Kerry

I read books, stay informed and support Israel

[Kerry @jelsamina]

#essentialtremor #newzealand
Curious https://t.co/k6RAZ7R9dX
Its over now https://t.co/M8s0Zq0Io3

[Undine @HorribleSanity]

A tragic bit of #Caturday history: When carpenter Harry McNeish joined Ernest Shackleton’s expedition to the Arctic in 1914, he was accompanied by his (male) cat Mrs. Chippy. The “full of character” feline became the ship’s mascot.

[Kerry @jelsamina]

@nzpoliticsgroup La Tropezienne in Browns Bay. Vaniye patisserie in Parnell & onehunga. For bread, Wild Wheat.

[Kerry @jelsamina]

@Mazelit_ Just finished Golgotha by Lavie Tidhar & The Tokaido Road by Lucia St Clair Robson. Now reading Dog by by Yishay Ishi Ron & The Book of Dirt by Bram Presser

[Anish Moonka @anishmoonka]

Finnish scientists trucked in real forest dirt and grass and laid it over the gravel at four daycare yards. They let the kids dig around in it for a month. The blood tests came back with changes the researchers hadn’t expected to see so fast or so clear.

The study ran at ten daycares in two Finnish cities with 75 kids aged three to five. Four of the yards got the forest treatment: about a tennis court worth of soil and grass laid over the gravel, plus planters and peat blocks the kids could dig and climb on. Three others stuck with their normal gravel yards. The last three were daycares where the kids were already visiting real forests every day.

After one month, the variety of bacteria living on the kids’ skin shot up, and the kind that helps train the skin’s immune defenses jumped the most. Their gut bacteria started to look like the gut bacteria of the forest-visiting kids. Their blood showed more of the immune cells whose job is to keep the body from freaking out at harmless stuff like pollen and peanuts, and overall inflammation dropped. The kids on the plain gravel yards showed none of this.

Childhood asthma in the US doubled between 1980 and 1995. Food allergies in kids jumped 50 percent between 1997 and 2011, then jumped another 50 percent between 2007 and 2021. And peanut allergies in one-year-olds tripled between 2001 and 2017.

The Finnish researchers think one of the reasons is simple: kids today don’t get dirty enough. 37 percent of American preschoolers now spend an hour or less outside on a normal weekday. Their immune systems are getting trained in environments stripped of the bacteria humans have always lived around.

Aki Sinkkonen, who led the study, put it in plain words: “It would be best if children could play in puddles and everyone could dig organic soil.” The Finnish government is now helping pay for daycares across the country to make the same changes.

[Caroline Yadan @CarolineYADAN]

L’appel au boycott de @joannsfar ne vise pas une œuvre : il vise un homme en raison de son identité juive réelle ou supposée.

Derrière le prétexte militant se cache une mécanique de discrimination qui rappelle les heures les plus sombres : exclure, stigmatiser, désigner publiquement un Juif à la vindicte populaire.

Qu’une partie de la gauche puisse aujourd’hui cautionner ou relativiser de telles pratiques est une honte absolue.
C’est le symptôme d’un antisémitisme décomplexé, revendiqué, qui ne cherche même plus à se dissimuler derrière les faux-semblants de l’engagement politique.

[Kerry @jelsamina]

@MOSSADil

[Dov Lipman @DovLipman]

THIS. IS. INCREDIBLE.
131 yrs. ago Alfred Dreyfuss, falsely accused of espionage, was stripped of his French army rank: lieutenant-colonel.
Last week, Uriel Dreyfuss, a direct descendant of Alfred, was promoted to the IDF rank of…lieutenant colonel!!
The nation of Israel lives!

[Henshi @HenshiG]

April 1941. Sarajevo trembled under Nazi boots. Soldiers kicked in doors, dragging Jews into the street. Screams echoed between houses.
Zejneba Hardaga watched them seize her elderly Jewish neighbor. The man’s desperate cries tore through her. Next door lived her dear friends—the Kavilio family. She knew they were next.

Without hesitation, Zejneba ran and pounded on their door.
“They’re coming,” she whispered urgently when Yosef Kavilio opened it.
“Come to my house. Now. All of you.”
Yosef’s eyes widened. “If they find us with you, they’ll kill you too.”

Zejneba’s voice was steel and fire: “Then don’t let them find you. Move.”
Yosef, his wife Rifka, and their young daughter Rivka slipped across the threshold into the Hardaga home. Mustafa Hardaga was waiting. “Upstairs. The back room. Not a sound.”

For three terrifying years, the Hardagas hid the Kavilios behind a false wall they built with their own hands. They shared every precious scrap of food. When Nazis banged on the door—three separate times—Zejneba greeted them with a calm smile and offered tea. “Jews? No, sir. Only my family.”

