Eyewitness Account

 

From Alana Ruben Free

I am a living witness to the attack on the center of Tel Aviv yesterday morning at 4 AM. I was staying in a safe room with 3 other women, pretty much as close as one could be to the direct hit. It's very important that you understand the following:

This was a neighborhood of young, relatively "secular" Israelis who do not wear any kind of head coverings. They cover themselves more in tattoos than clothes.

From the young soldiers in the search and rescue crews that got us out of the apartment to the store owners on the street below, everyone was literally telling jokes, laughing, and smiling from the minutes to the hours that followed the attack. The vast majority of us knew we had once again experienced another open miracle: we were safe and completely protected from evil by the Guardian of Israel, and that we are his Children. The air was filled with a powerful "Yirat Shamayim"/ "Awe of the Greatness of our Creator in Heaven." There was zero looting of any kind despite none of the stores having windows or doors. How was it that not one person was killed? How was it possible that the rocket landed in the one patch of empty land, an unused parking lot, in the center of all the buildings? (I often wondered what was the purpose of that empty lot? Now, I know.)

The majority of Israelis (of all faiths) know we dwell in truth, goodness, kindness, love, and righteousness. As I was rendered apartmentless, I wandered in and out of other people's apartments and spaces--some that were utterly destroyed and some that were still functional. Despite the damage to property, there was a tremendous sense of joy in the air!

I ended up resting on the sofa of two guys, Liran and Noam, who had just moved in the day before to their now windowless apartment. By the time I arrived around 9:30 AM they had cleaned up all the glass, taped up the open spaces, put up shelves, arranged their plants, and unpacked their dishes. One had just returned a month ago after spending 3 years in Australia. He said, "Here we are home. Here we know what's true.."

When the interviewer from ABC news asked me earlier, "Where will you go now that you don't have an apartment?" I looked at him in an odd-way, I said, "Of course I will have somewhere to go. We are one family. There's always somewhere to go in Israel." And this is true, everyone's home is open to everyone else. We trust each other; we trust God, the One God who neither slumbers nor sleeps.

During the missile explosion, I was very calm and calmed others. We sang, we prayed, we recited psalms. I knew God was protecting us. We walked out without a scratch and found all three of my friend's cats within a few hours.

I had a taste yesterday of what it would be like if we lived in a world where everyone shared "Yirat Shmayaim"/"Awe of Heaven." It was glorious! May this understanding that we are all being watched over, and are accountable to a Loving, Wise Source spread globally.

DO NOT GLOBALIZE the intifada. GLOBALIZE a movement that spreads an AWE OF THE GREATNESS OF THE CREATOR OF LIFE.

 

What do you really know about the HAREDI Draft.

For full report see https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/israel-middle-east/articles/israel-two-big-lies

Looking at the most explosive political issue threatening to derail the Israeli government mid-war: namely, the conscription of roughly 63,000 young Haredi men to the Israel Defense Forces. One would hardly know, listening to the hyperventilation in the Israeli media, that there are already 6,000 Haredi men serving in the army, that hundreds of them are combat soldiers, and that they volunteer in such solid and consistent numbers that the IDF saw fit, in 1999, to establish an independent battalion just for Haredi soldiers, called Netzah Yehuda.

How come Haredis don’t serve in the army? Why those Haredis who showed up rejected.

Haim Ramon, a longtime Labor Party politician who served as a minister in Yitzhak Rabin’s cabinet happened to browse a document released by the Knesset’s research and information center that provided statistics about various population groups and their representation in the IDF. One stat in particular left Ramon feeling confused: Since Oct. 7, the Knesset revealed, 4,000 young Haredi men showed up of their own volition and asked to volunteer to fight, an initiative that would’ve doubled the number of Haredi soldiers overnight and proven a potential way out of the political impasse.

