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Iran Denies Involvement in Attack on Israeli-Owned Ship

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Iran’s Foreign Ministry “strongly dismissed” on Monday accusations raised by Israeli officials about the Islamic Republic’s responsibility for an attack on an Israel-owned ship in the Sea of Oman, calling them “symptoms of his [Netanyahu’s] morbid obsessive-compulsive disorder.” Photo by Kobi Richter/TPS on 19 April, 2020

By: Aryeh Savir

Iran’s Foreign Ministry “strongly dismissed” on Monday accusations raised by Israeli officials about the Islamic Republic’s responsibility for an attack on an Israel-owned ship in the Sea of Oman, calling them “symptoms of his [Netanyahu’s] morbid obsessive-compulsive disorder.”

An Israeli-owned ship sailing through the Persian Gulf was attacked and damaged last Thursday, an attack Israeli officials have blamed on Iran.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told Israeli broadcaster Kan 11 on Monday that “it was indeed an act by Iran, that’s clear.”

“Iran is the greatest enemy of Israel, I am determined to halt it. We are hitting it in the entire region,” he said.

Minister of Defense Benny Gantz told Kan 11 on Saturday that “the location of the ship near Iran leads to the assessment that the Iranians are behind the operation. This is my estimate and we will continue to investigate it.”

Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Saeed Khatibzadeh told reporters in a press conference in Tehran on Monday that “the Persian Gulf and the Sea of Oman are our immediate area of security and we will not allow them [Israel] to intimidate others by these statements.”

He attacked Netanyahu personally by saying that he “is suffering from a mental illness.”

“These allegations are being made by the Quds occupying regime [Israel], and we not only strongly reject them, but we have also been monitoring all the actions made by the regime in security zone of Iran in the past few months, and we will give a response where it happens,” he added.

Israeli officials estimate that the attack was carried out by Iran as a signal to Israel, knowing that the ship is under Israeli ownership.

The officials further estimate that the Iranians did not want to sink the ship but sent a warning to Israel that it has the capability to do so.

The Israeli Air Force conducted airstrikes on Sunday night in Syria against Iranian targets, possibly a retaliatory strike for the Iranian sabotaging of the Israeli-owned boat.

Khatibzadeh further dismissed Netanyahu’s statements that Iran is seeking to develop nuclear weapons, saying that “this morbid obsessive-compulsive disorder of the Israeli Prime Minister towards Iran is nothing new. All this indicates a strange turmoil in the occupied territories and is the result of the adventurous behavior in and outside the occupied territories.”

“These blame-games are only meant to benefit the corrupt Zionist prime minister,” he added.

            (TPS)

PA to Biden: Cancel PLO’s Designation as Terrorist Organization

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Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has called on President Joe Biden to cancel the US’ designation of the PLO as a terrorist organization and instead recognize it as a partner organization for peace. Photo by Majdi Fathi/TPS on 20 February, 2020

By: Baruch Yedid

Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh has called on President Joe Biden to cancel the US’ designation of the PLO as a terrorist organization and instead recognize it as a partner organization for peace.

In doing so, Shtayyeh is calling for a reversal of the 1987 decision of the US Congress that designated the PLO as a terrorist organization.

“We are in touch with the Biden administration, and although what we heard during the election campaign is important, it should be translated on the ground and the consulate in east Jerusalem and the PLO office in Washington should be reopened and the aid to UNRWA should be renewed,” said a Shtayyeh at the 13th Arafat conference on Sunday

He stressed that “the most important thing in our eyes is the publication of an order that sees the Palestinian Liberation Organization as a partner in peace.”

“We have been through a difficult time and now we are turning to renewal through the general election and the reconstruction of the Palestinian National Council,” he added.

Referring to the PA’s efforts to renew the diplomatic process with Israel, Shtayyeh said “our position is clear and is the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state on the borders of June 4, 1967, with Jerusalem as its capital. We call on the international community to respond to Mahmoud Abbas’ initiative to hold a peace conference.”

In 1987, the US administration tried to close the PLO’s Palestinian information offices in Washington, D.C., following the enactment of the Counter-Terrorism Act, which declared the PLO a terrorist organization and banned all its activities. US courts rejected this claim but allowed for tighter oversight of the office.

Following the Palestinian declaration of independence in November 1988, the PLO recognized Israel and opened a dialogue between it and the US government.

President Bill Clinton’s election as president changed the official US attitude toward the PLO and the administration supported the establishment of a Palestinian state.

In September 1993, on the eve of the signing of the Oslo Accords between Israel and the PLO, Clinton announced the resumption of dialogue between the US and the PLO after it was suspended in 1990 due to the PLO’s refusal to condemn an ​​attack on Israel by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PLO), which is a member of the PLO.

Under President Barack Obama, relations between the US and the PA improved, and the Obama administration even supported the establishment of a Palestinian state under a permanent agreement with the State of Israel.

(TPS)

New Study Reveals Coded Language Used to Fuel Anti-Semitism Online

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Dr. Gabriel Weimann, a professor of communication at University of Haifa (pictured above) – Photo Credit: classroomswithoutborders.org

Employing use of a secret language or “dog whistles” to evade detection by algorithms poses challenge to law enforcement and social media platforms, University of Haifa study reveals

Edited by: TJVNews.com

A new study authored by Dr. Gabriel Weimann, a professor of communication at University of Haifa and web intelligence analyst Ari Ben-Am has revealed the existence of a new coded language on social media being used by anti-Semitic groups to fly under the radar of artificial intelligence-designed algorithms.

This sophisticated language, which is used for both propaganda and recruitment purposes, is hidden in plain sight and encourages violent incidents like the Christchurch shooting in New Zealand or the January capitol riots.

The study explores the emergence of this new language, its characteristics, transmission and usage and its findings are intended to serve both law enforcement and private sector hi-tech organizations in their quest to combat hate speech online. Given the popularity of the platform, the study focused primarily on images and messages disseminated on Facebook.

Posts used for the analysis were identified qualitatively after scanning hundreds of relevant groups and pages, eventually reaching a smaller sample of tens of pages (with a minimum of 500 followers or likes) as an initial seed group.

Much of this coded language the study found was shown to rely on the use of “dog-whistles,” a coded message communicated through words or phrases commonly understood by a particular group of people, but not by others.

The method could be as simple as swapping one word for another such as far-right users calling Jews “Skypes,” African-Americans as “Googles” and Latinos as “Yahoos.”

Yet, some tactics are more intricate and dabble in numerology where numbers stand for people or concepts. The number 88, for example, stands for “Heil Hitler,” since H is the eighth letter in the alphabet. Finally, the language also employed visual cues often by manipulating already popular memes found in pop culture. This method is by far the most sophisticated one as an algorithm’s ability to detect hate speech within an image is still limited.

While Weimann is currently working on a comprehensive glossary of terms chronicling instances of this coded language and what it means, he hopes this study will encourage law enforcement and hi-tech companies to be more vigilant and aware that their algorithms are not the be-all and end-all of ending hate speech.

“It’s clear that security, counter-terrorism, and government agencies, as well as social media platforms, are doing much to crack down on abuse,” Weimann said. “But we need to educate the operators of these companies that run social media platforms to report these violations and also teach their users how to spot them. A human eye is still much more savvy than a computer-generated algorithm.”

So successful is this new language based on numbers, acronyms, and hidden images, that it has driven the formation of alternative social media sites such as Gab, Bitchute, and imageboards such as 4Chan, 8Chan, and Neinchan.

“While this is purely an academic study, it has real-world implications,” Weimann added. “Being Internet savvy and understanding what you’re seeing online is important. We need to learn what they do, slow them down, and reduce their activity and efficiency. Words kill even if in a new language.”

Israeli FM to 1st UAE Amb in Israel: ‘Another Historic Day in the Middle East’

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Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi welcomed on Monday in Jerusalem Mohamed Mahmoud Al Khaja, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) first ambassador to Israel. Photo by MFA on 1 March, 2021

By: Aryeh Savir

Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi welcomed on Monday in Jerusalem Mohamed Mahmoud Al Khaja, the United Arab Emirates (UAE) first ambassador to Israel.

Ashkenazi congratulated Al Khaja and noted “the important role of the United Arab Emirates in leading the change created by the Abraham Accords throughout the Middle East”.

“We have a historic opportunity to present a model of a warm and comprehensive peace between countries and peoples. The opening of Foreign Ministry missions in Abu Dhabi and Dubai, and the opening of the Emirates’ Embassy in Israel are critical to establishing bilateral relations and promoting peace,” Ashkenazi stated.

I express happiness in “the rapid warming of relations between the countries, and the realization of the vision of peace between cultures and people.”

Al Khaja stated that his arrival in Israel “for Emiratis and Israelis, a new chapter of openness, understanding and prosperity is beginning.”

Ashkenazi and Al Khaja held a personal meeting, followed by the first working meeting between the staff of the UAE embassy in Israel and the working teams at the Foreign Ministry, led by Foreign Ministry Director-General Alon Ushpiz and Middle East Deputy Director Haim Regev.

Al Khaja landed on Monday morning at Ben Gurion Airport and was received by the Chief of State Protocol at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Gil Haskel.

Al Khaja is slated to present his credentials to President Reuven Rivlin later in the day and is expected to hold additional working meetings at the Foreign Ministry and visit the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum on Tuesday.

The Israeli embassy in Abu Dhabi officially opened on January 25 with the arrival of the Head of Mission Eitan Na’eh, Israel’s former envoy to Turkey.

The UAE and Bahrain signed a historic peace agreement with Israel at the White House on September 15, the first agreement to be signed between Israel and an Arab country in 25 years.

The UAE was the first major Arab state to recognize Israel since the Israel-Jordan Peace Treaty was signed in October 1994.

Announced on August 13, the Abraham Accords is the first between a Gulf state and Israel and is expected to lead to similar agreements with other Arab countries, possibly Oman or Saudi Arabia.

Israel and Sudan announced the normalization of ties in October 2020. Morocco joined the Abraham Accords in December.

   (TPS)

Trump, CPAC 2021 & the GOP

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Trump charged that our borders are now gone with millions of illegals soon to enter our now open borders with criminals as part of the throng. The needs of American citizens no longer come first. Kids have been sold out to teacher unions. (AP)

Former President Trump’s Sunday night speech at CPAC’s Orlando, Florida convention was a smash hit to the roaring crowd, hungry to hear their leader stir up their spirits after the losses in last November’s election. They were not disappointed. They loved the guy. They interrupted his talks a gazillion times with applause and chants of, “U.S.A., U.S.A,” “We’re number one!” and, “We love you!” And he loved them back. It was obvious. He opened his one and one half hour speech with a tribute to recently deceased Rush Limbaugh, a fitting tribute to one his most ardent, outspoken and ferocious supporters. We’ll comment on the points Trump hit on in a bit, but want to compare his smooth, confident, easy delivery to that of President Biden, who has increasingly displayed troublesome hints of mental impairment even as he reads from and is apparently totally dependent on his teleprompter and emergency note cards for his wording.

In office, now over a month, Biden has yet to face an open press conference lasting over ten minutes, with each evidently choreographed by his staff and the ever conforming press. Biden appears transfixed on the prompter, reading robotic-like, frequently stumbling over words, making up strange ones and losing his train of thought in mid topic. During a recent speech in Texas, pitifully lost and discombobulated, he blurted out, “What am I doing here? I’m going to lose track here.” He has confused his grand-daughter with his deceased son and could not distinguish between his wife and sister. Red lights are flashing. How much longer before he’s removed from office, one way or another, by his own people? And we hate to visualize that scenario.

