tell his story to an Emirati audience.
There, he will share a story that could easily have ended in tragedy.
“I had an option to go back. A weaker man may have done a U-turn at that junction,” Ziadna said. “But I said no way, I will throw myself at death if it means I can save lives.”
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The post This Bedouin bus driver is credited with saving 30 people from the outdoor party massacre appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Maccabi Tel Aviv Plays Soccer Game in Empty Hungarian Stadium Amid Security Concerns After Amsterdam Violence
Soccer Football – Europa League – Besiktas v Maccabi Tel Aviv – Nagyerdei Stadion, Debrecen, Hungary – November 28, 2024 General view before the match as the teams and match officials line up. Photo: Reuters/Bernadett Szabo
The Israeli soccer team Maccabi Tel Aviv played a UEFA Europa League match on Thursday against their Turkish rivals Besiktas in an empty stadium in Hungary, which was closed to supporters likely due to security concerns following the recent attack on Israeli soccer fans in Amsterdam.
Maccabi won the match 3-1 in the Nagyerdei Stadium in Debrecen, Hungary, during the fifth week of the UEFA Europa League. Gavriel Kanichowsky secured Israel’s lead in the 23rd minute with a goal, but Besiktas struck back in the 38th minute with a goal by Rafa Silva to tie the score. Maccabi Tel Aviv took the lead again right before halftime by scoring another goal in added time. The Israeli club finished 3-1 with Weslley Patati’s goal in the 81st minute.
Groups of police patrolled outside the venue and the game concluded with no incident, according to the Associated Press.
On Nov. 11, days after the attack against Maccabi Tel Aviv fans in Amsterdam, the European soccer body UEFA announced that this week’s match between Maccabi Tel Aviv and Besiktas, which was originally scheduled to take place in Istanbul, would be moved to Hungary “following a decision by the Turkish authorities not to stage it in Turkey.” Hungary, which has hosted several home games for Israel’s national soccer team since the start of the Israel-Hamas war last year, agreed to host the match and UEFA said it “will be played behind closed doors following a decision of the local Hungarian authorities.”
Maccabi Tel Aviv coach Zarko Lazetic said after Thursday’s match that playing in front of an empty stadium was hard for the team. “We play football because of the fans, to give them some pleasure, some excite(ment) and to be together,” he explained, as reported by the AP.
The match on Thursday was Maccabi Tel Aviv’s first game in Europe since its fans were violently attacked in The Netherlands during the late hours of Nov. 7 and into the early hours of the following morning. After the team competed against the Dutch club Ajax in a UEFA Europa League game in Amsterdam, anti-Israel gangs chased Israeli fans of Maccabi Tel Aviv through the streets of Amsterdam, ran them over with cars, physically assaulted them, and taunted Israeli soccer fans with anti-Israel and pro-Palestinian slogans such as “Free Palestine.” Five people were reportedly hospitalized for injuries.
Leaders in Israel and Europe condemned the premeditated and coordinated attack as antisemitic. Amsterdam’s mayor called the attackers “antisemitic hit-and-run squads” and said the assailants were going “Jew hunting.” Police in Amsterdam said they have already identified, investigated, and even arrested 45 suspects in connection to the incident.
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Preacher Slammed for ‘Appalling’ Remarks at Irish Memorial, Accusing Israel of Viewing Itself as a ‘Master Race’
A man walks past graffiti reading ‘Victory to Palestine’ after Ireland has announced it will recognize a Palestinian state, in Dublin, Ireland, May 22, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Hannah McKay
An Irish cleric has come under fire for delivering an antisemitic memorial sermon in which he suggested that Israelis and Jews see themselves as a “master race” that justifies “eliminating” other groups “because they don’t count.”
Reverend Canon David Oxley delivered the sermon last week at St. Patrick’s Cathedral in Dublin during a Remembrance Sunday service attended by Irish President Michael Higgins and other high-ranking dignitaries.
Ironically, Oxley had previously revealed familial ties to the Nazis in a sermon delivered at the same event five years ago.
In last week’s remarks, Oxley contended that Israel’s war against the Hamas terrorist group in Gaza represented “the horrible blasphemy of the master race in action.”