Almost immediately, the IDF deemed 3,120 of these men unfitting to serve, mostly for being too physically weak to fight. Which, if you know anything about the IDF, is a shocking revelation. A non-Haredi Israeli would have to suffer from a truly debilitating health condition to be found unfit for service; otherwise, 18-year-olds struggling with all manner of maladies—asthma, say, or a bad back or a minor heart condition, even with Downs Syndrome —are happily recruited and assigned to support positions that do not require strenuous physical exertion. You can find these excellent and motivated men and women serving as intelligence officers or riflery instructors, drivers or parachute packers, performing services the army absolutely needs. And you’d think that with the national interest allegedly being the swift swelling of the IDF’s ranks, the army would’ve made an effort to accommodate these enthusiastic young Haredis in its ranks.

Instead, not only were they rejected, but also, of the 880 volunteers who were found fit, only 540, or 61 percent, were recruited. In total, then, of the throngs of proud and patriotic black-hatted Israelis who, when it mattered most, wished to join their brothers and sisters in fighting, the army accepted a mere 13.5 percent.

This heartbreaking account provides us with two urgent insights.

First, the entire debate about Haredis in the army is predicated on a bright, shiny untruth. The army doesn’t need Haredi recruits to meet its goals. If it did, it would’ve welcomed every one, or at least the ones physically fit to fight. The army further understands that fully integrating Haredim into its ranks would require a wide array of logistical challenges—providing strictly kosher food, for example, or addressing concerns rising from coed military service—it currently cannot and does not want to address.

Second, while liberal Israeli politicians are quick to refer to Haredis in derogatory terms like shirkers and parasites, the Haredi community has just shown that it is more committed than ever to seeing itself as part of Israel’s national narrative. If you’re looking for a bit of perspective there, a 2023 report from the State Comptroller’s office revealed that, in 2021, a whopping 32 percent of young military-age Tel Avivis chose not to join the IDF, a fact that generated precisely zero national outcry.

Put bluntly, anyone who is asking why Haredis don’t serve in the army should first ask why the army widely rejected those Haredis who showed up.

 

Distorted UK, France and Canada

 To the UK, France, and Canada: Go Shove It

You sanctimonious, hypocritical cowards. How dare you threaten the one Jewish state on earth—after everything your nations did to us. You dare speak of “humanitarian values” while standing on piles of Jewish bones your ancestors buried beneath cobblestones, cathedrals, and charters of “civilized” nations.

Britain

Oh, Britain. The empire that carved up the Middle East with a pencil and a gin-and-tonic. You issued the Balfour Declaration and then slammed the door on Jewish refugees fleeing the Nazis. You handed chunks of Jewish land to Arab monarchs and let Jews die in the Holocaust rather than let them enter your precious Mandate. You interned Holocaust survivors in Cyprus like they were criminals. And now you’re wagging your colonial finger at Jews for building homes on our ancestral hills?

Go shove your royal hypocrisy back into Buckingham Palace and deal with your own collapsing society—where knife crime, antisemitism, and Islamic extremism are more common than fish and chips.

France

Liberté, égalité, fraternité—unless you’re a Jew. You deported over 75,000 Jews to their deaths during the Holocaust with the full cooperation of the French Vichy regime. You let them be shoved into cattle cars from the Vel d’Hiv while Parisians watched. And after the war? No justice. No reckoning. Just decades of indifference and empty words. Today, Jews are being stabbed in the streets of France, synagogues are under military guard, and you still have the audacity to lecture us about morality?

You couldn’t defend your own republic from a gang of jihadists in a van, but now you want to dictate how Israel defends itself from genocidal terrorists hiding behind human shields? You are morally bankrupt and culturally collapsing. Go lecture someone else while your republic burns.

Canada

Oh Canada—America’s cold, smug, spineless cousin. Your “moral high ground” is a snow-covered hill of lies. You locked Jewish refugees out during the Holocaust. The ship St. Louis begged for your mercy. You sent them back—to die. “None is too many,” your officials said. That’s your legacy. Your history. And today, your politicians pose for photo ops in mosques that glorify martyrs while denouncing Israel for fighting genocidal killers.

You’ve turned your universities into Hamas fan clubs and your Parliament into a circus of virtue signaling. You host terrorists in suits and call it diplomacy. You abandoned the Jews when we were stateless, and now you want to punish us for defending our state?

Here’s Our Response

We’re not the broken, stateless Jews of 1942. We’re the sovereign people of Israel—armed, aware, and unapologetic. Your sanctions are a joke. Your threats are meaningless. Your moral lectures are garbage. We don’t need your permission to live. We don’t need your validation to fight.

