Israel News Today

Back in May, when the Boston Celtics were merely an NBA Finals contender, head coach Joe Mazzulla vowed to take the team to Israel were they to win it all. “If we win the championship this year, we’re flying to Jerusalem and we’re walking from Jericho to Jerusalem,” Mazzulla said in an interview with NBC. (Winning pro athletes often celebrated with a sponsored trip to Disneyland. An Israel trip might be a first.) Now they’ve won it, knocking off the Dallas Mavericks ( of Maus jersey fame ) in five games. I don’t doubt Mazzulla, whose devout Catholicism is well-documented, will make the trip. But in the middle of a war, and with Israel a political lightning rod most American pro athletes have avoided, will the players go with him? Related Dallas ‘Maus’? Or are the NBA Finals making you see things? There are a couple of Celtics mainstays who I think would happily get on the plane. The star Jrue Holiday, like his coach, has been open about his faith, saying he “makes Chris...

“Antisemitism Notebook” is a weekly email newsletter from the Forward,  sign-up here  to receive the full newsletter in your inbox each Tuesday Many progressives are reluctant to accept allegations of antisemitism because they feel like these claims are often made in bad faith to damage their political movement. It was striking, then, to see so many prominent left-wing leaders — along with the rest of the political spectrum — unequivocally condemn the activists who  spray-painted the homes  of four Brooklyn Museum leaders last week: Brad Lander, New York City’s comptroller and an outspoken progressive, was the first to weigh in  early Wednesday morning  on X: “Vandals defaced the homes of  the Jewish director and several Jewish board members ,” he wrote. “The cowards who did this are way over the line into antisemitism.” Jumaane Williams, the city’s public advocate,  agreed : “Targeting and attempting to intimidate  Jewish New Yorkers ...

Nicole Françoise Florence Dreyfus, the actress who became world famous as Anouk Aimée, died this morning in Paris at the age of 92. With her death, a certain idea of France — an idea, at least, that swept away Americans of my generation — died a little more too. Born in Paris in 1932, the young Dreyfus and her mother took the name Durand during the Nazi occupation to escape the round-up of Jews by French police. Upon leaving her school one day, the actress recalled years later , her classmates began to shout “Elle est juive!” — “She’s Jewish! — as a German officer walked past. He took the young girl by the hand and, rather than taking her to the closest police station, took her home, where left her with her terrified mother. Scarcely had France been liberated that, in 1946, Dreyfus appeared in her first movie, La Maison sous la mer (“The House Under the Sea”), a forgotten film by the equally forgotten director Henri Calef. The one element that will always be remembered is that n the...

( JTA ) — After finding themselves on the receiving end of a socialist group’s “Naming and Shaming” campaign, two married Jewish organizers of a Cincinnati-area Pride group resigned from their roles last week over concerns for their personal safety . “Individuals and Organizations have targeted our board members, including [with] threats of violence,” Cincinnati Pride said in an Instagram statement. The incident — an apparent act of revenge after socialist groups were removed from a June 2 Pride event in northern Kentucky for distributing flyers calling Israel’s conduct in Gaza part of a “Final Solution” against Palestinians — was a prominent example of the tensions arising for LGBTQ Jews during Pride month, as the ongoing Israel-Hamas war continues to induce divisions in progressive spaces. A growing opposition to Israel among queer activists, who increasingly view anti-Zionism as a cause for the LGBTQ community to align with , has created an uneasy dynamic for many Jews who also i...

Defense ministry gave a blank check to defense industries to figure out how to stop Hezollah's UAVs from penetrating Israel's air defense systems; Cannons will be deployed in the Galilee and improvements have been made to Iron Dome, but the security system emphasizes that some drones will make it through; 'There is no hermitic seal' from ynet - News https://ift.tt/2MC3zUA

Steeply discounted shipping of donations to support the Israeli war effort aboard El AL aircraft is coming back days after Israel’s national airline said it planned to end the program.  El Al’s decision to reinstate the discount follows reporting on the end of the program by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency and subsequent public outcry both in Israel and among Jewish donors in the Diaspora.  Registered charities will be able to continue shipping donation bags for $50 instead of the regular price of $200, according to what El Al told JTA, Israel’s Channel 12 and the charities themselves. Individual passengers will not be allowed to bring donation bags at the discounted rate.  El Al, which recently reported record profits , has shipped tens of thousands of duffel bags full of items requested by Israeli combat soldiers, including tactical boots, helmets, flashlights, rifle scopes, drones and clothing, since Oct. 7. The company told JTA it had decided to end the discount pr...

