LLX News

Yom Ha’atzmaut was marked with muted festivities throughout the country on Monday evening and during the day on Tuesday.

By: Israel Today Staff; israeltoday.co.il

Israel ushered in its 76th Independence Day on Monday night with muted celebrations amid the war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.

The traditional torch-lighting ceremony marked the start of Independence Day and the end of Yom Hazikaron, Israel’s Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism. Due to the security situation, this year’s ceremony was filmed in advance without a live audience.

The event kicked off with the lighting of beacons in memory of the Israelis and foreign nationals who were murdered during the ongoing war. Torches were lit in Zikim, Sderot and other southern cities, as well as near Kibbutz Re’im, where 364 attendees of the Supernova music festival were murdered by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Forty-four people were chosen to light the 12 torches: The torch of the security forces, the torch of the emergency services, the torch of the rescuers, the torch of the immediate response squads, the torch of the public diplomacy front, the torch of the shield, the torch of hope, the torch of medicine and rehabilitation, the torch of victory of the spirit, the torch of giving, the torch of the Diaspora and the 12th torch that will burn without bearers to symbolize the hostages in Gaza.

cont’d…

“I have no idea how we are going to get through this,” says Marcy Oster, mother of fallen soldier Amichai.

By: Judith Segaloff – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il’

Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism) is always somber in Israel. Unlike Memorial Day in the United States, which combines parades, gun salutes and wreath laying with joyful barbecues, waterfront picnics and sales on summer sundries, our Memorial Day is solely a Day of Remembrance.

It is a day to commemorate slain soldiers and has been extended to civilian victims of terrorism. Cemeteries, public venues and television and radio broadcasts reflect the somber tones of the day. On Monday, the newly bereaved from the Oct. 7 massacre and friends and family of soldiers killed in the Gaza war will be experiencing the raw feelings of their first Memorial Day, while most of the Israeli public is likely to be thrust back to the collective trauma that began seven months ago.

“This year’s Yom Hazikaron is unique,” explains Marc Belzberg, founder of OneFamily, an NGO that supports victims of terrorism and their families. “Virtually every single person in Israel and many Jews around the world are connected in some way to at least one person who has been tragically killed on or since October 7. We all are feeling an iota of the loss that the bereaved feel every single day.”

cont’d…

Israeli military strikes more than 100 Hamas sites in the southern Gaza city • Senior Israeli officials: Hamas ceasefire claims a stunt.

By: Joshua Marks – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

The Israel Defense Forces took control of the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing with Egypt on Tuesday morning, as tanks from the 401st Armored Brigade of the 162nd Division rolled right up to the station.

The Israeli flag was raised at the Rafah crossing and video showed an armored vehicle arriving at one of the buildings there, next to a sign that says “Gaza” in English. The IDF shared pictures and video of the moments that the Rafah crossing was captured.

“Following intelligence that indicated that the Rafah Crossing in eastern Rafah was being used for terrorist purposes, IDF troops managed to establish operational control of the Gazan side of the crossing,” the IDF said on Tuesday morning.

The General Authority for Crossings and Borders in the Gaza Strip has announced a complete halt to passenger traffic and aid into the Gaza Strip.

cont’d…

Six million Jews were murdered by the Nazi regime and its allies in the Holocaust from 1933-1945.

By: Jerusalem Post Staff; jpost.com

Life across Israel came to a halt on Monday morning as a two-minute-long siren sounded to mark a moment of silence for Holocaust Remembrance Day.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day, places of entertainment are closed, and memorial ceremonies are held throughout the country. The central ceremonies are held at Yad Vashem on the evening and the morning of the memorial day.

At Yad Vashem, wreaths were laid at the foot of the six torches lit on Sunday night by dignitaries and representatives of survivor groups and institutions.

cont’d…

ICRC administrator Haythem Abid marches in anti-Israel rallies and posts Hamas propaganda.

By: David Isaac – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

In the latest example of a deep-seated anti-Israel bias within the International Committee of the Red Cross, the head of the ICRC’s office in Algeria and director of the Libya subdelegation has been outed as a pro-Hamas shill.

Geneva-based, pro-Israel group UN Watch exposed the pro-terrorist sentiments of the ICRC official, who appears to be based in Montreal.

“Meet Haythem ‘Ethan’ Abid. He runs the International Red Cross in Montreal. His job is to be neutral. But Abid marches in ‘Free Palestine’ rallies, posts Hamas videos saying hostages love their captors and accuses Israel of ‘terrorism’ & ‘genocide.’ He says: ‘F*** neutral s***,’” tweeted UN Watch’s Hillel Neuer on April 30.

UN Watch found numerous questionable posts on Abid’s Facebook page, including one from Oct. 24, 2023, in which he is seen holding a large PLO flag at a protest two days earlier.

The rally was co-organized by “Montreal4Palestine,” an antisemitic group, which posted on social media on Oct. 7, the day of the Hamas massacre, an image of a bowl of candy with the words “Celebration” and “The Journey has Begun.”

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The MIND-NUMBING poison of Palestinian propaganda

Amid the intense warfare provoked by the barbaric Hamas invasion of October 7^th comes an explosive new documentary powerfully challenging the false narratives of much Western media.

The controversy surrounding the rightful ownership of the Land of Israel is the focus of this brilliant 113-minute expose from established film-maker Hugh Kitson, to be premiered in the UK on May 30^th.

