Wednesday, October 05, 2022
The Yom Kippur War: Fifty minus one
Next year will mark fifty years. Fifty years ago, as a young, almost twenty-three-year-old, I had the experience of a lifetime.The trauma of Israel's Yom Kippur War was fully justified
Was I a foolish idealist? Perhaps. I had wanted to be “kravi,” a warrior soldier. I had wished for a combat unit. I excelled and had all of the recommendations that accompanied that excellence. Although assigned to guard an IDF intel unit and fully aware of what was happening “de facto” in front of my eyes, nothing prepared me for the brutality of what was to come a few months later, Yom Kippur, October 6th, 1973. Nothing.
The sounds, the deafening roar of low-flying fighter jets, the explosions of artillery and mortar shells all around, the firing of my own weapons. The smell, cordite and death, fire and destruction smoldering everywhere, along roads and fields. The sights, yes, those sights, leaving indelible imprints on my memory to this very day.
And yet, the war itself prepared me for my love of peace. After countless days in Syria, after a new call to duty to become a tank commander, after so many deployments to Israel’s southern front, the Sinai at first, later Egypt and the new border, and then the Gaza Strip and Gaza City itself, all that prepared me for the love of peace.
I served with farmers, kibbutzniks like myself, and like myself watched as we collectively allowed our idealism to slip away. I served with small-town entrepreneurs, small business owners, calculating their economic losses while they bravely defended the homeland. City dwellers, bankers and professionals, CEOs and police detectives, we all wore green and we all came when we were called. And with our own eyes, we saw the dire poverty within the Strip and the contrasting opulence of the villas in Gaza City.
And then Hebron, where some residents of Kiryat Arba went on nightly excursions to vandalize Palestinian property. And, the next morning it was our small two-jeep patrols who would pay the price, having rocks and Molotov cocktails hurled in our direction.
Yes, the Yom Kippur War, fifty years less one ago, prepared me for all that and prepared me for peace. Do not mistake my love of peace. I remain a hawk when it comes to dealing harshly with those who wish to harm the citizens of Israel. Do not mistake my love of peace for weakness in the face of terror. I have seen it. I have experienced it. I have lost dear friends to terror.
One of the first decisions that Gen. David Elazar faced when he was appointed Israel Defense Forces (IDF) chief of staff in 1970 was whether to continue resting Israel’s front line on the Suez Canal. Gen. Ariel Sharon and others warned that such a deployment in an area dominated by massive Egyptian artillery and anti-tank weapons could become a trap – not just for the soldiers in scattered outposts along the 100-mile-long canal but for the tanks that would undoubtedly be sent to rescue them if war broke out. Sharon recommended establishing the front line well back from the canal, beyond Egyptian artillery range, to reduce the danger of a surprise attack. But Elazar decided to remain on the canal where – for political reasons – Israel could “show the flag.” Of the 500 Israeli soldiers manning the line, a third would be killed, a third taken prisoner and a third would manage to escape at night through the Egyptian encirclement.Yom Kippur War: Why Israelis haven't made fictional films about it
THE SAGGER
The Armored Corps had been informed by AMAN that the Arab armies had acquired large stocks of a new Soviet anti-tank weapon, the Sagger. Unlike the ubiquitous RPG, which could kill a tank within 300 meters, the Sagger could be fired accurately by a soldier lying in the sand a mile away, virtually invisible to the Israeli tank crews. The armored corps was attempting to devise tactics to deal with the threat but meanwhile it had not informed the corps as a whole about the Sagger’s existence. When Israeli tanks attempted to reach the beleaguered Bar-Lev Line in the opening hours of the war many were knocked out by Saggers without the tank crews knowing what hit them. For several days, these weapons succeeded in keeping Israel’s formidable tank units at bay just as the air force was being kept at bay over the battlefields.
Despite the war’s nightmarish opening, the IDF succeeded, after the ground steadied under its feet, in staging one of the most dramatic turnarounds in military history, a feat too complex to be described here. The war ended with the Israeli army on the roads to Damascus and Cairo. It was a victory not only over Egypt and Syria but over the Arab world, from North Africa to Iraq, which sent fresh contingents to the battlefronts, even as Israeli troops were being steadily eroded. In Iraq’s case, two tank brigades blocked the Israelis who had reached artillery range of Damascus.