Ottopia CEO Amit Rosenzweig says true self-driving cars are far off, but new technologies his company developed allow remote drivers sitting in front of a computer to safely navigate them to wherever they need to go from ynet - News https://ift.tt/vMs7wun

I was standing next to a green bus stop sign in La Pequeña Habana (Little Havana) in Miami. Tiny pearls of sweat dripped beneath the collar of my soaked-through, pink dress shirt. Normally I take the car everywhere but the day before, my gray, beat-up clunker had broken down and I needed to run an errand in the city. In my hand, I held pages I had printed out of a Yiddish book that I intended to read on my hour-long ride. I’m not the type of person to gaze out of the bus window and daydream. I like to have something to do. Suddenly, a young woman appeared — a curious figure with an oval, milk-white face. She was wearing a long, loose, light-purple kaftan, with a colorful, handwoven, Peruvian satchel thrown over her shoulder. On her head was a tall turban, exactly the same color as her kaftan. Not one single strand of hair was visible. The first thought that crossed my mind was: “A turban in this heat? … Nebekh (poor thing)!” “Excuse me, but why are you reading something in Hebrew?...

When troops watch video of Hamas terrorists abducting female IDF soldiers on October 7, it underscores the importance of their mission and serves as a stark reminder of why they are deployed from ynet - News https://ift.tt/bdxT4hn

Worshippers, including children, filmed at several locations stoning effigies and images of US and Israeli leaders; in Istanbul, crowds seen kicking and punching effigies from ynet - News https://ift.tt/7LY5bzj

Armored combat engineering vehicle attacked by anti-tank missile on Saturday, killing all  8 soldiers inside; the battalion that they fought with eliminated about 50 terrorists in an operation that took place prior to the explosion from ynet - News https://ift.tt/0ot5UhZ

In newly released footage, police show dramatic moment when unit broke in, identified hostage, and carried her out; Amid gunfire, commandos reassured her, ‘You are safe’ from ynet - News https://ift.tt/tAI45xk

IDF Spokesperson Hagari says 'experts will examine entire incident,' adds 'we are approaching the dismantling of the Rafah Brigade'; Netanyahu: 'No alternative to victory' in war from ynet - News https://ift.tt/EP2pT05

There is a moment smack in the middle of the sprawling, subversive new documentary  Sabbath Queen  where the film’s subject,  Rabbi Amichai Lau-Lavie , explodes with anger. It is 2014, during the last major Israel-Hamas war, and he is at a protest holding a sign that says “Stand with Israel/Mourn with Gaza” when a woman calls him a  mamzer , Hebrew for “bastard.” “ Mamzer ?” the Israeli-born Lau-Lavie responds with a native accent and equally authentic outrage. “My father’s a Holocaust survivor.” “You don’t belong, carrying a sign like that,” the woman fairly spits. “And I’m a bastard?” he counters in genuine disbelief. “Yes, you are,” she insists. “That’s what you are. You should have died with them.” The film, 21 years in the making, began as a biopic of the Rebbetzin Hadassah Gross, a drag character Lau-Lavie embodied for years who dispenses wisdom through a thick Eastern European accent and thicker false eyelashes. It morphed into a meditation on  inter...

Andrey Kozlov says that while he is already in Israel, a lot of other hostages are still in Gaza, as he urges Israelis to attend and support the families of the hostages in the hostage square on Saturday from ynet - News https://ift.tt/UkJR8Qr

KIRYAT SHMONA, Israel – For years, residents of this town a mile from Lebanon have kept fragments of Katyusha rockets fired from across the border in their china cabinets or on their keychains, reminders of the ongoing danger Israel faces from its neighbor. The hard-headed few who have stayed in Kiryat Shmona since Oct. 7 have in recent weeks been adding new tokens of their survival: pieces of anti-tank missiles and Burkan rockets fired by the Lebanese Shiite militia Hezbollah that, in some cases, have mangled their cars or leveled their homes. These scraps, and the stories locals are telling about them, are at once emblems of Israelis’ resilience and evidence of what many see as the government’s failure to do more to keep them and the Upper Galilee safe. Some 56,000 Northern Israelis evacuated their homes after the Hamas terror attack and the war it spawned in Gaza, as Hezbollah intensified its strikes. That included nearly all of this city’s 24,000 residents.  Some fled to fa...