“This takes different forms in different times and places, but it is the same horrible idea, that one group of people is intrinsically more valuable than any other. Once that is accepted, then the elimination of others follows as a matter of course — because they don’t count,” he said.
Oxley’s comments sparked strong condemnation from both Israeli officials and Jewish leaders in Ireland.
Israel’s embassy in Ireland said Oxley had “hijacked” the memorial service in favor of an “outrageous and dangerous … libel on the State of Israel.”
The statement published on X also said the diatribe was “divorced from reality” and “willfully ignored the complexities of the Middle East.”
Ireland’s Chief Rabbi Yoni Wieder condemned the Anglican establishment for allowing such remarks, saying it was “an abrogation of moral and religious leadership that such a speech could be delivered by a representative of the Church of Ireland.”
“This type of inflammatory, hateful rhetoric has been used by politicians here countless times over the past year, and we’ve seen it constantly across mainstream Irish media. Now it’s gone beyond politics and journalism and is coming from a senior religious figure, a minister in a Christian Church,” Wieder told The Algemeiner.
“The anti-Israel narrative in Ireland now regularly spills over into overt antisemitism,” he added.
In an open letter addressed to Oxley, Wieder condemned the preacher’s “appalling” accusations.
“You fail to grasp the depth of offense invoked by suggesting that Jewish people have adopted the same murderous outlook that was perpetuated against them by the Nazis,” Wieder wrote.
He also slammed the Anglican cleric’s failure to make any mention of the threats posed by the Hamas and Hezbollah terrorist groups, which “are explicitly committed to destroying Israel and murdering Jews.”
“You claim Israel has a policy of targeting schools, hospitals, and mosques, yet you fail to mention that Hamas purposefully positions itself within and beneath such civilian infrastructure — and they do so precisely because they know it will deter attacks against them. Hamas have openly stated that it is their strategy to place civilians in harm’s way,” the chief rabbi continued.
Wieder called the destruction in Gaza as well as the loss of life “an unbearable humanitarian catastrophe.”
“You and I are united by a desire to see an end to this heartbreaking tragedy. But the situation is also fraught with complexities, which cannot be ignored. Would it not be more honest to acknowledge this, rather than to proffer an simplistic and partisan perspective?” he wrote.
During a 2019 address at the same event, Oxley reportedly disclosed his wife’s ties to the Nazis, according to a report published this week by the British Jewish Chronicle, which cited an article published at the time in the Irish Independent.
In that sermon, also delivered in the presence of the Irish president, Oxley shared that his wife, Amalia, was German and that her family included members who fought for the Third Reich.
“It’s not everyone who can boast that their mother-in-law had Adolf Hitler as a godfather. It’s not everyone who would want to,” he quipped, before going on to praise the Irish citizens who opposed Nazism.
Oxley told the Jewish Chronicle that his comments, which did not represent the Church of Ireland, contained “no hatred” and he stood by them.
“In delivering my sermon, I speak only for myself. I do not speak on behalf of the Church of Ireland, or of St Patrick’s Cathedral. As our church does not believe in infallibility, it is quite conceivable that I am mistaken. No one is obliged to agree with me. However, I am prepared to stand over my remarks,” he said.
“There was no hatred in my sermon, except a hatred of all theories that make one group of people more valuable than another, so that some become expendable,” Oxley added.
A 2021 report by antisemitism researcher David Collier found that traditional Christian attitudes play a significant role in shaping antisemitism in Ireland, with Christian NGOs often playing a role in perpetuating and spreading these sentiments.
“[M]uch of the antisemitism in Ireland appears to be driven from the top down. Regrettably, this certainly seems to be the state of affairs at the moment. Words carry weight, and political and religious leaders in particular ought to remember this,” Wieder said.
He also condemned the Church of Ireland for not distancing itself from Oxley’s comments.
A spokesperson from St Patrick’s Cathedral told the Jewish Chronicle: “In St Patrick’s Cathedral we continue to pray daily for peace in all the countries of the Middle East. We pray fervently for an end to all wars and the human suffering that they bring. Everybody, of all faiths, is welcomed in St Patrick’s Cathedral.”
In Europe, Ireland has been among the fiercest critics of Israel since Oct. 7 of last year, when Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists invaded the Jewish state from neighboring Gaza. The terrorists murdered 1,200 people, wounded thousands more, and abducted over 250 hostages in their rampage, the deadliest single-day massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Israel responded with an ongoing military campaign in Hamas-ruled Gaza aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling the terrorist group’s military and governing capabilities.