The soldiers searched closets, basements, every corner. Their heavy boots marched inches from the hidden room where the Kavilios pressed against each other, barely breathing, hearts hammering. One whisper, one cough, and everyone would die.

Neighbors asked about strange noises. “Just mice,” Zejneba lied. When soldiers came at night, Mustafa spoke loudly at the door, buying precious seconds for the family to vanish deeper into the shadows.
They risked everything—every single day—for three long years.

In 1944, the Nazis fled. The Kavilios emerged, blinking into the light, alive. Yosef embraced Zejneba, tears streaming: “You saved us.”
“You are our family,” she replied softly. “That’s what families do.”

The Kavilios eventually left for Israel and built new lives. The Hardagas stayed in Sarajevo, never boasting about their courage. They simply returned to quiet, ordinary days.
Forty years passed. Then, in 1992, war ripped Bosnia apart. Sarajevo was under siege—bombs, starvation, snipers. Zejneba, now 73 and widowed, huddled with her children and grandchildren as death closed in.

The phone rang. An international line from Israel.
“Mrs. Hardaga? It’s Rivka… the little girl you hid.”
Zejneba’s voice broke. “My little Rivka?”
“I’m coming for you,” Rivka said. “You saved us fifty years ago. Now we’re saving you.”

The Kavilio family moved mountains. They contacted Israeli officials, diplomats, the military.

“This Muslim family hid us during the Holocaust. They are Righteous Among the Nations. We must bring them home.”

Israel answered. A daring convoy braved the war zone, extracted Zejneba, her daughter, and grandchildren, and flew them to safety in Jerusalem—the very land where the family they had saved now thrived.

At the airport, two elderly women—Zejneba and Rivka—fell into each other’s arms, sobbing. Different faiths. Different lives. One unbreakable bond forged in terror and repaid in love.

In 1985, Yad Vashem had already honored Zejneba and Mustafa as Righteous Among the Nations—the first Muslim family ever to receive this distinction. Zejneba had shrugged it off: “We only did what our faith taught us—to protect our neighbors.”

But the deeper truth was written in their lives: kindness knows no border, no religion, no time.

Zejneba died in Jerusalem in 2003, buried near the people she had saved. At her funeral, Rivka spoke through tears: “She risked everything for us… and fifty years later, we were there for her. That is how it should be.”

A single tree stands at Yad Vashem bearing the Hardaga name—a living witness that one Muslim family chose humanity when the world chose hate, and that the family they saved chose humanity right back.

Full circle.
Perfect.
Eternal.

[ANZL @ANZLiterature]

The ‘final, magnificent novel’ of Kelly Ana Morey - Moa Press to publish Morey's sixth and final book. @HachetteNZ @tepoumuramura @NZSocAuthors @BooksellersNZ @CathChidgey https://t.co/gEoOkyK3iW

[Imtiaz Mahmood @ImtiazMadmood]

When a giant actor like Michael Douglas speaks, the entire media landscape trembles.

He’s not the kind of actor who posts a story and deletes it an hour later. He doesn’t write vague tweets that can be interpreted in every direction. Michael Douglas stood in front of cameras and stated plainly: the world has completely lost its moral compass.

Israel, he said, is on the front line of the struggle. Not a struggle over territory. Not a struggle for power. A struggle over the values of the entire Western world—democracy, freedom, human rights. All the things people love to talk about on Twitter but aren’t willing to fight for.

He outright rejected, without hesitation, any attempt to compare the IDF to extremist terrorist organizations. Such a comparison, he said, is an insult to reality. One side fires rockets at civilians and hides behind children. The other side calls civilians before a strike and tells them to leave. Comparing the two isn’t criticism—it’s moral blindness.

And then he said the sentence that summed it all up: a democracy must defend itself with force. Not with posts. Not with statements. With force.

Michael Douglas is not just an actor. He is a proud Jew who isn’t ashamed, doesn’t apologize, and doesn’t bow his head. While all of Hollywood stays silent out of fear, he stands tall.

[Elad Simchayoff @Elad_Si]

This year, my visit to the @AuschwitzMuseum was different.

It was my fifth time in Auschwitz, my first since October 7th. Before The March of the Living began, I had time to walk through the camp and revisit the exhibition.

Every time I’m there, I return to the Book of Names. I pass the walls lined with hundreds of prisoners’ photographs, and I make sure to stop at the endless piles of shoes, glasses, and suitcases left behind.

This year, I spent most of my time in Block 27. Short films and photographs bring to life European Jewish communities before 1939. Millions of people simply living their lives, contributing to society. Some enlisted to defend their countries. Others were doctors, musicians, academics, and tradespeople.

Another section shows what was happening at the same time. The spread of Nazi propaganda. More and more people came to believe that Jews were the source of all evil. They were blamed for the unimaginable. At first, many weren’t part of that hatred, these were educated, civilised societies, but they didn’t stop it either.

