“Jews must stop being dependent on others for our safety. By turning our communal centers into well-fortified bunkers, we’re teaching our children that it is normal to associate Jewish life and identity with anxiety, with insecurity, with lack of confidence in ourselves and in our neighbors”

Posted on April 29, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
Armed Guards Aren’t the Answer
Liel Leibovitz
April 28, 2026

On a recent Sunday in New York City, my family and I went on a walk that turned from a nice neighborhood stroll into a survey of our current state of institutional security. First, we passed a synagogue with three armed guards outside; they had earpieces firmly in place and looked furtively around. Another shul had two armed guards, a set of locked doors, and more security cameras than your average bank vault. The Jewish community center had concrete bollards on the sidewalk—the sort you’d find in front of the American embassy in a European country—and a metal detector greeting you as soon as you walked in the door. According to recently available data, a typical Jewish organization spends about 14% of its overall budget on security, with the total communal expenditure now reaching $765 million—every year…What I want to propose here, without everyone losing their minds, is that our approach to communal security is creating more vulnerability—of all kinds. READ MORE

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Politico establishes a red line on Israel

Posted on April 28, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH INSIDER
Politico’s owner, Axel Springer, doubles down on corporate principles
Matthew Kassel
April 28, 2026

Mathias Döpfner, the CEO of Politico’s parent company, Axel Springer, doubled down in defense of the German publishing giant’s corporate values while addressing criticism from Politico‘s editorial staff on Monday, suggesting to journalists that if they do not feel fully comfortable with a mission statement that includes support for Israel’s right to exist and other principles known as “the essentials,” they should find work elsewhere, according to audio of the discussion obtained by Jewish Insider…The meeting came in response to a letter sent by Politico staffers to [incoming editor-in-chief Jonathan] Greenberger on Friday, accusing Döpfner of using the outlet “to promote his political agenda” and raising concerns that two opinion pieces he wrote for the publication “risk undermining” its “reputation as an impartial news source.” READ MORE

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From Judaism Unpacked: What Jews Know About Rest That We Forgot

Posted on April 28, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JUDAISM UNPACKED
What Jews Know About Rest That We Forgot
April 2026

Why do Jews step away from phones, work, cooking, driving, and electricity every week for 25 hours? Shabbat isn’t just a day of rest. It’s a weekly break from the noise of everyday life and a reminder of creation, freedom, family, community, and what really matters. From challah shopping in Jerusalem to the deeper meaning behind the rules, this video explores why Shabbat has endured for thousands of years. Click here to watch this short, fascinating video.

More videos from Judaism Unpkd

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UCLA Student Council: Omer Shem Tov event was “selective platforming” of an Israeli voice — with no Palestinian counterpart — that would “legitimize and normalize” Israel’s war in Gaza and bombings of Lebanon”

Posted on April 28, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

LA TIMES
UC Regent Jay Sures condemns UCLA student government for criticizing Israeli hostage event
Jaweed Kaleem
April 24, 2026

In a rare rebuke, UC Regent Jay Sures is speaking out in a blistering criticism of UCLA student government leaders amid a growing controversy over the campus visit of a freed Israeli hostage held by Hamas after the Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel. Saying he was “disgusted and appalled” by recent statements from the undergraduate student government voicing opposition to an on-campus event featuring former Israeli hostage Omer Shem Tov, Sures, in a letter to student government leaders, said that the “failure of some student leaders in your council to listen to and acknowledge views of people with whom they disagree” is “disappointing and dangerous.”…The growing controversy stems from a statement the UCLA Undergraduate Student Assn. Council published this month “condemning” the campus Hillel for bringing Shem Tov to speak at an April 14 event tied to Yam HaShoah…READ MORE

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“Women living under Hamas rule in Gaza describe to the Mail how they are sexually abused by the terror group’s fighters and forced to have sex in return for food aid”

Posted on April 27, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Gaza women break silence on sexual abuse and extortion under Hamas rule
Bar Shaffer
April 22, 2026

Gazan women living under Hamas rule are describing sexual abuse by men in senior positions, sexual extortion in exchange for aid or money, and exploitation by those in positions of power, according to testimonies obtained by Britain’s Daily Mail. The accounts are emerging amid growing concern that the terrorist organization has reasserted control in much of the Gaza Strip, while global attention is fixed on Iran. A Gazan man, who identified himself as a member of the Al-Qassam Brigades, the “military” wing of Hamas, confirmed to the Mail the dire situation facing widows. He said he had reported to the leadership that some Al-Qassam members were exploiting martyrs’ widows” in a tent in the Gharabli area of Deir al-Balah. He said he was ordered to remain silent. READ MORE

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Tennessee General Assembly votes to change all official references to the region to “Judea and Samaria”

Posted on April 27, 2026 by ArchitectGuy

WPLN.ORG
Tennessee bans the name ‘West Bank’ from official documents
Marianna Bacallao
April 13, 2026

Tennessee will no longer recognize the Middle Eastern region known as the West Bank in official state documents. The General Assembly voted to change all official references to the region to “Judea and Samaria,” as it’s referred to in the Bible. “The ideological and cultural conflict over Judea and Samaria represents a broader civilizational struggle between Judeo-Christian values,” HB 1446/SB 1663 reads. “Radical Islamic ideologies … seek to undermine Western democratic principles and religious freedom. Evangelical activist Laurie Cardoza-Moore, who led a campaign against the Islamic Center of Murfreesboro, testified in favor of the bill…Anwar Arafat, a Palestinian American from Memphis, opposed the bill. As an imam, Arafat argued that the land known as the West Bank was also called Canaan, a more politically-neutral name. 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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