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When did the ruling class ever have a full set of marbles and what the hell is being allowed to go on in the IDF and IAF. Take one treasonous out and shoot him and that should send a message. ?Meanwhile
There is no diplomatic solution
Israel should declare three no's;
no to nuclear Iran, no to two-state solution, no to bi-national state
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The ruling class must regain its senses
The Golani Infantry Brigade has rebelled and is getting away with it because the IDF General Staff has surrendered its moral power to discipline its soldiers.
By Caroline Glick
(JNS) A group of soldiers from a company of Israel Defense Forces’ reservists in the Golani Infantry Brigade abandoned their posts at their training base in southern Israel on Tuesday and went home. The reservists revolted because they didn’t accept their battalion commander’s decision to replace their company commander with a company commander from the Paratrooper Brigade.
As Yediot Achronot’s military reporter Yossi Yehoshua reported, the last time that Golani experienced a mutiny of this dimension was in 2007. Back then, the top brass responded immediately, sentencing all of the soldiers to 56 days in jail.
This time, their commanders took their time responding and then hit them with a wet noodle. The soldiers were given suspended sentences and remanded to their base for a weekend.
The IDF’s decision to let the reservists off the hook for inexcusable behavior surprised no one. They had no choice. In February, a squadron of reserve Air Force fighter pilots shocked the country when they signed a letter announcing they would not serve in reserves so long as the Netanyahu government proceeded forward with its plan to place minimal limits on the powers of the Supreme Court and Attorney General. That is, they used their flight wings to extort the government and the public that voted it into office.
Rather than court-martial the pilots on charges of insurrection and sedition, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar opted to tolerate—and even coddle—the pilots in the hopes of getting them to relent
The same cushy fate greeted the other leftist reservists from technology, artillery and other units.
When in response, flight mechanics announced that they would refuse to service the planes of the leftist pilots who refused to defend the country for political reasons, Halevi and Bar recognized that they couldn’t discipline them without destroying what was left of the unity of force in the Air Force. And now, Golani has rebelled and is getting away with it because the IDF General Staff has surrendered its moral power to discipline its soldiers.
The implications of this situation are devastating. And they were anticipated. Halevi and Bar were warned repeatedly that if the General Staff permitted IDF service to be used as a political weapon, the generals would rupture the chain of command and compromise the unity of the force. But Halevi, Bar and their fellow generals went ahead and legitimized it anyway. And like Humpty Dumpty, once the egg of non-politicization of military service was broken, it was broken.
‘Good’ vs. ‘bad’ Israelis
It would be bad enough if military unity was the only casualty of the rebellion of Israel’s ruling class. But, of course, it isn’t. Moody’s Investor Services didn’t lower Israel’s credit rating, despite massive efforts by Israel’s economic elites to convince the rankings service to do so. And Silicon Valley Bank’s crash demonstrated just how stupid Israel’s high-tech moguls were when they called for Israel’s wealthy leftists to pull their money out of the country.
But statements by the likes of Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron, former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, current opposition leader Yair Lapid, and dozens of retired generals and other members of the ruling class warning that Israel’s economy isn’t a safe bet and that Israel’s democracy is hanging by a hair did more to advance efforts by Israel’s enemies to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state and mainstream anti-Zionism than any U.N. resolution or any boycott campaign ever could.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of their campaign to overthrow the government through insurrection and demonization is its international bent. In the past three months, Lapid, Barak, Olmert, Livni, Ya’alon and their powerful comrades have turned to Washington and other foreign capitals to convince them to boycott Israel. Last week, Lapid flew to New York and met with American Jewish leaders to mobilize them against the only democratically elected Jewish leadership in the world: the Netanyahu government. Lapid met with powerful lawmakers to draft them into the service of overthrowing the government. Three weeks ago, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called publicly for foreign governments to boycott the Israeli government.
This week, Ya’alon met with visiting Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. His goal was self-evident. The former hardline Likud minister who in recent years has undergone an ideological makeover and joined the radical left insisted three years ago that governing coalitions comprised of terror-supporting Arab Knesset factions are preferable to governments with Netanyahu and Likud. In recent months, like fellow former chiefs of general staff Barak and Dan Halutz, Ya’alon has called for soldiers and police to disobey lawful orders. In the context of his current positions, the only possible explanation for his meeting with Graham was that he and his comrades now seek to convince Republicans to hate Netanyahu and his voters as much as Ya’alon and his new friends hate them.[All three entered politics after retiring from the IDF and failed to get votes, ed.]
Back when he was first running for president in 2008, Barak Obama said, “I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.”
Obama’s remarks were panned by Israelis and American Jews for the contempt they displayed towards Israeli democracy. Likud is a major political party in Israel that has been the ruling party in the country far more often than not for the past 45 years because it is aligned with the views of the majority of Israelis. So whether or not you like Likud, if you support Israeli democracy, then you are expected to respect the will of the Israeli people. At the most basic level, you cannot be pro-Israel if you view the lawfully elected leaders of Israel as illegitimate.
Obama’s view has long been shared by many in the Democratic elite. In 2011, former President Bill Clinton gave a racist taxonomy of Israeli society as the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual conference. Ignoring that the Palestinian Arabs rejected then—as they still reject today—any possibility of peaceful coexistence with Israel, Clinton blamed the bad, Netanyahu supporting Israelis for the absence of peace. Clinton explained that Israelis need to be divided into two groups: the good “pro-peace” Israelis and the bad “anti-peace” Israelis.”
