Tom Faranda's Folly

Nikki Haley on support for Israel.

I pretty much agree with this. She is speaking to Jewish Republicans.

 

World Cup Final: New Zealand v. South Africa

What a game and high controversy after the New Zealand captain was given a red card and they had to play a man down from the 28th minute on. There were also three yellow cards - one to the All Blacks and two to South Africa - putting each player out for ten minutes. And it was a wet day. Suggest you hit the Watch on Youtube button.

 

So South Africa won their quarterfinal, semi-final and final each by one point.

Monday wordle

A traditional wife: The pros and cons

Many on social media these days are talking about the trend of "Tradwives", a totally new concept where women marry, have kids, take care of those kids, love their husbands, and engage in traditional home-making tasks

But is a tradwife right for you? Before you head on over to the wife store, be sure to consider these pros and cons:

Pro: When you marry her, she'll get a few chickens

Con: Within a year, you'll have way more than a few chickens

Pro: She has long, beautiful hair

Con: You have to clean the shower drains

Pro: Homemade sourdough bread every single day

Con: You now weigh 300 pounds

Pro: She homeschools, so your kids are always around you

Con: She homeschools, so your kids are ALWAYS around you

Pro: Cans her own vegetables

Con: Botulism

Pro: She's always barefoot, pregnant, and in the kitchen

Con: There's really no con to that, now that we think about it

Pro: She loves babies and farm animals

Con: Poop everywhere

Pro: She raises the kids herself and now they're all super intelligent and interesting people

Con: You seem kind of dull in comparison

Pro: Makes her own butter

Con: It takes FOREVER

Pro: Saves money with DIY projects

Con: You're actually the one doing them all

Pro: She believes in classical education and teaches your kids Latin

Con: Oh no! They just summoned a demon!

Pro: She's incredibly good with money

Con: All your money is in a friggin' envelope

Weigh each pro and con carefully, then go out and pick a wife - hurry, while supplies last!

Israeli intelligence failures and the devastating Hamas attack

This is from the NY Times and there are similar analyses in the Wall Street Journal and Washington Post.

A comprehensive article. 1400 dead Israeli's - as if we'd lost 38,000 people on 9/11.

At the headquarters of his service, Shin Bet, officials had spent hours monitoring Hamas activity in the Gaza Strip, which was unusually active for the middle of the night. Israeli intelligence and national security officials, who had convinced themselves that Hamas had no interest in going to war, initially assumed it was just a nighttime exercise. Their judgment that night might have been different had they been listening to traffic on the hand-held radios of Hamas militants. But Unit 8200, Israel’s signals intelligence agency, had stopped eavesdropping on those networks a year earlier because they saw it as a waste of effort.

As time passed that night, Mr. Bar thought that Hamas might attempt a small-scale assault. He discussed his concerns with Israel’s top generals and ordered the “Tequila” team — a group of elite counterterrorism forces — to deploy to Israel’s southern border.

Until nearly the start of the attack, nobody believed the situation was serious enough to wake up Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to three Israeli defense officials.

Within hours, the Tequila troops were embroiled in a battle with thousands of Hamas gunmen who penetrated Israel’s vaunted border fence, sped in trucks and on motorbikes into southern Israel and attacked villages and military bases.

The most powerful military force in the Middle East had not only completely underestimated the magnitude of the attack, it had totally failed in its intelligence-gathering efforts, mostly due to hubris and the mistaken assumption that Hamas was a threat contained.

************************

The last time Israelis’ collective belief in their country’s security was similarly devastated was 50 years earlier, at the start of the Yom Kippur War, when Israel was caught off guard by an assault by Egyptian and Syrian forces. In an echo of that attack, Hamas succeeded because Israeli officials made many of the same mistakes that were made in 1973.

The Yom Kippur War was “a classic example of how intelligence fails when the policy and intelligence communities build a feedback loop that reinforces their prejudices and blinds them to changes in the threat environment,” Bruce Riedel, a former top Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency, wrote in a 2017 research paper about the 1973 war.

In an interview this month, Mr. Riedel said that Mr. Netanyahu was reaping the consequences of focusing on Iran as the existential threat to Israel while largely ignoring an enemy in his backyard.

“Bibi’s message to Israelis has been that the real threat is Iran,” he said, using Mr. Netanyahu’s nickname. “That with the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza, the Palestinian issue is no longer a threat to Israel’s security. All of those assumptions were shattered on Oct. 7.”

 

Sunday wordle

Feast - Blessed Sister Maria Restituta, a Nazi martyr

A nurse, guillotined for her faith.  Beatified by Pope Saint John Paul II in June 1998.

 

From Brigid: Croton Point History Walk on November 5th

Here is the flyer. Brigid knows Marc Cheshire pretty well.

Saturday wordle

Brooklyn Bridge: 7,000 protestors call for elimination of Israeli State

Yeah. These are not any political party members; they are nihilists who also show up to demonstrate against prolife people https://twitter.com/ViralNewsNYC/status/1640024035185553410  and call the rest of us racists while trashing businesses.

And the same crowd who shut down Grand Central Friday. Grand Central Terminal shut down due to pro-Palestinian protests

The demonstrators — holding signs with antisemitic slogans such as “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will be Free,” and “F—k Israel, Justice Palestine” — headed north along Flatbush Avenue to the Barclays Center, and then converged on the Brooklyn Bridge, stopping traffic on the Manhattan-bound side around 6 p.m. as some scaled metal barriers and triumphantly waved Palestinian flags.

On the beheading of Israeli babies and children, Jason said: “Where’s the proof? Yeah, that’s the narrative that they put so they can put a bad name on the Palestinians.”

Two 24-year-old women from Crown Heights marched while holding signs depicting Israeli flags inside of hearts while claiming they support the movement to defund Israel and for the US to shred its alliance with the Middle Eastern country,

African Women's Education Fund (AWEF) fundraiser last evening

AWEF is a group started in Croton 20 years ago to support educational opportunities for young women in Africa. Their website is here www.awef.org  and "it addresses the educational needs of women attending secondary school and professional schools in Angola, Kenya, Tanzania, Zambia and Zimbabwe." Current number of young women being supported - 126. We have been backers of AWEF since it's beginning.

About 80 people attended. Here is a neat poster that was up, and below are three pictures - the crowd and one of the speakers. All regular folks!

Friday wordle

Pope Francis reaffirms: Holy Orders - deacons and priesthood - is reserved for men

Here's a brief video and an article below on the subject - note the Petrine Principle and the Marian principle comment in the article!

 

 

https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/pope-francis-affirmsA woman “is not entitled to the Petrine principle, but to the Marian principle, which is more important,” Francis said. “So the fact that woman does not access ministerial life is not a deprivation, because her place is much more important. I believe that in our catechesis we err in explaining these things and ultimately fall back on an administrative criterion that in the long run does not work.”

Pope Francis has affirmed the Catholic teaching that female deacons and female ordination of any kind is not possible, stating that “holy orders are reserved for men.”

On the topic of female priests, Francis stated that “this is a theological problem” that, if attempts were made to include women in the priestly ministry, could “undermine the essence of the Church.”

His comments came as part of a book-length interview conducted with two journalists: Argentinian Sergio Rubin and Italian Francesca Ambrogetti. Their book “Non sei solo” (You are not alone) was released in Italian on Tuesday but was published in Spanish earlier this year.

A woman “is not entitled to the Petrine principle, but to the Marian principle, which is more important,” Francis said. “So the fact that woman does not access ministerial life is not a deprivation, because her place is much more important. I believe that in our catechesis we err in explaining these things and ultimately fall back on an administrative criterion that in the long run does not work.”

The Pope alluded to the much-misconstrued argument of female deacons in the early Church – an argument that is often made today with activists erroneously suggesting that women were ordained. Whether they were ordained or merely helpers to bishops was “not an irrelevant issue because holy orders are reserved for men,” Francis said.

*****************

Questioned as to whether the implementation of female ordinands would perhaps bolster Church attendance, Francis said he disagreed.

“I do not share these arguments. Lutherans ordain women, but still few people go to church,” he said. “Their priests are allowed to marry, but still they cannot grow the number of ministers.”

He argued that “the problem is cultural” and that “we should not be naïve and think that programmatic changes will bring us the solution.”

There's more if you hit the link.

Nikki Haley interview yesterday on CNBC

Sign me up - I'm on the Haley team. Also on the Tim Scott team... and would vote for DeSantis... and Christie...

Anything but Biden - Trump.