But Trump was roaring like an express train as he made cogent point after point. He settled a frequently asked question by stating, “We’re not starting a new party. That’s fake news!” He claimed that after only one month with the new administration, “We’ve gone from first to last.” He charged that our borders are now gone with millions of illegals soon to enter our now open borders with criminals as part of the throng. The needs of American citizens no longer come first. Kids have been sold out to teacher unions. Sanctions against Iran have been removed even before re-negotiations on the treaty have begun. He ridiculed VP Harris’ claims that her administration had conquered the Chinese Virus. We’ve lost our former energy independence. Women’s sports has been destroyed with bi-gender nonsense. Biden and his crew have demeaned our police forces leading to increased crime. He called for the return to a single, national election day, not one months long. He called for the same voter ID as was required for admittance during the Democrat National Convention.

Mostly, we were impressed by his words,”This is a country blessed by G-d’ and “We are a Judeo/Christian inspired nation.” This nation’s stance alongside Israel is realistically now gone. The overt Democrat Congressional Jew haters and their staunch defenders, their elected Jewish buddies, give us much cause for concern. But, in the final minutes of Trump’s talk, he gave us and the country much cause for hope. He dropped the bomb of a thought of being the Republican candidate for President in 2024. There’s light at the end of the tunnel.

Andrew Cuomo’s Got to Go!!!

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. Photo Credit: AP

The Andrew Cuomo Crime Chronicles never seem to cease. With each passing week, we continue to get another dose of criminal accusations against Andy Boy, New York’s constantly backpedaling Progressive Governor. To get an idea of how jeopardized his situation is, last week his own bailiwick’s House member and Dragon Lady, Alexandria Ocasio Cortez has called for an investigation into the latest sexual harassment charges against him. We predict he will not finish out his term in office. Even his own brother, Chris, a major crony on CNN, can’t come to his aid. That network is now repeatedly reporting negatively on the Albany scandals. Andy appears to be dead meat. He’s got to go.

Andy Cuomo, the son of former NY Governor, Mario, was once a super star and considered by many to be a top contender for the Democrat nomination for President in the near future. He was a darling of the Left with his 2014 declaration that Republicans were not welcome in his state. “Their (Conservatives) problem isn’t me and the Democrats; their problem is themselves. Who are they? Right to life, pro-guns, anti-gay…they have no place in the State of New York because that’s not who New Yorkers are.” He even went so far, in order to build up his “tough man” image in the eyes of Progressives, to physically threaten Trump back in September, 2020, when the President accused Andy Boy of mismanaging the Chinese Virus in NY and causing the deaths of thousands of elderly in health care facilities. An outraged Cuomo Tweeted: “He better have an army if he thinks he’s gonna walk down the street in New York. He can’t have enough bodyguards to walk through New York City.” This threat, not only against a sitting President, but a citizen and resident of New York. Disgraceful, shameful and stupid.

The now explosive charges of having been responsible and then criminally covering up for over 20,000 deaths due to his forcing nursing homes to take in sick elderly patients will soon be taken up by NY’s own Attorney General and Democrat, Letitia James. The growing list of sexual harassment charges are piling on so heavily that Andy even tried to appoint a very friendly former federal judge, Barbara S. James, to investigate the claims against him from former Cuomo staffers, Lindsey Boylan and Charlotte Bennett. Amidst a swarm of criticism over his comical choice of a buddy to oversee the charges, he had to back off and have the AG and a sitting judge jointly choose who would investigate the harassment allegations against him. In short, Andy Boy is going down the drain in shame.

As the bad ink continues to accrue and even more salacious allegations are bound to be forthcoming, we implore Andrew Cuomo to tender his resignation forthwith. You have utterly disgraced the highest office of the state, you have disgraced the name of your father, and you have left the people of New York with a punch to the gut that they may never get over. We call on New Yorkers to wake up to finally elect leaders dedicated to preserve the safety, dignity and future of themselves and fellow residents.

Letters to the Editor

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Electric Buses in NYC???

Dear Editor:

The Port Authority promises of electric buses using the new $10 billion 42nd Street bus terminal facility left out some critical information. The estimated cost of an electric bus can range from $1 to $1.4 million per vehicle or $200,000 or more over the price of a standard clean diesel bus. The price depends on if it is a standard 40 foot, articulated or over the road coach model. Each operator would also have to modify their own respective bus garages to install plug in electric and other features to accommodate electric buses. This could cost millions for each garage. None of these costs were included in the most recent $10 billion overall project cost estimate.

Who is going to come up with $1 to $2 billion more for these two additional tasks? How much will the Port Authority contribute to NJ Transit and various private operators to pay for electric buses and facility conversions? Buses have a useful life of between 12 and 15 years. It would take all bus operators fifteen to twenty years before they could convert 100% of their fleets assigned to Port Authority Bus Terminal routes to be all electric.

Sincerely,
                        Larry Penner

(Larry Penner is a transportation advocate, historian and writer who previously worked for the Federal Transit Administration Region 2 NY Office. This included the development, review, approval and oversight for billions of dollars in grants which provided funding for capital projects and programs to the NY MTA, NYC Transit, Long Island and Metro North Rail Roads, NJ Transit and over 30 transit agencies in NY & NJ).

 

Cop Haters & NYC Mayoral Candidates

Dear Editor:

If you are a resident of NYC and are fearful for the safety of you and your loved ones…bail out, scram, take a powder and leave for safer environs before the next Mayoralty election coming up in November. Last year’s murder rate in the Big Apple zoomed up 43% over 2019’s horrific figures and with the certainty of another cop-hating Democrat occupying City Hall in 2022, a safe but sorry bet would be a continued rise in civilians slaughtering civilians.

Why is this so? Why the lack of reality on the part of our local biggees to understand the crisis our citizens face daily? Our current mayor may have his face mask on too high and cannot see reality when he boasts that his city is the “safest big city in America.” Nonsense. His own appointee, NYPD Police Commissioner, Dermot Shea, came clean back in June, 2021, with his statement: “You have to step back and look at this. You have a criminal-justice system that is imploding!” He’s on the mark, but from the lips of the crowd of Hizzoner Wannabees, that are vying for the top seat, they all see it differently. “It’s the cops!” they scream out. “They are the problem,” they tell ordinary citizens who shudder and push their kids under kitchen tables when they hear gunshots in our Wild West streets.

Andrew Young wants to hold police “accountable” because of their civil rights violations in arresting culprits too vigorously but at the same time accuses them of “not doing their jobs hard enough.” Figure that one out. Scott Stringer and Ray McGuire both want to defund the police and hire mental-health practitioners to answer 911 calls involving mentally-ill criminals. Good luck! And duck! Shaun Donovan claims the problem is that “the police perform too military-like and are overly armed.” Is he aware that Our Finest suffered nearly 500 injuries during the George Floyd riots and a total of nearly 2,000 during the year?

NYC is plunging into disaster. Over 300,000 known residents have left for Covid-19, physical safety precautionary reasons and to avoid soaring taxes. The vacuum they and the ongoing stream of other “fleers” will create will be hard to fill. And from what we can gather from any of those politicians running to govern New York City, none have a clue of how to win them back. For them to continue to bash New York’s Finest is, in our minds, total lunacy. NYC is on the brink, with no happy ending in sight.

Sincerely
                        Alan

 

New Food Pantry in Queens

Dear Editor:

As part of both organizations’ continued efforts to help feed New Yorkers during this COVID-19 pandemic, Met Council and Chazaq have partnered to open a new food pantry in Kew Gardens Hills on Thursday. The Lev Aharon Community Food Pantry will be supplied by Met Council’s citywide food distribution network and run by Chazaq staff and volunteers who are best equipped to serve the Bukharian community in Queens.

Chazaq and Met Council held a socially distanced grand opening and ribbon cutting at the food pantry on Thursday afternoon. The food pantry, located at 141-47 72nd Ave. in Flushing, provides kosher food tailored to the Bukharian Jewish community in nearby neighborhoods, but the food pantry is available to all families in need and is completely confidential.

“The crisis of hunger and poverty exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic continues and Met Council is proud to partner with Chazaq to open this new food pantry,” said David G. Greenfield, CEO, Met Council. “Food pantries are vital to supporting the struggling families, seniors, and working men and women of this city who have fewer and fewer places to turn to.”

“Building a stronger future for our children is only possible if we also provide for them in the present,” said Rabbi Yaniv Meirov, the CEO of Chazaq. “Through our partnership with Met Council, Chazaq will be able to provide reliable access to healthy, kosher food to thousands more in our community. Our seniors, our children, and anyone who is vulnerable to this pandemic should not and will not go without this winter.”

“Food insecurity has been a real threat to so many Queens families for a long time,” said Queens Borough President Donovan Richards. “This threat has only been exacerbated by the pandemic, and we are grateful that the Met Council and Chazaq are helping address the problem by opening the Lev Aharon Community Food Pantry. We must not rest until all Queens families have the adequate food they need.”

Sincerely
            Met Council & Chazak

New York Dems’ BDS Debate Shows the Power of the Woke Left

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Andrew Yang talks about urban entrepreneurship at the Techonomy Conference in Detroit, Sept. 15, 2015. Credit: Asa Mathat for Techonomy via Wikimedia Commons

Andrew Yang, the frontrunner to be the next mayor of the world’s largest Jewish city, took a stand against anti-Zionist hate, though backed down when Linda Sarsour pressed him on it.

By: Jonathan S Tobin

Most Americans don’t pay much attention to New York City politics. As one of the deepest blue political bastions in the country, the struggle for political ascendancy in the Big Apple can seem to be merely a choice between left and lefter. But while New York has become a one-party city in which Democrats don’t so much predominate as the Republicans have disappeared, that doesn’t mean debates there are insignificant. To the contrary, the city is in some ways a laboratory experiment in which it appears the future of the Democratic Party is up for grabs.

That’s especially true with respect to the question of whether it will be, as it always used to be, a pro-Israel political party. And the struggles of Andrew Yang—the entrepreneur/philanthropist and one-time presidential candidate who has now shifted his ambitions to taking possession of the city’s Gracie Mansion—illustrate this dilemma.

New York is still the world’s largest Jewish city (that is, in terms of those living within its city limits; if we were talking about metropolitan areas, Tel Aviv would now be No. 1), which means that mayoral candidates are bound to wish to appeal to the sensibilities of Jewish voters. But given how diverse the New York community is, that’s easier said than done. After all, a much larger percentage of New York Jewry is not merely Orthodox but denizens of ultra-Orthodox enclaves. At the other end of the political spectrum, Jewish voters who live in more upscale neighborhoods like the Upper East and Upper West Sides tend to be extremely left-wing rather than merely liberal.

In an earlier era when white ethnic voters held the balance of power in the five boroughs, appealing to them meant mayoral candidates would take international tours of the three “i’s”: Ireland, Italy and Israel. Irish and Italian voters don’t seem to be cohesive voting groups anymore, but a million Jews still reside in the city. Yet figuring out what they want is not so easy. That’s especially true if, like Yang, you clearly have no idea what you’re talking about when it comes to the Middle East or Jewish issues.