By Clinton’s telling, “The most pro-peace Israelis are the Arabs; second the sabras, the Jewish Israelis that were born there; third, the Ashkenazis of longstanding, the European Jews who came there around the time of Israel’s founding.”
As for the bad Israelis, the former president and husband of the then-secretary of state, explained: “The most anti-peace are the ultra-religious who believe they’re supposed to keep Judea and Samaria, and the settler groups, and what you might call the territorialists, the people who just showed up lately and they’re not encumbered by the historical record.”
Back in 2008 and 2011, statements like Obama’s and Clinton’s were a cause for rancor, or at the very least, uncomfortable throat clearings among Israeli leaders on the left, and among liberal American Jews. But today, their contemptuous views of Israeli society are not merely accepted as legitimate. They have become the rallying cries of the Israeli ruling class that works with the Democrats and liberal American Jews to demonize and delegitimize not only Netanyahu and his government, but the majority of Israelis who voted them into office.
President Joe Biden has shown through his policies and statements on Iran, the Palestinians, Jerusalem, progressive anti-Semitism and a host of other issues of strategic importance to Israel that his Middle East policies are predicated on ideological positions that are hostile to Israel’s core national and strategic interests. Under normal circumstances, Biden’s hostile posture would place him in an uncomfortable position vis-à-vis the overwhelming majority of American Jews who are pro-Israel.
But with the likes of Lapid, Barak, Olmert, Ya’alon and their many partners demonizing the government and calling for American Jews, Democrat and Republican lawmakers and the Biden administration to boycott the government, Biden’s effective declaration of Netanyahu persona non grata last month went over with barely a word of protest among American Jewish leaders. He was applauded by Israeli leaders.
In this week’s “Caroline Glick Show,” Tony Badran from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies explained that Iran’s decision to escalate its aggression against Israel in recent weeks is predicated in part on Biden’s declared shunning of Netanyahu. Biden’s statement was interpreted by Iran as an invitation to attack Israel at will.
Likewise, in recent weeks, the Iranian regime-controlled media have given banner headlines to statements by retired IDF commanders like Barak and Ya’alon and politicians like Lapid declaring that Israel is doomed. And rather than join Netanyahu when he warns Iran not to believe the propaganda, Lapid, Barak, Ya’alon and their elitist comrades blame Netanyahu for failing to protect the country from the forces their insurrection has emboldened.
This week, the son of the former Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi made a historic visit to Israel. He participated in the official Yom Hashoah ceremony at Yad Vashem. He visited the Western Wall. He went to a desalination plant and spoke of the assistance Israel can offer a post-ayatollah Iran that will seek to repair the environmental devastation the regime has inflicted on the land.
Rather than praise Netanyahu and Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel who hosted Pahlavi, leftist commentators attacked them and Pahlavi. Former ambassador Daniel (“Danny”) Shek panned Pahlavi and Netanyahu for hosting him. In an interview on i24 News, Shek said the son of the former monarch “is not a force to be reckoned with” and that “Israel has nothing to gain from him.” Parroting Iranian regime propaganda, Shek insisted that no one in Iran supports Pahlavi.
Maariv columnist Yossi Melman attacked the government even more forcefully calling it “stupid” for hosting Pahlavi and inviting him to attend the Yad Vashem ceremony. Parroting the pro-Iran anti-Israel lobby in Washington, Melman wrote, “It’s counter-productive to topple the terrible regime.”
Why? Because.
Other members in good standing of the Clinton’s “pro-peace” Ashkenazi, sabra, Likud-bashing club joined the chorus of elitists standing with the Iranian regime and pillorying Netanyahu for hosting Pahlavi and Pahlavi for not hating Israel and Netanyahu.
With our ruling class in full revolt, Israel’s most important institutions—first and foremost, the IDF—are reeling. Our ability to defend ourselves on the battlefield and in diplomatic circles is constrained as never before. With our elites declaring our government illegitimate, and lobbying American Jews and politicians to boycott our leaders and reject the morality of the public that voted them into office, the government must fight against our enemies, against anti-Semitism, against BDS campaigns and anti-Israel propaganda machines with both hands tied behind its back, its mouth gagged while hopping on one foot. This situation is unsustainable.
As we approach Remembrance Day for Fallen IDF Soldiers and our 75th Independence Day next week, we must find a way to restore sanity and a sense of common destiny to our national life. We don’t have a spare country. Our ruling class needs to return to its senses and remember this obvious fact.
Caroline B. Glick is the senior contributing editor of Jewish News Syndicate and the host of the Caroline Glick Show on JNS. Glick is also the diplomatic commentator for Israel’s Channel 14 as well as a columnist at Newsweek. Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and a lecturer at Israel’s College of Statesmanship.
The ruling class must regain its senses
The Golani Infantry Brigade has rebelled and is getting away with it because the IDF General Staff has surrendered its moral power to discipline its soldiers.
By Caroline Glick
(JNS) A group of soldiers from a company of Israel Defense Forces’ reservists in the Golani Infantry Brigade abandoned their posts at their training base in southern Israel on Tuesday and went home. The reservists revolted because they didn’t accept their battalion commander’s decision to replace their company commander with a company commander from the Paratrooper Brigade.
