“Israel exists precisely because Jews learned, at unbearable cost, that eloquence without power is fragile, and law without force is often meaningless”

Posted on April 24, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

ARUTZ SHEVA
Israel is the ultimate response
Dr. Alex Grobman
April 23, 2026

Now that we have celebrated Yom Haatzma’ut, it is worth stating a truth that much of the West still does not understand: the greatest memorial to the Holocaust is not found in stone, glass, or ceremony. It is the sovereign State of Israel. Museums matter. Memorials matter. Testimony matters. But none of them can stop a pogrom, intercept a missile, rescue hostages, or defeat an army sworn to destroy the Jewish people. Israel can. That is why Jewish independence is not merely a political achievement…When Jews say “Never Again,” they are not reciting a line for memorial ceremonies. They are making a declaration of policy. READ MORE

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“The strategic paradigms that governed the Middle East for decades have shifted. Not all of them. Not fully. But the shift is real, larger than is yet fully understood, and Israel drove it”

Posted on April 23, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

MIRYAM INSTITUTE
Is Israel Safer Today?
John Spencer
April 21, 2026

It is hard to call any war’s outcome while it is still happening. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either not paying attention or not being straight with you. But that is different from refusing to ask the question at all. So here it is, plainly: Is Israel safer today, from a national security standpoint, than it was on October 6, 2023? The answer is yes. That will be uncomfortable for some people to read. The grief of October 7 has not faded. The cost in Israeli lives, in soldiers killed across multiple fronts, in hostages taken and the years required to bring them home, was real and enormous. But national security is not measured in these factors. It is measured in relative capability, freedom of action, and the ability to deter or defeat threats. It is measured in threats eliminated, enemies degraded, and the military balance shifted. On those terms, what has happened since October 7 is something few strategic analysts would have predicted when the smoke was still rising over Southern Israel. READ MORE

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“He thought nobody was listening. The Saudis heard everything. And the Palestinian Authority will never recover”

Posted on April 23, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

SUBSTACK
The Tape That Just Ended Mahmoud Abbas
Hen Mazzig
April 17, 2026

…I have spent years being told, in every Western capital where I am invited to speak, that the Palestinian cause is the conscience of the Arab world. This month, the Arab world watched Hamas refuse to lift a finger for the regime that armed it for twenty years, and watched the president of the Palestinian Authority laugh at the destruction of the country that has paid his civil servants’ salaries for most of his presidency. Therein lies the conscience of the Arab world. Iran will punish Hamas quietly, the way Tehran punishes proxies who disappoint it: a late transfer, a missed shipment, a Quds Force contact who stops returning calls. The Saudis will decide what to do with Abbas, and my guess is that Mohammed bin Salman is already running the arithmetic on whether it is easier to replace the old man than to reform him. Saudi-Israeli normalization is back on the table, and MBS is not the kind of ruler who lets a man with a recording problem sit across the table of the deal that reshapes the region. READ MORE

FUTURE OF JEWISH Hen Mazzig: Israel’s Independence Day is no longer just for Israelis. The safest Jews in the world right now are the ones living in Israel. They have 177,000 babies a year. They post happy reels set to Hebrew songs. The Jews who are not safe are in London and Paris — the ones with the mezuzah tucked behind the doorframe so it isn’t visible from the corridor, the ones who take their Star of David off before riding the tube. Jews in Israel live in a country where people who try to kill them are mostly from the outside. Jews in the Diaspora live in countries where we are told, politely and then less politely, that our discomfort is our own fault for having the wrong opinions about the one Jewish state, four thousand kilometres away. 

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“By ignoring the ideological reality of Hamas and Hezbollah, Klein treats Israelis and Palestinians as props in a Western morality play rather than actors in a high-stakes struggle for survival”

Posted on April 22, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
Ezra Klein Doesn’t Understand Israel
Haviv Rettig Gur
April 17, 2026

…Because [Klein] misses the central point that any Westerner concerned for Palestinians must deal with: Any Israeli withdrawal from significant parts of the West Bank will almost certainly produce a Hamas takeover. This point is so widely believed by Israelis and Palestinians that we can safely ignore that “almost.” And a Hamas-run West Bank—16 times the size of Gaza, perched on mountains overlooking Israel’s main population centers, narrowing the country to nine miles wide at its vulnerable middle—would be catastrophic. It would endanger Israelis, sure, but it would be devastating to Palestinians. Because Hamas will not have changed from the version of itself that planned and launched the Gaza war and even now sees it as a success worthy of replication in the West Bank. If your analysis of the West Bank erases Palestinian politics and the certainty of the Hamas takeover suggested in every poll of Palestinians, then you aren’t discussing real people. You’re staging a morality play in your own mind. READ MORE

