Connect with us
Seder Passover
Israel Bonds RRSP

RSS

1 dead, 17 injured in attack in Raanana, Tel Aviv suburb with large Anglo community

(JTA) — One woman was killed and 17 injured in a terror attack in the Tel Aviv suburb of Raanana on Monday, a rare fatal incident in central Israel amid the country’s war in Gaza.

Two Palestinian men carried out the attack on Monday afternoon, stabbing people and ramming others with cars in Raanana, a suburb of about 75,000 north of Tel Aviv with a large population of English-speaking immigrants. The woman who was killed was identified as Edna Bluestein, 79, and two additional victims were seriously injured, including a 16-year-old boy. The attack took place at the end of the school day, and several children were hospitalized.

Police apprehended the attackers, who came from the Hebron area in the West Bank and were reportedly working in Israel illegally. The men said they had been inspired by Israel’s war in Gaza to plan and carry out an attack, according to an account shared by Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service with Israeli media.

The attack comes as Israel’s war in Gaza against Hamas, the terror group that controls the coastal enclave and that launched the war by invading Israel on Oct. 7 and killing roughly 1,200 people, crosses 100 days. Nearly 200 Israeli soldiers have been killed in the ensuing ground invasion, while some 24,000 Palestinians have been killed in Gaza, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Health Ministry.

In addition, Israel is fighting an escalating conflict with the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah on its northern border in which 15 Israelis and some 200 Lebanese people have died. And it is conducting military raids against suspected Palestinian terror cells in the West Bank, where some 300 Palestinians have been killed since Oct. 7.

By comparison, relatively few Israelis have been killed in central Israel, and Monday’s attack fueled a debate over whether Israel should continue to issue work permits to West Bank Palestinians. Before Oct. 7, 300,000 Palestinians from the West Bank crossed into Israel legally to work, but their permits were suspended following Hamas’ attack, plunging the territory into economic crisis. Last month, Israel’s security cabinet opted not to vote on whether to reinstate the permits.


The post 1 dead, 17 injured in attack in Raanana, Tel Aviv suburb with large Anglo community appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Continue Reading
Click to comment

You must be logged in to post a comment Login

Leave a Reply

RSS

The Daily Wire Parts Ways With Candace Owens After Months-Long Flirtation with Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories

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

Right-wing podcast host Candace Owens is no longer employed by The Daily Wire following a months long row with co-founder Ben Shapiro over Israel’s war with Hamas and other controversial incidents in which Owens appeared to promote neo-Nazism.

“Daily Wire and Candace Owens have ended their relationship,” the company’s chief executive officer, Jeremy Boreing, said on X/Twitter on Friday, setting off a torrent of comments views retweets. Within an hour, it had been viewed by over 2 million users. Owens later confirmed the news on the platform, saying, “The rumors are true — I am finally free…There will be many announcements in the weeks to come.”

After Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, Owens’ relationship with her colleagues — especially with The Daily Wire’s founder, Ben Shapiro, who is Jewish — became increasingly strained. After Israel launched a military operation to expel Hamas from the Gaza Strip, Owens accused the country of committing genocide and of subjecting Palestinians living in Israel and the Palestinian territories to apartheid. In the process she betrayed deficiencies in her knowledge of the Middle East and Israel, once describing the Muslim Quarter in Jerusalem as a racially segregated area in which Israel forces Muslims to live, a grossly false characterization.

Shapiro found her comments highly offensive.

“I think her behavior during this has been disgraceful,” Shapiro can be heard saying in footage of a private event that emerged online in November. “Her faux sophistication on these particular issues has been ridiculous…everybody can see the moves that she’s making and the things that she’s saying, and I find them disreputable.”

Owens responded on X/Twitter by weaponizing passages of the Christian New Testament, with which she suggested that defending Israel was a matter of choosing between “God and money.” Shapiro said that she should “by all means quit” if she felt so conflicted. Soon after, Owens’ show “Candace” went on hiatus while she took maternity leave.

After returning in January, Owens introduced more fringe themes to her show and endorsed for president a candidate who called for eliminating US aid to Israel. By March, she was feuding with Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, an author and Jewish civil rights activists who has written about sex between married couples and founded with his daughter a company that sells intimacy products. Owens derided Shmuley for this, calling him an “unholy rabbi” and his daughter a “hag.” At other times, she insinuated that Shmuley and a “mafia” of Jews had been involved in the death of Michael Jackson, whom Shmuley had befriended on-and-off before the singer’s death in 2009.

“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’?” Owens said about Shmuley in one episode. “You gross me out. You disgust me. I am a better person than you, and I do not fear you.”

Jewish community leaders called on Shapiro and The Daily Wire to terminate Owens’ employment, noting that she had gone so far as to imply that Nazi fascists are wrongly condemned for “burning books that they deemed to be Marxist and that they deemed to be overtly sexual.” For many, Owens — who began posting ominous condemnations of “merchants of smear” and had liked a tweet accusing Shmuley of drinking the blood of Christians — had signaled to the world that she was embracing neo-Nazism.

Neo-Nazis on the internet thought so too, and throughout the month of March, Nick Fuentes — who has referred to African Americans as “n—gs” and called for dissolving the American government and replacing it with a patriarchal theocracy based on the Catholic religion — commended Owens on his show, which streams on “Rumble,” for saying “there is a Jewish mafia, they hide behind antisemitism.” On March 9, he proclaimed that he is a “stan” of hers.