As Yediot Achronot’s military reporter Yossi Yehoshua reported, the last time that Golani experienced a mutiny of this dimension was in 2007. Back then, the top brass responded immediately, sentencing all of the soldiers to 56 days in jail.
This time, their commanders took their time responding and then hit them with a wet noodle. The soldiers were given suspended sentences and remanded to their base for a weekend.
The IDF’s decision to let the reservists off the hook for inexcusable behavior surprised no one. They had no choice. In February, a squadron of reserve Air Force fighter pilots shocked the country when they signed a letter announcing they would not serve in reserves so long as the Netanyahu government proceeded forward with its plan to place minimal limits on the powers of the Supreme Court and Attorney General. That is, they used their flight wings to extort the government and the public that voted it into office.
Rather than court-martial the pilots on charges of insurrection and sedition, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi and Air Force Commander Maj. Gen. Tomer Bar opted to tolerate—and even coddle—the pilots in the hopes of getting them to relent
The same cushy fate greeted the other leftist reservists from technology, artillery and other units.
When in response, flight mechanics announced that they would refuse to service the planes of the leftist pilots who refused to defend the country for political reasons, Halevi and Bar recognized that they couldn’t discipline them without destroying what was left of the unity of force in the Air Force. And now, Golani has rebelled and is getting away with it because the IDF General Staff has surrendered its moral power to discipline its soldiers.
The implications of this situation are devastating. And they were anticipated. Halevi and Bar were warned repeatedly that if the General Staff permitted IDF service to be used as a political weapon, the generals would rupture the chain of command and compromise the unity of the force. But Halevi, Bar and their fellow generals went ahead and legitimized it anyway. And like Humpty Dumpty, once the egg of non-politicization of military service was broken, it was broken.
‘Good’ vs. ‘bad’ Israelis
It would be bad enough if military unity was the only casualty of the rebellion of Israel’s ruling class. But, of course, it isn’t. Moody’s Investor Services didn’t lower Israel’s credit rating, despite massive efforts by Israel’s economic elites to convince the rankings service to do so. And Silicon Valley Bank’s crash demonstrated just how stupid Israel’s high-tech moguls were when they called for Israel’s wealthy leftists to pull their money out of the country.
But statements by the likes of Bank of Israel Governor Amir Yaron, former prime ministers Ehud Olmert and Ehud Barak, former foreign minister Tzipi Livni, former defense minister Moshe Ya’alon, current opposition leader Yair Lapid, and dozens of retired generals and other members of the ruling class warning that Israel’s economy isn’t a safe bet and that Israel’s democracy is hanging by a hair did more to advance efforts by Israel’s enemies to demonize and delegitimize the Jewish state and mainstream anti-Zionism than any U.N. resolution or any boycott campaign ever could.
One of the most extraordinary aspects of their campaign to overthrow the government through insurrection and demonization is its international bent. In the past three months, Lapid, Barak, Olmert, Livni, Ya’alon and their powerful comrades have turned to Washington and other foreign capitals to convince them to boycott Israel. Last week, Lapid flew to New York and met with American Jewish leaders to mobilize them against the only democratically elected Jewish leadership in the world: the Netanyahu government. Lapid met with powerful lawmakers to draft them into the service of overthrowing the government. Three weeks ago, former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert called publicly for foreign governments to boycott the Israeli government.
This week, Ya’alon met with visiting Republican Sen. Lindsey Graham. His goal was self-evident. The former hardline Likud minister who in recent years has undergone an ideological makeover and joined the radical left insisted three years ago that governing coalitions comprised of terror-supporting Arab Knesset factions are preferable to governments with Netanyahu and Likud. In recent months, like fellow former chiefs of general staff Barak and Dan Halutz, Ya’alon has called for soldiers and police to disobey lawful orders. In the context of his current positions, the only possible explanation for his meeting with Graham was that he and his comrades now seek to convince Republicans to hate Netanyahu and his voters as much as Ya’alon and his new friends hate them.[All three entered politics after retiring from the IDF and failed to get votes, ed.]
Back when he was first running for president in 2008, Barak Obama said, “I think there is a strain within the pro-Israel community that says unless you adopt an unwavering pro-Likud approach to Israel that you’re anti-Israel, and that can’t be the measure of our friendship with Israel.”
Obama’s remarks were panned by Israelis and American Jews for the contempt they displayed towards Israeli democracy. Likud is a major political party in Israel that has been the ruling party in the country far more often than not for the past 45 years because it is aligned with the views of the majority of Israelis. So whether or not you like Likud, if you support Israeli democracy, then you are expected to respect the will of the Israeli people. At the most basic level, you cannot be pro-Israel if you view the lawfully elected leaders of Israel as illegitimate.
Obama’s view has long been shared by many in the Democratic elite. In 2011, former President Bill Clinton gave a racist taxonomy of Israeli society as the Clinton Global Initiative’s annual conference. Ignoring that the Palestinian Arabs rejected then—as they still reject today—any possibility of peaceful coexistence with Israel, Clinton blamed the bad, Netanyahu supporting Israelis for the absence of peace. Clinton explained that Israelis need to be divided into two groups: the good “pro-peace” Israelis and the bad “anti-peace” Israelis.”
