Election Day is fast approaching and our host committee is throwing a blow out rally to turn out the vote for Jesse Sullivan, Mark Vice and Daniel Shanes. It’s going to be full production and a lot of fun. Please bring your friends who might be on the fence! The Illinois Republican gubernatorial primary is Tuesday, June 28, 2022 and early voting begins next week.
An Iranian Quds Force officer died under mysterious circumstances earlier this week after he was suspected of leaking information that led to the assassination of his fellow IRGC officer in May, Saudi-backed news outlet Iran International reported on Thursday evening. The officer, reportedly identified as Colonel Ali Esmailzadeh, died on Monday after falling from the roof of his home in Karaj, near capital Tehran. He was taken to a local hospital after his fall, where he was pronounced dead. As per Iran International, Esmailzadeh’s family was told by the IRGC that he killed himself due to “psychological problems caused by separation from his wife,” with an alleged letter left by the colonel backing up that claim. READ MORE
TIMES OF ISRAEL Iranian dissident group says it hacked 5,000 surveillance cameras in TehranGovernment-run surveillance cameras around Iran’s capital reportedly were “disrupted” Thursday, while an exile group claimed it hacked into over 5,000 cameras around Tehran ahead of commemoration events honoring the founder of the Islamic Republic.
Iraq is in the news again, this time due to its passage of a “draconian” law that forbids contact between Israel and Iraqi citizens on pain of death. Several Arab states have embraced normalization with Israel in the wake of the Abraham Accords. They have signed trade deals, established air links and encouraged tourism, but Iraq has bucked the trend…It is ironic that the al-Sadr law was passed within days of the 81st anniversary of the worst catastrophe to strike the Iraqi Jewish community: The 1941 massacre of hundreds of Jews in the wake of the defeat of Iraq’s pro-Nazi regime led by Rashid Ali al-Kilani. It has been known ever since as the Farhud. READ MORE
ISRAEL HAYOM Yemen’s Houthis criminalize ties with IsraelIran-backed Houthi rebels’ government in Yemen on Wednesday passed legislation banning any normalization process with Israel, and criminalizing any contact with the Jewish state or its citizens.
Did you know that 12 Al Jazeera journalists have been killed in recent years – seven of those in Syria? How many of their names or the names of the other journalists who’ve been killed in war zones do you know? According to the International Federation of Journalists, (IFJ), in the first such report, from 1990-2020, 2,658 journalists were killed while covering wars and conflicts…Jew haters the world round now believe that Israel really is the worst country in the world and, allegedly, callously shoots down journalists. Such beliefs are diabolical since Israel is probably the only country in the region which truly permits freedom of the press and allows the most savage criticism of its policies to appear, daily, in Israel-based media. READ MORE
CAMERA BLOG CNN’S Farce of an “Investigation”CNN’s “investigation” of the death of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Akleh did not, as it claims, show that Israeli forces intentionally murdered her. Instead, CNN only showed the world how far the news company has fallen from serious journalism.
More than half of bankruptcies in the United States are connected to medical debt. For some families in the Chicago area, however, that debt is being erased in accordance with the Jewish law of shmita, the sabbatical year. The Torah’s shmita laws prescribe that, every seven years, all agricultural activity in the Land of Israel is forbidden, and the land must be left fallow. There are many specific rules, including prohibition against plowing, pruning and planting. But a lesser-known custom in observance of the shmita year is the release of all debts. READ MORE
The public prosecutor in the French city of Lyon announced on Friday that he would examine whether the brutal killing on an elderly Jewish man was motivated by antisemitism, one week after local police dismissed the possibility in their own investigation. 89-year-old René Hadjaj was pushed to his death on May 17 from the balcony on the 17th floor of the apartment building where he lived in the Duchère district of Lyon. His fate brought to mind the murder in April 2017 of Sarah Halimi, a Jewish woman who was beaten and tortured in her Paris apartment by an Islamist intruder, who then ejected her from her third-floor window. READ MORE
California’s upcoming primary elections could deliver Rep. Ilhan Omar (D., Minn.) an unlikely foreign policy ally—Republican Greg Raths, who last week said the “Jewish community” uses money to “control” U.S. politicians. Raths’s anti-Semitic rant came during a May 20 Orange County Islamic Foundation candidate forum, which saw the Republican claim that U.S. support for Israel is bought and paid for by the “Jewish community.” Raths, who is running against Republican congresswoman Young Kim in California’s 40th Congressional District, also called to “rein in” U.S. foreign aid to Israel, a position he said he is able to support because he hasn’t taken “one dime” from Jewish sources. READ MORE
What does it mean to join the people of Israel? This question takes on pressing urgency now as the State of Israel takes in tens of thousands of refugees from Ukraine, some with Jewish mothers, some with only Jewish fathers, some who converted or want to convert, others non-Jews seeking safety until the fighting ends. The complexity of Israel’s national immigration law, including the relevant-as-ever Law of Return, overlaps uneasily with traditional Halacha, resulting in confusion and bureaucratic hurdles for hundreds of thousands of people. READ MORE
U.S. Rep. Ilhan Omar and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison are scheduled to attend a conference in Baltimore this weekend featuring talks by Islamists who have declared Western society to be “filth,” sanctioned sex slavery, called on Muslims to hate homosexuals and to support jihad in countries throughout the world…In 2012, [invited speaker] Kamani said that under Islam that there are two ways for a man to fulfill his sexual desires — with his wife, or with “a female slave that belongs to him.” Kamani has also approvingly cited a hadith that warns Muslims to seek “cleanliness” and “purity,” and to “not resemble the Jews.” READ MORE
…Over the last few decades, Mr. Kertzer has turned the inquisitive tables on the church. Using the Vatican’s own archives, the soft-spoken Brown University professor and trustee at the American Academy in Rome has become arguably the most effective excavator of the Vatican’s hidden sins, especially those leading up to and during World War II…Mr. Kertzer’s latest book, “The Pope at War,” looks at the church’s role in World War II and the Holocaust — what he considers the formative event of his own life. It documents the private decision-making that led Pope Pius XII to stay essentially silent about Hitler’s genocide and argues that the pontiff’s impact on the war is underestimated. And not in a good way. READ MORE
ArchitectGuy on Israel 