People stayed silent when Jewish shops were vandalised. They stayed silent when Jews were portrayed as money-obsessed, power-hungry conspirators controlling the world. There was no outrage when people were knocking on doors, tagging Jewish people's homes. Then, the systematic extermination began. By the time some might have wanted to speak, it was already too late.

After I left, I saw a social media video where a person in London was throwing money on the ground next to a religious Jew, calling it a “Jew trap.” I remembered how, just hours after the synagogue attack in Manchester, an anti-Zionist march went ahead as if nothing had happened. I thought of the young Jewish girl I met in Australia whose classmates carved swastikas into her desk. And the secondary school student in England who told me how his classmates said he should “go back to the gas chambers.”

Is a second Holocaust possible? I want to believe not, mainly because today, Jews have a state of their own. But if you think the hatred, rhetoric, violence, and indifference that led to Auschwitz belong to the past, you are gravely mistaken.

[Melissa Chen @MsMelChen]

The first time I was flying to Beirut, the desk officer at London Heathrow asked before checking us in, “have you been to Israel?”

We had rehearsed the answer to this question before. But Winston can't lie, so he said yes. I gave him the dirty look. There goes our vacation!

"Well, you don't have the stamp on your passports so just make sure you tell the officer in Beirut that you haven't," she intoned.

I was stressed out for the next 5 hours, and even more so when we had to face the border officer who, by the grace of God, did not ask us THE question (even though he took our passports to a secondary office for extra checks).

Spending time in Beirut, you realize that it's the same Mediterranean light that bathes Tel Aviv; the sea is the same shade of shimmering blue because... well, it's the same sea.

In both places, young people spill out of clubs at sunrise, the bass still thumping from rooftops that overlook the same ancient coastline. Both cities pulse with the same Levantine hunger for life: the clink of arak glasses, endless plates of hummus swirled with olive oil, the sudden eruption of dabke or house music that pulls strangers into a circle. Parties start on the rooftops of Gemmayze in Beirut and tumble down into Mar Mikhael’s narrow alleys; in Tel Aviv they begin on the sand at Gordon Beach and migrate to the warehouses of the Florentin district. These are both stylish people who love life, and who love to party. The energy is truly infectious. The accents may differ but something about this weird combination along with a deep sense of rootedness in community and the extended family really underscore how similar they were.

And yet, there's been a wall between these two peoples. There are no flights stitching the 45 min hop across the water. No commercial trucks rumbling between the ports. Lebanese law forbids its citizens - inside the country or in the diaspora - from so much as speaking to an Israeli, a rule so absolute that some Lebanese friends of mine who live in Europe still glance over their shoulders before typing a reply to any Israeli even outside the country, whether for business or pleasure.

I spent evenings in Beirut listening to Lebanese friends speak of Israelis not as the enemy but as people caught in the same endless loop of fear and longing.

Decades of Hezbollah’s shadow have hollowed out parts of Lebanon, turning the south into a garrison and the economy into a ruin. Yet in the cafés of Achrafieh and the mountain villages above the city you hear it more and more: a quiet, exhausted recognition that the real hostage-takers are not across the border but inside it.

I keep imagining the day the question at Beirut airport changes. I keep picturing the first flight from Rafic Harari to Ben Gurion. One day the music will be louder than the fear. One day the Lebanese and the Israelis will throw the party the rest of the world has been waiting for.

I hope this is the first step:

[The Bookseller @thebookseller]

British writer Michael Rosen has won the 2026 Hans Christian Andersen Award for Writing, while Chinese illustrator Cai Gao has won the award for Illustration 👇 https://t.co/RmQcEOxP6K

[Imtiaz Mahmood @ImtiazMadmood]

THE JEW'S HOLOCAUST;He was offered his life, his freedom, and a way out, but he chose to walk into the fire because he couldn't bear the thought of a child being afraid in the dark alone.

They went to their deaths not as prisoners, but as a family, following the only man who ever told them they were loved. Janusz Korczak, the famous Polish-Jewish doctor, author, and director of a large orphanage in Warsaw, dedicated his life to fighting for children's rights.

When the Nazis invaded Poland, he moved his 200 orphans into the cramped, starving Warsaw Ghetto. On August 5, 1942, as the orphanage faced "liquidation" and the children were to be sent to Treblinka, Korczak was offered a "Sanctuary" pass by Nazi authorities, which he tore to pieces, refusing to abandon his children. He led them on a "trip to the countryside," dressed in their cleanest clothes, holding two of the youngest children's hands as they marched through the ghetto toward the trains.

Even at the station, a German officer's attempt to pull him from the line was met with a simple shake of his head before he stepped into the airless cattle car with his children. He stayed with them until the very end, comforting them in the darkness of the gas chambers, telling them stories until the air ran out, choosing to die as a father to the fatherless.