By Clinton’s telling, “The most pro-peace Israelis are the Arabs; second the sabras, the Jewish Israelis that were born there; third, the Ashkenazis of longstanding, the European Jews who came there around the time of Israel’s founding.”
As for the bad Israelis, the former president and husband of the then-secretary of state, explained: “The most anti-peace are the ultra-religious who believe they’re supposed to keep Judea and Samaria, and the settler groups, and what you might call the territorialists, the people who just showed up lately and they’re not encumbered by the historical record.”
Back in 2008 and 2011, statements like Obama’s and Clinton’s were a cause for rancor, or at the very least, uncomfortable throat clearings among Israeli leaders on the left, and among liberal American Jews. But today, their contemptuous views of Israeli society are not merely accepted as legitimate. They have become the rallying cries of the Israeli ruling class that works with the Democrats and liberal American Jews to demonize and delegitimize not only Netanyahu and his government, but the majority of Israelis who voted them into office.
President Joe Biden has shown through his policies and statements on Iran, the Palestinians, Jerusalem, progressive anti-Semitism and a host of other issues of strategic importance to Israel that his Middle East policies are predicated on ideological positions that are hostile to Israel’s core national and strategic interests. Under normal circumstances, Biden’s hostile posture would place him in an uncomfortable position vis-à-vis the overwhelming majority of American Jews who are pro-Israel.
But with the likes of Lapid, Barak, Olmert, Ya’alon and their many partners demonizing the government and calling for American Jews, Democrat and Republican lawmakers and the Biden administration to boycott the government, Biden’s effective declaration of Netanyahu persona non grata last month went over with barely a word of protest among American Jewish leaders. He was applauded by Israeli leaders.
In this week’s “Caroline Glick Show,” Tony Badran from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies explained that Iran’s decision to escalate its aggression against Israel in recent weeks is predicated in part on Biden’s declared shunning of Netanyahu. Biden’s statement was interpreted by Iran as an invitation to attack Israel at will.
Likewise, in recent weeks, the Iranian regime-controlled media have given banner headlines to statements by retired IDF commanders like Barak and Ya’alon and politicians like Lapid declaring that Israel is doomed. And rather than join Netanyahu when he warns Iran not to believe the propaganda, Lapid, Barak, Ya’alon and their elitist comrades blame Netanyahu for failing to protect the country from the forces their insurrection has emboldened.
This week, the son of the former Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi made a historic visit to Israel. He participated in the official Yom Hashoah ceremony at Yad Vashem. He visited the Western Wall. He went to a desalination plant and spoke of the assistance Israel can offer a post-ayatollah Iran that will seek to repair the environmental devastation the regime has inflicted on the land.
Rather than praise Netanyahu and Intelligence Minister Gila Gamliel who hosted Pahlavi, leftist commentators attacked them and Pahlavi. Former ambassador Daniel (“Danny”) Shek panned Pahlavi and Netanyahu for hosting him. In an interview on i24 News, Shek said the son of the former monarch “is not a force to be reckoned with” and that “Israel has nothing to gain from him.” Parroting Iranian regime propaganda, Shek insisted that no one in Iran supports Pahlavi.
Maariv columnist Yossi Melman attacked the government even more forcefully calling it “stupid” for hosting Pahlavi and inviting him to attend the Yad Vashem ceremony. Parroting the pro-Iran anti-Israel lobby in Washington, Melman wrote, “It’s counter-productive to topple the terrible regime.”
Why? Because.
Other members in good standing of the Clinton’s “pro-peace” Ashkenazi, sabra, Likud-bashing club joined the chorus of elitists standing with the Iranian regime and pillorying Netanyahu for hosting Pahlavi and Pahlavi for not hating Israel and Netanyahu.
With our ruling class in full revolt, Israel’s most important institutions—first and foremost, the IDF—are reeling. Our ability to defend ourselves on the battlefield and in diplomatic circles is constrained as never before. With our elites declaring our government illegitimate, and lobbying American Jews and politicians to boycott our leaders and reject the morality of the public that voted them into office, the government must fight against our enemies, against anti-Semitism, against BDS campaigns and anti-Israel propaganda machines with both hands tied behind its back, its mouth gagged while hopping on one foot. This situation is unsustainable.
As we approach Remembrance Day for Fallen IDF Soldiers and our 75th Independence Day next week, we must find a way to restore sanity and a sense of common destiny to our national life. We don’t have a spare country. Our ruling class needs to return to its senses and remember this obvious fact.
Caroline B. Glick is the senior contributing editor of Jewish News Syndicate and the host of the Caroline Glick Show on JNS. Glick is also the diplomatic commentator for Israel’s Channel 14 as well as a columnist at Newsweek. Glick is the senior fellow for Middle Eastern Affairs at the Center for Security Policy in Washington and a lecturer at Israel’s College of Statesmanship.
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ACCORDING TO MELANIE PHILLIPS THE "NEW JEW," LIKE THE "NEW AMERICAN, IS MORE INTOLERANT OF OTHERS AND OTHERIDEAS. HE/SHE HAS SUPPLANTED TRADITIONS, BASED ON THE HEBREW BIBLE, WITH UNIVERSAL PRINCIPLES IN ORDER TO BRING ABOUT BROTHERHOOD.
