Tom Gross has a heartbreaking short newsletter today (actually, they’re all heartbreaking). I’ll reproduce it as is since it’s not anywhere on the internet and you can’t subscribe. His words are indented:
Ruth’s last dance. Please watch her happy for a few seconds and read this note. [JAC: video below]
Tom Gross writes:
16-year-old Ruth Peretz was a special needs child with cerebral palsy and muscular dystrophy.
Her dedicated father Arik would take her to music festivals because the one thing that made her happy was to dance in her wheelchair alongside other kids.
Arik and Ruth went to dance at the “nature and peace” music festival near Kibbutz Re’im in Israel, at which Hamas murdered over 260 youngsters and raped and kidnapped others.
Yesterday (Wednesday) evening after a frantic 12 day search for Ruth and her father, volunteers from the incredible ZAKA charity organization found their badly dismembered and burned bodies in the desert nearby and they were then identified by forensic experts.
Their body parts will be buried today in accordance with Jewish law.
This is a video lasting a few seconds of Ruth dancing in her wheelchair at the music festival 12 days ago on October 7, before she was dragged out of her wheelchair and brutally murdered by the evil terrorists of Hamas. In other cases on October 7, Hamas filmed themselves forcing parents to watch as they first murdered their children before torturing and then murdering the parents.
Ruth Peretz and her father Arik will be buried today by her mother Elinor and her sister Yamit
Update: Noya has been murdered.
(This is an update to my dispatch of two days ago.)
Confirmed this morning: the bodies of special needs Harry Potter fan Noya Kalderon and her grandmother have been found murdered and dumped near the Gaza border.
Her 14-year-old sister, 12-year-old brother and her father remain hostages in Gaza. Five members of the family were initially kidnapped together. It appears Hamas didn’t want to deal with a disabled child and grandmother so killed them.
— Tom Gross
Absolutely brutal, but the evil needs to be exposed.
I saw JKR’s tweet about Noya and then the tragic updates in response. Heartbreaking.
Monstrous – just wordless…
Cerebral palsy is preventable in most cases. It’s occurrence is a blemish upon our perinatal care.
Murdering children is the lowest one can sink to, but murdering children with CP is somehow even below rock bottom.
I have no words for the depravity and evilness of the Hamas attacks. They murdered, raped and tortured innocent civilians, yes, including children. And on top of that they exposed the population they pretend to support to war, explosions, displacement and death. That is what fundamentalist Muslims do to their ‘enemies’ as well as to ‘their own’. There is no excusing Hamas. I’d be in favour of eradicating that murdering, torturing and raping militia altogether. I hope I’m wrong, but I fear those hostages are beyond saving.
Tsahal has a really difficult task there, you want to eliminate Hamas, but don’t want to cause too much (ideally none at all) ‘collateral damage’, a daunting, basically impossible, task in a tight urban environment.
And it is the innocents that have and will suffer most.
Just when I think we’ve seen the lowest of the low, we are shocked into realizing that Hamas can still go lower.
“In other cases on October 7, Hamas filmed themselves forcing parents to watch as they first murdered their children before torturing and then murdering the parents.”
When I read that, I couldn’t help but experience pure unadulterated hatred for Hamas. For a parent, no greater agony can be conceived than to be forced to witness their child’s suffering and death. Hamas is depraved, evil, inhuman.
But according to Professor Russel Rickford over at Cornell what Hamas did was as widely quoted (and since apologised for) “‘…exhilarating. It was exhilarating, it was energizing. And if they weren’t exhilarated by this challenge to the monopoly of violence, the shifting of the violence of power, then they would not be human. I was exhilarated.”
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12638105/Cornell-Professor-Russell-Rickford-Hamas-Israel-attacks.html#:~:text=%27It%20was%20exhilarating.,%2C%27%20he%20told%20the%20crowd.
The link is to the Daily Mail’s version of the story but it’s been widely covered, although not on the Left, who would not like anyone to realize that BDS also stands for the Beating, Degredation and Slaughter of Jews.
I have noticed that a number of “social justice activists” have complained about “collective punishment”, but are also supporters of BDS… Weird, eh?
I’ve been watching CNN more than usual due the tragedy in the Middle East. They do a good job of interviewing Jewish families and relatives of some of those poor folks who have been killed or kidnapped. The bravery and stoicism of these folks is completely off the charts. It’s quite possible that they crumble to pieces off camera interview, but Christ do they appear strong.
Heard on NPR today – I dropped in on the middle of it and guess it was news but I wasn’t paying attention to that aspect. Reporter interviewing a Palestinian guy whose creds I didn’t get either, but in response to a question about the attack they guy just offhandedly said that the invasion met such little resistance that the Palestinians went farther than expected, or something along those lines. The interviewer just continued, without any challenge about the atrocities. Then either next or shortly after, that the guy commented that Hamas was elected, without any challenge that yeah, but that was in 2006.
Did anyone else hear that one?
I saw a photo of Ruth’s wheelchair in her father’s van. Her sister Yaarit had reported they were last seen with her father running carrying Ruth. Yaarit had also said Ruth would not survive as a hostage as she was tube fed through her stomach.
The term “Nazi” is thrown around a lot to describe people we don’t like, but as a descriptor of Hamas it could not be more apt. They are 21st century Nazis.
Their treatment of a disabled person does not surprise me. In their sick minds, they probably viewed her as some type of animal…barely a human at all.