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Dershowitz: “I first registered as a Democrat in 1959. The party’s hostility to Israel is too much”

Posted on April 22, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

WALL STREET JOURNAL
Why I’m Becoming a Republican
Alan M. Dershowitz
April 20, 2026

…I still disagree strongly with the GOP on abortion, the separation of church and state, immigration, healthcare and taxes, among other things. Yet I’ve decided to bite the bullet and register as a Republican. The Democratic Party has become the most anti-Israel party in U.S. history. Last week all but seven Senate Democrats voted for an arms embargo against the Jewish state, and an avowed enemy of Israel, Abdul El-Sayed, is gaining ground in the Democratic campaign for U.S. senator from Michigan. There is no denying that the hard left, anti-Israel wing of the Democratic Party has moved from the fringe to the mainstream. Until recently there was an age gap, with younger voters more strongly opposing Israel, but recent polls suggest that the trend now includes Democrats of all ages. Republicans have their own antisemitic fringe, but for now it remains a fringe. READ MORE

REAL CLEAR WORLD Alan Dershowitz: New York Times’ Tom Friedman Is Wrongly “Torn” Between Iran and Israel. The Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times editorial writer, Tom Friedman, says he is “torn” between his wish to have Iran defeated and his unwillingness to see Prime Minister Netanyahu and President Trump, who he regards as “awful human beings,” “strengthened.” He worries that a victory over the nation he correctly describes as being “a terrible regime” would benefit the leaders of the two democracies that the mullahs regard as “Satans”. Being “torn” between flawed democracies with duly elected leaders who Friedman regards as “terrible,” and an unmitigated tyranny ruled by unelected mass murderers is only the most recent manifestation of Friedman’s serious disease, namely Netanyahu and Trump “derangement syndrome.” 

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“Fishback has raised little money and is polling poorly, but his campaign appearances are attracting crowds of antizionist bigots openly hostile to Jews on college campuses across Florida”

Posted on April 22, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

AFTER OCTOBER 7
After Jewish Students Were Blocked From His Event at USF, Antizionist Gubernatorial Candidate James Fishback Set for FAU Appearance
Kevin Deutsch
April 17, 2026

James Fishback, the anti-Jewish, anti-Israel Florida gubernatorial candidate whose campaign has been defined by attacks on Jews, Zionists, and the Jewish state, is set to appear Monday night at Florida Atlantic University, bringing his racism to a campus with a large Jewish and pro-Israel student population. His appearance in Boca Raton comes days after a volatile event at the University of South Florida where Jewish students were blocked from attending and subjected to harassment…Fishback, who is popular among participants in the antizionist hate movement and the anti-Israel wing of the Republican Party, has repeatedly pushed the libel, “No American should die for Israel,” including writing it on a Marine reservist’s helmet…He has described the U.S.-Israel alliance as a “scam” and called pro-Israel advocacy “cringe and pathetic propaganda.” In attacking AIPAC, he has falsely referred to it as a “foreign lobbying group,” called its supporters “slaves,” and characterized its political spending as bribery. READ MORE

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A Yom Hazikaron Reflection with Rachel Goldberg-Polin

Posted on April 22, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

MORNING MUSINGS
For Rachel Goldberg-Polin and the Rest of Us
Peter Himmelman
April 20, 2026

Driving to the dentist this morning was difficult. Not only was I dealing with a sore tooth and struggling to find a parking spot, I’d been listening to Rachel Goldberg-Polin on 60 Minutes, speaking about losing her only son, Hersh, to Hamas terrorists. It’s hard to find parking when your eyes are shedding tears on busy Wilshire Boulevard. It’s hard to be in the world when you’re listening to a woman who, with unearthly grace, indescribable dignity, and bottomless sorrow, is on national television attempting to express the inexpressible. Her composure feels like someone lifting the back of a pickup truck, without wincing, without a single complaint. How lucky we are to have her in our midst. She with her grief, she with her strength, she with her head held high, despite all odds. READ MORE