IN HIS BRILLIANT BOOK, "WHY ARE JEWS LIBERAL" NORMAN PODHORETZ WROTE LIBERAL JEWS HAVE SUBSTITUTED POLITICS FOR RELIGION BECAUSE THEY MISUNDERTOOD "TIKUM OLAM" AND KNOW SO LITTLE ABOUT THEIR OWN RELIGION.
Tikkun olam
(Hebrew: תִּיקּוּן עוֹלָם, lit. 'repairing of the world') is a concept in Judaism, which refers to various forms of action intended to repair ...
History · Performance of mitzvot · Building a model society · Improving the world.
I TOO LIVE BY THE "TEN COMMANDMENTS" BUT I ALSO AM A ZIONIST WHICH MOST "NEW JEW'S" ARE GENERALLY NOT. THUS, THE SIGNIFIGANCE OF ISRAEL IS LESS IMPORTANT AND THEREIN LIES THE DANGER.
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Israel’s protests are now crossing sacred red lines
The battle is existential and reflects a similar struggle in the West.
By Melanie Phillips
Israel’s three-month-old protest movement, which has repeatedly brought tens of thousands into the streets, is now crossing an increasing number of red lines.
There are serious anxieties that protests will disrupt next week’s Remembrance Day for Fallen Soldiers and Independence Day ceremonies.
At a Holocaust Remembrance Day synagogue service this week, anti-government participants forced Likud MK Boaz Bismuth to leave after they shouted at him to get out and started to become physically violent.
The leader of the opposition, Yair Lapid, announced that because the government had “divided society,” he would boycott the traditional torch-lighting ceremony that ends Memorial Day and opens Independence Day.
It was hitherto unthinkable that Israelis could desecrate those three sacred days. It was similarly unthinkable for soldiers of the IDF to refuse to serve their country, as did a group of elite Air Force pilots in protest against the government.
Even the memory of the Shoah is being traduced. On an El Al flight from Tel Aviv to New York on Holocaust Remembrance Day, the pilot announced, “Things like [the] Holocaust are potentially carried [out] in a dictatorship, and we are fighting in Israel to remain a democratic country.”
On the same day, in another obscene equivalence, a ceremony at the Mateh Asher Regional Council displayed pictures from the Holocaust alongside photographs from the protests.
It should be apparent to rational observers that this has gone way beyond the issue of judicial reform. That particular agenda is now all but dead in the water. The government has retreated. Yet the protests are not only continuing but are becoming increasingly disturbing.
This is because judicial reform is a flashpoint for profound divisions that have previously escaped attention but have now erupted.
The Israeli protests are being fed by several different agendas. Some people oppose the judicial reforms because they believe the judiciary provides the only check on political power. Some want to bring down Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Some are frightened by religious or nationalist extremists in the government.
The deeper reason, one that connects all of the above, is secular Israel’s onslaught against Jewish religiosity in the public square.
For this, religious leaders bear significant responsibility. The reformist Orthodox Rabbi David Stav has warned that the extremism of the religious Zionist bloc has caused a dangerous rift in Judaism and Israeli society.
“Unfortunately,” he said, “some of our leaders, elected officials and rabbis speak in a tone that frightens many people in Israeli society—and rightfully so.”
However, secular Israelis are intolerant of all Orthodox religious observance. When a Jewish prayer service was held in Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Square to celebrate Passover, the city’s Deputy Mayor Reuven Ladyansky attacked it as a “scandal” and demanded that “the organizers be fined in the most severe way possible” because they had separated men from women.
In Tablet, Liel Liebovitz reported that one of Tel Aviv’s protest organizers told him: “We’re here because we want this to be a normal state, you understand? Just like the United States or France or Germany. We don’t want this country to be taken over by those fanatics with their beards and their religion.”
As Rabbi Stav observed, many religious Israelis are now afraid to wear their kippah at their workplace because the “forceful and violent” rhetoric from secular Israelis has made the atmosphere so toxic.
Obviously, this tumult reflects the ambiguity over national identity that’s remained unresolved since Israel’s rebirth in 1948. Was the new Jewish state to be a recovery of Judaism’s ancient religious calling, or would the “new Jews” who replaced religion with secular values repudiate that calling?
These secular Israeli “New Jews” view themselves and their country as no different from other peoples or countries. That’s why they sign up to the universalist principles promoted by the “human rights”-driven judiciary. The erosion of the judiciary’s power is therefore intolerable.
But Judaism, the most particularist of creeds, stands in direct opposition to universalism.
Judaism created the nation-state that universalism seeks to destroy. Jewish human rights are created from the network of duties that form a civilized community and nation. Modern, secular “human rights” have no such prior network of duties and instead divide people into groups warring for power.
Jews can never be the same as other peoples. Israel, like the Jewish people, is unique. If it tore up its ancient identity, it would tear up the reason for its existence as a Jewish state.
In America, liberal Jews have embraced secular ideologies inimical to Judaism. As a result, Jewish identification is dwindling and America’s Jewish community is being inexorably reduced to a small rump of the truly observant.
A similar process is happening more broadly in the West. For decades, it has been subjected to a sustained onslaught on its cultural inheritance of laws, morality and traditions based on the Hebrew Bible, in an attempt to replace them with supposedly universal principles intended to bring about the brotherhood of man.