According to a recent poll conducted by Politico, Yang has parlayed his name recognition from his presidential run into the frontrunner’s position in a mayoral race, where he is competing in a field where there are literally dozens of contenders with only a few of them considered to have a chance. While his lack of political experience is an asset at a time when voters are tired of career politicians, his willingness to say what he thinks various groups want has become a serious problem.

Clearly listening to the advice he’s been given by political consultants, Yang has staked out a position on education that is bound to help him with the ultra-Orthodox. While some in the Jewish community believe the state should be pushing haredi yeshivahs to raise their standards so as to give students a better secular education as well as a religious one, Yang has outflanked his rivals by staking out a hardline stance in which he believes these schools should be left alone. That’s a position that will likely win him Orthodox votes without costing him much support elsewhere.

But navigating the debate about Israel isn’t proving to be so easy.

In an op-ed published in The Forward, Yang laid it on thick while seeking to suck up to New York Jews with flowery rhetoric about his love for the Lower East Side and the shared immigrant experience that Jews have with those who have come to this country from places like Taiwan, the birthplace of his parents.

But then he went full-on Zionist declaring his support for Israel and opposition to the anti-Semitic BDS movement in terms that earned him praise from the Jewish community:

“A Yang administration will push back against the BDS movement, which singles out Israel for unfair economic punishment. Not only is BDS rooted in anti-Semitic thought and history, hearkening back to fascist boycotts of Jewish businesses, it’s also a direct shot at New York City’s economy.”

But as good as that position was, he soon learned that waving the blue-and-white flag isn’t quite the political slam dunk he thought in a Democratic primary dominated by voters who lean to the far-left.

When confronted about this correct evaluation of the anti-Semitic nature of BDS at a mayoral forum hosted by the Muslim Democratic Club of New York, Yang discovered that not everybody in New York loves Israel. In fact, some New Yorkers hate it.

When Palestinian American Linda Sarsour, whose claim to fame is her role in orchestrating the Women’s March protests against former President Donald Trump and promoting anti-Semitism inside that group, pressed him about BDS, Yang folded like a cheap carpet.

Instead of sticking to his guns, he started backing away from his anti-BDS position, declaring that he made a mistake in the op-ed by having “confused” peaceful supporters of economic warfare on the only Jewish state on the planet with “very, very violent” people, and declaring that he had nothing but the greatest respect for those who believe anti-Zionism is right.

The problem here is not just that the distinction he tried to make between various kinds of BDS supporters is meaningless. BDS is inherently discriminatory because it seeks to deny to the Jews rights that no one would deny to anyone else. People like Sarsour hate Israel because it’s a Jewish state, not because of any alleged shortcomings.

Yang isn’t the only top-tier mayoral contender who is having trouble articulating a position on BDS. City Controller Scott Stringer is a conventional, ultra-liberal Manhattan Jew who also proclaims his opposition to BDS. Yet knowing that he would have to tack to the far-left to win the all-important Democratic primary nomination, he’s been flirting with anti-Semitic supporters of intersectional ideology that is implacably hostile to the Jewish state, such as members of the Democratic Socialists of America.

Lest anyone think the DSA is some ancient leftist relic of pre-Holocaust socialism, today it’s the political home of party rock stars like New York Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, who knocked off Rep. Eliot Engel in a primary that ended the career of that pro-Israel stalwart. Yang and Stringer may think they can survive the loss of pro-Israel Jewish voters, but not stands that offend the DSA.

It’s impossible to know how all of this will impact the June primary that will likely decide the identity of the next mayor. But this matters because if the increasingly loud ranks of the leftist activist wing of the Democratic Party are going to decide the identity of the next mayor of New York City, it also bodes ill for the future of pro-Israel Democrats candidates.

While the bulk of the Democrats who make up their congressional majority are conventional pro-Israel politicians, the wind is clearly at the backs of so-called progressives like AOC and her pals in the expanded “Squad,” who have little patience for politicians who think supporting the Jewish state is good politics.

New York City isn’t representative of America, but the people who are the loudest and most influential Democrats in the city are very much the inspiration for younger and more left-wing members of the party elsewhere. Simply put, the woke activists in the DSA may not tolerate having a mayor who would write an anti-BDS op-ed such as the one that was published under Yang’s name.

Seen from this perspective, Yang’s retreat from calling out BDS supporters for their anti-Semitism isn’t just a local kerfuffle but a litmus test that may have a lot to say about the future of the Democrats.

             (www.JNS.org)

Jonathan S. Tobin is editor in chief of JNS—Jewish News Syndicate. Follow him on Twitter at: @jonathans_tobin.

Biden’s Handlers Bomb Syria

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The self-anointed foreign policy and military experts who are now in charge struck without even knowing exactly whether they were hitting what they wanted to hit.

By: Robert Spencer

In December, I wrote an article entitled: “Here We Go: Swamp Rats Start Laying the Groundwork for Sending U.S. Troops Into Syria.” And in January, I wrote an article entitled: “Back to the Endless Wars: US Military Convoy Enters Northeast Syria.” And here we are. CNN reported Friday that “the US military on Thursday struck a site in Syria used by two Iranian-backed militia groups in response to rocket attacks on American forces in the region in the past two weeks. ‘Up to a handful’ of militants were killed in the strikes, a US official told CNN.” There are, of course, no estimates of how many American troops will be killed in Syria pursuing the Biden team’s internationalist agenda.

The self-anointed foreign policy and military experts who are now in charge struck without even knowing exactly whether they were hitting what they wanted to hit. CNN noted that the site of the airstrikes “was not specifically tied to the rocket attacks but Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin said he was ‘confident’ it was used by the same Iranian-backed Shia militias that had fired rockets at US and coalition forces.” Well, that’s that, then: the political elites’ foreign policy exponents, from John Kerry to Ben Rhodes, have done so very much to inspire confidence, who could possibly doubt that they know what they’re doing?

Pentagon spokesman John Kirby claimed improbably that the strikes took place “at President Biden’s direction,” and were designed to deal with “ongoing threats” to U.S. forces in Syria. “Specifically,” Kirby explained, “the strikes destroyed multiple facilities located at a border control point used by a number of Iranian-backed militant groups, including Kata’ib Hezbollah and Kata’ib Sayyid al Shuhada. The operation sends an unambiguous message; President Biden will act to protect American coalition personnel. At the same time, we have acted in a deliberate manner that aims to de-escalate the overall situation in both Eastern Syria and Iraq.”

Here is a better way to protect American troops in Syria and Iraq, and de-escalate the overall situation in both countries: get out and end these pointless military misadventures that serve no genuine American interest.

In any case, since we know that Biden is not going to pursue “America First” policies, that this strike does not benefit America or Americans, and was not intended to.

The Islamic State (ISIS) is resurgent in Syria, but Biden’s handlers didn’t strike the Islamic State. They struck instead at two Iranian-backed groups, which is essentially to strike at Assad. This was in order to placate one of Biden’s handlers’ constituencies: the Muslim Brotherhood network in the U.S., which hates Assad and has for years been trying to compel the U.S. to topple him. However, it antagonizes the Iranians, which Biden’s handlers also intend to appease.

All this could backfire on the handlers in a big way. But in the short term, it will likely lead to a new round of concessions and pot-sweeteners for the Iranian mullahs, all at the expense of the American taxpayer, of course. In the meantime, South Korea got the ball rolling. Korea Times reported Tuesday that “the Iranian assets locked in South Korea will be released after consultations with the United States, the foreign ministry said Tuesday, after Iran claimed it has reached a deal with Seoul on how to transfer and use the frozen money.”

The South Koran foreign ministry announced: “Our government has been in talks with Iran about ways to use the frozen assets,” which amount to $7 billion, “and the Iran side has expressed its consent to the proposals we have made. The actual unfreezing of the assets will be carried out through consultations with related countries, including the United States.”

Korea Times noted that according to a South Korean foreign ministry official, “Seoul was finalizing talks with Washington about using some of the frozen funds to pay Tehran’s U.N. dues in arrears, to which the Islamic republic has also agreed.”

So the bombs are falling in Syria and the money is flowing once again to Tehran, and both the Muslim Brotherhood lobby and the Iranian mullahs are happy. All is well again. America is back.

  (Front Page Mag)

Robert Spencer is the director of Jihad Watch and a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He is author of 21 books, including the New York Times bestsellers The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades) and The Truth About Muhammad. His latest book is Rating America’s Presidents: An America-First Look at Who Is Best, Who Is Overrated, and Who Was An Absolute Disaster. Follow him on Twitter here. Like him on Facebook here.

The Khashoggi Passion Play

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The Biden administration’s decision to publish the intelligence report on Jamal Khashoggi’s death in late 2018 was as predictable as it was destructive to U.S. national security and to the security and stability of the Middle East. Photo Credit: AP

By: Caroline Glick

The Biden administration’s decision to publish the intelligence report on Jamal Khashoggi’s death in late 2018 was as predictable as it was destructive to U.S. national security and to the security and stability of the Middle East.

It was predictable for two reasons. First, this is Obama’s third term. And in Obama’s first term he played a central role in overthrowing Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, the anchor of the U.S.’s alliance system in the Sunni Arab world in favor of the Muslim Brotherhood, the ideological anchor of every Sunni terror group in the world.

Obama’s consistent policy for eight years was to side with the jihadists. Obama’s anti-colonialist worldview bred his anti-Western sensibilities. He and his neo-Marxist advisors viewed the jihadists as the “authentic” voice of the Islamic world. They were favored because they were “revolutionary” and anti-Western. In every conflict that pitted either conservative Sunni leaders, Iranian anti-regime forces, or Israel against jihadists from Hamas to Hezbollah, to the Muslim Brotherhood and the Houthis, to Iran, Obama and his people supported the jihadists. For this reason, Obama admired both Turkish dictator Erdogan and the Qatari ruling family. Like him, they supported jihadists.

Saudi Crown Prince Muhammed Bin Salman (MBS) and Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed (MBZ) from the UAE were big problems for Obama, Robert Malley and their ilk. They appeared out of nowhere.

Young and vigorous, they seek to liberalize their conservative societies. They are deeply opposed to Iran and the Muslim Brotherhood. They are open to peace and cooperation with Israel. They support Israel in its campaigns against Hamas and Hezbollah. And they are certainly “authentic” Arab Muslims. When the UAE declared the Muslim Brotherhood, and Obama’s key supporters and ideological allies at CAIR terrorist organizations, Obama and his comrades were so angry they could barely put together a coherent sentence.

This brings us to Khashoggi. As Lee Smith reported after he was found dead in the Saudi consulate in Turkey, there were a lot of things about Khashoggi that made him a strange hero for Americans of any stripes. He was a Qatari agent of influence. He was a former Saudi intelligence officer who sided with the Wahabist jihadists in the royal family who supported al Qaeda. He was friends with Osama bin Laden and mourned his death. The al Qaeda, ISIS, Iran and Hamas supporting Qatari regime was essentially writing his columns in the Washington Post.

On its face, Khashoggi’s receipt of a green card made no sense given his open support for al Qaeda. On its face, his gig as a columnist at Jeff Bezos’s paper made no sense given his relationship with Saudi intelligence and with the Qatari ruling family. But they made perfect sense in the context of the efforts made by Obama’s deep state friends, particularly former CIA director John Brennan, who opposed MBS from the outset to empower the Muslim Brotherhood and the Iranian regime.

