Defense minister says ultra-Orthodox must share military burden; announcement welcomed by Gantz, met by vague Haredi threats that issue could bring down the government

Posted on February 28, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Gallant says no Haredi draft bill without centrist support, risking coalition crisis
Emanuel Fabian and Jeremy Sharon
February 28, 2024

Defense Minister Yoav Gallant called for an end to military draft exemptions for members of the ultra-Orthodox community Wednesday, and said he would only back legislation settling the matter if it is endorsed by centrist ministers Benny Gantz and Gadi Eisenkot. His position, along with growing pressure on the government to reach a resolution on the long-deferred political hot potato, could set up a do-or-die clash with Haredi parties key to the survival of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s ruling coalition. Urging lawmakers to hash out legislation to address a situation in which most ultra-Orthodox men can skip mandatory service in favor of religious studies, Gallant said manpower strains on the army amid fighting in Gaza and on the northern border required the contribution of all sectors of society. READ MORE

JNS Could the haredi draft issue bring down the government? Gallant drops a bombshell by announcing he will back an ultra-Orthodox service law only if all parts of the coalition agree.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

The Book Stall in Winnetka said it canceled Highland Park native Brett Gelman’s March 20 book signing because they didn’t think they “could guarantee the comfort and security” of attendees.

Posted on February 27, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

PATCH WINNETKA-GLENCOE
The Book Stall In Winnetka Withdraws From Brett Gelman Event
Jonah Meadows
February 21, 2024

A Winnetka bookstore canceled a planned appearance by actor and first-time author Brett Gelman. Gelman, an outspoken supporter of Israel, blamed antisemitic intimidation for the cancelation of an promotional appearance that had been scheduled for next month to promote his book. The Book Stall withdrew due to safety worries not related to the book, a representative said in a statement. Gelman, a Highland Park native best known for his roles in the Netflix show “Stranger Things” and the BBC series “Fleabag,” had booked a four-city tour next month to promote his first book, “The Terrifying Realm of the Possible: Nearly True Stories.”…After learning of the cancelations, Gelman told the New York Post he believed it was due to his vocal support for Israel and the fact that he is Jewish, describing it as “a completely antisemitic act.” READ MORE

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged | Leave a comment

“In antisemitic discourse, Jews are always made to exemplify what a given group of people considers to be the worst feature of the social order in which they live”

Posted on February 26, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TIME MAG
The New Antisemitism
Noah Feldman
February 27, 2024

…It can be hard to think clearly and reason calmly about antisemitism. For 15 million Jews around the world, its resilience engenders fear, pain, sadness, frustration, and intergenerational trauma going back to the Holocaust and beyond. The superficial sense of security that many Jews feel on a daily basis in the contemporary world turns out to be paper-thin. Jews know enough of their own familial stories to realize that in historical terms, such moments of safety have often been fleeting, followed by renewed persecution. Sitting in my office in leafy Cambridge, Mass., a proud citizen of the freest country in the world, in which Jews have been safer than in any other country in history, I am not free of emotion on the topic. Nor could I be. READ MORE

JERUSALEM POST Alan Baker: Antisemitism must be criminalized before it’s too late Given the large-scale resurgence of international antisemitism today, it is now essential to universally criminalize antisemitism. This must be done despite anticipated negative reactions by Muslim groups and despite the apathetic and misplaced sense of political correctness that is most prevalent in Europe and North America. Now is the time to advance this before it is too late. History will not give us another chance.

Posted in Israel & Middle East | Leave a comment

“The fact that so many Hamas members were switching to Israeli SIM cards could have been strong evidence of a potential invasion”

Posted on February 26, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JERUSALEM POST
IDF intel. saw Hamas using hundreds of Israeli SIM cards in Gaza before Oct. 7
Yonah Jeremy Bob
February 26, 2024

Dozens to hundreds of Hamas members activated Israeli SIM cards in the early morning hours of October 7, just before the massacre began, Israeli censorship cleared for publication on Monday – four months later. IDF intelligence and the Shin Bet noted the activity in real time. This could have very well been an indication of a potential invasion. Despite the evidence however, the overall approach at the time was that Hamas would not dare try invading, because Israel’s technology would give prior warning, and any invaders would be killed by overwhelming Israeli air power and reinforcement forces, which would arrive in time to stop an invasion, and also because an Israeli counterattack would be devastating. READ MORE

POLITICO Our warnings on Hamas were ignored, Israel’s women border troops say Testimony from members of mainly female look-out units adds fuel to accusations that Netanyahu badly misread the dangers from Gaza.

JERUSALEM POST IDF official warned of fatal intel. failures right before Oct. 7 massacre IDF intelligence unit commander’s Yom Kippur message on maintaining military readiness, two weeks before the country’s largest intelligence failure on October 7, is haunting in retrospect.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Overwhelming Israeli opposition to Biden plan rewarding Palestinian terrorism with a state puts the prime minister’s adversaries in a bind

Posted on February 25, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET
U.S. Scheming for a Palestinian State Unwittingly Strengthens Netanyahu
Gadi Taub
February 21, 2024

If the news that the U.S. is going to recognize a Palestinian state that doesn’t exist was intended to break up Prime Minister Netanyahu’s wartime coalition, it’s unlikely to work. Contrary to what the Biden administration assumes, the obstacle to the “two-state solution” is Israel’s electorate, not its prime minister. The more the administration tries to ram this misguided plan down the throat of traumatized Israelis who are in no mood to compromise their security, the more the country’s prime minister will recover political support.The calculation here is not a difficult one to make: Netanyahu’s coalition is united in the belief that promising the Palestinians a state in the middle of a war for national survival would be a declaration by Israel’s government that murdering, raping, and kidnapping Israelis is the way for Palestinians to achieve their national ambitions. READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