You allowed Jewish blood to soak your soil for centuries. Now that Jews fight back, build, thrive—you clutch your pearls?

Israel doesn’t need your empty Western democracy. We have something older, holier, and stronger: truth, covenant, survival.

Go shove your resolutions where the sun doesn’t shine.

We’re not going anywhere.

And next time you dare threaten the Jewish state—

Remember who we are now.

Why has Britain become so Intolerant

 Arab diplomat exposed the stupidity of British leaders who bow to the whims of Muslim terrorists, who are literally exploiting freedom, democracy, and other privileges to turn Britain into an Islamic terror state.

Massacres under Syria's new Regime

 

SYRIAN CHAOS GROWS - The new regime led by al-Julani, which received the blessing of the democratic governments, European countries, the UN, and Turkey, have accelerated massacring Alawites who had been massacring Sunnis for years.  Videos of massacres, murder and humiliation are being shared widely on Arab channels, as well as looting and kidnapping of women. 

 Condemnations? None. UN Security Council sessions? None. Intl. Court of Justice or Criminal Court warrants? None. 

 Compare to the responses for Israel’s defensive actions.  Hypocrisy abounds.

Quote of the day from Catherine Perez-Shakdam, executive director of We Believe in Israel:

“Israel, Mon Amour. You are my identity, my history, my future. You are the embodiment of a people’s unyielding spirit, the living proof that we will not be erased. I shall never cease to love you.”

 

9 children in 4 years

Nachum Fleischer is an ultra-Orthodox Jew who lives in Canada. He got married in 2020, and 9 months later, his wife gave birth to triplets. A year and a half later, they had triplets again. And now, just 4 years after getting married, they have had their 3^rd set of triplets. That’s 9 children in 4 years!

 

Direct from Gaza to donate bone marrow to 3-year-old

When Matan Amir registered with Hadassah’s bone marrow registry on the day he enlisted in the IDF, he provided a saliva sample and forgot about it - until Hadassah informed him, while he was fighting in Gaza, that he was a genetic match for a 3-year-old boy diagnosed with a rare blood disorder. Matan agreed to help. He was released from Gaza, and underwent a pelvic bone procedure. The recipient is doing well. After a regulatory 12-month delay, Matan hopes to meet the boy. Matan means gift. How appropriate!

 

Volunteer medic injured on Oct. 7 returns to service with ‘ambucycle’

Seriously wounded United Hatzalah emergency medic Rabbi Chaim Sassi is back on active duty after receiving a custom-made ambucycle that accommodates his lingering leg injury. Sassi, who also serves as the regional rabbi for United Hatzalah in Sderot, underwent a long rehabilitation, but was determined to get back to work. The ambucycle allows Sassi to ride safely despite balance issues caused by his leg injury. United Hatzalah CEO, Ehud Davidson: “Sassi is an inspiration to us all.”

 

Disabled rehab patients enjoy an exhilarating treat

ADI (Ability, Diversity, Inclusion) helps the rehabilitation of people with disability. More than a dozen war-wounded military and civilian rehab patients from ADI Negev-Nahalat Eran recently took to the southern Israel skies with pilots from “Ananim: Flights for the Community.” The exhilarating flights are a metaphor for unlocking potential beyond limitations.

 

Golders Green boy wrote Brian Epstein’s first UK #1

Martin Dover, who was a teacher at Carmel College when I was there, once shared with me that he was Brian Epstein’s barmitzvah teacher. Epstein – the subject of a new biopic, “Midas Man” – not only managed the Beatles, but also another popular Liverpool group, Gerry and the Pacemakers. In fact, Epstein’s first UK number one was Gerry and the Pacemakers’ “How Do You Do It?” The lyrics for this hit song were written in Golders Green by a good Jewish Golders Green boy, songwriter Mitch Murray.

 

Medical clowns shorten hospital stay for children with pneumonia

We already know that visits from a medical clown can help reduce stress and anxiety in hospitalised children. After studying the impact of medical clowns on children who are hospitalised with pneumonia, a team from Carmel Medical Center in Haifa has found that the children spend less time in hospital if they are visited by medical clowns, who sing and play music with the children, and encourage them to eat and drink independently.