When seen in this light, it is clear that Khashoggi, a terror supporting Qatari agent who opposed the modernizing, pro-American, anti-jihadist and pro-Israel Saudi Crown Prince was an important political warfare asset for Obama’s clique. His job was to discredit MBS and legitimize the terror-supporting Qataris while making pro-jihadist progressives feel good about themselves.

I’m not saying his murder was justified. I am saying he doesn’t deserve the tears of anyone who opposes jihadist terror and jihadist regimes, cares about human rights or wants to avoid a major war in the Middle East.

Whatever Khashoggi’s ties with Obama’s clique during his lifetime may have been, the way they responded to his murder made clear what they hoped to do with his death. They wanted the old, bad Saudi Arabia back. They wanted the Muslim Brotherhood funding, al Qaeda-spawning Wahabists of Riyadh back. They wanted the Prince Bandars and Prince Turkis of the days of yore, not the guy that gave women drivers licenses.

They immediately set out lionizing Khashoggi as some sort of Nelson Mandela so that they could turn MBS into Hitler or whatever. As Smith reported in another article, Robert Malley, who is now in charge of Biden’s Iran policy, was the first pushing the line that in response to Khashoggi’s death, the U.S. should end its support/alliance with Saudi Arabia in retribution and side with the Iran-controlled Houthis against Saudi Arabia.

It was a testament to Donald Trump’s common sense and his political courage that he refused to bow to their pressure. And it was equally obvious back in 2018 that if a Democrat beat Trump in 2020, the next Democrat administration would resuscitate the Khashoggi affair to try to push MBS from power.

The worst thing that happened to the Obama nee Biden crowd were the Abraham Accords. This is why the first thing that Biden and his handlers did was bow out of the U.S. side of the deal by freezing the arms sales to the UAE and Saudi Arabia. The Abraham Accords put paid their false claims that the jihadists are the authentic voice of the Arab world. The popularity of the deals among the citizens of the Gulf and much of the wider Arab world – like Morocco and Sudan — made clear that Obama (Biden) and their ilk were basing U.S. Middle East policy on the propaganda being taught in Middle East Studies departments throughout the U.S. rather than on anything even vaguely resembling the reality of the region and the views of people who actually live here.

I don’t know if MBS will survive this blow or not. There is reason to fear that at the end of the day, the leaders of the UAE and of Saudi Arabia will decide they are better off making an arrangement with Iran supported by the U.S. than standing up for their sovereignty and their interests with Israel. And if they do, it will be a disaster of epic proportions. The danger of war will rise exponentially. Jihadists of the Sunni and Shiite varieties will be empowered as never before. And Israel will be in a pretty horrible position.

But in the midst of all of this, leave it to the fake human rights activists and real terror supporters and jihad sympathizers like Malley and his comrades in Obama’s new administration to pat themselves on the back for ushering in an “authentic” era in the Middle East.

A couple of additional thoughts on the administration’s sudden efforts to overthrow MBS.

First, by branding MBS a murderer, the administration is making it politically unfeasible for Israel to make peace with Saudi Arabia. This brings me back to my earlier point about the administration’s efforts to undermine and hopefully destroy the Abraham Accords. Hours before the administration opened this shocking offensive against MBS, I24 news reported that Israel, Saudi Arabia, the UAE and Bahrain were establishing a NATO-like military alliance. I wouldn’t be surprised if the two stories were related. Now that the administration has criminalized MBS, with the avid support of its fully mobilized media attack dogs and a stable of fake human rights groups, it can use any move towards formalizing Israel-Saudi ties as “proof” that Israel is immoral.

MBS will become a new version of Bashir Gemayel, the Lebanese leader Christian leader who signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1982 only to be assasinated. Any move MBS makes towards Israel will be attacked by the progressive left and their Muslim Brotherhood and Iranian regime regime fellow travelers in Washington.

So the move against MBS is a move to block further progress towards ending the Arab conflict with Israel.

The second aspect of the U.S. move that is worth noting is that its impact so far has been the opposite of what Biden and his handlers no doubt expected. Rather than express contrition or accept guilt of any sort, the Saudis have rejected the U.S. findings and said that they will not allow the U.S. to overthrow the Crown Prince. The UAE and Bahrain have issued similar responses. Trump spent an enormous amount of time and effort working to rebuild U.S. credibility with its Middle East allies after eight years of Obama’s betrayal. The Saudis and Egyptians did trust Trump, but scarred from eight years with Obama, they were unwilling to place all of their eggs in the U.S. basket. As a consequence, Russia and China expanded their arms sales to Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE during Trump’s tenure.

The Biden administration seems not to have considered that freezing U.S. arms sales to Saudi Arabia and the UAE doesn’t freeze arms sales, it just freezes the U.S. out of the regional arms market. So the first victim of Biden’s policies will be U.S. arms manufacturers. And the damage they incur will likely be longstanding. No matter how hard the next Republican administration works, it will be much more hard pressed than Trump was to rebuild America’s credibility in the Middle East.

Israelis are not responding to Biden’s pro-Iran policies with hysteria. They are simply rejecting his policies.

This doesn’t mean that Biden and Malley et.al., can’t do major damage. They can and they are. It does mean that they are much less powerful than they think they are.

Mark Levin: ‘Facebook & Twitter? Boycott Them, There Are Other Sites’

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Mark Levin, a Jewish American talk radio host and former Reagan administration official, makes no effort to hide what he thinks

With a radio show pulling in more than 14 million listeners, Mark Levin has no reason to pull his punches.

By: Caroline Glick

A special interview marking the release of the Hebrew edition of Mark Levin’s bestselling book, “Unfreedom of the Press.”

Mark Levin, a Jewish American talk radio host and former Reagan administration official, makes no effort to hide what he thinks. Indeed, what his three-hour radio show’s 14 million regular listeners and the millions more who watch his top-rated show on Fox News every Sunday love most about Levin is that he gives them the unvarnished truth as he sees it. And Levin does so with a combination of intellectual depth and populist passion.

Pro-Trump protesters inside the US Capitol building. Photo Credit: AP

Levin’s massive audience insulates him from the growing fear of censors that now plagues conservatives in America. At a time when progressive propaganda has become a substitute for news reporting at liberal media organs across the United States, fresh from four years of unrelenting media assaults on former President Donald Trump and his supporters, Levin is a leading voice for millions of Americans who feel increasingly marginalized and besieged.

Ahead of the release of the Hebrew edition of his New York Times bestseller “Unfreedom of the Press,” (Sella Meir Publishers), Levin sat down for a conversation with Israel Hayom. He explained what moved him to research the roots of media bias and why he believes the rising extremism of the U.S. media poses a threat to the future of the most powerful democracy in the world.

Levin sees a direct link between the U.S. media’s longstanding hostility towards Israel and its burgeoning anti-Americanism. He also sees parallels between the overwhelmingly leftist Israeli media and the U.S. media.

Our conversation was broadcast last week to mark the official launch of the Hebrew edition of his book. What follows are excerpts from our discussion.

“As somebody who watches the Israeli media, the Israeli media is a disaster,” Levin begins.

“The American media is a disaster. But at least in America, we have conservative talk radio. You have a few outlets in Israel—not many. And we have Fox News where at least we have some conservative opinion shows. You have nothing like that in Israel. You pretty much have a statist media that backs the left—as small as the left is now politically, the media remains overwhelmingly leftist in Israel.

“They are constantly, in my humble opinion, trying to undermine the conservatives, the hawks, the Netanyahu administration. And yet the people of Israel have pretty much rejected the media, haven’t they? At least in the last number of elections. The Labor Party really only exists in The Jerusalem Post and some of the other media outlets there. But it’s appalling to watch it. It’s appalling to watch the lies about the prime minister because I’m very familiar with his legal situation and the law in Israel.

Barack Obama and Joe Biden. Photo Credit: AP

“And I would say the other problem is basically—I hope this doesn’t get me in trouble—the founding socialists pretty much adopted the Italian parliamentary system. So you have 412 parties that are constantly running, and if you can pick off three guys maybe you can get a coalition. So it’s this constant state of play which is unstable, I think, for democracy.

“Now that said, in my own country over here, we have disasters looming all over the place. Part of the problem is our media. Our media here is a one-party media. I call it ‘the Democrat Party Media’ because that’s what it is. We have individuals in our media who worked in Democrat presidential administrations, Democrat presidential campaigns, who worked for members of Congress on Capitol Hill in Washington, and vice versa.

“The media in our country is at the tip of the spear dividing our country in many vile ways. They talk about incitement of an insurrection in our country and they’re attacking former President Donald Trump for that. He didn’t incite an insurrection.

“If the president of the United States wanted to lead an insurrection, I don’t think he would’ve sent 200 militia guys from all over the country into the Capitol. I think he would have sent in the Marines. But that’s quite beside the point. What about the left, and their language and their incitement? How do we know that doesn’t anger people and cause people to do things they ought not to do?

“But all that said, it’s kind of hard to maintain a republic, a civil society, rational debate when you have a media that has no interest in reporting the news. There are many ways you can affect the news—one is by censorship, not reporting the news even though something is newsworthy. And the other is of course with political bias. I am 63 years old and I have never seen anything like what is going on in our country before. The media are not really a profession anymore. They are social advocates.

“Let me just say this, in our journalism schools today there’s something taught called public or social advocacy. This is something that goes back a hundred years in our country to the progressive movement, the neo-Marxist movement. And you have it in your country too, trust me. You even have it on your Supreme Court.

“This is what it is: You don’t teach anything—science, math, history, language, literature, without it having a patina of social activism. In other words, it’s got to be placed in some social activist category. So you don’t just teach math, that’s too rote.

In our journalism schools they’re being taught, ‘Don’t just report news. You have to give it an angle—and certainly not a conservative angle or a free-market angle or a constitutional angle. No, no, no. It’s got to be the left’s angle because only the left believes in humanity. Only the left is compassionate. Only the left wants progress.’ And that is what we are getting out of our media in the U.S. today, and I daresay in Israel today.”

Q: In terms of the commingling of media and government, it’s hard to know sometimes where the media begins and the government ends. The most outstanding example of that was during the Obama administration when Obama’s information czar, his deputy national security advisor Ben Rhodes, was placed in charge of selling the Iran nuclear deal while Rhodes’ brother, David Rhodes. was the president of CBS.

Rhodes bragged in a media interview about how he created an “echo chamber” around the deal. It began with the administration, went through “experts” at allied think tanks, and was digested by reporters whom he noted derisively “literally knew nothing” about Iran or its nuclear program and were in no position to question the propaganda they were spoon-fed by Rhodes’ echo chamber. That echo chamber was responsible for falsely portraying a deal that guaranteed Iran would get the bomb inside a decade as a non-proliferation agreement. It also demonized deal opponents as warmongers and agents of a Jewish financial conspiracy that extended from Jerusalem to New York. And it worked. The merging of the media with the administration on the Iran deal looked an awful lot like fascism. How do you view this unity of forces and combined action?

