…Morally and philosophically, liberalism believes in individual autonomy, which entails a concept of personal responsibility. The current model of anti-racism scoffs at this: It divides the world into racial identities, which in turn are governed by systems of privilege and powerlessness. Liberalism believes in process: A trial or contest is fair if standards are consistent and rules are equitable, irrespective of outcome. Anti-racism is determined to make a process achieve a desired outcome. Liberalism finds appeals to racial favoritism inherently suspect, even offensive. Anti-racism welcomes such favoritism, provided it’s in the name of righting past wrongs. READ MORE
As the initial shock and horror over Thursday night’s deadly crush at Lag B’Omer festivities on Mount Meron began to subside, focus started to turn on Friday toward the matter of who was to blame for the packed conditions at the site that led to the deaths of 45 people and the injuring of dozens of others in the fatal stampede. Stark questions will likely be directed at political, civil and law enforcement officials involved in planning, approving and securing the event, amid talk of a potential state commission of inquiry to thoroughly investigate the disaster. On Friday night, multiple reports in Hebrew media outlets indicated that there had been immense pressure by religious lawmakers ahead of the festivities to ensure that there would be no limits placed on the number of attendees. Some 100,000 ultra-Orthodox pilgrims ultimately attended the event…READ MORE
ISRAEL HAYOM Israel grieves for Lag B’Omer stampede victimsForty-five people were killed and 150 wounded in the worst civilian disaster to ever strike the Jewish state. Local businesses, Arab communities in the country’s north rally to aid victims’ families. Thousands donate blood.
One week before the deadline expires for Benjamin Netanyahu to either form a new government or return the mandate to President Rivlin, the prime minister appears to be at a dead end. While seven days is time enough for a last-minute breakthrough, Netanyahu’s path to forming a government appears to be obstructed by the very bloc he put together before the election. Prior to the March vote, Netanyahu worked to strengthen the position of the Religious Zionist Party, headed by Bezalel Smotrich. Netanyahu helped the party push through the electoral threshold, on the understanding that Smotrich would help him form a right-wing government. READ MORE
John Kerry, who serves as U.S. special presidential envoy for climate in the Biden administration and was secretary of state during the Obama administration, continues to face a backlash over allegations that he may have provided Iranian foreign minister and nuclear negotiator Mohammad Javad Zarif inside information on Israeli military operations. Three Republican members of the House Foreign Affairs Committee wrote a joint letter the U.S. State Department inspector general on Wednesday to demand an investigation into whether Kerry did indeed provide information, as Zarif claimed in a recording provided to The New York Times, the details of which were published in a story on Sunday. READ MORE
Doctors at the Rambam Health Care Campus in Haifa have saved the life of a 7-year-old boy from Gaza after performing a complex 11-hour medical procedure involving three simultaneous surgeries. Madchat Tapash was born with a defect in his renal system that caused life-threatening kidney failure and an improperly functioning bladder. To fix the problems, doctors at Rambam had to perform three different surgeries to reconstruct the boy’s bladder, implant a new kidney donated from his mother, Sumar, and connect the new kidney to the reconstructed bladder. READ MORE
A March 29 article in the online news magazine Tablet titled “Are Educated People More Anti-Semitic?” reported that a carefully crafted survey of Americans by authors Jay P. Greene, Albert Chang and Ian Kingsbury found that the more highly educated did exhibit a greater level of anti-Semitism. The authors note that this result runs contrary to the widely held assumption linking intolerance, including intolerance of Jews, to ignorance and viewing greater education as the solution…But this finding should hardly be surprising to anyone who has been paying attention. The authors note that the ADL Global 100 studyreported higher levels of anti-Semitism among the educated compared to those less schooled within some Muslim populations and associated this with school systems that may explicitly teach hatred towards Jews. READ MORE
The killing of Sarah Halimi is much more than a snippet of local news. It is a major event. Let’s review what happened. We have a murder of unimaginable savagery. We have a woman living alone, struck in the head, tortured, thrown from a window, killed. We have an act that everyone, starting with the judges, agrees was antisemitic. We have a killer, Kobili Traoré, known to be a radical Islamist, who attends a Salafist mosque, and who killed this mild-mannered and simple woman just because she wore a short wig and strove to serve God by observing His commandments. And we have a legal system that, upon the conclusion of a prosecution, an appeal, and a final ruling, found that the criminal, although guilty, was not responsible for his actions and therefore could not be condemned. READ MORE
…Like the Obama administration before it, the Biden administration is ideologically committed to realigning US policy towards Iran and away from Israel and the Sunni Arab states. And no facts will sway it from that course. So too, just as Kerry could not be trusted with classified information Israel shared with him and his Obama administration colleagues, so his colleagues in the Biden administration can be expected to misuse information Israel provides them about Iran. Facing this reality, in which the US – the most important strategic actor in the region – is now openly in Iran’s corner, Israel needs to conceive and implement a strategy to bypass the US and achieve its goal of preventing Iran from becoming a nuclear power. READ MORE
…What motivated [John Brennan’s] confounding essay, which slams Israel’s checkpoints and security barrier but ignores the Palestinian violence that prompted them; that, conversely, celebrates a reduction in Palestinian violence but ignores that the barriers play a role in that reduction; that protests the lack of a Palestinian state but avoids acknowledging that Israel has offered such a state; and that criticizes the Israeli government for its increased ambivalence about a two-state solution, but suggests that the Palestinian government is ineffective because it doesn’t reject a two-state solution? Was the man who drew up “kill lists” for the most powerful army on earth really so shaken by the fictional portrayal of two trips through a checkpoint?READ MORE
he latest target for online mobs is South Carolina’s Republican senator Tim Scott. His ‘crime’ is apparently being a black conservative who gave a thoughtful televised response to President Biden’s address to a joint session of Congress. The mob responded by calling him ‘Uncle Tim’, a none-too-clever play on the old racial epithet, ‘Uncle Tom’. Twitter allowed that hashtag to trend. Scott has endured such insults before. So have all black conservatives. They shouldn’t have to stand alone in their response. Good people, including those who disagree sharply with conservatives, should stand with them. Slanders like these, left unanswered, degrade us all. Sen. Scott spoke because Republicans chose him to give the party’s official response to President Biden’s address. READ MORE
ArchitectGuy on Israel 