 

Thursday wordle

From Brigid - Death Valley, ephemeral lakes after August rains

From the Guardian (UK) with more neat pictures if you hit the link. Brigid was sent this - I subscribe to the Guardian but missed it.

"Death Valley visitors delight in rare ephemeral lakes left behind by storm Shimmering bodies of water have appeared in the sand dunes of the recently reopened national park after a summer deluge"

The park reopened last week after being shuttered in August, when a record-breaking tropical storm unleashed a year’s worth of rain in a single day.

Dramatic images emerging from the park show arid dunes now dotted with lakes.

“Some spectacular things happened in Death Valley following the floods we received from remnants of Hurricane Hilary back in August,” the park wrote in an Instagram post on Sunday.

*********************

The floodwaters have transformed the famous Badwater Basin salt flats, which are now covered in shimmering water believed to be about 2ft deep. “That’s what it was in 2005, the last time there was a significant lake there,” park ranger Matthew Lamar, told the Los Angeles Times.

***************

The basin, which sprawls across close to 200 sq miles and typically features striking salt formations, once housed an ancient lake that evaporated tens of thousands of years ago. At 282ft below sea level, it’s the lowest point in North America.

*****************

Death Valley, considered the hottest place in the world and the driest on the continent, is accustomed to extremes. This summer, temperatures in the park regularly topped 120F, making it not only one of the wettest but the hottest years yet.

******************

“Every so often, there are events that are large enough to break weather records and cause significant damage to historic locations and park infrastructure,” the National Park Service wrote on the park’s website. “The natural forces that formed this landscape are still at play.”

Wednesday wordle

NY Times real estate section: "I Live in My Car"

An interesting and sad article. And filled with pictures & with stories of several people. I will excerpt about one of them. This picture is not from the article. But you get it...

Dozens of parking lots have opened across the country for working people who can afford a car but not rent.

Chrystal Audet tried to get comfortable in what she called her “bedroom” — the back seat of her eight-year-old Ford Fusion. To stretch her legs, she had to leave a passenger door ajar, but September nights are raw in the Pacific Northwest, with sheets of rain that cut to the bone.

From her own “bedroom” in the front seat, her 26-year-old daughter Cierra Audet asked her to close it.

**************

Ms. Audet, 49, earns over $72,000 a year as a social worker for the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services. But a combination of bad luck, bad debt and a bad credit score priced her out of her apartment in Bellevue, another suburb of Seattle, one of the most expensive housing markets in the country. With an eviction looming, she put her furniture in storage this spring and began parking the sedan in a U-shaped parking lot outside a church in Kirkland.

The car, her biggest investment, became her home — the roof turned into a dining table, the trunk a closet. And a weathered stretch of blacktop provided by a Methodist church became her yard, her neighborhood and her safe place.

Around the country, real estate is being set aside for people like Ms. Audet in the form of parking lots. Dozens of such lots have opened in the last five years, with new ones being announced every few months,... They earn too little to afford rent but too much to receive government assistance and have turned their cars into a form of affordable housing.

************

“Tens of thousands of people are living in their vehicles,” said Graham J. Pruss, an applied anthropologist studying the trend, who heads the National Vehicle Residency Collective. “It’s huge.”

***********

Her free fall (Ms. Audet) into unsustainable debt began last December when her car made a horrible, sputtering sound, and died. With poor credit, the only loan she could find came at a punishing cost: For the 2015 Ford Fusion with over 100,000 miles, she is being charged interest of 27.99 percent, equaling a payment of $398 per month, one-tenth of her take-home pay.

Medical bills in the thousands arrived for her Crohn’s disease. She missed two rent payments. And then the landlord raised her rent $248 a month.

*************

The fact that she was able to hang on to her car allowed her to maintain a semblance of normalcy. Almost no one knew her secret. Each morning, Ms. Audet used a portable toilet to get ready for work, then commuted to the downtown Seattle office of the Washington State Department of Social and Health Services, where she spent her day sitting behind a plexiglass partition across from some of the city’s most destitute residents.

***********

Her luck changed in late August at an event inside the church, when housing activists noticed that she was being trailed by a Times reporter. Several offered their business cards. One coached her on how to approach potential landlords — what to share and what to omit.

Soon after, she toured a $2,360-a-month one-bedroom in Redmond, Wash. At 673 square feet, it was a palace: Bright, white countertops and shiny floors stretched over floor space 20 times the size of her car.

