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Rising football star Harry Sheezel could be ‘greatest ever male Jewish athlete in Australia’

MELBOURNE (JTA) — Jews in Australia have seen their community prosper in many areas, from business to the arts to the highest levels of government.

But there is one arena that Aussie Jews have not featured prominently in: Australia’s biggest sport, Australian Rules Football (AFL).

AFL, referred to colloquially as “footy,” is a uniquely Aussie sport, which has been played in some form since teams from Melbourne and Geelong first came together in a paddock in East Melbourne in 1858.

Professional footy is played between two teams of 18 players using an oval ball. Goals are scored when the ball is kicked, airborne, through two tall goalposts set on each end of the oval field. It is similar to rugby but has more players, an oval-shaped pitch and different rules regarding kicking, throwing and tackling.

While many Jews are passionate fans and have been involved with the game’s administration, such as Rabbi Joseph Gutnick, the former president of Melbourne Football club, few Jews have ever played at the highest level of the game.

This has changed with the drafting of a Jewish player, Harry Sheezel, who was selected in November as the 3rd overall pick in the 2022 AFL draft.

A bonafide prodigy, the 18-year-old Sheezel began his footy journey in a local Jewish sporting league, as a member of AJAX (Associated Judaean Athletic Clubs), Australia’s only Jewish football club. Sheezel also graduated from Melbourne’s largest Jewish day school, Mount Scopus Memorial College.

According to Ashley Browne, an Australian sports journalist who wrote a book about Jewish Australian athletes called “People of the Boot,” there have been 11 Jewish football players since 1897.

“It’s very rare for a Jewish player to be drafted to the AFL. It’s been quite incredible,” he said, referring to Sheezel’s meteoric rise. “He spent his whole life at Jewish school. He learned to play football at a Jewish football club. A lot of promising Jewish athletes will go to a [non-Jewish] private school for coaching where there are talent scouts, but Harry stayed at Mount Scopus without having to go to the private school.”

Sheezel is already making a mark. Since debuting in March 2023, he has been ranked in the AFL’s top 10 in disposals — a stat referring to legal touches of the football, which indicates how involved one is in a game (while throwing is allowed in rugby, it isn’t in footy). He set an all-time record for most disposals for a player in their first four professional games (with 127).

After just his first game, his two-year team contract was immediately extended through 2026 and he was nominated for the AFL Rising Star award, which acknowledges the best new player in league competition. The footy season began in March and ends in September.

“You don’t want to get too excited too early, but Harry has the potential to perhaps be our greatest-ever male Jewish athlete in Australia,” said Browne.

Harry Sheezel shown during a match between the Gold Coast Suns and his North Melbourne Kangaroos at Heritage Bank Stadium in Gold Coast, Australia, April 23, 2023. (Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

Mount Scopus, which has produced some famous alumni in its 75-year history — from music industry giant Michal Gudinski to Mark Regev, former Israeli ambassador to the United Kingdom — can now add Harry Sheezel’s name to its list illustrious graduates.

“Clearly his talents were nurtured in many different environments, but I believe that his time playing footy at school was one of them. We have a strong sporting culture and Harry was very much part of that,” said Mount Scopus principal James Kennard.

In Australia, many minority communities have gained a foothold in Australian society though footy. The AFL has produced stellar Australian Aboriginal players and more recently, other players from diverse backgrounds, such as Islam. Newly-arrived refugees have also been able to find new audiences through their footy skills. The league even has a multicultural ambassador program, through which faith leaders and others promote the sport in diverse communities.

As the first Jewish player drafted this century, Sheezel’s rise is a cause for celebration in Australia’s Jewish community.

“To see a young Jewish man, one who is the product of a Jewish school and a Jewish junior football club, be so widely celebrated and applauded is a source of great pride,” said Rabbi Zach Gomo, one of the AFL’s multicultural ambassadors.

“I’ve definitely felt the support from the community since before I got picked up to now, being on an AFL list and playing league football,” Sheezel said in a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency. “It means a lot to have so much support and genuine care from everyone.”

Those who have coached Sheezel along the way know that he has always been extraordinarily gifted at the sport.

“I coached Harry for 5 years at AJAX Junior Football Club alongside his father Dean,” said Jason Wrobel. “He was always a gun footballer. Even as a 5-year-old, doing Auskick [junior football], he was already very talented.”

Each of Sheezel’s matches have attracted a huge number of Jewish fans, including former Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg. While traditionally most Jewish footy fans align with teams that have roots in Melbourne’s historically Jewish suburbs like Carlton, Sheezel was drafted by the North Melbourne Kangaroos, a team that has relatively few fans within the Jewish community.