CBS NEWS: 60 MINUTES Rachel Goldberg-Polin: Learning how to live after the murder of her son In February 2025, Hamas released Israeli hostage Or Levy, who had spent time in a tunnel with Hersh. When Levy reunited with his family and his 3-year-old son, he learned his wife, Eynav, was killed in the attack. He was also told Hersh had been murdered. “It broke me. And I told my parents right away, ‘I want to meet their parents,'” Levy said. Levy met with Rachel and Jon five days after his release and told them their son wasn’t broken — he laughed, he smiled, and he repeated a mantra: “He who has a why can bear any how.” Levy credits that mantra with saving his life. It’s a phrase Hersh got from “Man’s Search for Meaning,” a 1946 memoir by concentration camp survivor Viktor Frankl, who’d adapted a similar saying by Friedrich Nietzsche. To view 60 Minutes episode, click here

DAN SENOR CALL ME BACK  Rachel Goldberg-Polin What does grief actually look like, and what does it mean to live with it? In this live conversation recorded at Temple Emanu-El Streicker Center on the eve of Yom HaZikaron, Rachel Goldberg-Polin joins Dan Senor to reflect on love, loss, faith, and the story behind her new book, about the loss of her son, Hersh, who was taken hostage on October 7 and later killed in captivity. This conversation explores how Rachel understands suffering, why she rejects the idea that grief “gets better,” and how she holds onto faith, love, and what she calls “tragic optimism.” It is a raw and deeply human discussion about what remains when everything changes, and what it means to keep going. To view podcast click here

Purchase Rachel’s book When We See You Again

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“‘Lox and Loaded’ partnership comes as anxieties fuel interest in firearms”

Posted on April 21, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

THE FORWARD
A Jewish gun club teams up with the NRA, in pursuit of self-defense
Louis Keene
April 17, 2026

Capitalizing on heightened anxieties and surging Jewish interest in gun ownership, the National Rifle Association this week announced a partnership with a national Jewish gun club, in a move the mega gun lobby group says will help in the fight against antisemitism. “People are scared,” said Gayle Pearlstein, the Chicago firearms instructor who launched Lox & Loaded, the Jewish group the NRA is teaming with. “You can see it in their faces. People see history repeating itself.”…Many of those members, she said, are seniors — and quite a few are longtime gun skeptics turning to firearms for self-defense after personally experiencing antisemitism. READ MORE

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“What looks like distancing is actually forcing Israel to accelerate its independence, strengthen its defenses, and become more self-reliant in ways decades of alliance politics delayed”

Posted on April 20, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
The Left is doing Israel a favor by abandoning it.
Bob Goldberg
April 23, 2026

…Israel did not fall into disfavor because it chose the wrong prime minister. It has been attacked under Left, Center, Right, and national unity governments alike. That was true during the intifadas, true in the wars with Hezbollah, and true in repeated rounds with Hamas. It was true almost immediately after October 7th. What we are seeing now from Democrats is not moral clarity; it is an old hostility to Jewish power in a new idiom. The shift has been underway for years, as Islamists and leftists — aided by anti-Zionist Jews who furnished both vocabulary and absolution — used academia, the media, the United Nations, and the nonprofit world to move hatred of a Jewish state from the fringes into the mainstream, and from the mainstream into the core of the Democratic Party. So when Democrats call for distance, conditionality, or even the weakening of the strategic alliance, they insist they are doing so to help Israel embrace strategies to advance people through diplomacy. READ MORE

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“The Arab Case for Israel is the book that I would recommend above all others for anyone who sincerely wants to understand the entrenched conflict between Jews and Arabs in Israel”

Posted on April 20, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
‘The Arab Case for Israel’: Explaining the conflict between Jews and Arabs
Abigail Klein Leichman
April 12, 2026

Attorney Alan Dershowitz’s bestselling 2003 book The Case for Israel was flawed from the get-go by the fact that its author is Jewish and American. This is a topic best handled by an insider – and not a Jew, but an Arab. An Arab with intellectual curiosity, integrity, courage, and journalistic expertise. Lebanese-Iraqi journalist and scholar Hussain Abdul-Hussain fits the bill…Raised in Beirut, Baghdad, and Baalbek, Abdul-Hussain witnessed Israeli airstrikes as a child, marched in anti-Israel protests as a young man, covered Middle East news for Beirut’s The Daily Star, and then plunged into rigorous research that blew his previous misconceptions out of the water. Abdul-Hussain’s case for Israel rests on decades of firsthand experience in the Arab world, years of work in Beirut, Kuwait, and Washington as a journalist and policy analyst – currently he’s a research fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies – and an authentic familiarity with the Arabic-speaking world, Hebrew source material, and Western attitudes toward the Middle East. READ MORE

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