***************

She was nearly in tears when she heard that she had been approved, but almost lost the apartment when she couldn’t provide the security deposit. The church where she had been parking stepped in, ending her homelessness for a little more than $2,000.

Ms. Audet and her daughter moved in on Sept. 23. For now she is relishing the simplest of human pleasures — the ability to drink as much water as she wants, to take a shower in a space that is fully hers and to stretch out when she sleeps. Her tennis shoes fit again. Yet the math of her life remains precarious.

From Brigid - "Barrk Rescue" - cute cartoon for dog lovers

Heh. Brigid rarely sends stuff around but the dog lover in her got to her.

Tuesday wordle

Money laundering, The Biden Family Business

How it's done. FULL DISCLOSURE: I have to take an anti-money laundering (AML) course every two years to maintain a certain professional license. If I didn't turn this in, I'd be in trouble.

From the Wall Street Journal four days ago.

From One Brother to Another The House Oversight Committee finds a $200,000 payment from James Biden to Joe Biden.

Are the walls closing in on Joe Biden? Another revelation from House Republican investigators further undermines the president’s longtime claims that he was never involved in his relatives’ various schemes to trade on his name.

A press release today from the office of House Oversight Chairman James Comer (R., Ky.) describes transactions related to one of Mr. Biden’s brothers:

In 2018, James Biden received $600,000 in loans from, Americore—a financially distressed and failing rural hospital operator. According to bankruptcy court documents, James Biden received these loans “based upon representations that his last name, ‘Biden,’ could ‘open doors’ and that he could obtain a large investment from the Middle East based on his political connections.”

On March 1, 2018, Americore wired a $200,000 loan into James and Sara Biden’s personal bank account – not their business bank account. On the same day, James Biden wrote a $200,000 check from this same personal bank account to Joe Biden.

The release includes an image of the check, which says that the $200,000 is for “loan repayment.”

Regular Journal readers may recall Americore from its appearance in a recent story on Biden family business from Annie Linskey and James Areddy. ...

New Zealand vs. Argentina, Rugby World Cup semi-finals

Some superb open rugby. Hit the "Watch on youtube" for the bigger screen.

 

Monday wordle

CNN: Analysis shows Gaza hospital blast not caused by Israeli military

A short to the point video.

Rugby World Cup semi-final: England vs. South Africa

Played in very wet conditions - a tense match to the very end. but too many up and unders...

 

Sunday wordle

What happens when you quit alcohol for 30 days

FULL DISCLOSURE: I average 2-4 drinks a week, usually on weekends. Last week total consumption was a White Russian earlier in the week and then three beers with a large meal out (Oktoberfest) last night (a Saturday).

Moderate drinking is considered two drinks a day or less for men and one drink or less for women, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC). Binge drinking, according to the same source, is quantified as five or more drinks on an occasion (lasting two to three hours) for men and four or more drinks on occasion for women. Excessive alcohol consumption can leave you feeling less than ideal for a long time, with brutal hangovers often accompanying a fun night out.

If you want to improve your physical and mental well-being at any point of the year, taking a 30-day break from alcohol can lead to many health benefits.

1. 1. Improved liver health
   2. A better night’s sleep
   3. Weight loss
   4. Better digestion
   5. Improvements to brain function

Hit the link for the whole story from the NY Post.

Saturday wordle

"The Four Yorkshiremen" - a precursor to Monty Python

With some of the same wits from Monty Python's Flying Circus. Look how young the now 83 year old John Cleese is ... You can cut their accents with a knife.

 

Friday wordle - an ace! Luck and a bit of skill ...

Ireland v. New Zealand, last 7 minutes - Rugby World Cup

I posted about this whole game here Rugby World Cup: New Zealand v. Ireland - EPIC!, and said I'd post the last few minutes if it was available. Here it is.

 

Thursday wordle

WSJ: A decent outcome possible for people of Gaza?

This is a short guest column from yesterday's Wall Street Journal. I'm posting the entire thing.

Everyone seems to agree that no good outcome is possible in Gaza. They’re wrong. It’s possible for a decent Gaza-led administration to emerge, which could make autonomy and even statehood possible.

That may seem unlikely, given the deep and longstanding anti-Zionism in Gaza. In 1967, Gazan school books taught arithmetic with problems like, “You have five Israelis. You kill three of them. How many Israelis are left to be killed?”