The cost of the fierce battles on both fronts would be high. Israel suffered three times more fatalities per capita in 18 days of combat than the Americans suffered in Vietnam in a decade.
It would be years before Israelis could view the war as anything but a disaster. Eventually, however, most would concede to themselves that it had been a military victory. In fact, Israel’s greatest. If the country could overcome the terrible hand it had dealt itself on Yom Kippur it would survive. The war was an extraordinary demonstration of Israel’s resilience and the Arab world would see it too. Six years later Israel would sign a peace treaty with its most formidable opponent, Egypt – the first with an Arab country but not the last.
Why have so many years gone by since the Yom Kippur War of 1973 and so few Israeli filmmakers have turned their hands to depicting it? There have been a plethora of television documentaries about bereavement and about the soldiers – those who survived and those who didn’t – but, not many feature films have been made about this important war in Israel’s history.
Why have our most successful filmmakers, all of whom have made serious (anti-)war films, not made fictional accounts of the Yom Kippur War?
The answer is certainly complicated, mostly dealing with the deep and long-lasting trauma of the war, which makes it so difficult to confront.
According to Aner Preminger, who teaches cinema studies at Hebrew University and is a well-known filmmaker, the Yom Kippur War is “the most traumatic war that Israel ever went through, for a number of reasons: its intensiveness; the number of deaths, wounded, and victims of shell shock during such a short period; the surprise; and the downfall after the euphoria of the Six Day War,” he says.
“In fact, we are still today in the post-traumatic period of this war,” Preminger says. “Dealing face-on with such a difficult wound of trauma is complex and complicated, psychologically speaking. It is more natural to hide from it and to deal with it only from afar.”
According to this view, the trauma of the surprise attack and the terrible losses on the battlefield of the Yom Kippur War remain very much with us, and therefore it is very difficult to portray it in fictional films.
Another reason that Israeli filmmakers have kept away from the difficult subject matter of this war has to do with the fact that this particular war was accepted – throughout Israeli society – as a war of defense, a war for which we had no choice, thereby making it difficult to look at it critically: cinematically, politically or militarily.
In contrast, the War in Lebanon from 1982-2000 lent itself to criticism from the very beginning. It was a war of choice, a war entered into recklessly and without forethought about the long-term implications, which provided excellent material that filmmakers could easily dig their teeth into.
Seth Frantzman: Russia's nuclear threat: Why Vladimir Putin is probably bluffing - analysis
The talk of Moscow’s reverses on the battlefield and pressure it now faces have led some to imagine that the nuclear threat might be serious. John Bolton, a former US national security advisor and ambassador to the United Nations, was quoted in Sky News as saying that Russia is in “greater trouble than at any point since the invasion.... So I think without question that increases Putin’s domestic difficulties in regular Russian politics and makes it somewhat more likely that the use of a tactical nuclear weapon might be possible.”Before leaving office, Obama claimed Netanyahu ‘subscribes to Putinism’
In a recent CBS interview, Rolf Mowatt-Larssen – former CIA Moscow station chief and William J. Perry Distinguished Fellow at the Nuclear Threat Initiative – spoke about the nuclear threat. Mowatt-Larssen said that Western leaders must take Putin’s threats seriously.
“There is no military reason for Vladimir Putin to do this. In other words, he can’t use tactical nuclear weapons on the battlefield to win a war he can’t win with an army. Nuclear weapons don’t take territories. They don’t hold territories. It is a way to try to strike back at an enemy you can’t stop with an asymmetric weapon of mass destruction. That’s the danger.”
In a video posted online, retired US Gen. Ben Hodges said something similar speaking to CNBC. He said that this was a credible threat but added it was unlikely because there is no battlefield advantage in using nukes.
The nuclear threat appears to emerge every time Russia wants to shift gears in Ukraine. When it first attacked, it also referenced the nuclear issue, hoping the West would not intervene. When the West called Moscow’s bluff, the Russians had to change their tactics. Now Russia has annexed parts of Ukraine, and Russia wants to warn the Ukrainians not to continue their successful advance.
It seems all the talking points about not escalating in Ukraine and giving Putin an “off-ramp” are points that Moscow wants to be raised, and it wants people afraid of nuclear war because it thinks that then it might be able to cement its control of areas it illegally annexed.
