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With their country under fire, Israelis who can’t fight find other ways to help
MODIIN, Israel (JTA) — When Israel’s national emergency service, Magen David Adom, opened a mobile blood donation site in the central Israeli city of Modiin on Tuesday to address the needs of those injured by Hamas’ attacks, the plan was to run a nine-hour emergency blood drive.
But the site was so overwhelmed when over 650 volunteers showed up at the opening that within an hour staffers said they had reached their blood-collecting capacity for the day and urged donors to stop coming.
Not far away, at a shopping center in Maccabim, volunteers collecting supplies for soldiers including soap, shampoo, deodorant, canned tuna, energy bars, underwear, socks, toothbrushes, female hygiene products and toilet paper were bustling with urgency.
Community members dropped off items they’d brought from home or stores, teenagers sorted them, and volunteers loaded them onto trucks and delivered them to soldiers in southern Israel. After a busy Monday, organizers sent out word on Tuesday that volunteers should stop coming to work at the site because there were too many – though they still needed supplies.
Four days after Hamas launched a brutal attack against Israelis with the murders of hundreds of civilians, soldiers and police in areas near the Gaza Strip and heavy rocket bombardments aimed at southern and central Israel, most Israelis appear to be falling into one of two groups: those mobilizing to fight and those trying to support them and the victims.
“I can’t sit and work. I’m a person who feels I need to do something. I can’t watch from the sidelines,” said Assaf Tzur-El, a Modiin resident who collected over $1,000 from friends, work colleagues and members of his synagogue to buy supplies for soldiers. “In this case I’m not doing reserve duty; I can’t for health reasons. There’s not a lot I can do there, so I do what I can.”
His effort began Sunday at the behest of his daughter, Yael Tzur-El, 22, who kicked into gear after reading posts on social media about the soldiers’ needs. She got two local falafel places to donate 80 meals, filled the trunk of her father’s car with food, drinks and salty snacks, and drove to an army gathering point near Rehovot to distribute the food to soldiers waiting to go down south. They handed off the food to security at the gate and within minutes saw soldiers exiting in cars headed southward chomping down on the food they’d brought.
Hundreds of Israelis donate blood in Jerusalem, Oct. 9, 2023. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
The Israeli volunteer efforts span the gamut.
Social workers are showing up at the Dead Sea hotels where evacuees of the Israeli kibbutzim and towns that were attacked are recovering. Residents of central Israel are opening up their homes to fellow citizens who have fled affected areas in the South and towns along Israel’s northern border, near Lebanon, that are now considered at risk of terrorist infiltration.
“I want to invite anyone who needs a place to be my guest,” Noga Brenner Samia, a resident of Telmond, a small town not far from Netanya, said in a video she shared on social media. “I know maybe it’s hard to come into a stranger’s home. But I want to say that none of us are strangers. Nobody today is a stranger. We all are friends; we just haven’t met yet. So whoever needs a place to stay, I have a quiet, pleasant house. I’ve got a lot of available rooms because the kids are in the army or national service.”
Israeli chef Eyal Shani prepared a complimentary lunch on Monday at his Tel Aviv restaurant HaSalon for residents of southern Israel who had been evacuated to a hotel in the city, and the restaurant also prepared hundreds of bagged meals to be sent to soldiers. “With much love and hope for better days,” read a note attached to each bag.
“We wanted to do good for the residents of the South,” said Netanel Rosenberg, a chef who works at the restaurant. “Families came, older people – about a hundred in all. It put a smile on their face.”
A group of Hasidic Orthodox Jews from the desert town of Arad, near Masada, surprised soldiers on a nearby military base with a delivery of dozens of pizza pies. Volunteers launched crowdsourced fundraising efforts for large orders of mobile phone batteries and chargers for soldiers stuck on the front lines. Parents with sons and daughters in the army fielded messages from their children about the need for outdoor mattresses, wearable flashlights and sleeping bag covers to keep their bedding dry from rain. A group calling itself Grilling for the IDF spent a day barbecuing and then delivering the food to soldiers.
“We literally just heard from the boys now that the food that we donated yesterday they got now and they’re so, so happy,” said Noa-Chen Anders, a 15-year old from Modiin who, along with her 14-year-old sister, Miya, organized a food delivery on Monday of six cars full of food to soldiers. “They just put it all on the table and many of them ate for the first time since Friday.”
The efforts are not limited to Israelis. American Jews, too, are mobilizing. Donors in Los Angeles organized a van full of bulletproof vests to be delivered to LAX so they could be loaded on an El Al plane and delivered to Israel. (The Israeli Defense Forces says the army has no shortage of protective equipment but that it takes time to get everything in place; however, soldiers on the ground are complaining of substandard or scanty equipment).
Over 300,000 Israeli reservists have been called up for duty so far.
Because of the logistics involved, they don’t all have beds to sleep in or enough satisfying meals or hygiene supplies. In an army where most soldiers go home every couple of weeks or so, most military bases are not equipped with laundry facilities. And many soldiers left home with little more than the clothes on their back on Saturday in their rush to answer the call of duty while Hamas’ attacks were in full force.
This is the need volunteers are trying to address — so much so, in fact, that supermarkets are running low on items in high demand by soldiers because donors are buying them up in large quantities.
Tzur-El said the biggest sacrifice he has made so far was standing in the supermarket checkout line at Rami Levy, a national discount chain, for over an hour and a half. He might have complained, but then he saw a friend in front of him with a cart and a half piled high with items because he had opened up his home to a family displaced by the war and needed more food.
“There are people doing far more than me,” he said.
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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.