But over the past 15 years, Gazans have endured something monstrous and possibly unique in human experience: exploitation by their rulers as cannon fodder for public relations.

Tyrants’ treating their subjects as expendable to attain battlefield victory is routine—think Wagner Group prison recruits dying in Bakhmut, Ukraine. Hamas, however, uses civilians to score propaganda points. It attacks Israel to provoke retaliation, correctly expecting that the bombs, destruction and death will bring Iranian approbation, Islamist support, Muslim solidarity and leftist sympathy. After each attack, the narrative about culpability invariably shifts from Hamas to Israel.

Much evidence suggests that most Gazans don’t want to serve as pawns in an obsessive and illusory jihad against Israel. Why suffer for a lost cause? “These people profess Islam and claim to be religious, but they slaughtered people,” one Gazan observes.

Polls find overwhelming support among Gazans for the statement that “Palestinians should push harder to replace their own political leaders with more effective and less corrupt ones.” A July poll by the Washington Institute for Near East Policy foundthat 62% of Gazans wanted to keep a cease-fire with Israel and half wanted Hamas to stop calling for Israel’s destruction.

For years, Gazans have voted with their feet. “Hamas has billions of dollars in investments in many countries, while people [in Gaza] starve to death and migrate in search of work,” anti-Hamas activist Amer Balosha noted last year. Interviewed in September while waiting in long lines to leave, Gazans expressed despair. “All those who are seeking to emigrate want a dignified life . . . they are prepared to die.” “I know I’m risking my life, but I want to leave, dead or alive.”

Gazans led normal lives under Israeli rule; unsurprisingly, they want to do so again. Gaza and the West Bank in the 1970s, historian Efraim Karsh recounts, “constituted the fourth fastest-growing economy in the world—ahead of such ‘wonders’ as Singapore, Hong Kong, and Korea, and substantially ahead of Israel itself.” Medicine, electricity, schools, literacy—all flourished. Gazans benefited from refrigerators and running water.

All this implies that, on seizing control of Gaza, Israel can reasonably expect to find plenty of residents ready to work with the new authority to create an administration that could return them to normal life.

Israel failed to find decent partners during its previous occupation, when it made no effort to cultivate friendly relations with Gazans and handed the territory to Yasser Arafat. Hamas has now done Israel’s work. Where is Gaza’s Konrad Adenauer?

Mr. Pipes is president of the Middle East Forum.

Wednesday wordle

New bakery opening in Croton

Thanks to Maria for the heads up on this. Looks like this is right near  Baked by Susan - wonder how that will work out? And the Little Star Pastry shop on Maple Street (which has delicious stuff!)? But that's capitalism - competition is good.

A pair of bakers who have built a reputation for quality bread have opened their first retail store in Northern Westchester.

The Hudson Oven opened a new physical retail store to the public in Croton-on-Hudson at 385 South Riverside Ave. on Sunday, Oct. 15, the owners announced. 

The store, owned by Chase and Madison Harnett, will provide a space for the couple to sell their homemade sourdough bread, soups, stews, biscuits, cookies, salads, scones, and other baked goods to customers for the first time. 

In their announcement, the couple said they wanted to create a "home away from home for ourselves where we can grow and develop our passion for food and sharing it with good people." 

*************

Those interested in trying the couple's homemade products can visit the store Thursday through Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 6 p.m. Additional parking is located across the street in a gravel lot.

 

 

 

Tuesday wordle

Back on a winning streak hopefully after Monday's failure. Monday wordle - a miss!

Rugby World Cup; South Africa v. France

Another quarterfinal monster game. And France is the host nation! Here is the other high quality quarterfinal. Rugby World Cup: New Zealand v. Ireland - EPIC!

Again best to hit the "Watch on youtube" button for big screen.

Monday wordle - a miss!

Breaking my 39 day correct streak. I should have gotten it.

Yesterday: NY Jets beat Phillie Eagles for the first time in their history!

Pretty cool. The Jets were 0-12 in their entire history against the Eagles. And going into the game the Eagles were 5-0 - had the best record in the NFL.

The NFL does not allow embedding of their video highlights so either go here - Jets 20, Eagles 14

or watch this which are only the Jets highlights (4 minutes long) without the Eagles 2 touchdowns.