A: That is a perfect example. He was putting out propaganda. They deliberately lied about everything. They knew the government of Iran wasn’t moderate but they were claiming it was moderate. They knew the government of Iran wasn’t trustworthy but they said it could be trusted. All those people are back. I just want my Israeli brothers and sisters to know, all those people are back in the Biden administration, and then some.

You’re going to have your hands full. We have our hands full here. And if you can’t have an honest media—which you do not have in Israel and which we do not have in the United States—it’s hard to preserve a free society.

I would though slightly amend what you said. The media are only part of the state when the left controls the state. Otherwise, they try to undermine the state as much as they can.

So as long as they’re Democrats, the media is fine. You can see the treatment here with Biden. Biden doesn’t hold press conferences. Biden is not challenged. Biden is signing executive orders like some kind of king. We don’t do that in the United States. He’s signing exceedingly radical executive orders, so he’s legislating through the executive branch. We have this system of checks and balances here which is relatively formal. And you don’t hear any talk about impeachment. You don’t hear any talk about violating the Constitution when it comes to Joe Biden.

I call the media in our country when it comes to Biden and Obama “The Praetorian Guard Media.” They not only do not want to report on what these guys are doing—they seek to protect them. And they protect them during their campaigns and they protect them when they are in office.

And what I do in the book, it’s chapter and verse. I don’t just give my opinion. I’ve got hundreds of endnotes in this book. I’ve got an enormous number of examples. I’ve got some in the media criticizing others in the media. You know, some “old school” guys who are liberals saying, “You know, we can’t do this,” and yet, they’re still doing it. You know it’s actually getting worse in this country. And it’s because, whether it’s media in this country or Hollywood, or academia or the Democrat Party, they’ve all been devoured by this progressive, sort of neo-Marxist movement. They’re all kind of one and the same, moving in the same direction.”

When I write these books, and I’m working on another one, it’s really quite depressing. What you find is that these so-called intellectuals and masterminds of critical race theory have as their intention, literally, to bring down a society. You’ll get it in Israel. It will come in the form of the Palestinians, the Arabs. We get it here in the form of everyone other than Caucasian Christians. And I would argue that they have a voice certainly in a corner of the Democrat Party but a growing part of the Democrat Party with Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib and AOC [Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez], and these anti-Semites and anti-American types. It is a growing part of the Democrat Party. The media not only do not condemn them, they promote them. And the Democrat Party doesn’t condemn them. They seek their reelection.

Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar. Photo Credit: AP

Q: One of the things you discuss in your book is how progressive Jews over time have covered anti-Semites. You devote a chapter, for instance, to how the Sulzbergers—the progressive Jewish owners of The New York Times—deliberately hid news of the Holocaust from their readers and in so doing, helped the Nazis to expand the pace of the genocide of European Jewry unabated.

Today we see progressive American Jewish organizations and leaders calling for the Biden administration to deny civil rights protections to American Jews who are being persecuted by progressive anti-Semites through the BDS movement and other anti-Israel campaigns. So these progressive Jewish groups are actually enabling progressive anti-Semitism and allowing progressive anti-Semites to get off scot-free for harming Jews. What do you make of this?

A: Well, you’ve got groups like J Street, and all the anti-Semites go to J Street and they speak. And they’re all given a plaque and patted on the head. And then they feel that they’ve spoken to Jews around the world. I’ll just be honest. I’ve said it on the radio. These are self-hating Jews.

I don’t know what their problem is. But you know, we’ve always had this phenomenon. There’s always been a corner of Judaism that is self-hating Jews. I would argue that these are some of them. So the anti-Semites and those who are very hostile to the current government in Israel, they go to these groups. And they speak. And they feel like they’ve spoken to “the Jews,” and they haven’t.

As for reportage of the Holocaust, I didn’t feel enough Americans were aware enough of what the New York Times did and didn’t do during World War II and the Holocaust. It wasn’t just the New York Times. It was all the American media. Old man Sulzberger was a secularist. He was hostile to the Zionist movement. He was hostile to Orthodox Jews. And he was a Roosevelt sycophant.

The Roosevelt administration was very hostile to the Jews. They wanted to keep the Holocaust quiet, as quiet as possible. And the New York Times assisted them. The American media assisted them. This is what happens when you don’t have a media that is responsible, that is independent, that is going to report “the news” as opposed to its opinions.

President Trump refers to the media in America as “the enemy of the people.” And when he says that you have the New York Times saying, ‘That’s outrageous, that’s like Hitler.’

I mean, are you kidding me? You guys, who hid what Hitler was doing, you’re casting aspersions? But the New York Times really hasn’t changed in many ways. As I write in the book, they still are extremely hostile to Israel. They are very sympathetic to Hamas and to terrorist activities.

The book isn’t about Israel. But I don’t know how you can talk about America and America’s principles and the way America’s covered without talking about Israel, and Israel’s principles and the way Israel is covered in America.

We also get in this country from our media—depending which media outlet—that Israel is an apartheid society, a racist society. It’s the same things they say about our country, they say about Israel. So it’s kind of hard to write a book, [about] what I call “Unfreedom of the Press,” and ignore what’s going on with Israel.

The latest anti-Netanyahu cartoon

And finally, it’s hard to ignore it as a Jew. I see the overlays. I see the animus towards Israel, the animus towards the United States, and really, I think that the American people—forget about the elites—I think the American people and the Israeli people have such a connection, such a love for each other. You know when we clear out all the race-baiters, clear out all the academics, and clear out Hollywood and clear out the media and clear out the politicians, I really feel that’s the case.

Q: During Trump’s tenure in office, and most notably during his last months in office, it seemed that social media platforms abandoned their role as open platforms for all—including conservatives.

When Facebook and Twitter began, conservatives raced to join. They believed this was their chance to finally level the playing field because Facebook and Twitter and the rest gave the conservatives that have no voice in the liberal media an opportunity to be heard. But in Trump’s final months in office, these platforms betrayed their conservative users, they joined the liberal media to shut them down, censor and block them.

The most stunning moment came when, after weeks of aggressive censorship, they banned Donald Trump from all the major platforms while he was still president. How are people supposed to respond to this?

A: Donald Trump used Twitter to get elected, to help get around Big Media. But Big Tech is controlled by multi-billionaires, I mean multi-multi-billionaires who [are] quite liberal, and they’re all Democrats. I think they decided that that was never going to happen again. So they’ve all been extremely partisan in the way they allow people to post information in terms of news. They and Big Media were quiet about Hunter Biden, candidate Biden’s son, who is corrupt as hell.

I quit Twitter and Facebook on my own. I gave them about a month. I brought over as many people as I could to Parler.

[Parler, an alternative free speech platform, was shut down by Big Tech last month, after millions of conservatives responded to Trump’s expulsion from Facebook and Twitter by joining the new platform.]

Parler, before it was shut down, had about 20-21 million followers. Five and a half million of whom were mine. I think that’s one of the reasons they got whacked, quite frankly. What our media has tried to do is they’ve tried to destroy Parler, to take it down. They called it “right-wing.” In America “right-wing” is pejorative. I know in Israel, not so much. It’s an open platform. I don’t even know what their politics are.

I told everybody, “Let’s go to Parler.” I’m not going to be censored. No more scarlet letters. I don’t need left-wing kook billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg or the goofball with the beard, Jack Dorsey, telling me what to do and putting all these conditions and censorship. It was like “Holy Mackerel, what’s going on here?” So I said, “You know what, I’m gonna get the hell out of here. I have enough [of an] audience myself and I don’t need these people to be dinging me all the time.”

Donald Trump Facebook/Twitter post, 13 July 2017. Credit: WIkimedia Commons.

Q: Do you think the events that followed the Jan. 6 riot on Capitol Hill were sort of an inflection point for social media platforms—that they became something different after Jan. 6 from what they were before Jan. 6 in terms of censorship?

A: I think they saw an opportunity on Jan. 6. When the thugs stormed the Capitol building, they took that opportunity and they are still taking that opportunity, as are the rest of the left, taking that opportunity to turn America inside out.

But there will be pushback. There’s pushback already. I’m not going to keep my mouth shut. Other radio hosts are not going to keep their mouths shut. My friends on the opinion side of Fox, they’re not going to keep their mouths shut. We do have something now called podcasts. But here’s the problem: Those same companies we’re talking about own the platforms. They can pull the plug on podcasts.

But I think if they keep this up in America, people are going to rise up. I don’t know how, but you cannot keep silencing people, you cannot keep abusing people and keep calling them those vile, vicious names, and then through policy destroy their wealth, destroy their jobs, destroy their personal identity.

You can’t keep treating 100 million people that way and expect there to be no response. This is why I say to the left, “You talk about incitement? You’re pushing people to a point that scares the hell out of me.”

Because one of the relief valves is speech. And if you’re going to crush speech and then crush people, day in and day out on television and day in and day out on social media, people in the end don’t like that very much.

Q: Today’s world is different, media-wise, than it was just two years ago when your book was first published. We’re in a time when censors that are more powerful than humanity has ever seen are bearing down on the Right on Facebook, Twitter and all the rest. How are people supposed to respond to this? These platforms gave people unprecedented opportunities to share their views and now they are clamping down on freedom of speech in a way we’ve never experienced. What do you think people should do?

A: We use their tactics. Not the violent ones. We learn from the BDS movement. I’ve been saying on American airwaves—we need to BDS them. We need to have a BDS movement against Big Tech, and if it’s not Big Tech, then their advertisers. They can’t survive without their advertisers. They take our data, they steal it from us, they sell it to each other [and] they sell it to commercial entities. We need to find out who those commercial entities are. We need to BDS the major television networks just like the left does.

Q: One of the problems with saying “I want to leave Facebook,” or “I want to leave Twitter,” is that people really do want to have their voices heard. They don’t want to lose their freedom of expression. They’re not market makers. They’re market takers. They’re the little guys with their 150, 500 friends on Facebook and they want to communicate with them. What are they supposed to do?

A: People have given up a helluva lot more for liberty than Twitter and Facebook. So my advice is just to give it a year. And then other companies are going to pop up. Because once Parler figures out how to do it, others will be able to do it. When you look at YouTube, there’s another small entrepreneur out there called Rumble. And YouTube and Google are trying to crush it. I used to have 4,000 followers on Rumble, but then two weeks ago I said, okay, I’m done with YouTube, and now I have half a million followers on Rumble. Come join us. You could talk. There’s a lot of people to talk to on Rumble. There’s going to be a lot of people to talk to on Parler.

Water always finds the cracks. Liberty always finds the cracks. We’re going to find the cracks and we’re going to use them and exploit them. We’re going to compete against these people once and for all. What we reject is their attempt to crush us, and their attempt to use government to advantage them. This is what we need to fight. So you’re either in this fight, or you’re not. Get the hell off there. Try other sites. We still have more ways to communicate than we did 20 years ago.

Ahead of the release of the Hebrew edition of his New York Times bestseller “Unfreedom of the Press,” (Sella Meir Publishers), Levin sat down for a conversation with Israel Hayom. Photo Credit: Amazon.com

Q: Any parting words for your new Israeli readers?

A: Whenever I come to Israel, and I go to the Western Wall or what have you, people come up to me. I just want you to know how much I appreciate the Israeli people, the way I appreciate the American people. It always really puts a big smile on my face when someone comes [up to me] with the Israeli accent and says that they listen to me on the radio. And I get Israelis who call my show at three and four in the morning Israel time, and that’s always a lot of fun too. Some of them are Americans living in Israel, or Israelis. I just want you to know you’re heard by 14 million people, so feel free to call in.