During his final week in office, former US president Barak Obama expressed concern that then-Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and several other conservative world leaders had to various degrees subscribed to “Putinism” in a war of ideas against liberal democracy.Netanyahu to stay in hospital for tests after falling ill on Yom Kippur
“What I worry about most is, there is a war right now of ideas — more than any hot war — and it is between Putinism — which, by the way, is subscribed to, at some level, by [Turkish President Recep Tayyip] Erdogan or Netanyahu or [then-Philippine president Rodrigo] Duterte and [then-incoming US president Donald] Trump — and a vision of a liberal market-based democracy that has all kinds of flaws and is subject to all kinds of legitimate criticism, but on the other hand is sort of responsible for most of the human progress we’ve seen over the last 50, 75 years,” Obama said in an off-the-record, January 2017 conversation with reporters, which was declassified by the Justice Department last week.
The concern was one of several voiced by the then-outgoing president during the wide-ranging discussion. Obama lamented how the “liberal order [in Europe was] being chipped,” at the time, warning that the trend would only continue if the US does not continue raising democratic ideals, such as human rights on the world stage.
“If we’re not there initiating ourselves, then everybody goes into their own sort of nationalist, mercantilist corners, and it will be a meaner, tougher world, and the prospects for conflict that arise will be greater,” Obama is quoted as having said in the transcript obtained by Bloomberg.
The former president acknowledged that “sometimes there’s hypocrisy” in the US’s dealings with authoritarian regimes such as Saudi Arabia or China all while raising the importance of defending human rights as a critical American value. However, he said his fear was that under a Trump presidency, concern for such liberal, democratic ideals would be tossed aside entirely.
Obama’s folding of Netanyahu alongside populist leaders such as Erdogan, Duterte and Trump and even claiming the Israeli premier has a similar worldview to that of Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to be a further extension of what was already known to be the poor standing Netanyahu holds in the former Democratic president’s eyes.
Opposition leader Benjamin Netanyahu was rushed to Sha’arei Tzedek Medical Center on Wednesday afternoon after he reportedly fainted during Yom Kippur prayers in a Jerusalem synagogue.Settler leaders call for IDF to launch ‘Operation Defensive Shield 2’
“The former prime minister began to feel unwell in synagogue during prayers,” his office said in a statement. “He underwent a series of tests at the scene that came back normal and is now feeling better. In order to be certain, Netanyahu went to the hospital independently.”
The former prime minister’s doctor released a statement Wednesday evening reassuring that Netanyahu feels well but will spend the night in the hospital for further tests.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid wished his rival full health in a tweet sent out shortly after Yom Kippur ended.
Netanyahu’s bloc partners, notably Shas head Aryeh Deri, United Torah Judaism head Yitzchak Goldknopf and MK Itamar Ben-Gvir, also wished Netanyahu well.
Settler councils plan to strike on Thursday as part of their campaign to pressure the IDF to embark on a military operation against Palestinian terror akin to the 2002 Operation Defensive Shield.3 Israelis, 8 tourists enter PA-controlled Hebron area, extracted by Abbas’s forces
The Yesha Council also plans to hold a rally in front of Defense Minister Benny Gantz's Rosh Ha'Ayin home at 11 a.m. Settlers protest rising number of attacks against Israelis
At issue is the rising number of shooting attacks against Israelis in settlements or on the roads in the West Bank. According to the IDF there were 34 shooting attacks in the West Bank in September, up from 23 in August and 15 in July.
On Sunday evening Palestinians shot at settlers who had held a rally at the entryway to the Palestinian city of Nablus, lightly injuring an IDF soldier.
On Tuesday morning, in advance of the Yom Kippur fast, settlers held a pre-holiday prayer service in that same area. Rabbi Elyakim Levanon, Religious Zionist Party head Bezalel Smotrich and Samaria Regional Council head Yossi Dagan participated in the service.
"I hope that those who heard [the prayer] will understand the need for a drastic change in the security services approach," Levanon said.
Smotrich said that "the government must order the IDF to launch a large-scale military operation in Nablus and Jenin to eradicate the nests of terrorism" that are established there before more harm comes to Israelis.
Three Israelis and eight foreign tourists drove into the West Bank city of Hebron on Wednesday evening. They were spotted by Palestinian security forces, who protected them while escorting them safely out of the area, Channel 12 news reported.Suspect in West Bank shooting attack arrested, Palestinian gunman killed in clashes
It was the second such incident in a West Bank city in as many days.