 

Nikki Haley on "chaos" in government

An interesting exchange with CNN's Jake Tapper. I'm hoping for a Haley/Scott (or Scott/Haley) Republican ticket.  Anything but Biden v. Trump....

Tapper asked Haley on “State of the Union” if Rep. Austin Scott’s (R-Ga.) remarks on the House Speakership election were accurate when he said the Speakerless House makes the Republicans “look like a bunch of idiots.” Haley began her response by criticizing the Biden administration before Tapper jumped in to interrupt, saying that the turmoil in Congress was not at the hands of the president.

“Well, I’ll tell you what’s right is. Under the Biden administration, we’ve seen chaos within —” she said before Tapper interjected.

“You can’t blame that on Biden. You can’t blame this on Biden,” Tapper said.

“Well, you have to let me finish,” Haley said. “We have seen chaos with inflation. We’ve seen chaos with the lack of transparency in education. We’ve seen chaos on the border. We’ve seen chaos with crime on the streets, and now we’re seeing chaos around the world.”

“What I’m saying is you can’t fix Democrat chaos with Republican chaos. They need to get it together. They need to get in a room and figure out who this is going to be and come out unified. That’s what Republicans need to do. This is not a good look. This is not good for our country. We saw what happened to Israel when they were distracted,” she continued.

 

Sunday wordle

Close

Rugby World Cup: New Zealand v. Ireland - EPIC!

Wow what a game. Ireland ranked #1 in the world, v. the All Blacks in the World Cup quarterfinals. Amazing 4 minute ending, with Ireland going through 37 phases of play. I'm sure someone will be posting the last few minutes of the game and I will put it up. For this one, I'd hit the "Play on youtube button" for the bigger screen.

 

Saturday wordle

37 seconds: "George W. Bush Says ‘One Side Is Guilty. And It’s Not Israel’"

Yes he gets it about right. But is it worth thousands of Gaza Palestinians losing their homes and/or their lives? Tough call...

 

Saturday wordle

Three minutes.

Irony: Senator Fetterman and AOC - 2 minutes long

The interview AOC is giving is from 2017. Fetterman's comment was the other night - funny he would make it. Dave Rubin is a liberal who went conservative a few years ago. Rubin has a wide following.

Friday wordle

WSJ: "The ‘Ceasefire’ in Gaza Mirage"

Uh huh. As the Babylon Bee points out this is Like Emperor Hirohito calling for a cease fire after bombing Pearl Harbor.

This from the Wall Street Journal.

Right on schedule, the Democratic Party’s anti-Israel faction is responding to Hamas’s assault with calls for a “ceasefire” and an end to the violence. This is a mirage that will protect Hamas and guarantee more violence.

“An immediate ceasefire and de-escalation is urgently needed to save lives,” said Ms. Ocasio-Cortez. Ms. Omar chimed in that “we need to call for deescalation and ceasefire.” These are the first of what are likely to be many such calls from the Democratic left as Israel responds with force to the war Hamas started.

A ceasefire now would reward those who started the war that by this writing had killed 700 in Israel. These include many foreign nationals and probably some Americans. Is Israel supposed to tolerate this deliberate murder and not retaliate against those who planned and executed it?

Israel has a right to self-defense, and that means eradicating the threat from Hamas, and from Hezbollah in Lebanon if it comes to that. The failure to do so will mean more violence in the future as the Islamists who are backed by Iran conclude the Jewish state has lost its willingness to fight. Israel also has a right to rescue its citizens who have been taken as hostages to Gaza, even at the risk of more casualties.

Hamas fighters hide behind Palestinian civilians so they can play to Western sympathy, but that is another reason for eliminating Hamas and Islamic Jihad as threats. They terrorize Palestinians as well. The time for a ceasefire is when Israel has defeated its enemies.

Wednesday wordle

HA!

Israeli couple save their twin infants before being killed by Hamas

Hit the link for the complete story.

Itay and Hadar Berdichevsky saved their 10-month-old twins in a final act of sacrificial love before the couple was killed by Hamas terrorists. When the 30-year-old parents heard Hamas gunmen trying to break down their door, the young couple had to make a life-altering decision – a decision that would determine the fate of their children. Itay and Hadar rushed to hide their babies in a shelter moments before the terrorists stormed into their home, Israeli ambassador to Colombia Gali Dagan wrote on Twitter. The couple then tried to fight off the attackers.