             (INN)

Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of “The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East.”

“Conversations in Transit with Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik’

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Rabbi Dr Aaron Adler’s new book,’Seventy Conversations in Transit with HaGaon HaRav Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt”l,” (OUPress, Urim Publications, 179 pp.)

Rabbi Dr. Aaron Adler’s insightful and fascinating book brings Rabbi Soloveitchik to life while inspiring the awe in which he was held by all.

By: Rochel Sylvetsky

A beautiful and true story is told about the meeting of two great Talmudic minds several decades ago. When Israeli Chief Rabbi Hagaon HaRav Avraham Shapira, then Rabbinic leader of Religious Zionism, visited America, he gave a shiur at Yeshiva University (YU) attended by that institution’s famed Rosh Yeshiva, HaGaon HaRav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, known reverently as the “Rov”. At the end of his lecture, Rabbi Shapira approached Rabbi Soloveitchik and kissed him. When some of those present remarked that one is not allowed to kiss even one’s own children in a synagogue, Rabbi Shapira responded: “But one is allowed to kiss a Sefer Torah.”

HaGaon HaRav Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt”l

That story came to mind as I noted that Rabbi Dr Aaron Adler’s new book,’Seventy Conversations in Transit with HaGaon HaRav Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt”l,” (OUPress, Urim Publications, 179 pp.) chronicling the period in which he served as the Rovi’s driver, is aptly titled in Hebrew, Vayehi Binsoa Haaron (When the Holy Ark travelled, a quote from the Book of Numbers on the Tabernacle’s sojourn in the desert). After all, if Rabbi Soloveitchik is likened to a Sefer Torah, the car in which he travelled is akin to the Holy Ark, and it is Rabbi Aaron who merited taking it on its journeys.

In fact, Rabbi Dr. Aaron Adler was privileged, from 1974-1977, to be Rabbi Soloveitchik’s personal driver to the airport to catch the Rov’s weekly flight to New York, where he was a a brilliant and awe-inspiring Torah lecturer, from his home in Boston where he was a more accessible community rabbi. Rabbi Adler, who admits that he purposely drove in the slow lane to add precious minutes to the ride, gained priceless insights into the Rov’s thoughts on varied halakhic issues, glimpses into his hashkafa (Torah worldview) and most fascinatingly, an inside look at the everyday behavior of an intellectual giant who saw himself, first and foremost, as a servant of Hashem.

Rabbi Herschel Shachter was a main talmid of HaGaon HaRav Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt”l. Photo Credit: YouTube.com

The Talmud says that attending to the needs of one’s teacher has more value than learning from him, because although a great Talmudic sage adds immeasurably to the understanding of Torah, his actions are a mirror of how the Torah is supposed to affect every aspect of one’s life. Rabbi Adler realized that he was in a unique situation and luckily for us, took the time to jot down brief highlights of each conversation, and – perhaps thanks to the lockdowns due to the corona pandemic which he alludes to in his remarks — has now expanded and generously shared them with us.

Reading the seventy vignettes of 1-4 pages each that comprise the book (which I found hard to put down until I finished it and then wished there were more) will be a fascinating and nostalgic experience for the Rov’s students. The opinions of several of his well-known students, printed on the back cover, Rabbi Herschel Shachter, Rabbi Prof. Carmi Horowitz and Rabbi Menachem Genack, show that the three, close talmidim (students) of the Rov, thoroughly enjoyed it. For those of us, like this writer, who occasionally heard the Rov speak, but were not his students, it is the closest we can get to learning about the Rov’s attitudes and views, without an intermediary’s opinion intertwined in the writing. Rabbi Adler did add his own comments to some of the conversations, but, with laudable integrity – and humility–took care to print them in a different font with a black line delineating them. He also divides the conversations into five subsections, so that the conversations in each section, although on different topics, are part of a coherent whole.

Rabbi Prof. Carmi Horowitz was also a main talmid of HaGaon HaRav Joseph B. Soloveitchik zt”l. He is a professor of Jewish Thought and Intellectual History at Michlalah Yerushalayim. Photo Credit: YouTube.com

We learn about the Rov’s scrupulous honesty as he refunds a nickel, insists on paying the tolls and parking and how he cares about people’s feelings in the way he answers questions. Strictness and leniency within the halakhic framework take social and human factors into account when granting a halakhic decision as well as when dealing with the non-observant, while he evinces an informed, analytic and matter of fact approach in decisions on issues such as prenatal testing, glatt kosher meat and saying the Hagomel blessing after air travel. His educational principles and decisions are pioneering, ideological and at the same time, pragmatic, as are his views on women’s Torah study. I found the visit to his father’s grave, an exception to family tradition, extremely moving and must admit having tears in my eyes when Rabbi Adler wrote of the Rov’s saying tehillim at Rabbi Belkin’s bedside before he passed away. And there is much, much more.

Rabbi Adler brings what he admits is probably an apocryphal story about Yitzchak Rabin offering the Education portfolio to Mizrachi in exchange for dropping the controversial “Who is a Jew” issue and the Rov opting for Education as having more influence. Rabbi Adler, in his comment section, disputes the efficacy of religious education ministers in that regard in retrospect, saying that this was “overly optimistic”, but having worked in education since my aliyah 50 years ago, I would like to add my own comment! The NRP Education Ministers, although they certainly tried, could not have much of an effect on an antagonistic secular parent body which, for example, decided at one point that talking about teshuva before Rosh Hashanah was an attempt to turn their children into baalei teshuva and banned rabbis (including Chabad) from the non-religious schools! However, the Yeshiva high school and Ulpana networks, National Service and countless other educational projects for the religious community, would not have happened without a Religious Zionist Education minister. And those students have had much influence volunteering in the secular community.

Rabbi Menachem Genack is known as one of the foremost talmidim of HaGaon HaRav Rabbi Joseph B. Soloveitchik, zt’l under whom he studied for over a decade. He is the CEO of the Orthodox Union Kosher Division

Different opinions exist as to the Rov’s attitude to the State of Israel, Rabbi Avraham HaCohen Kook’s views on the rebirth of Jewish life in Eretz Yisrael, the Chief Rabbinate and aliyah. The Rov’s seminal work Kol Dodi Dofek (part of Israel’s Religious Education curriculum) and his role in the Mizrachi put him squarely in the Religious Zionist camp, with perhaps a nuanced definition of Zionism. Rabbi Adler brings memorable examples of the Rov’s identification with the State, but also makes clear that he felt strongly that American Jewry needed rabbinic leadership as well.

It is well known that Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook, Rosh Yeshiva of Merkaz HaRav and the son of Rav Avraham HaCohen Kook, made considerable efforts to travel to wherever the Rov was giving shiurim when he spent time in Israel while running (unsuccessfully) for the Tel Aviv Chief Rabbinate. (Running on the Agudah list gave him little chance of being elected in a city that was then overwhelmingly Mizrachi, whose candidate was the much-respected and older Rav Amiel). Party affiliations notwithstanding, Rav Tzvi Yehuda explained that Rav Soloveitchik had visited his father in 1935, the last year of his life, and that Rabbi Kook told his son to attend the Rov’s shiurim whenever possible because “the genius of Rav Chaim of Brisk has passed down to his grandson.”

There is no one definitive answer as to why, years later, the Rov did not accept the offer to serve as Chief Rabbi, and perhaps that is because several factors came into play – wanting to avoid another election experience may understandably even be one of the unspoken ones–but the book does explain that the Rov was not comfortable with the idea of a rabbinate under government aegis and said that it was not for him. That attitude is different from that of Chief Rabbis such as Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, Rav Avraham Shapira, Rav Mordechai Eliyahu and others, who were well aware of that built in difficulty but were fearless in standing up for Torah truth against political or governmental pressures and who saw that as an integral and crucial part of their role in a changing and developing miraculous Jewish state which faces religious questions of national significance.

Rabbi Dr. Aaron Adler was privileged, from 1974-1977, to be Rabbi Soloveitchik’s personal driver to the airport to catch the Rov’s weekly flight to New York, where he was a a brilliant and awe-inspiring Torah lecturer, from his home in Boston where he was a more accessible community rabbi. Rabbi Adler, who admits that he purposely drove in the slow lane to add precious minutes to the ride, gained priceless insights into the Rov’s thoughts on varied halakhic issues, glimpses into his hashkafa (Torah worldview) and most fascinatingly, an inside look at the everyday behavior of an intellectual giant who saw himself, first and foremost, as a servant of Hashem.

Had Rabbi Soloveitchik been Chief Rabbi, there is no question that he would have done the same and Rabbi Adler’s relating how the Rov felt that the Israeli Chief Rabbinate is the “mara deasra” – the national halakhic authority – on questions such as the Jewish status of Ethiopian immigrants or Hallel on Independence Day is in line with Rav Kook’s definition of the Chief Rabbinate’s role. The book tells of his pride in a grandson’s IDF service, of his calling the IDF uniform “bigdei kodesh” – holy garments – when asked about whether a soldier needs to put on freshly laundered clothes to daven–but that was possible because of a chief rabbinate system, as it was at Chief IDF Rabbi Goren’s insistence early on that the IDF kitchens are kosher.

Rabbi Adler should be highly commended for this uplifting, interesting and enlightening book, and I have no doubt readers will be profoundly grateful for the glimpse it gives into the life of a true Gadol who was, in every way, larger than life.

When Israeli Chief Rabbi Hagaon HaRav Avraham Shapira (pictured above) then Rabbinic leader of Religious Zionism, visited America, he gave a shiur at Yeshiva University (YU) attended by that institution’s famed Rosh Yeshiva, HaGaon HaRav Joseph B. Soloveitchik, known reverently as the “Rov”.

Rabbi Dr. Aaron Adler was a student of the Rov, attained his B.A. and M.A. as well as semicha from Yeshiva University, and his Ph.D. from Bar Ilan University where he served on the faculty after making aliyah in 1979. He was president and campus rabbi at the Emunah College of Technology and Arts in Jerusalem, founding head of Yeshivat Ner Tamid in Hashmonaim, and pulpit rabbi in Ramot, in Zurich and currently at the Ohel Nechama Synagogue in Katamon. He is a popular lecturer and scholar in residence as well as a leader of Jewish Heritage tours.

(Israel National News)

Rochel Sylvetsky is op-ed and Judaism editor at Arutz Sheva and formerly its Managing Editor.

Parshas Ki Sisa –“The Masked Man”

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The major events of the parsha are even more troubling: The people sin, they worship the Golden Calf and dance around it. Moses beholds this shameful scene and becomes enraged. He hurls the tablets from his hands, shattering them. He directs the Levites to gird their swords and “slay brother, neighbor, and kin.”

By: Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb

As a person who likes to see the connections between the Jewish calendar of holiday celebrations and the weekly Torah reading, I have long been perplexed by the proximity of Purim to this week’s Torah portion, Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35).

We generally read Parshat Ki Tisa (Exodus 30:11-34:35) soon after concluding the celebration of the holiday of Purim. I have always been struck by the contrast between the frivolity of Purim and the somber themes of this parsha.

After all, Purim is a day of “merry-making and feasting…a holiday and an occasion for sending gifts to one another” (Esther 9:19). Our Rabbis have even declared it obligatory to become somewhat inebriated on this day. Behavior which would not be tolerated all year long is encouraged on Purim.

But Parshat Ki Tisa projects quite a different mood.

It begins with the strict annual obligation, incumbent upon rich and poor, to donate a half-shekel for the maintenance of the Temple and its ceremonies.

It proceeds to underscore the centrality of Sabbath observance in our religion: “The Israelite people shall keep the Sabbath, observing the Sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time.” Harsh punishment is threatened for those who break this covenant: “…Whoever does work on the Sabbath day shall be put to death.” (Exodus 32:15-16).

The major events of the parsha are even more troubling: The people sin, they worship the Golden Calf and dance around it. Moses beholds this shameful scene and becomes enraged. He hurls the tablets from his hands, shattering them. He directs the Levites to gird their swords and “slay brother, neighbor, and kin.” (Exodus 33:27)

No wonder I have felt frustrated in my attempts to discover a linkage between the fearsome content of our parsha and the levity and laxity which we enjoyed on Purim, just days ago.

This year, under the influence of Purim and an overflowing cup of wine, I uncovered such a linkage, and it is a profoundly meaningful one. It has to do with the masks we wear, the façades we maintain, and the role of the imposter in our midst.

A common component of the Purim experience, especially for children, is the masquerade. Visit a Jewish neighborhood, anywhere, and you will see throngs of young people dressed up as Mordechai or Haman, Vashti or Queen Esther. Adults dress up in preposterous disguises, and even the most subdued among us puts on a face mask or at least wears a garish tie.

The goal of the day is to re-enact the historical Purim. “On the very day in which the enemies of the Jews had expected to get them in their power, the opposite happened, and the Jews got their enemies in their power.” (Esther 9:1). We masquerade, pretending to be the opposites of who we really are.

Ironically, however, most of us pretend to be the “opposites of whom we really are” not just on Purim, but all year long. We hide our real selves from those around us; we wear masks and disguises. We may reveal our real faces for those close to us, but when we are “out there”, in public, we play the roles that we think society expects of us. We deceitfully present a façade to the world; an image which we hope will bring us admiration, approval, and material success.

To some extent we are all imposters. Inauthenticity has been identified by social scientists as the malaise of postmodern man. I recently came across a poem which makes this point so well:

“Oh God of such truth as sweeps away all lies,/ of such grace as shrivels all excuses,/ come now to find us/for we have lost ourselves/in a shuffle of disguises/and the rattle of empty words.” (Ted Loder, My Heart in My Mouth)

For many of us the masquerades of Purim are worn all year.

We are now prepared to discern the link to Purim in this week’s parsha. Did you know that, of all people, Moses himself wore a mask? He did not wear it at all times, and certainly not for all of his life.

When he descended from Sinai with a second set of tablets, the first tablets having been smashed by his own action, we read: “…As Moses came down from the mountain…he was unaware that the skin of his face was radiant… Aaron and all the Israelites… shrank from coming near him. But Moses called to them… and he instructed them concerning all that the Lord had imparted to him on Mount Sinai. And when Moses finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face.” (Exodus 34:19-33)

Read the rest of the story near the very end of the parsha, and you will discover that Moses did not wear the mask when he was in direct contact with the people: Speaking to them, advising them, teaching them. He also did not wear it when he was in dialogue with the Almighty. At all other times he had the mask, or veil, at the ready.

Moses knew that masks may be worn, but only with great discretion. In moments of communion with the Master of the Universe one must shed one’s mask, hiding nothing. Absolute authenticity is demanded when one attempts to reach or teach another person. Then there can be no facades, no disguises, and no masks. In Moses’ case, his veil was worn for one purpose only: to assure that others would not shrink from his presence, to guarantee that others would not avoid him because of his frightening radiance.

Moses knew when to assert himself publicly with the full radiance of his personality, and when to withdraw in solitude and in modesty. This is illustrated in the following homiletic comment by the great Rabbi Meir Shapiro, the Rabbi of Lublin in the immediate pre-Holocaust years, and the founder of its famed yeshiva.

Earlier in the parsha we read of the mysterious encounter between Moses and the Almighty: “And the Lord said, ‘See, there is a place near Me. Station yourself on the rock and, as My Presence passes by, I will put you in a cleft of the rock and shield you with My hand…”. (Exodus 33:21-22)

Rabbi Shapiro pointed out that all leaders confront this dilemma: When should I publicly and courageously assert myself with my entire being, and when should I retreat to my own space, in humility. The answer, he suggested, lies in the aforementioned verse: When you are in “a place near Me”, when the issue is one which involves promulgating My Divine will, then “Station yourself on the rock”. Then there can be no masks, no withholding of your personal talents and radiance. But, “as My presence passes by”, when the issues are neither sublime not spiritual, your place is “in a cleft in the rock”, in privacy, modesty, and occasional isolation.

When we are doing the Lord’s work we must shed our masks and assert ourselves in full authenticity, holding nothing back. But then there are circumstances when the Lord’s honor is not at all at stake. In such mundane moments solitude and humility are warranted. At such moments one may resort to veils, masks, and disguises.

We must limit our use of facades to the one day a year festival of Purim. But if our encounters with others and with the Almighty are to be meaningful, we must shed our masks, and act with courageous authenticity.

(Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb is the Executive Vice President, Emeritus of the Orthodox Union)

Parshas Ki Sisa – Making a Difference in the World

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The half a shekel that we are called upon to donate is also symbolic of a heart broken in half which results from the awareness that we have failed in our mission of fulfilling G-d`s command- ments. That realization is in and of itself an atonement for our soul.. As King David proclaimed in his psalm: “G-d is close to the broken hearted...” (Psalm 34:19)

By: Rabbi Osher Jungreis

Sometimes we wonder whether we puny individuals can make an impact on world events, whether we can make a real difference in G-d`s universe.

Most of us would give a negative response to such questions. Parshas Ki Tisa however, comes to challenge that view. This week`s parsha impresses upon us that not only is it possible for us to make a difference, but it is our imperative to do so. The portion opens with the words “Ki Tisa…” – “When you shall take a census of the children of Israel… every man shall give – ‘v`nosnu` G-d an atonement for his soul… this shall they give…all who pass through the census, half a shekel…” (Exodus 30:11-13)

At first glance, this commandment to count the Jewish people appears puzzling. Surely the Almighty G-d knew our numbers, so what purpose was there in a census? Moreover, why should the people be counted through a “half shekel”?

Herein is to be found a profound teaching, which, if absorbed properly, can be a life-transforming experience through which we can make that difference. Ki Tisa – the words with which the Torah commands the census does not literally mean “counting,” but rather “the elevation of one`s head”, impressing upon us that when we realize that we count, our heads are lifted up and we are elevated, That realization, that we can impact on the destiny of the world, that our words and deeds have significance, charges us with responsibility and allows us to grow and become better people..

Our sages offer many explanations as to how we may best achieve this elevation. When we make a spiritual accounting by carefully scrutinizing our lives, then we transcend ourselves and grow spiritually. By having to contribute half a shekel to the census, we are challenged to realize that we are all only halves and that our nation is only as strong as its individual parts. It follows then that when we make a decision to pray with greater intensity and devote more time to torah study, to be more scrupulous about the observance of Shabbos and Kashruth, to make an effort to control our tempers and to desist from loshen hora (gossip and slander), to reach out with chesed (loving-kindness and patience), then we are not only elevating our individual selves, but we are actually tipping the scales in favor of our people and the world.

The half a shekel that we are called upon to donate is also symbolic of a heart broken in half which results from the awareness that we have failed in our mission of fulfilling G-d`s command- ments. That realization is in and of itself an atonement for our soul.. As King David proclaimed in his psalm: “G-d is close to the broken hearted…” (Psalm 34:19)

Finally, the word v`nosnu – and they shall give” is a palindrome–a word or phrase that reads the same backwards and forwards. reminding us that that which we give always comes back to us. In these tumultuous times, when we are all concerned about our personal safety and security, let us be aware that our most powerful protection is to be found in giving. We are all only halves, and to create that whole and to bring blessing to ourselves and to our people, we must learn to give.

             (www.Hineni.org)

10 Fabulous Castles and Fortresses in Israel

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Photo of Belvoir Castle via Shutterstock.com

From palaces hanging off a cliff in the desert to knights’ halls and imposing fortresses, Israel is the place to imagine yourself in shining armor.

By: Naama Barak – Israel21C.org

When you think of Israel, castles probably aren’t the first thing that comes to mind. Which is a shame, considering that the country boasts some truly magnificent ones.

Some of them date back thousands of years while others are more recent, but they are all monuments to fascinating history, lost empires and power struggles worthy of their own Netflix show.

Here, we’ve whittled them down to our top 10 castles and fortresses, to be admired while wearing your finest gown.

  1. Belvoir Castle

Like many of the castles and fortresses dotted throughout Israel, Chateau Belvoir was built by the Crusaders who ruled over the country, and later parts of it, from the 12th to 13th century. Located a short distance from the Sea of Galilee, the castle is concentric, meaning that it has two circuits of defensive walls one inside the other.

It was ruined by its Muslim conquerors in the early 13th century to ensure that Crusader forces won’t occupy it again in the future, but luckily they only destroyed the top floor and filled in the moat, leaving intact the base that can be viewed today. Nowadays, as part of a national park, the castle boasts not only great ruins but also great ruins but also a stunning panoramic view.

  1. Cafarlet Castle
    Photo of Cafarlet Castle by Tokar via Shutterstock.com

Cafarlet Castle, within the serene Moshav Habonim on Israel’s coastline, is rather mysterious in that there’s little historical record of it. It was probably built by the Muslim rulers of the Land of Israel in the eighth or ninth century, alongside similar fortifications constructed along the coastline to protect it from invading Byzantine Christians.

The rectangular castle had guard towers in each corner, which all underwent reconstructions when taken over by the Crusaders. Eventually the area was once again taken by Muslim conquerors, and the castle and surrounding area fell into disrepair. Today, the site remains off-road and is not maintained, so perhaps is best enjoyed from a distance.

  1. David’s Citadel
    Photo of David’s Citadel by Aleksandar Todorovic via Shutterstock.com

One of Jerusalem’s most well-known landmarks, the David Citadel at the entrance to the Old City is a big, imposing complex that was originally the site of King Herod’s watchtowers some 2,000 years ago. It was then turned into a fortress by the Arab rulers of Jerusalem, further fortified by the Crusaders and then fortified yet again by the returning Arab rulers. The minaret that now adorns it was added by the Ottomans, who also surrounded it with a moat. Today, the citadel houses archaeological finds, the Tower of David Museum and a very impressive light-and-sound show.

  1. Nimrod Castle
    The ancient Nimrod Castle in Israel’s north is a stunning example of the country’s many castles and fortresses. Photo by Nina Mikryukova via Shutterstock.com

Nimrod Castle on the slopes of Mount Hermon in northern Israel looks like it was taken straight from the set of “Game of Thrones,” being medieval and all. The huge complex was built by Muslim rulers on a strategic spot to protect the important road to Damascus.

It fell out of use hundreds of years ago but still very much crowned the local landscape, even leading a visiting Mark Twain to call it “the stateliest ruin of that kind on earth.” Today it is a national park that is open to the public, who can enjoy an ancient stone inscription, interesting architecture and magnificent views.