According to Channel 12 news, Palestinian forces handed over the group to Israeli security forces. There was no immediate statement from the Israeli military on the matter.
Footage circulating on social media apparently showed the two cars surrounded by a crowd. It was unclear why they had driven into the area — part of the 80 percent of the city that is under the control of the Palestinian Authority.
There were no injuries reported in the incident.
The Walla news site said the eight tourists were from Russia.Again,
— Younis Tirawi -يونس الطيراوي (@ytirawi) October 5, 2022
Now in Hebron, an Israeli settler downtown caught by local residents. PSF are trying to evacuate him. pic.twitter.com/UzXsp4zePQ
Hebron is a West Bank city with a population of over 210,000 Palestinians and several hundred Israeli settlers living in enclaves, mostly near its old city area.
Under the Hebron Protocol signed in 1997, the West Bank’s most populous city was divided into two sections. H1 includes 80 percent of the city and lies under full Palestinian control. In H2, 800 Israeli settlers live in fortified compounds heavily guarded by the IDF amid 40,000 Palestinians, whose movements are highly restricted.
A Palestinian gunman was killed as Israeli security services arrested a suspect in the Sunday shooting attack on a taxi and bus in the West Bank, it was announced Wednesday.Nablus governor advises gunmen to surrender to Palestinian security forces
Salman Imran, 35, from the village of Deir al-Hatab near Nablus was arrested after he surrendered to Israeli forces, according to a joint statement from the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet security service.
“Soldiers surrounded the residence of the suspect. The suspect shot at the soldiers while barricaded inside the residential building,” the army said in a statement.
The suspect’s gunman’s brother was injured in clashes surrounding the operation, carried out during Yom Kippur.
Two journalists were also reportedly injured in unclear circumstances.
Wafa, the official Palestinian Authority news agency, said the two journalists were employees of state television network Palestine TV.
“A claim is being made about two members of the media who were present in the fighting area and were injured, it is not known as a result of what,” the IDF said.
The Palestinian Authority has offered members of the Lions' Den to hand themselves over to the Palestinian security forces and dismantle their armed group, which has been responsible for a spate of shooting attacks on IDF soldiers and Jewish settlers in the Nablus area.France seeks EU freeze on Iran officials’ assets, travel bans over protest crackdown
In return, the PA would try to convince Israel to stop pursuing the gunmen.
In the past few days, PA security forces summoned family members of some of the gunmen and advised them to talk their sons into laying down their weapons, Palestinian sources revealed on Wednesday. “The goal is to end the phenomenon of the Lions' Den in order to avoid a disaster in Nablus,” the sources said.
Earlier this week, the sources told The Jerusalem Post that the PA was considering the possibility of calling on the gunmen to surrender to Palestinian security forces. The PA was also studying the possibility of recruiting the gunmen to those security forces.
A senior Palestinian official told the Post that the PA leadership will not allow a small group of gunmen to drag the Palestinians into a major confrontation with Israel.
France was pushing for the European Union to “target senior officials and hold them responsible for their actions” over Iran’s repression of protests following the death of Mahsa Amini, foreign minister Catherine Colonna told parliament Tuesday.
Proposed sanctions include “freezing their assets and their right to travel”, Colonna said, criticising Tehran officials who she said “repress [protests] on the one hand and send many of their own children to live in the West on the other.”
Citing diplomatic sources, Germany’s Der Spiegel had reported Monday that Paris was working with Germany, Denmark, Spain, Italy and the Czech Republic on new sanctions against Tehran.
Amini, 22, was pronounced dead on September 16, days after the notorious morality police detained the Kurdish Iranian for allegedly breaching rules requiring women to wear hijab headscarves and modest clothes.
Anger over her death has sparked the biggest wave of protests to rock Iran in almost three years and a state crackdown that has seen scores of protesters killed and more than 1,000 arrested.
US President Joe Biden Monday vowed “further costs on perpetrators of violence against peaceful protesters.”
The unrest has overshadowed diplomatic efforts to revive a 2015 nuclear deal between Iran and major powers which had come close to a breakthrough in recent months before stalling again.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei had accused arch-foes the United States and Israel of fomenting the upheaval.
"Would the Biden Admin consider deporting family members of all Iranian authorities who are here in the United States, studying, working...?"@StateDeputySpox "...that's a legal issue, not a political tool."
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 5, 2022
Pathetic. #MahsaAmini #OpIran
pic.twitter.com/TVr79gPZCm
Oscar-winning French actresses cut off their hair in solidarity with Iranian women
Oscar-winning actors Marion Cotillard and Juliette Binoche, as well as other French screen and music stars, filmed themselves chopping off locks of their hair in a video posted Wednesday in support of protesters in Iran.
“For freedom,” Binoche said as she hacked a large handful of hair off the top of her head with a pair of scissors, before brandishing it in front of the camera.
The video, hashtagged HairForFreedom, comes with Iran engulfed by anti-government protests. They were sparked by the death of 22-year-old Mahsa Amini after her arrest for allegedly violating the Islamic Republic’s strict dress code.
Some of the Iranian demonstrators have publicly hacked off locks of hair at the protests, and the gesture has spread.
Images of women elsewhere cutting their hair to show solidarity with Iranian women have gone viral — from Turkish singer Melek Mosso on stage last week, to women in Lebanon and Syria, to Swedish lawmaker Abir Al-Sahlanion in the halls of the European Parliament in Strasbourg on Tuesday. A museum in Rome is collecting locks of hair to present to the Iranian Embassy.
French actress Juliette Binoche and a number of other well known French women cut part of their hair in solidarity with Iranian women protesting the regime in Tehran. #MahsaAmini #مهسا_امینی pic.twitter.com/e2EqQZOhNl
— Bahman Kalbasi (@BahmanKalbasi) October 5, 2022
A girls' school in Iran brought a member of the IRGC-run Basij paramilitary to speak to students. The girls welcomed the speaker by taking off their headscarves & chanting "get lost, Basiji".
— Kian Sharifi (@KianSharifi) October 5, 2022
Teenage girls have been at the forefront of protests for days.pic.twitter.com/kvskgB8qas
Hezbollah TV (Al Manar, with links to Iran):
— Emily Schrader - ????? ?????? (@emilykschrader) October 5, 2022
“Mahsa Amini was a terrorist who collaborated with Israel. There are reports she went to the police station to commit suicide and took a poison pill so as to set Iran and the region of fire.”
Pathetic!!! #MahsaAmini #OpIran pic.twitter.com/I09iOOWLHI
Exemplary morality. Girls before putting on Hijab salute our Supreme Leader. pic.twitter.com/qihFs5ibmz
— Iran Morality Police (@IranMorality) October 5, 2022
‘Extermination Camp Run By Jews’: On Yom Kippur, Cornell Set to Host Professor Who Compared Jews to Nazis
Cornell University is set to host a panel—on the holiest day of the year for Jewish students—featuring a professor who compared the Jewish state to Nazi Germany, claiming that Palestinians in the Hamas-controlled Gaza strip are living in an "extermination camp, run by Jews."Anti-Israel Protest Staged at University of Michigan During Jewish New Year Observance
The Cornell Institute for Comparative Modernities panel, which is titled "Palestine and Indigenous North America," is the final event in a series about "Settler Colonialism, Sovereignty, Apartheid." The panel includes Cornell American Studies professor Eric Cheyfitz, who has compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and University of Kansas professor Robert Warrior, a vocal proponent of the anti-Israel boycott movement, who claimed that Israel "illegally confiscates Palestinian lands, it literally blows up Palestinian homes, house by house."
The event comes as Jews on college campuses are facing increased incidents of anti-Semitism, with the federal government investigating allegations of anti-Jewish harassment at multiple schools, including the University of Southern California and the University of Vermont.
The event will take place on Oct. 5, which falls on Yom Kippur—precluding many Jewish students and community members from attending. Yom Kippur is the holiest day of the year for Jews during which they are required to fast and refrain from working.
"The terrible ironies of history: Gaza has become an extermination camp, run by Jews," Cheyfitz, the Cornell professor, wrote on Twitter in 2014.
Cheyfitz equated Gaza, the Palestinian territory that Israel withdrew from in 2005 and which is controlled by the Hamas-led government, to the Warsaw Ghetto under Nazi Germany.
He also described Israel as a "terrorist organization, projecting its crimes on the defenders of human rights," and claimed "Apartheid Israel is in its death throes. The symptoms: Violence, in its desperation, is all Zionism can offer the world."
Students at the University of Michigan last Thursday erected an “apartheid wall” on campus and led an anti-Israel protest in front of it.Sun-Sentinel Opinion Writer Undermines a Crucial Tool for Fighting Antisemitism
Organized by Students for Allied Freedom and Equality (SAFE), the demonstration coincided with observance of the Jewish New Year.
“It is an apartheid wall and actively contributes to the systems of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and forced displacement that harms Palestinians every single day,” a student, who declined to reveal her identity, told The Michigan Daily. “The wall separates family members from one another, children from their schools, men and women from their jobs, and sick people from the nearest hospitals.”
Others, one of whom made a sign that said “No Justice, No Peace,” accused the Israeli government of aiming to harm American pro-Palestinian activists, denounced Canary Mission, an antisemitism watchdog, and criticized the university for refusing to embrace the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement.
“Unfortunately the groups that don’t support Palestine have been able to blacklist Palestinian allies and activists on this campus,” sophomore Bilal Irfan said. “SAFE has been advocating for divestment for almost two decades now for the University, but the Board of Regents has persistently refused to do that.”
Some University of Michigan students approached the protestors and urged them to become fully apprised of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Michigan Daily reported. Standing atop a nearby structure, they made a “thumbs-down” gesture when they perceived the protestors’ remarks as offensive or lacking nuance.
Fifty-one out of the 53 members of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish organizations (including CAMERA) have endorsed the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. That’s about as close as one can possibly come to unanimity within the organized American Jewish community. The IHRA definition has also been endorsed by 38 countries and a majority of US states. But on September 25th—erev Rosh HaShanah—the South Florida Sun-Sentinel ran an op-ed by a far-left activist seeking to undermine this definition. (“What antisemitism is, what it is not and why it matters,” by Donna Nevel.)
Nevel wrote, on the eve of the Jewish High Holy Days, purportedly to urge Jews not to consider criticism of Israel antisemitic: “Many Jewish organizations speak about criticism of Israel or Zionism as antisemitic, but that is a misuse and an abuse of what antisemitism is.” In fact, however, the IHRA definition specifically and explicitly states that “criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic.”
It is beyond argument that not all criticism of Israel is antisemitic. But just as surely, some of it is. How to distinguish between the various critiques of Israel, how to sort what is from what is not antisemitic, is at the root of the IHRA definition. But Nevel seeks to erode this distinction.
On the one hand, Nevel claims, “antisemitism is directed at Jews as Jews. Criticism of Israel or Zionism is directed at a nation-state,” implying that there is no connection between criticism of Israel and hostility towards Jews. But on the other hand, she wrote, “for many of us who are Jewish, we feel an obligation to make clear Israel does not have our support and to speak out about the injustices being committed.” If Israel is just any old nation-state, just like any other, then why does Nevel feel that being Jewish gives her a special obligation to speak about it?
Read the full story by @koningsveld @HonestReporting here: https://t.co/huHQdiksXN
— Jacki Alexander (@JackiAlexander_) October 5, 2022
Nice thread. Can we talk about the time you praised the Har Nof synagogue massacre? https://t.co/HCwPMEs9g0 pic.twitter.com/l5E3nGcbx7
— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) October 5, 2022
The Facebook post "expressing support for the Palestinian resistance" in question.
— The Mossad: The Social Media Account (@TheMossadIL) October 5, 2022
Har Nof Synagogue Massacre, November 18, 2014. https://t.co/v5Ucx0b5L9 pic.twitter.com/znOCyeJTEN
Australia soccer fan gets life ban for Nazi salute; governing body: ‘Zero tolerance’
A fan who made a Hitler salute at an Australian soccer match was banned for life on Wednesday, with the sport’s governing body saying it had zero tolerance for “offensive behavior.”
The man, who has not been named publicly, was among a group of supporters at the Australia Cup final in Sydney on Saturday caught on camera making fascist gestures and reportedly chanting far-right Croatian songs.
Football Australia said one spectator has been identified and handed a lifetime ban from any future games it sanctions, including national team, A-League and Australia Cup fixtures.
“The conduct in question relates to a fascist salute or similar gesture conducted during the match and captured on the host broadcast,” said the governing body, which previously referred to “Hitler salutes.”