Earlier this month, the Irish parliament passed a non-binding motion saying that “genocide is being perpetrated before our eyes by Israel in Gaza.” As the measure passed, Irish Foreign Minister Micheal Martin said that the government intended to join South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) before the end of the year.
Around the same time, Ireland accepted the appointment of a full Palestinian ambassador for the first time, confirming that Jilan Wahba Abdalmajid would step up from her current position as Palestinian head of mission to Ireland.
In May, Ireland officially recognized a Palestinian state, prompting outrage in Israel, which described the move as a “reward for terrorism.” According to The Irish Times, Ireland is due to have its presence in Ramallah in the West Bank upgraded from a representative office to a full embassy.
Israel’s Ambassador in Dublin Dana Erlich said at the time of Ireland’s recognition of “Palestine” that Ireland was “not an honest broker” in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
More recently, Irish Prime Minister Simon Harris last month called on the European Union to “review its trade relations” with Israel after the Israeli parliament passed legislation banning the activities in the country of UNRWA, the United Nations agency responsible for Palestinian refugees, because of its ties to Hamas.
Recent anti-Israel actions in Ireland came shortly after the Institute for Monitoring Peace and Cultural Tolerance in School Education (Impact-se), an Israeli education watchdog group, released a new report revealing Irish school textbooks have been filled with negative stereotypes and distortions of Israel, Judaism, and Jewish history.
Antisemitism in Ireland has become “blatant and obvious” in the wake of Hamas’s Oct. 7 onslaught, according to Alan Shatter, a former member of parliament who served in the Irish cabinet between 2011 and 2014 as Minister for Justice, Equality and Defense.
Shatter told The Algemeiner in an interview earlier this year that Ireland has “evolved into the most hostile state towards Israel in the entire EU.”
Just last month, an Irish official, Dublin City Councilor Punam Rane, claimed during a council meeting that Jews and Israel control the US economy, arguing that is why Washington, DC does not oppose Israel’s war against Hamas.
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Candace Owens Barred From New Zealand After Facing Similar Ban From Australia for Comments on Jews, Holocaust
Right-wing political commentator Candace Owens speaks during an event held by national conservative political movement ‘Turning Point’, in Detroit, Michigan, US, June, 14, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Rebecca Cook
Right-wing American political commentator and YouTube content creator Candace Owens has been denied a visa to enter New Zealand because she was banned from the nearby country Australia, immigration officials reportedly said on Thursday.
Owens was scheduled to embark on her first speaking tour across Australia and New Zealand in February and March of next year. The tour includes a stop in Auckland, New Zealand, on Feb. 28 and tickets remain on sale online.
Australia rejected her request for a visa last month. Australian Immigration Minister Tony Burke said the decision was made because of Owens’s past remarks, including her apparent denial that Nazis forcibly did medical experiments on Jews in concentration camps during World War II.
“From downplaying the impact of the Holocaust with comments about [Nazi doctor and war criminal Josef] Mengele through to claims that Muslims started slavery, Candace Owens has the capacity to incite discord in almost every direction,” Burke said at the time. “Australia’s national interest is best served when Candace Owens is somewhere else.
Jock Gilray, a spokesperson for New Zealand’s immigration agency, said on Thursday that Owens was refused an entertainer’s work permit for New Zealand because visas legally cannot be granted to someone who have been banned from another country, The Associated Press reported on Thursday. New Zealand officials did not refer to Owens’s past comments when announcing the denial of her visa.
Owens and the Australia-based promoter behind her speaking tour, Rocksman, have yet to comment on news regarding the ban from New Zealand but said in October that they will file a legal appeal to a federal judge in response to the ban from Australia. Owens commented on Burke’s decision to deny her a visa for Australia and blamed it partially on the alleged influence of the global “Zionist media empire.”
Owens, who has over 3 million subscribers on YouTube and hosts the podcast titled “Candace,” has promoted conspiracy theories and made numerous antisemitic comments about Israel, Jews, Zionists, and the Holocaust. She has also made controversial comments against Black Lives Matter, feminism, vaccines, and immigration.
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