This image captures the "Final Walk of the Just"—a poignant testament to human goodness, a story that breaks the heart but heals the soul, proving that the light of one man’s love can outshine the darkness of a thousand cannons.

Today, against the Jew, the same annihilation is crafted every other day. THE ISLAMIC WORLD, LEFTIST REGIMES AND REST OF THE DEMONISED BEINGS HAVE CONNIVED AGAINST ISRAEL. IT'LL NOT HAPPEN!

[Ireland Israel Alliance @irlisrAlliance]

Absolutely shocking and disgraceful decision by Dublin's National Concert Hall to cancel a fundraiser event in aid of MDA Ireland. It's not even a political event, rather a staged reading of the experiences of survivors of the 7/10 Hamas massacre. Is it any wonder Ireland has gained an odious reputation worldwide as being virulently antisemitic? See @Alan__Shatter statement below...

[Liz Churchill @liz_churchill10]

Angela Merkel just ADMITTED on CAMERA she deliberately flooded Germany with third-world migrants to “stop the far right.”

She chose to erase her own people rather than lose power.

This wasn’t a mistake.

It was demographic warfare.
This is TREASON.

[Raet Lomi @raetlomi]

Fiji set to host Israel and UAE embassies in Suva to boost Middle East ties https://t.co/K6LOweYaVK #Fiji

[Jennifer Dunham🇮🇱🇨🇦🇺🇦🇬🇧 @Wetaskijen]

I believe in God.

[NZ and the MRNA @HopeRising19]

NZ GOVT HAD DIRECT ACCESS TO FACEBOOK "TAKE DOWN PORTAL"

A New Zealand OIA confirms that under the Ardern government, there was an arrangement with Facebook, that granted our Govt

DIRECT ACCESS TO THE TAKEDOWN PORTAL

In early 2021 I started a facebook group called The Health Forum NZ Our membership quickly swelled to nearly 60,000 New Zealanders whose lives were impacted by mRNA employment mandates or mRNA injury or death of a loved one.

One morning I awoke to find our entire group had disappeared...and there was not a single trace of us ever having existed. There was no pathway for explanations or appeals

DID THE NZ GOVT REMOVE OUR GROUP THAT WAS SUPPORTING MRNA HARMED AND MANDATED OUT? (link in comments)

[Captain Allen @CptAllenHistory]

This day (March 5) in 1975, eight terrorists from Yasser Arafat’s Fatah stormed the Savoy Hotel in Tel Aviv with AK-47s and grenades, murdering 11 people.

Landing on the beach by boat from Lebanon, the terrorists sprayed passers-by with automatic gunfire and grenades. One bullet struck 21-year-old bride, Sara Najaj, on her wedding day. Thankfully, she survived. Her husband of only a few hours, however - Moshe Deutschmann - was shot and killed.

The terrorists then burst through the Savoy Hotel and immediately murdered a woman working the front desk.

As chaos ensued, the terrorists killed two unarmed hotel guests before taking 10 guests and staff hostage while barricading themselves on the top floor.

Local police, border police, and IDF troops encircled the building.

Meanwhile, it already appeared to be the site of a mass casualty event with a string of seemingly endless flashing red lights. Ambulances arrived one-by-one and paramedics rushed to treat wounded civilians like the bride and sudden widow, Sara Najaj, who lay bleeding on the sidewalk.

Nearly five hours of negotiations with the terrorists went nowhere. So, at 5 a.m., the elite Sayeret Matkal unit of the IDF attempted a rescue mission. What they did not know, however, was that the terrorists had boobytrapped the hotel’s top floor with bombs.

A 5 minute and 16 second-long gunfight ensued, during which seven of the eight terrorists were killed. Two soldiers, Colonel Uzi Yairi and Sergeant Itamar Ben-David, were also killed.

The eighth terrorist was captured alive, but not before he could detonate the planted explosives.

In the end, five of the hostages (including one child) were killed, and the other five were freed. The murdered child’s father was critically wounded but survived.

Decades later, a WikiLeaks cable from the U.S. Embassy in Israel confirmed Yasser Arafat’s direct involvement in and responsibility for the attack. Specifically, the U.S. Embassy’s communique stated:

“The criminal action of Fatah members in Tel Aviv again testifies to the murderous aims and methods of the terrorist organizations … Any claim to relative moderation which might have been attributed to Arafat has been negated.”

Sadly, but tellingly, the eight terrorists are still well-known and remembered today as “martyrs” and “heroes” in Palestinian society.

In 2012, Mahmoud Abbas’ Palestinian Authority built these eight terrorists a grand mausoleum in 2012 to once again drive home the perverse message that there is no greater act for a Palestinian than to die while murdering Jews.