“Part of this Israel-Hamas war reminded me of the “Trolley Problem” — a speculative puzzle that incorporates inaction as a consequential option in a moral choice”

Posted on February 24, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
Can you hear the runaway trolley in Gaza?
Yishai Jusidman
February 24, 2024

…In philosopher Philippa Foot’s original 1967 outline, a runaway trolley is on a downhill course about to hit and kill five people down its main track, yet the trolley can be diverted by its driver to a side-track, such that one person on that track would otherwise be killed. What should the driver do? Divert the trolley to the side-track, or avoid intervening at all? To what extent would the driver be held responsible by diverting the trolley or refraining from doing so? Much ink has been spilled over whether doing nothing amounts, in this case, to doing something. Most people’s gut reaction to the basic Trolley Problem is: Do something! Divert the trolley and save a net of four lives — all lives being equally sacred. For the protestors in pursuit of an immediate ceasefire in the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, there is no mystery either…READ MORE

Posted in Israel & Middle East | Tagged | Leave a comment

Days after the Hamas onslaught, filmmaker Duki Dror headed to the devastated rave site near Re’im. It is now his mission to show the world ‘Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre’

Posted on February 23, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Documentary on October 7 Supernova festival massacre makes US debut
Rich Tenorio
February 23, 2024

Just three days after the October 7 Hamas terror onslaught on Israel, longtime Israeli filmmaker Duki Dror visited the location of an infamous massacre from that Saturday morning — the site of the Supernova music festival. Dror is a veteran documentarian, and his films have tended toward geopolitical subjects in recent years. Now he took on a more visceral subject. Four months after that first visit to the Supernova site, he brought the finished film to the United States: “Supernova: The Music Festival Massacre.” “It was really tough,” Dror told The Times of Israel. “I think it’s the hardest film I ever made. I did a few in my career. This one was really tough, really hard emotionally.” Just under an hour in length, “Supernova” conveys the terror of the massacre at the rave, which came as thousands of Hamas-led terrorists launched a widespread onslaught into southern Israel, butchering 1,200 people, most of them civilians, and abducting 253 more, while committing horrific acts of brutality including rape, torture, dismemberment and mutilation. READ MORE

Posted in Islam, Israel & Middle East, Jewish | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Rachel Goldberg-Polin’s son, Hersh, was kidnapped on Oct. 7 and his family has had no word of him since

Posted on February 23, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

WALL STREET JOURNAL
‘Stay Strong. Survive.’ The Mother Who Became the Face of Hostage Advocacy
Elizabeth Bernstein
February 20, 2024

Rachel Goldberg-Polin numbers her days. On Day Seven, she spoke to President Biden on a Zoom call. On Day 37, she was forced to wear her hair down for a TV interview after she lost her hair clip. On Day 88, a college student asked her a question no one else had thought to ask: “What can we do to ease your pain?” Day One was Oct. 7. That’s when her 23-year-old son, Hersh Goldberg-Polin, an American-Israeli, was severely injured in the attack on the Tribe of Nova music festival in Israel, then kidnapped and taken to the Gaza Strip. “My son was stolen,” she says. Rachel, who is 54, was a teacher and a mom when she woke up that morning, the kind who baked chocolate-chip cookies from scratch, then warmed them up individually when her children came home from school at different times. READ MORE

COMMENTARY How the Free World Is Failing the Hostages Nobody in the British government, MP Andrew Percy said to the House of Commons last week, “has any business [or] agency at all in telling the state of Israel where it is able to operate to seek to rescue hostages who are being raped by Islamic terrorists who hold them.” The clip of Percy’s speech—which included other noteworthy lines—quickly made the rounds on social media precisely because it stood out. But it shouldn’t have. Every politician in the free West should talk this way.

Posted in Israel & Middle East, Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

Mark Twain: “The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind”

Posted on February 23, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE
Tribute to Samuel Clemens, Pen Name Mark Twain
Lawrence Kadish
February 25, 2024

…Yet there have always been strong, courageous voices outside the Jewish community that have pushed back against the bigotry. Consider the essay of Mark Twain who, in 1899 wrote an essay in the publication Harper’s that is relevant today as it was at the turn of that century. An excerpt reveals his insight:

“If the statistics are right, the Jews constitute but one per cent. of the human race. It suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust lost in the blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His contributions to the world’s list of great names in literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine, and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a marvelous fight in this world, in all the ages; and has done it with his hands tied behind him. READ MORE

Posted in Jewish, Politics | Tagged , | Leave a comment

This will likely not impact New York State 2024 election results but, if accurate, an interesting data point

Posted on February 23, 2024 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Majority of New York Jewish voters intend to vote for Trump
Andrew Bernard
February 21, 2024

A poll of registered New York voters suggests that a majority of Jews in the state intend to vote for former President Donald Trump in the presidential election in November. New York Jews now favor Trump over President Joe Biden 53 per cent to 44 per cent, according to the Siena College poll, released on Tuesday. Jews in the state said that they intend to continue to back Democrats over Republicans 54 per cent to 39 per cent in congressional elections. The poll has an overall margin of error of 4.2 percentage points in either direction, which means that a gap of 8.4 percentage points could potentially be dead even. READ MORE

Posted in Jewish, Politics | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment