Me pre-COVID!
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A dear friend and fellow memo reader sent this:
1. The dumbest thing I ever bought was a 2020 planner.
2. I was so bored I called Jake from State Farm just to talk to someone. He asked me what I was wearing.
3. 2019: Stay away from negative people. 2020: Stay away from positive people.
4. The world has turned upside down. Old folks are sneaking out of the house & their kids are yelling at them to stay indoors!
5. This morning I saw a neighbor talking to her dog. It was obvious she thought her dog understood her. I came into my house & told my cat. We laughed a lot.
6. Every few days try your jeans on just to make sure they fit. Pajamas will have you believe all is well in the kingdom.
7. Does anyone know if we can take showers yet or should we just keep washing our hands?
8. This virus has done what no woman has been able to do Cancel sports, shut down all bars & keep men at home!
9. I never thought the comment, “I wouldn’t touch him/her with a 6-foot pole” would become a national policy, but here we are!
10. I need to practice social-distancing from the refrigerator
11. I hope the weather is good tomorrow for my trip to the Backyard. I’m getting tired of the Living Room.
. Never in a million years could I have imagined I would go up to a bank teller wearing a mask & ask for money.
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Hi Fellow Patriot,
It’s common knowledge at this point that Biden is corrupt. So why am I shocked that more evidence of his corruption keeps coming forward?
Check out what has most recently been uncovered.
Fighting for Freedom,
Jenny Davis
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Avi says follow the money:
Follow the Money: Hunting Terrorists and their State Sponsors
By Avi Jorisch
As I looked out the balcony of my Jerusalem apartment, I heard a loud thud. Almost immediately I saw ambulances driving at breakneck speed, and fear spread through my limbs. It was sometime in the late 1990s, and Hamas suicide bombings were taking place almost daily. Then I waited. My girlfriend came home looking dazed and shaken. She’d been in Mahane Yehuda, where the bomb went off. She described men and women putting on their “death jackets” – paramedics and shop owners who had experienced this type of horror many times before and were trying to save as many people as possible and pick up the pieces of the dead. She sobbed uncontrollably in my arms for what seemed like an eternity.
I hadn’t thought of that traumatic day for a long time until I read Harpoon: Inside the Covert War Against Terrorism’s Money Masters (Hachette Books, 2017), by
Nitzana Darshan-Leitner and Samuel Katz. As they described the many bombings, military operations and targeted assassinations from the second intifada, those memories haunted me. I finally understood why to this day I so rarely take public transportation anywhere in the world and why I avoid crowded places.
Years after the Mahane Yehuda bombing, I worked at the U.S. Departments of Treasury and Defense tracking illicit money. Harpoon describes many of the operations we worked on to try and choke off the financial superhighways terrorists, money launderers and criminals use to raise and move their dirty money. As I read, those memories came back to me as well. Non-fiction books don’t generally read like novels – but I couldn’t put this one down.
Israel has fought many wars, and the battle against money laundering and terrorism finance is perhaps one of its most significant challenges. Darshan-Leitner and Katz provide the first-ever account – previously classified – of how Israel brought together its government services, including intelligence units, police and diplomats, to create a task force to combat blood money.
In the early 90s, Israel nabbed Mohammed al-Hamid Khalil Salah, a Palestinian living in Chicago. After arriving at Ben Guion Airport, a nervous Salah went to the East Jerusalem YMCA. The Shin Bet was suspicious and an entry team positioned itself outside his hotel room, picked the lock and burst in. A police bomb unit was summoned to open his suitcases in case they were rigged with explosives. What the law enforcement officials found stunned them into silence – a huge amount of American dollars.
Israel’s security apparatus later discovered that Salah was much more than a bag man, delivering bundles of cash like a common courier; he was, in fact, a key node in the finance unit of Hamas’ transnational terrorist finance organization. This case forced Israel to start tracking Palestinian charities that were ostensibly collecting nickels and dimes for orphans and widows, but were actually raising huge amounts to fund bullets, bombs and suicide bombers. The light had finally gone off for Israel’s security apparatus: money could be a powerful tool to disrupt terror.
As a result of that realization, in 2001, former Mossad head Meir Dagan formed a task force, code-named Harpoon, to follow money movements around the world. Harpoon describes some of the conventional and unconventional tactics the task force employed to disrupt the flow of money.
As the books’ authors describe, since Harpoon’s founding, an army of accountants, forensic specialists, bankers and policymakers has worked to detect and curb the formal and informal methods terrorist groups like Hamas and Hizballah employ to abuse the international financial sector.
In spy thriller-like fashion, Harpoon covers Israel’s 2010 assassination of Mahmoud Al-Mabhouh, a senior Hamas military wing commander and top financier. Al-Mabhouh spent a chunk of his career commanding the highly secretive squad whose sole mission was to kidnap and murder Israeli soldiers, and he was eventually selected by Iran and Hizballah to channel massive sums into the Palestinian Islamic factory of death. “He was part accountant, part purchasing agent, part arbitrator, part facilitator and part banker,” recalled a former member of Harpoon. “Money went into one of his hands, and death came out the other.”
A year before he met his destiny, Israel inserted a Trojan horse on his laptop and monitored all of his movements. He traveled to Dubai, ostensibly a neutral city, since the UAE has made it clear to Middle Eastern adversaries that they may not use its territory for waging war. That, however, reportedly didn’t stop an Israeli hit squad from assassinating al-Mabhouh in his hotel room, leaving the room locked from the inside – something no expert has been able to explain.
In the Second Lebanon War in 2006, Dagan argued in favor of bombing banks in Lebanon which, based on Harpoon’s work , were known to be handling funds for terrorists. Dagan believed that targeting the Lebanese economy would cripple the Party of God, stop Hizballah from firing rockets into Israel, and send a message to the populace that their economic fate depended on reining in Hizballah. During the war, Israel bombed Beit al-Mal, Hizballah’s treasury office, and banks that served as key pipelines for Hizballah operations. These included Al Baraka Bank, Fransabank and Middle East Africa Bank – some of which I named and shamed in 2003, as Hizballah’s TV station advertised its accounts at these bank accounts and encouraged viewers to wire it funds. Close to $100 million in hard currency was reportedly incinerated in the Israeli bombings, and Israel also hit bank information centers (and their backup facilities), erasing valuable data.
Harpoon also describes working with Dagan and others in the task force to develop a new battlefield to pursue those engaged in terrorism – “lawfare.” Darshan-Leitner, the founder of Shurat HaDin, an Israeli NGO that uses the legal system to fight terrorists, has filed thousands of cases in U.S. courts against individuals, corporations and banks that have aided and abetted terrorism. This groundbreaking means of going after illicit actors has exerted financial pain on terrorists and their state sponsors, depriving them of valuable access to the international financial sector.
Terrorism is a plague that is waged by those looking to demoralize and bring down democratic regimes. Groups like Hamas, Hizballah and al-Qaeda, and state sponsors like Iran, Sudan, Syria and North Korea, threaten the international order and all of civilized society. Darshan-Leitner’s work at Shurat Hadin and the work of Harpoon have played a critical role in going after terrorism and its sponsors. Responsible international policymakers can use Harpoon as a blueprint to creatively and successfully pursue terrorism finance. Israel has learned that one of the most effective ways to curb illicit actors is to hit them where it hurts: their pocketbook.
Avi Jorisch is the author of Thou Shalt Innovate: How Israeli Ingenuity Repairs the World (Gefen Publishing). He is also a Senior Fellow at the American Foreign Policy Council and the Israel Project.
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Everyone is jumping on Trump because we are behind the curve on administering the vaccines which are available. Trump used warp speed and a businessman's approach to get the vaccines approved and now it falls to the governors of states to get their citizens vaccinated. What were they doing all this time? They were betting against Trump and sitting on their thumbs.
https://ourworldindata.org/
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Time to cease and desist:
High Time to Stop Treating Israel Differently
By David Harris
The recent spate of annual anti-Israel resolutions at the UN is a telling reminder that Israel is treated according to a totally different standard than all other countries in the international system.
Of course, Israel deserves attention and scrutiny, as does every other nation. But it also merits equal treatment – nothing more, nothing less.
First, Israel is the only state whose capital city, Jerusalem, with which the Jewish people have been umbilically linked for more than 3,000 years, is not recognized by almost all other countries, with the notable exception of the United States and a handful of others.
Imagine the absurdity of this. Foreign diplomats live in Tel Aviv while conducting virtually all their business in Jerusalem, an hour’s drive away, where the prime minister’s office, the Knesset (Parliament), the Supreme Court, and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs are all located.
In fact, look at listings of world cities, including places of birth in passports (with the exception again of the U.S., thanks to the current administration), and you’ll see something striking – Paris, France; Tokyo, Japan; Pretoria, South Africa; Lima, Peru; and Jerusalem, sans country – orphaned, if you will.
Second, Israel is the only UN member state whose very right to exist is under constant challenge.
Notwithstanding the fact that Israel embodies an age-old connection with the Jewish people, as repeatedly cited in the most widely read book in the world, the Bible; that it was reborn based on the recommendations of both the League of Nations and UN; and that it has been a UN member since 1949, there’s a relentless chorus denying Israel’s very political legitimacy.
No one would dare assail the right to exist of many other countries whose basis for statehood is infinitely more questionable than Israel’s, such as those that were created by brute force, occupation, or imperialist mapmakers. Just look around at how many nations fit those categories – including, by the way, quite a few Arab countries. Why, then, is it open hunting season only on Israel? Could it possibly have anything to do with the fact that it’s the one Jewish-majority country in the world?
Third, Israel is the only UN member state that’s been targeted for annihilation by another UN member state.
Think about it. The leadership of Iran, together with Iran-funded proxies in Lebanon and Gaza, has repeatedly called for wiping Israel off the map. Is there any other country facing such a stated goal of genocidal destruction? Meanwhile, a majority of UN member states continues to conduct business as usual with Tehran, as if this threat to another nation was either welcome or somehow irrelevant.
Fourth, the UN has two agencies dealing with refugees.
One, the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), focuses on all the world’s refugee populations, except for the Palestinians. The other, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine (UNRWA), handles only the Palestinians.
But the difference goes beyond the anomaly of two structures, two bureaucracies, and two budgets. In fact, they have two strikingly different mandates.
UNHCR seeks to resettle refugees; UNRWA does not. When, in 1951, John Blanford, UNRWA’s then-director, proposed resettling up to 250,000 refugees in nearby Arab countries, those countries reacted with rage and refused, leading to his departure. The message got through. No UN official since has pushed for resettlement.
Moreover, the UNRWA and UNHCR definitions of a refugee differ markedly. Whereas the UNHCR services only those who’ve actually fled their homelands, the UNRWA definition covers “the descendants of persons who became refugees in 1948,” without any generational limitations.
Fifth, Israel is the only country that has won all its major wars for survival and self-defense, yet is confronted by some defeated adversaries who have insisted on dictating the terms of peace.
In doing so, ironically, they’ve found support from a number of countries which, victorious in war themselves, demanded – and, yes, got – border adjustments. A quick glance at, say, earlier maps of Europe and today’s amply illustrates the point.
Sixth, Israel is the only country in the world with a separate – and permanent – agenda item, #7, at the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council.
No other member state, including serial human-rights violators like Iran, North Korea, Syria, and Venezuela, gets its own agenda item.
Only the sole liberal democracy in the Middle East is treated in this blatantly biased manner because that’s the way it works – the bad guys circle the wagons to protect one another, and, at the same time, gang up on Israel, creating an automatic majority against it.
Seventh, Israel is the only country condemned by name at the World Health Organization as a “violator” of health rights.
This canard happens despite the fact that Israel has achieved one of the world’s highest life expectancy rates for all its citizens, Jewish and non-Jewish alike; is among the very first medical responders to humanitarian crises wherever they may occur; and is daily advancing the frontiers of medicine for everyone, including in response to COVID-19, something that can’t be said for too many other nations.
Eighth, Israel is the only country that’s the continuous target of three standing UN bodies established, staffed, and funded solely for the purpose of advancing the Palestinian cause and bashing Israel – the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People; the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People; and the Division for Palestinian Rights in the UN’s Department of Political Affairs.
Ninth, Israel is the only country annually targeted by double-digit UN General Assembly resolutions and countless measures in other UN bodies, such as the Human Rights Council.
Indeed, astonishingly, every year Israel is pretty much on the receiving end of more such efforts than the other 192 UN member states combined. No one can seriously argue that this is remotely warranted, but it’s a reality because in every UN body except the Security Council, where each of the five permanent members has a veto, it’s all about majority voting.
When close to two-thirds of the world’s nations belong to the Non-Aligned Movement, and when member states in recent years elected chairs from Iran and Venezuela, that just about says it all.
And tenth, Israel is the only state targeted by the BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement.
Has anyone seen any significant campus activity that targets true human rights offenders, including some in Israel’s neighborhood, who have dropped chemically-laced barrel bombs on civilians; taken aims at Christians; denied Palestinians full rights; persecuted LGBT communities; and used capital punishment, even for minors, with abandon?
Would a student government official be forced to resign over her support for the existence of any country other than Israel, as happened at University of Southern California? Would any campus tolerate a student senate president who likens any other country’s government to Nazi Germany, as happened with Israel at Florida State?
Have the Democratic Socialists of America tried to prevent New York City Council members from traveling to any country other than Israel?
Has anyone seen any flotillas or flytillas organized by European far-left groups that don’t involve an anti-Israel angle?
Has anyone seen movements demanding entertainers pull out from scheduled performances in any country except Israel?
Turkey, to take just one example, has brazenly and illegally occupied more than one-third of the island nation of Cyprus for 46 years, deployed an estimated 40,000 Turkish troops there, and transferred countless settlers from Anatolia, yet not a peep about Ankara from those who purport to act in the name of “justice” and against “occupation.”
Given political realities, tackling any of these instances of egregious double standards and blatant hypocrisy can be a daunting challenge. And, still worse, this list is not complete.
The old advertisement proclaimed that you don’t have to be Jewish to love Levy’s Jewish rye bread.
Well, surely, you don’t have to be a pro-Israel activist to be troubled by the grotesquely unjust treatment of Israel. All it takes is a capacity for moral outrage that things like this are happening in today’s world.
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If the various judges and courts will not hear evidence of election foul play the onlyway we will go back to having elections we can believe are if we elimnate mail in balloting and insist on personal identification.
Whitmer and In Re Coreco Ja’Qan Pearson, et al. — This pair of linked petitions might be the most important case the Supreme Court hears for the next four years. It’s an emergency petition to declare the election results in Michigan and Georgia unconstitutional and to do it before Congress counts and certifies electoral college votes on January 6.The Israel Tour starts Sunday for those wo want to go and have registered.
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We’ve packed our passports, hats, sunscreen and water bottles and are excited to have you join us on this special “Off the Beaten Path“ tour of Israel.
Below are links to maps of Israel that may help you as we traverse the country.
Click here for maps and educational materials from the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs
Click here for interactive satellite maps from the Israel Ministry of Tourism
Here is the Zoom link for you’ll use each day of the tour: https://jnf.zoom.us/j/
Each night, following the tour, we’ll have time for additional enrichment on a variety of topics. On January 3, Rabbi Yossi Kahana will share Jewish perspectives on the environment that connect to our tour. Please see the attachment document for texts that he’ll be discussing.
Thank you to The Congregation Beth Ahm Sisterhood for sponsoring this tour and todah rabba to our bus captains:
Debra and Martin Darvick, Nancy and Ira Goldberg, Tammy and Jeffrey Kahan, Sharona Shapiro and David Lerner, Robin and Rabbi Steven Rubenstein, Jerry Soble
Looking forward to touring with you. Shabbat Shalom.
Sharona Shapiro, Rabbi Rubenstein, and David Goodman
Congregation Beth Ahm
5075 West Maple Road • West Bloomfield, MI 48322
248-851-6880 • www.cbahm.org
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