This has both eroded the West’s internal cohesion and undermined its defenses against the enemies of civilization. Western liberals deem these enemies victims of the powerful, and thus excuse their violence and other misdeeds.
These liberals believe that if they are nice to their enemies, their enemies will lay down their weapons and chant “kumbaya.” That’s why U.S. Democrats grovel to the genocidal fanatics of Iran and pressure Israel to kowtow to the Palestinian Arabs, incentivizing their agenda of exterminating the Jewish state.
This attitude also dominates Israel’s military and official classes, among whom the “Oslo” mindset—which held that the Palestinian Arabs will end their aggression if offered a state of their own—still endures despite the destruction of that fantasy.
Of course, when rockets start flying from Gaza or Lebanon, the IDF responds appropriately. But in the daily war of attrition by Palestinian Arabs in the disputed territories of Judea and Samaria, Israeli soldiers are told to enforce “normal life” for the Arab residents.
So, instead of doing everything possible to save the lives of Israeli citizens, the soldiers refrain as far as possible from any action that may disrupt normal Arab life.
Unless soldiers endorse this mindset, they come up against a promotional glass ceiling. That’s an important reason why so many senior officers have such liberal views.
This amounts to the same unadmitted but devastating cultural pressure that exists in Western universities and other cultural institutions and ensures that anyone who dissents from prevailing liberal shibboleths is pushed out.
It is impossible to understand the tumult in Israel without understanding that it is a rerun of a battle that goes back to the earliest days of the Jewish people—the titanic struggle between paganism and Jewish monotheism; between universalism and Jewish particularism; between Jewish Hellenists and those desperately defending Mosaic law against the manifold seductions of Greek culture.
The battle over Greek Hellenism fatally undermined the Jews’ defense against their enemies and led to their expulsion from ancient Israel. A direct line can be traced from today’s Western progressives through the 18th century Enlightenment all the way back to the ancient Greeks.
The current onslaught against biblical values and their replacement by secular and even pagan ideologies is sacrificing the West on the altar of identity politics, moral relativism and the retreat of reason.
Israeli secularists are prepared to bring Israel to its knees in order to be like the West at the precise point that the West is going down the tubes.
It’s often said that the Jewish community is the canary in the cultural coal mine. What’s happening in Israel is that the canary is now fighting off an adder it hadn’t noticed was coiled up inside its cage.
The fate of the Jewish canary should be of acute concern to the West, to which that adder belongs.
Melanie Phillips, a British journalist, broadcaster and author, writes a weekly column for JNS. Currently a columnist for “The Times of London,” her personal and political memoir “Guardian Angel” has been published by Bombardier, which also published her first novel, “The Legacy.” Go to melaniephillips.substack.com to access her work.
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This is Soros' America. They should throw him in jail for financing such evil.
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Teens face only misdemeanor charges — of criminal trespassing — after crashing stolen car, killing infant in Chicago
By Allie Griffin
6-month-old Cristian Uvidia died following the crash.6-month-old Cristian Uvidia died following the crash. WGN9
Two teenage boys are facing only misdemeanor charges after they allegedly stole a car and crashed it into another vehicle, killing a 6-month-old baby in Chicago last week.
The boys, ages 17 and 14, were each charged with just one misdemeanor count of criminal trespassing in the deadly April 16 crash in the city’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, according to Chicago police.
The teens were driving in a stolen Hyundai when they slammed into a Ford pickup truck at an intersection of West Washington Boulevard and North Kostner Avenue shortly after 5 p.m., according to cops.
The 6-month-old boy, Cristian Uvidia, died in the hospital following the crash.
His 34-year-old mother and two sisters, ages 15 and 7, were each injured and treated at a local hospital, ABC 7 reported.
The infant’s skull was fractured in the crash, according to a GoFundMe page created for the family.
“He suffered from an impact that fractured his skull, causing his brain to swell and eventually killing him,” Annelisse Rivera wrote. “We are devastated, and we are broken. We will miss his sweet smile, as he was a joy to everyone that he met.”
The teens were reportedly driving a stolen vehicle when they crashed into the family's pickup truck on April 16. The teens were reportedly driving a stolen vehicle when they crashed into the family’s pickup truck on April 16. FOX32 Mangled pickup truck stands in middle of street, while crumbled up car is partially on lawn The infant was killed and his mother and two sister were injured in the crash, FOX32
Charges against the teens could be upgraded after police complete their investigation.
As of Sunday evening, a Chicago police spokesperson said no further charges have been brought against the teen boys.
Rivera called the misdemeanor charges “disheartening” in an interview with Fox 32 Chicago.
“Your however-minutes-long joyride ruined our life completely,” she said.
Two other teenagers were also inside the car, but have not been charged.
The stolen-car crash was just one recent instance of juveniles becoming involved in criminal activity in the city.
Recent “teen takeovers” have created chaos in the windy city as hundreds of teens mob Chicago streets and clash with cops there.
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Trump impeached for trumped up congratulatory telephone call to head of Ukraine yet Biden steals election and goes Scott free. Again, this is the new American system of justice.
Those who hate Trump use his crude mannerism to hide behind his narssissistic personality so they can continue to ignore his accomplishments and continue to weigh their warped comparisons. They are the ones who are sick.