 

Bigoted vandals smash bust of Chaim Weizmann at Manchester University

In Room 27 on Floor 2 at the London’s National Portrait Gallery is a bust of Chaim Weizmann that Sir Jacob Epstein completed in 1934. I recall a replica of this bust in Rabbi Kopul Rosen’s study in Carmel College. I thought of this bust when I learned that bigoted anti-Zionist vandals had destroyed a bust of Weizmann in Manchester University, where Israel’s first president worked for decades in his chemistry laboratory.

 

Upgraded training base in Jordan Valley for ultra-Orthodox soldiers

Despite current tensions surrounding the Haredi military service exemption law, the new ultra-Orthodox brigade of combat soldiers is set to move into its upgraded training base in the Jordan Valley in December. The base has 4 new synagogues and specialized infrastructure designed to accommodate religious requirements. The first ultra-Orthodox infantry battalion is expected to be combat-ready by November 2025.

 

Mazal tov to the winners of the Israel Defence Award

The Israel Defence Award is presented by the President of Israel to people and organisations who made significant contributions to the defence of the State of Israel. At the 2024 awards ceremony, the winners included the David’s Sling air defence system, the Namer armoured personnel carrier, and the IDF’s technology-enhanced target bank project. Because some of the recipients are still working on top secret projects, the group photos of the winners featured some winners standing with their back to the camera.

 

“You are my identity, my history, my future.”

Catherine Perez-Shakdam is a French Jewish journalist, political analyst and commentator who converted to Islam. After divorcing her Muslim husband, she now identifies as a Zionist and as a Jew. In an op-ed in The Times of Israel headlined “Israel, Mon Amour,” she writes: “You are my identity, my history, my future. You are the embodiment of a people’s unyielding spirit, the living proof that we will not be erased. You are not just the land I inhabit, but the hope that inhabits me. You are the story we write anew, the promise we keep alive. I shall never cease to love you.”

 

 

Yanky Fachler

yankyfachler@gmail.com +353 86 8575162

Israel supporters post ‘rape tunnel maps’ on London Underground

 

 October 7, 2024

Hamas’s extensive tunnel network in Gaza, much of which was dismantled by the IDF, was larger than London’s subway system. 

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

On the first anniversary of the October 7th massacre, Israel supporters placed “rape tunnel map” posters throughout the London Underground to raise awareness about the terror group’s sexual crimes and to advocate for the release of hostages.

The goal of the campaign was to put up posters at every station of “The Tube.”

Hamas’s extensive tunnel network in Gaza, much of which was dismantled by the IDF, was larger than London’s subway system.

Anti-Israel protesters have often used the London Underground as a prime location to post misinformation about the Gaza conflict.

A graphic similar to London Underground maps on the posters suggested Gaza tunnel routes.

The text at the bottom of the posters read, “On October 7th, 2023, Hamas murdered hundreds and kidnapped hundreds. The UK government must do all it can to  ensure the release of 100 hostages still unaccounted for after 365 days of terror.”

The campaign was intended to counteract demonstrations involving tens of thousands of anti-Israel protesters marching through London ahead of the first anniversary of the October 7th massacre.

The group behind the campaign, London Against Hamas, issued a statement, “On the first anniversary of the unimaginable horrors committed by Hamas murderers on October 7th, 2024, the tunnels of London Underground today have featured maps showing that terror organization’s Rape Tunnels of Gaza.”

“Trains on every Underground line now feature “Gaza Underground” maps, reminding Londoners for what appalling purposes Hamas have created their subterranean network – rape, murder, torture, further terrorist activities – as supporters call for the UK Government to do everything to ensure the release of the 100 hostages still unaccounted for after 365 days,” the statement continued.

On Monday, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer vowed to “stand behind the Jewish community” and called October 7th “The darkest day in Jewish history since the Holocaust.”

“One year on from these horrific attacks, we must unequivocally stand with the Jewish community and unite as a country. We must never look the other way in the face of hate,” the Prime Minister said.