Our communities are torn apart by division and strife. The way we speak is both the problem and the solution. Clean Speech Illinois is a community-wide education and awareness campaign to unite us in the practice of Jewish mindful speech, to build a more positive, respectful, and peaceful world. Gossip, slander, disparagement are contaminating our relationships and social environment – and until now, there’s been no programs to address this problem. Clean Speech is taking a stand to spread shalom (peace) throughout our communities by cleaning up our conversations, one word at a time. Sign up here to get involved.
…After deposing Mr. Madigan, Democrats last year did him proud by jamming through new state legislative maps that forced 12 Republican incumbents into six House districts. Democrats held 73 of 118 House seats under Mr. Madigan’s gerrymander. Their new, more extreme gerrymander helped them pick up four to five more seats. Democrats also redrew state Supreme Court districts for the first time in 60 years. Three Justices are elected exclusively from Cook County, which includes Chicago. This guarantees Democrats three seats. But their majority looked in danger after a Democratic Justice representing central Illinois lost a retention election in November 2020 for the first time in state history. READ MORE
A new poll of scientists conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University found that only 59 percent of respondents think global climate change will cause “significant harm” to the “living conditions for people alive today.” That is far short of the “97 percent consensus” narrative pushed by climate alarmists and their media allies across the globe. The survey, conducted in September and October 2022 by Fairleigh Dickinson University and commissioned by The Heartland Institute, polled only professionals and academics who held at least a bachelor’s degree in the fields of meteorology, climatology, physics, geology, and hydrology. The key question of the survey asked: “In your judgement, what will be the overall impact of global climate change on living conditions for people alive today, across the globe?”
Officials from Benjamin Netanyahu’s Likud party said on Wednesday that the coalition agreement with the heads of the right-wing parties that are likely to join the government will contain a commitment to enact a parliamentary override clause. The party heads made it clear they would not be satisfied with anything less, and would not sign a coalition agreement that only includes the distribution of ministries and a promise to reverse the previous government’s legislative agenda…The override clause is a proposed legislative tool that will allow Knesset members to override Supreme Court decisions and exempt parliamentary legislation from judicial review.READ MORE
WALL STREET JOURNAL Eugene Kontorovich: Israel’s Right-Wing Coalition Gets the Cold Shoulder From BidenThe victory of Benjamin Netanyahu’s right-wing coalition has many on the left bemoaning the end of democracy in Israel. Even before voting began, Sen. Robert Menendez (D., N.J.) threatened harm to bilateral relations should Israelis vote to the right. The State Department has said it would boycott some right-wing ministers, and President Biden waited almost a week before calling to congratulate Mr. Netanyahu. Yet Secretary of State Antony Blinken apparently had time Friday to phone Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who last stood for election (to a four-year term) in 2005.
Pop quiz: Which of these two individuals do you find more problematic? Kyrie Irving, a kooky basketball player who believes that the Earth is flat, that JFK was shot by bankers, that the COVID vaccines were secretly a plot to connect all Black people to a supercomputer, and that Jews worship Satan and launched the slave trade? Or Jonathan Greenblatt, the head of the Anti-Defamation League, who accepted $500,000 from Irving last week without even meeting or even talking to the all-star—and who was then forced to give back the donation when Irving blatantly refused to apologize? READ MORE
Joe Biden is a lucky man. The heroism of the Ukrainian people saved him from a Russian victory. Now the people of Iran, led by their women, are offering him a historic opportunity to weaken Russia, reduce long-term American vulnerabili-ties in the Middle East, and even return a sense of caution and sobriety to Chinese foreign policy. Like many great opportunities, it comes unexpectedly. The Middle East has been a dreary place for Team Biden. The failure to enlist the Iranians in a renewed nuclear deal, the shambolic Afghan withdrawal, the embarrassing fist bump with a price-hiking Mo-hammed bin Salman, Benjamin Netanyahu’s electoral victory: Nothing in the Middle East has gone Joe Biden’s way. READ MORE
There is no more dangerous third rail in American politics and journalism than antisemitism in the black community. It is an issue that has mostly simmered in obscurity for decades for the very simple reason that it can be ugly to talk about. But we have to talk about it. With rapper Kanye West‘s recent anti-Jewish rantings, with basketball star Kyrie Irving sharing antisemitic movie trailers, and, most importantly, with Haredi Jews now routinely assaulted in places like Brooklyn, New York, silence is no longer an option. The question is how to best combat the antisemitism that has lurked, not so secretly, within hate-spewing figures such as Louis Farrakhan and noxious organizations such as the Black Hebrew Israelites. READ MORE
Even before the final results of the latest Israeli general elections were announced, Palestinian leaders and officials were quoted as expressing deep concern and fear that the outcome of the vote would lead to increased tensions and violence between the Palestinians and Israel. Palestinian Authority (PA) Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh was quoted as saying that the results of the election “confirms” that the Palestinians have no partner in Israel for peace.” The Palestinians, who keep complaining about the rise of the right-wing parties in Israeli elections, are the ones who brought the terrorist Hamas group to power. In 2006, a majority of Palestinians voted for Hamas, whose charter openly calls for the elimination of Israel. Since then, Hamas has carried out countless terror attacks, killing and injuring thousands of Israelis. READ MORE
…“The Fabelmans,” in theaters in New York and Los Angeles on November 11, followed by the rest of North America the upcoming week, represents [Tony] Kushner’s fourth collaboration with Spielberg — but the first time that the legendary director has taken a co-writing credit. Indeed, throughout his vast career, Spielberg has almost always delegated the business of getting the words on the page to someone else. But this time he isn’t focusing his camera outward to benign space aliens or an adventuresome archeologist, or even toward Normandy Beach or Polish concentration camps, but inward — not only to the peculiar history of his own family, but also to his growth as an artist and a person. It is a remarkable work of cinema, one of the best movies of the year, and unlike anything else in this innovator’s incomparable career. READ MORE
Longtime New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman warned this week that, as a result of the Nov. 1 Israeli election, “the Israel we knew is gone” and the Jewish state is “entering a dark tunnel.” If you’d never read an article by Friedman before, you might assume that it was the rightward turn by Israeli voters that set the columnist against the Jewish state. You would think, in other words, that Friedman’s ire is Israel’s fault. You would be wrong. Very wrong. The truth is that Friedman’s hostility towards Israel has nothing to do with the reelection of Benjamin Netanyahu as Israel’s prime minister or the center-right governing coalition he is about to form. READ MORE
ArchitectGuy on Israel 