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We’re now learning that his campaign helped gin up the disinformation about Hunter’s laptop.
The Editorial Board
The House Judiciary and Intelligence committees released portions of a deposition transcript exposing the origins of the statement from 51 former U.S. spies declaring that Hunter’s laptop had “all the classic earmarks of a Russian information operation.” The admission came from Mike Morell, former deputy CIA director under Barack Obama. The letter served its political purpose of giving the media and Joe Biden the opening to dismiss the New York Post’s laptop scoop as Russian disinformation. (The letter and the names of the 51 signers can be read nearby.)
It turns out the Biden campaign was behind the letter. Mr. Morell told Congress under oath that he received a phone call from Antony Blinken on Oct. 17, 2020—three days after the Post published emails from Hunter’s laptop. Mr. Blinken was then a senior adviser to the campaign and is now secretary of State.
According to a letter the House committees sent to Mr. Blinken last week, Mr. Morell said the call was “couched as simply gathering Morell’s reaction to the Post story,” yet it “set in motion the events that led to the issuance of the public statement.”
Committee question to Mr. Morell: “Prior to [Mr. Blinken’s] call, you—you did not have any intent to write this statement?”
Mr. Morell: “I did not.”
The letter says Mr. Morell also “explained that the Biden campaign helped to strategize about the public release of the statement.” Mr. Morell says he then contacted an aide to former CIA director John Brennan to say “the Biden campaign wanted the statement to go to a particular reporter at the Washington Post first and that he should send the statement to the campaign when he sent the letter to the reporter.”
Mr. Morell acknowledged he had two goals with the statement: to “share our concern with the American people,” and to “help Vice President Biden” “win the election.”
All of this took place shortly before the final presidential debate, and Mr. Biden pointed to the Gang of 51’s statement that his campaign helped to generate as proof that the Hunter laptop was phony: “Look, there are 50 former national intelligence folks who said that what this, [President Trump is] accusing me of is a Russian plan. They have said that this has all the characteristics—four—five former heads of the CIA, both parties, say what he’s saying is a bunch of garbage!”
Mr. Morell told the committee that following the debate, Biden campaign chair (and now senior White House aide) Steve Ricchetti called to thank him for the statement. No doubt. The Biden campaign had in essence generated its own disinformation, marshaling the authority of supposedly nonpartisan intelligence veterans to discredit a story that was accurate about laptop emails that were authentic.
The committees are seeking more information from Mr. Blinken about the Biden campaign’s role, and the public deserves answers. Statement signers like former Obama director of national intelligence James Clapper have since admitted they had no evidence to make their disinformation claims, and Mr. Clapper claims the media “distorted” their views. No, the press did precisely what Mr. Blinken and the 51 spooks wanted: Use their letter to discredit the Hunter laptop and the information on it that raised questions about the Biden family business with foreigners.
Intelligence officials, former as well as current, have a particular duty not to spread disinformation because they have access to classified information that the public can’t check. The press overwhelmingly went along with the false Biden campaign claims because it wanted Mr. Biden to win. These 51 officials have done more to damage the credibility of the CIA and FBI than anything Donald Trump has said. Ditto for the complicit media.
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China plows ahead technologically:
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And:
HONEST REPORTING
CNN moves forward but in the wrong direction as usual.
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CNN Omits Antisemitism in Flattering Profile on Pro-Palestinian Celebrities
"A group of celebrity activists are trying to destigmatize being Palestinian, telling the human stories of an oppressed nation in a new documentary," is how CNN gushingly describes a recent film collaboration by a handful of A-list antisemites.
Featured in the arts section of the news outlet's website, the piece claims British graffiti artist Banksy's headline-grabbing Bethlehem hotel venture "inspired celebrity activists to tell the Palestinian story." So, who are these celebrities selling the Palestinian plight to their starry-eyed fans?
+++++++++++++++++++++++++
Thanks Biden. Do you keep a chalk board by your nap bed?
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Five injured in terrorist ramming attack in Jerusalem
Pedestrians run over by vehicle near Jerusalem's Mahane Yehudah open-air market. One person in very serious condition.
Apr 24, 2023 at 4:26 PM (GMT+3)
At least five people have been injured in a ramming attack near Jerusalem's Mahane Yehudah market this afternoon (Monday).
The attack occurred on Kol Yisrael Chaveirim (Kiach) Street, near Davidka Square.
The suspected attacker has been shot and neutralized by security forces. He has been identified as Khatem Najma, a 39-year-old resident of eastern Jerusalem.
One man of about 70 is reportedly in very serious condition, while a woman is in moderate condition, and two other victims are in light condition.
The victims were all taken to Hadassah Ein Kerem and Shaarei Tzedek hospitals.
Amir Pardo, an eyewitness to the attack, told Israel National News - Arutz Sheva: "I saw the car coming quickly to the intersection. It ran over a man and a woman who fell to the ground. The driver tried to reverse and enter the market and a policeman who was there started shooting at him and hit him."
MDA EMT Eli Raymond said: "I was with the MDA Medicycle in Jaffa St. when the report was received at MDA's 101 Emergency Call Center, and I was on scene in seconds. There was a large disturbance at the scene, I saw the five victims near the vehicle, with one unconscious with multiple injuries, and the other four victims were conscious. We treated them and they were evacuated to Jerusalem hospitals by MDA Mobile Intensive Care Units."