But this is rapidly changing, and each of North Melbourne’s games now have a large Jewish cheering section. Some of Sheezel’s footy fans have been seen waving Israeli flags, which conveniently align with North Melbourne’s blue and white color scheme.

Those flags caused a brief brouhaha when a complaint about them being waved at the stadium was lodged with the AFL. While the AFL initially advised that in the future Israeli flags would be banned at matches, they quickly walked back this directive by apologizing for the confusion in March and clarifying that Israeli flags were welcome at matches.

Sheezel has also been the brunt of antisemitic comments from other fans, including after the draft.

Dean Sheezel, Harry’s father, doesn’t pay attention to any of the negativity.

“We just ignore that. I don’t give it the time of day. Harry has ignored it too and he doesn’t give it the time of day. He focuses on football, and it doesn’t affect him or us in any way,” he said.

Another problem for the immediate Sheezel family is that they now have to support North Melbourne after 50 years of history supporting Hawthorn, another AFL football team based in a suburb of Melbourne.

“We were mad Hawthorn supporters. We are now fully North Melbourne. You wouldn’t have known I barracked for [supported] Hawthorn for 50 years,” said Dean Sheezel.

Based on the extraordinary start to Harry Sheezel’s footy career, the Sheezel family are likely to be joined by thousands of other Jewish and non-Jewish fans alike.

“Harry Sheezel is going to inspire a generation of young footballers,” said Wrobel. “I think it’s a fantastic example of the path that can be taken for lots of young kids. He is definitely a role model. There are going to be boys and girls trying to follow in his footsteps. In the past there have been some Jewish AFL players, but to achieve this level it was considered, by many, that you couldn’t go to a Jewish school or couldn’t play for a Jewish club. But Harry proves you can, and that is exciting for Jewish kids.”


The post Rising football star Harry Sheezel could be ‘greatest ever male Jewish athlete in Australia’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

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Comparing European, American, and French Roulette at Canadian online casinos

Roulette is the most popular table game at online and land-based casinos alike. You can easily find a seat at the table, place your bets, and hope that the wheel turns in your favour. But you have surely noticed that the roulette section is quite rich, featuring at least a dozen different tables. Most of them come with a different design and different rules. The most popular roulette variants are American Roulette, European, and French Roulette. In this article, we will try to explain the main differences between each one.

French VS European Roulette

We’ll first compare the French versus the European version of roulette since they are the most similar. The layout of the bets and the wheel is basically the same. Even the table layout is pretty much the same at most online casinos. Depending on the provider some differences can be found, like the layout of the table or the order of the numbers of the wheel. But as far as the odds and gameplay are concerned, European and French Roulette are basically the same. 

Both roulette variants have a single 0 on the board and the same number of slots on the wheel and numbers on the table. There are 36 additional numbers you can bet on, along with the standard Red or Black and Odd or Even bets. This means both games come with a house edge of 2.7%. So, the only difference comes from the introduction of two basic rules in French Roulette. 

  • La Partage
  • En Prison

La Partage

This rule applies to even money bets, and in case the ball lands on the 0 slot. The term comes from the French word which means to divide. All even money bets are divided into half, and the player gets one half, while the other half goes to the house. This rule works greatly in your favour, especially if you’re playing on higher bets. 

En Prison

The En Prison bet is also applied to even money bets and only when the ball lands on 0. Instead of counting as a loss, the bets are held on the table for the following spin, and if you win, you get your bet back. Even though you don’t actually win anything extra, the En Prison rule gives you a chance to get your money back without a loss. 

The introduction of these rules lowers the house edge on French Roulette down to 1.35%. This is why many players prefer the French version, as the odds are better for the player. 

French VS American Roulette

The main and pretty much only crucial difference between American and French roulette is the 00 and the layout of the slots on the wheel. The added 00 on the American version means that the house edge is higher. It climbs up to 5.26%, which is almost double the house edge on European Roulette and a massive difference from the 1.35% on the French version. 

Since there is an added 00 number, the layout of the slots on the wheel is different. On the table, the 00 is next to the 0, so it doesn’t make a big difference to the layout of the table. But the rules in American roulette are quite simple. If your number doesn’t come up, you lose the bet. There are no extra rules like in the French version. 

Conclusion 

If you go by the odds alone, it turns out that the best roulette variant to play at Canadian online casinos is French roulette. But this doesn’t mean you will lose more when you play American or European Roulette. Many players prefer to play the American wheel as it’s faster and more exciting. With the right strategy and some luck on your side, you can easily make a profit on any type of roulette game. 