Narrated by Col Richard Kemp, former British army chief in Afghanistan, it features a host of international lawyers, professors, politicians, and military experts, and is set against the stunning backdrop of the territory in question.

Whose Land? Part II – The Law of Occupation and the Status of Jerusalem – explores the 76-year-old history of the modern nation’s legitimacy.

In terms of international law, correctly interpreted, the programme concludes that there is absolutely no question of Israel’s rightful inheritance to the land. But the nations have fallen hook, line, and sinker to Arab claims that Israel have stolen it from them.

https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/explosive-truth/?mc_cid=a0404d9eb3&mc_eid=90fbf7be68

Former US presidential candidate says the administration “has been anything but supportive of Israel.”

By: Amelie Botbol – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

Former US senator and presidential candidate Rick Santorum told JNS that US President Joe Biden is willing to abandon Israel to secure victory in the 2024 presidential election.

“To him, it’s all about winning elections, and he is willing to throw Israel under the bus,” Santorum told JNS at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Budapest, Hungary on Friday.

“The Biden administration has been anything but supportive of Israel. It has done the bare minimum to keep some sort of lid on the outrage that would come from America if it didn’t support Israel,” he added.

The US State Department’s top Middle East diplomat Barbara Leaf reiterated on Wednesday that contrary to reports, the Biden administration has not given approval to an IDF military operation in Rafah, the southernmost city in the Gaza Strip, where four of Hamas’s six remaining battalions are entrenched.

“Absolutely not,” Leaf, the assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern affairs, told reporters. “We have not done any such thing. We have not green-lighted a military operation. I want to be very clear on that point.”

The deadlock in negotiations for the release of Israeli captives, coupled with American accusations against the group, has paved the way for the offensive.

By: Meir Ben-Shabbat – Israel Today; israeltoday.co.il

As signs of an imminent IDF operation in Rafah intensify, there is growing concern that Israel will unnecessarily exercise self-imposed restraint by acting with insufficient force, so as not to upset the Biden administration, the Egyptians, or the ICC prosecutor at The Hague.

Meanwhile, Hamas is exploiting the prolonged waiting period and preparing well for the ground operation in this sector, which will undoubtedly pose complex operational challenges for the IDF. Despite the political pressures, Israel’s decision-makers must make it a top priority to attain the objectives with minimal risk to the lives of our forces.

The deadlock in negotiations for the release of Israeli captives held by Hamas, coupled with American accusations against the terrorist group, has paved the way for Israel to launch the Rafah offensive.

The recent de-escalation with Iran allows Israel to shift its focus, without forfeiting political gains made, while continuing the fight against Hezbollah and dismantling terrorist networks in Judea and Samaria.

https://www.israeltoday.co.il/read/rafah-operation-must-take-place-even-in-defiance-of-the-us/?mc_cid=10245b983b&mc_eid=90fbf7be68

By: Samantha Kamman – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

An official with the Palestinian terror group Hamas and the supreme leader of Iran have praised the growing college campus protests in the United States against Israel’s military offensive in Gaza, including pro-Hamas demonstrations at Columbia University that have driven fear into the hearts of Jewish students. 

Columbia University in New York City announced a shift to hybrid classes after protestors set up a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” last Wednesday. This led to the arrest of more than 100 people after Columbia University President Minouche Shafik authorized police to clear the camp. The demonstrators resettled the encampment, and there have been multiple reports of Jewish members of Columbia’s community feeling unsafe due to the encampment. 

The demonstration has prompted calls for the Biden administration to take away the school’s federal funding and discipline the demonstrators, which some say should include revoking the visas of the students expressing support for terrorist groups.

On Wednesday, Izzat Al-Risheq, a member of Hamas’ political bureau, accused the Biden administration of violating student and faculty rights, claiming that they are only rejecting “the genocide that our Palestinian people are the subjected in the Gaza Strip at the hands of the neo-Nazi Zionists.”

cont’d…

https://www.christianpost.com/news/hamas-iran-praise-anti-israel-college-protests-in-us.html

A coordinated effort on April 15 (tax day) aimed to shut down economic activity at sites throughout the United States and in other countries.

As part of a coordinated effort of “blocking the arteries of capitalism and jamming the wheels of production,” anti-Israel protesters disrupted traffic at the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco, Chicago O’Hare International Airport and the Brooklyn Bridge in New York City, among other locations in the United States, on Monday.

Called A15 and centered on tax day in America, the effort involved a “multi-city economic blockade” in “solidarity with Palestine,” per the group’s site. It listed participating cities in multiple countries as well as major U.S. cities.

In San Francisco, where protesters blocked traffic for almost five hours, some “were linked together using a ‘sleeping dragon’ maneuver, in which protesters connect their arms inside PVC piping that must be cut through to separate them,” Gabe Stutman reported in J. The Jewish News of Northern California.

Sharing a news report that referred to “pro-Palestinian” protesters, Marc Levine, the Anti-Defamation League’s Central Pacific regional director, wrote that “a day after Israel is attacked by Iran, the media continues to get it wrong. These are not pro-Palestinian protestors. They’ve always been anti-Israel.”

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/anti-israel-protests-at-brooklyn-bridge-chicago-ohare-golden-gate-bridge-many-other-sites/