MDA Paramedic Nadav Taieb added: "There was a large disturbance at the scene, and we were led to a 32-year-old female who was lying on the sidewalk with a serious leg injury. We provided medical treatment including medication, wound treatment and immobilization of the broken leg, and evacuated her in moderate, stable condition to hospital.”
United Hatzalah volunteer EMTs Moshe Erblich and Eliyahu Avraham said: "We were close by when we heard cries for help after five pedestrians were struck by a car. We provided initial treatment to the injured at the scene, who were in serious, moderate, and light conditions. United Hatzalah transported a number of them to the hospital. Members of United Hatzalah's Psychotrauma and Crisis Response Unit are still treating a number of people for emotional shock."
Following the attack, the light rail in Jerusalem ceased operations between the Damascus Gate station and the central bus station.
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Like him or not Trump is trying to save the republic and rectify treason against him and the American people by 51 renegades who were a meanable to Biden current Sec. og State:
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Richard,
Tucker Carlson just called attention to the MASSIVE revelation that the Biden campaign organized the letter of 51 former intelligence officers who LIED about the Hunter Biden laptop being “Russian disinformation.”
“...it was a lie that came from Joe Biden and Secretary of State Tony Blinken. That was election interference.”
-Tucker Carlson
Joe Biden stood on that debate stage with me and LIED to every single American citizen when he told the nation that his son’s laptop depicting all of his many crimes was fabricated by the Russians.
This is the Democrats’ 2024 playbook.
They will LIE about the border, they will LIE about inflation, they will LIE about our national security, and they will LIE about crime.
And they’ll collude with their Deep State “ex-CIA” operatives to cook up any report they need to back up their lies.
This is un-American. These are Soviet tactics. But what else can you expect from a party that just tried to imprison its leading opponent?
2024 is no longer just an election. It’s about the survival of our Free Republic. We either win – or we lose America for good.
And:
Now Carlson has left FOX.
Now Carlson has left FOX.
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Tucker Carlson Leaves Fox News, Effective Immediately
By Jack Phillips
Fox News on Monday confirmed that it “parted ways” with popular primetime host Tucker Carlson, offering no explanation why.
“FOX News Media and Tucker Carlson have agreed to part ways. We thank him for his service to the network as a host and prior to that as a contributor,” said a news release from the news channel.
The release said that his departure from the network is effective immediately. Carlson’s last show was on Friday, April 21. It means that Carlson will not have the opportunity to host a final Fox News show and bid his viewers farewell.
In Carlson’s place, “Fox News Tonight” will air starting at 8 p.m., a time slot that Carlson has held since April 2017. That will be “an interim show helmed by rotating FOX News personalities until a new host is named,” said Fox’s news release.
On Twitter, Carlson did not make any reference to his departure from the channel.
Other details about Carlson’s departure were not made public. The Epoch Times has contacted a Fox News spokesperson for additional comment.
For years, Carlson’s show had been among the most popular in all of cable television, often generating more than 3 million viewers per episode. In March, “Tucker Carlson Tonight” drew the highest audience on cable television, averaging 3.251 million viewers per show, according to Nielsen data.
His ratings also spiked in early March when he aired never-before-seen footage of the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol breach, the Nielsen numbers show. In one of the clips aired on his show, it appeared to show “Q Shaman” Jacob Chansley being escorted by Capitol Police through the premises.
Carlson’s segments that were published on Fox News’s YouTube page would often generate millions of views each. For example, a recent post titled, “Tucker Carlson: The Biden admin is incentivizing bad behavior,” netted more than 600,000 views in two days.
Carlson joined Fox News in 2009, first working as a contributor. Between 2012 and 2016, he served as the co-host of “Fox & Friends Weekend” before starting his primetime show a year later.
He soon became Fox’s most popular personality—eclipsing Sean Hannity, who comes on an hour later—after replacing Bill O’Reilly in Fox New’s prime-time lineup. Before Fox News, he appeared on CNN, MSNBC, and PBS—and he also co-founded the Daily Caller, which was launched in 2010.
Last week, another popular Fox News host, Dan Bongino, announced via his podcast that he, too, is leaving Fox News.
“The show ending last week was tough. It’s not some big conspiracy theory, I promise you. There’s no acrimony,” Bongino said last Thursday. “We just couldn’t come to terms on an extension. That’s really it.” He added: “I really enjoyed myself there. They were good for me for ten years.”
“It’s a sad day. They did give me the opportunity to do one last show, I don’t want you to think they showed me the door,” he continued. “That’s on me, not on them, but I thought it was best to go this way for now.”
In a statement to several news outlets after Bongino’s departure, Fox News said: “We thank Dan for his contributions and wish him success in his future endeavors.” The company did not explain why it was parting ways with Bongino, who was a former New York City Police Department official and U.S. Secret Service agent before entering the media business.
After it was announced Carlson would be leaving the network, Fox Corporation’s stock dropped about 4 percent by midday trading.
This is a breaking news story. Check back for developments.
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The entire mas media world is in unraveling:
Lemon fired by CNNN and Carlson resigns
Lemon fired by CNNN and Carlson resigns
And.
| Fetterman’s Comeback Turns into Scandal - Look What He Wore on His First Day Back |
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