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Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism

niversity of California, Santa Barbara student body president Tessa Veksler on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Instagram

University of California, Santa Barbara student body president Tessa Veksler on Feb. 26, 2024. Photo: Instagram

JNS.org – “Never would I have imagined that I’d need to fight for my right to exist on campus,” laments Shabbos Kestenbaum, a student at Harvard University who is suing the school because “antisemitism is out of control.”

Jewish students have suffered an unrelenting explosion of hate on American higher education campuses—so far with little relief. They have endured antisemitic rhetoric, intimidation, cancellation and violence. But those charged with keeping campuses safe—whether administrators who govern student and faculty behavior or federal agencies responsible for ensuring that schools adhere to civil rights protections—are failing in their jobs.

Many Jewish students have complained to their colleges’ administrators about the injustices. But instead of responding with measures to ensure Jewish students’ safety—like stopping pro-Hamas protestors from hijacking campuses or expelling militants who incite Jew-hatred— administrators have largely shown indifference. In some cases, college authorities have made things worse for Jewish students by appeasing the riotous, pro-Hamas mobs who have been primary perpetrators of Jew-hatred on campus.

Snubbed by college administrators, Jewish students and their supporters have appealed for federal protection, filing Title VI complaints with the US Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights (OCR), the body tasked with enforcing protections under the Civil Rights Act. Unfortunately, the OCR, which has the power to levy severe financial punishments against colleges that neglect students’ Title VI rights, has so far rewarded negligent universities with little more than slaps on the wrist.

Until college and university boards of trustees begin hiring administrators committed to Jewish students’ safety—and until the OCR begins seriously punishing antisemitic perpetrators—we can expect no respite. Safe to say, colleges and universities run by arrogant, apathetic administrators will not change until their jobs and schools’ survival are threatened.

College/university administrators don’t take antisemitism seriously. Their reactions to Jewish students raising concerns about Jew-hatred range from indifference to outright hostility. For example, when Mohammed Al-Kurd, who the Anti-Defamation League says has a record of “unvarnished, vicious antisemitism,” came to speak at Harvard, Shabbos Kestenbaum and other Jewish students complained to administrators.

Rather than cancel Al-Kurd’s appearance, which would have been the appropriate action, the administrators ignored the students’ complaints. “Harvard’s silence was deafening,” Kestenbaum wrote in Newsweek. Kestenbaum said he “repeatedly” expressed concerns to administrators about the antisemitism he experienced, but as his lawsuit alleges, “evidence of uncontrolled discrimination and harassment fell on deaf ears.”

Administrators at Columbia University reacted to Jewish students’ complaints about antisemitism even more cynically. In fact, during an alumni event, several administrators exchanged text messages mocking Jewish students, calling them “privileged” and “difficult to listen to.”

When Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-N.Y.) asked the presidents of Harvard, MIT and the University of Pennsylvania if calling for genocide against Jews violated their schools’ codes of conduct, none could say “yes.” The presidents of Harvard and UPenn have since resigned. Good riddance.

Some college/university administrators have outrageously granted concessions to pro-Hamas students. For instance, Northwestern University agreed to contact potential employers of students who caused campus disruptions to insist they be hired, create a segregated dormitory hall exclusively for Middle Eastern, North African and Muslim students, and form a new investment committee in which anti-Zionists could wield undue influence. Brown University agreed to hold a referendum on divestment from Israel in October.

Similar appeasements were announced at other colleges and universities, including Rutgers, Johns Hopkins, the University of Minnesota and the University of California Riverside.

So far, OCR has failed to take concrete action against antisemitism on campus. This is evident in recent decisions involving the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Michigan. CUNY was ordered to conduct more investigations into Title VI complaints and report further developments to Washington, provide more employee and campus security officer training, and issue “climate surveys” to students.

The University of Michigan also committed to a “climate survey,” as well as to reviewing its case files for each report of discrimination covered by Title VI during the 2023-2024 school year and reporting to the OCR on its responses to reports of discrimination for the next two school years.

Neither institution was penalized financially, even though the Department of Education has the power to withhold federal funds, which most colleges and universities depend on. There are now 149 pending investigations into campus antisemitism at OCR. If these investigations yield toothless results similar to those of CUNY and Michigan, it is highly unlikely that colleges and universities will improve how they deal with antisemitism.

Putting an end to skyrocketing antisemitism on campus involves three things.

First, donors and governments at every level should withhold funds from colleges that fail to hire administrators who will take antisemitism as seriously as they take pronoun offenses or racism directed at people of color.