  1. Montfort Castle

Montfort Castle is a unique Crusader castle in that it was built not to protect the Christian kingdom from Arab invaders but rather to house some of the Teutonic Order’s administration and protect it from rival Crusaders. Built in the 13th century, it is located on a steep cliff in the northern Galilee, where it is surrounded by green forest. Today, it is part of a national park that is also home to rare and endangered plants.

  1. Masada

Possibly the most jaw-dropping fortress on this list, Masada is one of Israel’s leading archeological sites. Perched atop a cliff in the Judean desert, this complex housed King Herod’s palaces and was where Jewish rebels fortified themselves again the Romans until, according to tradition, they killed themselves in 74 CE instead of falling captive.

Nowadays, Masada National Park is one of Israel’s most popular tourist sites, accessed by two walking trails or a less strenuous cable car. The best time to visit is sunrise, when the desert and the adjacent Dead Sea light up.

  1. Apollonia Fortress

Seaside Apollonia is one ancient town, established at the latest in the fourth century BCE. It was the home of Samaritans, Greeks, Romans, Muslims, Crusaders, Jewish immigrants and most recently well-to-do Israelis. The Crusaders left the most memorable mark on the place in the shape of a fortress that juts out to the sea. The fortress existed in its entirety for only 24 years before it was razed by Muslim conquerors. Nowadays, it’s a popular nature reserve that also includes a Roman villa, a moat and a mosque.

  1. Antipatris Fort

Antipatris Fort is also known as Binar Bashi, a variation on the Turkish word for fountainhead. It was built in the late 16th century by the Ottoman rulers of the Land of Israel to guard the passageway between the sources – or fountainhead – of the Yarkon River and more distant areas and is located on the ancient Via Maris trade route linking Egypt and Syria. The impressive fort is now part of Tel Afek National Park, which boasts a lake and extensive recreational grounds.

  1. Acre Hospitaller Fortress

The crusading Hospitaller Order built the impressive fortress in Acre (Akko) in the 12th century when they and other Christian communities resided in the port city. The remains of their large-scale complex include a courtyard, what was a heavily secured gate and gate tower and the knights’ dining room – a huge, pillared stone room that you can just imagine teeming with knights in shining armor devouring their spit roasts.

  1. Atlit Fortress

When the Crusaders built their fortress in Atlit back in the 13th century, little did they know it would one day become an Israeli Navy commando camp that would fascinate the public that is not allowed to step inside. Aside from being a huge and well-fortified fortress, the place was the last Crusader stronghold in the Land of Israel from which the last Christians knights departed back to Europe.

Years later, stones from the fortress were used to build new buildings in nearby cities and the whole site suffered damage from an earthquake in the 19th century. Still, it is an imposing sight, especially when you think of the secretive divers lurking underneath.

            (Israel21C.org)

Read more at: www.israel21c.org

Protecting American Children from Today’s Educational Activists

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A school district in San Diego conducted a “white privilege training” for its white teachers who were told they were racist for being white, and for upholding racist ideas and policies

A healthy way to begin defending our children from leftist indoctrination

By: Jason D. Hill

A friend of mine told me an apocryphal story that left me with a cold shudder. He is an old-fashioned left-leaning “liberal” and a strong advocate of public education. All his children attend public schools. In fact, he is vehemently opposed to the idea of promoting private schools on the premise that its implementation will result in a more stratified society because, he believes, poor whites and blacks will be disproportionately disqualified from attending such institutions.

In good faith, he has always entrusted his children’s education to what I had typically referred to as Government Schools. He was confident that his children would receive a robust education from K-12 grade.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, however, he was forced to monitor the classroom activities of his children. Unemployment had left him more time to inconspicuously sit-in — especially on the classes of his 6th grader son.

He was shocked, one afternoon, to come upon an assignment being conducted during an English class in which all the white students in the zoom online course were required to place their arms beside a brown paper bag. How his 6th grader had acquired a crisp brown paper bag was a mystery to him. The teacher asked them if they noticed a difference in color between their skin and the brown paper bag. All of the white students nodded, and some verbally assented. The teacher asked them if the color of the bag looked close to the color of some of the students identified as black in the class. His son peered at the zoom screen and raised the icon button identifying his acknowledgement. The teacher then announced with full moral rectitude and intransigence the following:

Seattle Public Schools also held racially charged teacher-training sessions that accused them, unequivocally, of murdering the souls of black children everyday through systemic institutionalized, anti-black, state-sanctioned violence

If your skin color is different from the color of the paper bag, then you are part of a problem in America known as systemic racism that does irreparable harm to all black and brown people in America. Further, if your skin color is different from the brown paper bag and you are identified as white you enjoy something called white privilege which means you are practicing racism every day without knowing it.

Each such student that had a different color than the brown paper bag bore a collective guilt. The teacher then went on to ask the class if they had ever heard the term, “Reparations.”

Out of some sense of visceral, atavistic paternal protection, my friend slammed down his son’s computer and told him to go to his room for a while. He said he stood with his fingers pressed into the metal cover of the computer, shaking with incredulity.

I explained to him that guilt implied wrong-doing, and that because his son at age twelve had committed no egregious harm against any black person that he would eventually grow to feel a burgeoning sense of resentment. Over time, as his mind grew more focused and the charges against him repeated had been codified into a cultural norm, he would feel that he was the real cause of all harms directed at black people. I said that something evil and sinister was going to take root in his son’s psyche.

My friend grew alarmed. But I pressed on. His son, I told him, would grow to feel resentment towards black people. It would be mild at first; a contemptuous discharge fueled by a growing sense of his superiority and empowerment that he, by the power of his whiteness, could cause so much harm and that he, by that same magical power of whiteness, could alleviate the misery and suffering of blacks. I told him it would not end well, His son’s curriculum would include a phalanx of black and white progressive nihilists who would call for the annihilation of “whiteness” which, his mind would come to understand as: the annihilation of all white people from the earth including himself.

His son, I told him, runs the risk not just of becoming a racist, but of a white supremacist. Becoming a white supremacist, he will come to believe, will be his only default position from which to protect his life from the early stages of assault being waged against it — starting with the seemingly benign comparison between his skin color and that of a brown paper bag. And all this from white liberals masquerading as anti-racists.

Be careful how you proceed with his education, I warned him. It is not too late for you to assume responsibility and assert control of his mind by extracting him from one of our many national security threats destroying our American civilization: our Government schools on the tertiary level, and our nation’s universities. The decision is yours.

The idea first started by Rutgers that grammar is racist, has been extrapolated on to the disciplines of science and math — they, as well, are racists disciplines, we’re being told. Photo Credit: Rutgers.edu

Doubtless, readers have been keeping up with reports of how our public schools have become inundated with what is becoming known as “Culturally Responsive Teaching.” Teachers are required to implement “action civics” in the classroom, leading students in activism on behalf of various causes.

A school district in San Diego conducted a “white privilege training” for its white teachers who were told they were racist for being white, and for upholding racist ideas and policies. They were made to feel ashamed for teaching on stolen Native American land.

Seattle Public Schools also held racially charged teacher-training sessions that accused them, unequivocally, of murdering the souls of black children everyday through systemic institutionalized, anti-black, state-sanctioned violence. They, too, were told they were natural racists because of their mere possession of white skin, and that they had to self-consciously reject their “whiteness.” Any objection to their indictment of being racists, they were told, no matter how well-argued or factually grounded, would be dismissed as a reflex of their whiteness, as “lizard brain,” which was proof of their white fragility.

These stories come on the heels of decolonized courses in which Shakespeare, Homer, Chaucer and other classics are expurgated from curricula in high schools and colleges in the United States (I cannot keep up). The idea first started by Rutgers that grammar is racist, has been extrapolated on to the disciplines of science and math — they, as well, are racists disciplines, we’re being told.

It is obvious that today’s cultural activists are guilty of massive child abuse in our classrooms. They have criminalized independent thinking, logic, reason, and so, have ended up conceptually breaking the minds of our children. They have usurped the purpose of educational from one of learning to one of, ultimately, Marxist indoctrination and the destruction of the values that undergird American civilization. They are using children as political pawns, weapons of mass destruction, and objectified instruments in their war against the United States of America.

They have declared war on this country’s children and their precious minds — openly, vulgarly, and with full forethought of malice.

It is time to apply an intransigent and implacable counterassault against their efforts. We know where they are and who they are.

The battle is, first, a philosophical one. We must proudly defend our first principles and our unassailable constitutive values that define America: our free market system of capitalism, our sacred Constitution and its Bill of Rights, a philosophy of individualism, reason, and American exceptionalism.

To destroy this movement, we must, first, abolish public education, that is, all government schools from K-12 to our public universities that have become national security threats and indoctrination centers for anti-American, and Marxist and post-modern ideologies. They have to be shut down. Your tax dollars cannot fund these institutions any longer.

A future secretary of education, and philosophically-minded future leaders must prepare for the complete eradication of the Department of Education. Education must be placed back in the hands of parents, and morally speaking, ought to be privatized. If as the New Cultural Leaders say, state teachers are racists — then, alright, they must all be fired.

Private learning institutions should no longer receive any funding from the federal government, or from any state governing agencies that mandate an activist curricula.

This is a contentious position to hold. I am willing to entertain the idea of issuing school vouchers for the use of a child’s private school tuition. This is also a more divisive issue among reasonable people, as it involves the use of public funds to pay for a child’s education. Some will argue, therefore, that vouchers still involve the state’s role in education. A safer alternative, it seems to me, and one predicated on the moral principle that people are responsible for the procreative choices that they make — not society — is to implement a unilateral tax credit for education for all parents.

All one would have to do to qualify is to have a child or children that one wishes to educate in a private school. One would not be taxed on the portion of one’s income that is needed to send one’s child to school. This would certainly dis-incentivize more people from having more children than they can afford to educate. Among competing private schools in a free market, it simply would not be in the fiscal interests of private educators to leave broad swaths of people outside the system. We have seen where the emergence of private online universities have provided a plethora of opportunities for those whose income levels do not permit easy entrance into traditional, high-tuition universities, to receive an education.

It is obvious that today’s cultural activists are guilty of massive child abuse in our classrooms. They have criminalized independent thinking, logic, reason, and so, have ended up conceptually breaking the minds of our children. Photo Credit: Pinterest

I think a conversation about the two possibilities outlined is a healthy way to begin rooting out the existence of government schools from our republic.

To fight a war, one must start at the root by defeating the adversary’s strategies and methods. Strategies will follow as I continue to write on this topic. For now, I simply want those brown paper bags destroyed, those government schools closed forever, and American children given back to the safety of their parents. They are innocent. The future is theirs. And they deserve a shot at making something magnificent of it, and of their minds.

            (www.FrontPageMag.com)

Jason D. Hill is professor of philosophy at DePaul University in Chicago, and a Shillman Journalism Fellow at the Freedom Center. His areas of specialization include ethics, social and political philosophy, American foreign policy and American politics. He is the author of several books, including We Have Overcome: An Immigrant’s Letter to the American People (Bombardier Books/Post Hill Press). His new forthcoming book is What Do White Americans Owe Black People: Racial Justice in the Age of Post Oppression. Follow him on Twitter @JasonDhill6.