“Football Australia adopts a zero-tolerance policy to disrespectful and offensive behavior at sanctioned events and will not tolerate behavior that has the potential to offend, insult, humiliate, disparage or vilify spectators, players or officials.”
It added that investigations were continuing to identify other individuals.
Eight people were ejected from Sydney’s CommBank Stadium during the match between A-League side Macarthur FC and semi-professional Sydney United 58, formerly known as Sydney Croatia.
The heavy penalty came as Football Australia chief executive James Johnson wrote an open letter to the soccer community, saying that he was “shocked and concerned” by the fans’ behavior.
But seriously, don't take anybody's word for it, scroll through the responses to this post from entirely appropriate post Liverpool FC.
— David Hirsh (@DavidHirsh) October 4, 2022
Scroll. Keep scrolling.
It bears some thinking about. https://t.co/6gF7GZLyGj
‘School Ties’ at 30: How a film about antisemitism launched Brendan Fraser’s career
After a long career pause brought on by an assault-induced depression and injuries, actor Brendan Fraser is back in headlines, earning early Oscar buzz for his performance in the upcoming movie “The Whale.”Medics treat 2,741 for cycling injuries, Yom Kippur fasting effects, deliver 1 baby
What some of even his most ardent fans might not realize is that one of Fraser’s earliest roles — alongside Matt Damon in what was his first major onscreen role — came in one the few mainstream Hollywood films to focus on antisemitism at non-Jewish schools.
In “School Ties,” which hit theaters 30 years ago and was set in the 1950s, Fraser plays David Greene, a working-class Jewish kid from Scranton, Pennsylvania, who enrolls at an elite New England prep school for his senior year of high school, to play quarterback for the vaunted football team.
David is urged to keep his Jewishness a secret, and he proves an instant success on the football field.
Faced in the early fall with a Sandy Koufax-esque choice — whether or not to miss a big game that falls on Rosh Hashanah — David sneaks to the campus chapel by himself late at night to say High Holiday prayers. Confronted by a dean, he’s asked, “Was it worth it, breaking a tradition just to win a football game?”
“Your tradition or mine, sir?” he replies.
Once a drunken postgame party guest lets the secret slip, David finds himself an outcast. What begins with a few jokes about “Jews and communists” at Harvard and how a classmate “Jewed” someone down for a deal for a stereo gives way to antisemitic slurs during a shower room brawl (with Damon’s villain character Charlie Dillon), a swastika on his dorm room wall and a cheating scandal meant to frame David.
All of his classmates, unlike him, are from the upper-crust WASP class and under pressure to be the fifth or sixth generation of their family to attend an Ivy League school. It’s also clear that many of them had never met a Jew in their life.
“School Ties” was directed by Jewish filmmaker Robert Mandel and written by, of all people, “Law & Order” creator Dick Wolf. Wolf’s father was Jewish, but he had a Catholic mother and was an altar boy; Wolf also attended the prestigious Philips Academy in Massachusetts. (Fraser is not Jewish, and Randall Batinkoff, who has a minor role, appears to be the only Jewish actor in the cast, although Cole Hauser, on his mother’s side, was descended from Warner Brothers’ Jewish co-founder Harry Warner.) Mandel has said in interviews that he experienced antisemitism during his college years at Bucknell University in the 1960s.
Medics treated 2,741 people over Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, which began Tuesday at sundown and ended Wednesday evening, according to figures from the Magen David Adom emergency service.
The Jewish Day of Atonement is marked by fasting and intense prayer by many observant Jews, while secular Israelis take advantage of the deserted roads and highways, filling the streets in droves over the holiday.
Medics also delivered one baby.
The emergency service said 1,920 of those treated were taken to the hospital for further medical care.
Three people were seriously hurt on the roads. A pedestrian, 33, was seriously injured on Route 4 near Aluf Sadeh junction. A motorbike rider, 19, was seriously injured in the central city of Tira, and another person was seriously injured in a road accident near the Gadot Forest.
Another 19 people were moderately injured in accidents around the country, and 19 were lightly injured. People walk on the empty road at the entrance to Jerusalem, on Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, October 5, 2022. (Jamal Awad/Flash90)
There were 285 bicycle scooter and skateboard riders who needed treatment for injuries on roads, including six who were moderately injured.
Also, 133 expectant mothers were taken to the hospital, MDA reported, with medics assisting one woman in Jerusalem to deliver her baby.
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