Second, the OCR must mete out serious consequences to Title VI violators in the form of funding cuts. This may require legislation that specifically mandates withdrawing funding from offending parties. A bill recently introduced by Rep. Nicole Malliotakis (R-N.Y.)—the University Accountability Act—may be ideal, as it is designed to financially penalize institutions that don’t crack down on antisemitism.

Third, if OCR won’t act, Jewish students and their supporters should turn to the courts. Lori Lowenthal Marcus, the legal director of the Deborah Project, a public-interest Jewish law firm, argues that the CUNY settlement demonstrates the futility of going to OCR and that going to court is more likely to produce “a clearly delineated and productive result,” such as punitive and compensatory fines. As of late May, at least 14 colleges and universities are facing lawsuits over their handling of antisemitism on campus since Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre.

As long as college administrators are allowed to ignore antisemitism on campus and as long as OCR and other government institutions fall short in punishing Jew-hatred, antisemitism will continue to plague Jewish students.

The post Universities Must Be Forced to Address Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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Candace Owens Claims US ‘Being Held Hostage by Israel,’ Suggests Zionists Killed JFK

Candace Owens speaks at CPAC on March 2, 2023. Photo: Lev Radin via Reuters Connect

Political commentator Candace Owens claimed on Friday that the US is being held “hostage” by Israel and suggested that AIPAC, the foremost pro-Israel lobbying organization in the US, was behind the assassination of former US President John F. Kennedy.
“It seems like our country is being held hostage by Israel,” Owens, a right-wing provocateur, said during the opening segment of her YouTube show, where she interviewed far-left commentator Briahna Joy Gray.
“I’m going to get in so much trouble for that. I don’t care,” Owens lamented.
Gray, who was the guest for this episode, was recently fired from The Hill‘s TV show, Rising, after aggressively cutting off and rolling her eyes at the sister of an Israeli hostage who said that Hamas sexually assaulted women during the terror group’s Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel and that people should believe those women. Gray, who claimed her firing was politically motivated, had repeatedly cast doubt on the sexual violence perpetrated against Israeli women during the Hamas-led onslaught.
However, Owens said that part of the reasons she was addressing the subject was that people were being fired because they were “not happy … when an innocent Palestinian kid dies” or for “critiquing a foreign nation.”
Also on Friday’s show, Owens claimed US Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) was “wading into some dangerous waters” when, during an interview with host Tucker Carlson, he spoke about how effective the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is at lobbying members of Congress and suggested the group should have to register as a foreign agent that is acting on behalf of Israel.
The reason it was dangerous, Owens said, was because “we know there was once a president that wanted to make AIPAC register, and he ended up shot … so Thomas Massie better be careful.”
Owens was referencing the fact that Kennedy wanted the American Zionist Council, a lobby group, to register as a foreign agent. However, there is no evidence the group had anything to do with Kennedy’s assassination.
Owens and The Daily Wire, which was co-founded by conservative and Jewish political commentator Ben Shapiro, parted ways after Owens flirted with antisemitic conspiracy theories for a number of months, especially following the outbreak of the Israel-Hamas war.
“In all communities there are gangs. In the black community we’ve got the Bloods, we’ve got the Crips. Well, imagine if the Bloods and the Crips were doing horrific things, murdering people, controlling people with blackmail, and then every time a person spoke out about it, the Bloods and the Crips would call those people racist,” Owens said while still at The Daily Wire. “What if that is what is happening right now in Hollywood if there is just a very small ring of specific people who are using the fact that they are Jewish to shield themselves from any criticism. It’s food for thought, right? … this appears to be something that is quite sinister.”
Additionally, after getting into a spat with an outspoken and controversial rabbi, Shmuley Boteach, she said, “Are you going to kill me? Are you going to kill me, because I refuse to kowtow to you, and I think it’s weird that you and your daughter are promoting and selling sex toys, that’s why I deem you an ‘unholy rabbi?’”
“You gross me out. You disgust me. I am a better person than you, and I do not fear you,” Owens continued.
The list of controversial incidents involving Owens continued to grow longer with time. In one case, she “liked” an X/Twitter post that promoted the antisemitic “blood libel.” The post read, in response to Boteach, “Rabbi, are you drunk on Christian blood again?”
The “blood libel” is a medieval anti-Jewish slur which falsely claims that Jews use the blood of non-Jewish children in their religious rituals.

The post Candace Owens Claims US ‘Being Held Hostage by Israel,’ Suggests Zionists Killed JFK first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

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