Fuentes continued his praising of Owens on Tuesday, as first reported by Media Matters, commenting on an interview Owens conducted with Rabbi Michael Barclay, a Jewish author and conservative activist who agreed to appear on Owens’ show to discuss why he wrote an article describing her as antisemitic. Throughout the discussion, Owens insisted that there is nothing unique about anti-Jewish hatred and attacked the world’s leading definition of antisemitism, calling it an instrument of censorship.

On March 20, Owens released her final episode for The Daily Wire, titled “Why Does Everyone Think I Am Going to Be Killed?” In it, she suggested that she will be murdered and said that she has been targeted for rejecting racial “supremacy,” an apparent allusion to neo-Nazi conspiracies of “Jewish supremacy” and Jewish control. Signing off, she promised to return with a new episode the following day. It never came, and on Friday, after the announcement of her departure from The Daily Wire, she solicited cash donations from her social media followers.

Owens’ exit is a shock to the system of alternative conservative media, which has received massive investments for the creation of online content that bypasses traditional news outlets and reaches audiences through platforms such as YouTube and X/Twitter. The Daily Wire, which offers viewers original documentaries, films, and talk shows, has been a shining success story of this venture, and since joining the company in 2020, Owens has been one of its most recognizable — and controversial — stars, amassing tens of millions of views and hundreds of thousands of followers allured by her popularizing of complex political issues.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

The post The Daily Wire Parts Ways With Candace Owens After Months-Long Flirtation with Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

IDF Asks That Kids Avoid Using Toy Explosives During Purim Celebrations to Protect Soldiers

Ayla Mirakhor, 1, from left, Carmen Gavilan-Fraum, 7 months, and Elka Levitin, 20 months, celebrate Purim during the Daled Arts Family Hamantash Bake, March 18, 2024 at Alef Preschool in Palm Beach. Photo: USA TODAY NETWORK via Reuters Connect

IDF Spokesman Rear Adm. Daniel Hagari released a video on Friday, shortly before Shabbat, calling on Israelis to avoid using toy explosives and other noisy objects during the upcoming Jewish holiday of Purim.

“Don’t throw explosives on the holiday. We in the IDF will continue to do everything to embrace the soldiers wounded in body and soul and their families. You have fulfilled your duty; now we will fulfill our duty,” Hagari said.

Purim — which commemorates the saving of the Jewish people from annihilation at the hands of Haman, an official of the Achaemenid Empire — is told in the Book of Esther. It is known as an especially joyous and fun holiday when people dress up in costumes.

The video also included soldiers from various units injured in battle speaking about the issue.

“I have never been in favor of explosives,” one solider said. “There are many soldiers that it can hurt them from the same sounds and noises that sound like real explosions. Every small sound we hear takes us back [to Gaza]. We don’t want to be there.”

The soldier continued: “We experienced wounded and killed, and it brings us exactly to the same spot. We don’t want to be there. Moments of blood, explosions, and screams. Think of me as your big brother. Would you want your big brother to hear something explode and it makes him jump? Of course not.”

The soldier concluded: “Every small explosion can bring you back to the hardest moments you have ever experienced. Your sensitivity can help us not to return to that place. Especially this year, don’t throw explosives on the holiday.”

According to professionals, mental health has emerged as a critical challenge facing the IDF and Israeli society as a whole since the Gaza war’s outbreak. Due to the war — which began with the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust on Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists killed over 1,200 people and took 253 as hostages — the entire country is considered in a state of trauma, according to a leading psychologist group.

According to a study released last week, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are at risk of developing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) following the war. Many of those at risk are soldiers. The IDF has taken extra measures to look after their mental health, including army-mandated therapy sessions for all soldiers who served in Gaza or in the north at the border with Lebanon.

The IDF also opened a new mental health center at the army’s Tel HaShomer base in February specifically geared for soldiers leaving Gaza. Per IDF numbers at the time of the opening, more than 30,000 reservists had met with mental health professionals, with 202 soldiers being released from service due to mental health issues discovered and an additional 1,700 referred for advanced screening and treatment.

With Purim set to begin on Saturday evening, there have been fears that costumes or loud noises could startle soldiers who left service and may be suffering from discovered or under-the-surface mental health stresses due to what they saw.

Amid such concerns, there have been calls for those celebrating to avoid dressing as soldiers and carrying fake guns. The call by Hagari goes further, however, asking them not to use popular toy explosives — which, though harmless, can make loud and sudden noises, sometimes accompanied by a quick flash.

The toy explosives are usually thrown by kids in the various street parties and at synagogues when the name “Haman” is said.

The post IDF Asks That Kids Avoid Using Toy Explosives During Purim Celebrations to Protect Soldiers first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Continue Reading

RSS

Canadian volunteers have already been helping Israeli high school students learn English—now they’re being good listeners too

Israel high school students who are caught up in the country’s national trauma after the Oct. 7 attacks are finding warm listeners, and improving their English with the help of Canadian volunteers. “Many of our students are experiencing depression and anxiety,” said Sarah Gordon, a former teacher in Ottawa who started Israel Connect, a weekly […]

The post Canadian volunteers have already been helping Israeli high school students learn English—now they’re being good listeners too appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.

Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News