“Angered by Cuomo and de Blasio, powerful Orthodox and Hasidic communities break ranks with the Democrats and challenge NYC’s political math”

Posted on November 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

TABLET MAG
The New Jewish Vote
by Armin Rosen
November 5, 2020

…Even before precinct data was available, there was strong circumstantial evidence that there had been historic turnout in Orthodox communities across New York and New Jersey and that the benefits had been largely—though by no means solely—reaped by the Republican Party. Republicans have likely flipped a state Senate seat in a South Brooklyn district that includes Orthodox and Syrian Jewish areas, as well as state Senate  and Assembly districts in Rockland County that include large Hasidic enclaves. A Republican took an unexpected election night lead for an open state Assembly seat in disproportionately Orthodox Great Neck. READ MORE

NEW YORK POST Josh Hammer: Despite ‘racist’ charges, Trump did better with minorities than any GOP candidate in 60 years For four years now, Democrats and their media allies have tarred President Trump as a reprehensible white supremacist leading a dying party. The Trumpian, populist GOP, they claimed, was doomed to become a regional rump party, whose electoral prospects were tied to a shrinking share of bitter, downscale whites. That narrative was always bunk. It finally died, once and for all, on Tuesday evening.

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“Islamist gunman began shooting spree outside kosher restaurant, Jewish community headquarters, killing four people before being shot dead”

Posted on November 1, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Vienna attack shatters sense of security for city’s Jewish community
by Daphne Rousseau
November 4, 2020

Shalom Berntholz never closes his kosher restaurant in central Vienna, but as a new coronavirus-induced lockdown approached, he decided to shut early. That saved his life. A gunman who supported the Islamic State (IS) group kicked off his shooting rampage on Monday evening right in front of his closed restaurant, killing a waitress opposite. “Normally, we’re open 365 days a year, even for Shabbat and Jewish holidays. Exceptionally, we closed. That’s what saved our lives,” Berntholz tells AFP….The gunman, named as 20-year-old dual Austrian-Macedonian national Kujtim Fejzulai who was shot dead by police after killing four people, “started right at the foot of this building,” says Berntholz. READ MORE

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“Harris statement comes as many observers in the Middle East will be watching the outcome of the 2020 US election”

Posted on November 1, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JPOST
Kamala Harris: We will restore aid to Palestinians, renew ties
by Cody Levine
November 3, 2020

Democratic Party candidate for vice president Kamala Harris indicated on Saturday in an interview via email with The Arab American News that under a Joe Biden administration, the United States will renew its ties with the Palestinians, and oppose Israeli unilateral actions that undermine a two-state solution. Harris also said that a Biden administration will take immediate steps to restore economic and humanitarian assistance to the Palestinians, attempt to address the humanitarian crisis in Gaza and reopen the US consulate in east Jerusalem, in addition to working to reopen the PLO mission in Washington. READ MORE

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“Trump’s better-than-expected showing, despite many Jews thinking that he’s a hatemonger, speaks volumes about the chasm between the two warring Jewish political tribes”

Posted on November 1, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
The Jewish vote mattered more than we thought in 2020
by Jonathan Tobin
November 4, 2020

We already knew that the chasm that separates those Jews who vote for Democrats and those who vote for Republicans was already wide. The partisan split between all Americans who vote for the two major parties is growing all the time. But is there any gap greater than that between two branches of the same ethnic/religious tree that separates the Jews who voted for former Vice President Joe Biden and those who voted for President Donald Trump?…The other surveys all showed that Biden’s percentage of the Jewish vote appears to be the lowest total for any Democrat since 1988 while Trump is the best showing for a Republican since that same year. READ MORE

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Boca Raton school board “received thousands of comments from Holocaust survivors all over the world”

Posted on November 1, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

SOUTH FLORIDA SUN SENTINEL
Principal fired for second time over Holocaust remarks
by Scott Travis
November 2, 2020

A principal’s reluctance to say the Holocaust was real — leading to a two-year saga that inflamed his Jewish community and people around the world — reached a possible climax Monday when the School Board decided to fire him for the second time. William Latson was the principal of Spanish River High, a school in Boca Raton that serves a large Jewish population. He told a parent in a 2018 email that, as a district employee, he couldn’t confirm the Holocaust was a factual event. After the story received international attention, he was reassigned, then fired but then rehired last month on the recommendation of administrative law judge who said the firing was improper. READ MORE

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“Power-drunk NY bureaucrats are now menacing people in the name of public health, ostensibly with the blessing of the governor, who has repeatedly singled out Orthodox Jews”

Posted on November 1, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

WASHINGTON EXAMINER
New York’s crackdown on Jewish businesses makes no public health sense
by Melissa Braunstein
October 30, 2020

Nobody is tossing tea into New York Harbor, but restlessness appears to be growing in Brooklyn. Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo complained earlier this month that New York City was too lax about enforcing COVID-19-related health regulations, but Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish residents wouldn’t necessarily agree, especially now. Seven months into our “new normal,” reports are emerging of the city and state being notably heavy-handed in their public health enforcement. The New York City Department of Buildings issued a summons to a kosher pizzeria “that was only open for takeout.” READ MORE

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“Israel’s Arab neighbors have demonstrated that the Palestinian cause is not as high on their agenda as it appeared to be in the past”

Posted on November 1, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

GATESTONE INSTITUTE
The Future of Arab Normalization with Israel
by Alan Dershowitz
October 28, 2020

Now that the Sudan has joined the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain in normalizing relations with Israel, the future seems bright for even more Arab countries to make peace with their former enemy. The big prize, of course, would be Saudi Arabia, and already we are hearing rumors from its leaders pointing in that direction. Even Lebanon, which currently houses Hezbollah, has dropped hints about possible peace overtures. The possibility does exist that before long, most of the Sunni Arab states will recognize that their interests lie in a peace process with Israel. They will see the economic, technological, diplomatic and military advantages in having Israel as an ally instead of an enemy. READ MORE

ISRAEL HAYOM Abbas is holding out for a Biden White House The PA hopes the US presidential election will bring an end to what it sees as four nightmarish years, but Ramallah would be better served by coming out of its defensive crouch and starting to progress towards reconciliation with Israel and America.

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“ Even well-meaning WSJ editors are going to have a hard time earning reader trust when 300 of their own employees have questioned their own paper’s standards and inadvertently announced their liberal worldview in the process”

Posted on November 1, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

REAL CLEAR POLITICS
A Campaign to Neuter the WSJ Opinion Page?
by Mark Hemingway
October 30, 2020

Earlier this year, newsroom employees at the New York Times went to war with the paper’s opinion section for publishing an edgy op-ed by a Republican senator. Now the furor over coverage of the Joe Biden October surprise has many worried that a similar civil war between news and editorial is brewing at America’s largest, and arguably most respected, paper, The Wall Street Journal. The stakes are high. If the Journal’s conservative op-ed page is unable to hold out, it may be the death knell of conservative opinion in legacy media. READ MORE

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“In effect, what we’ve been doing is requiring young people to bear the burden of controlling a disease from which they face little to no risk. This is entirely backward from the right approach”

Posted on November 1, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

IMPRIMIS
A Sensible and Compassionate Anti-COVID Strategy
by Jay Bhattacharya, MD
October 2020

…Those who dare to talk about the tremendous economic harms that have followed from the lockdowns are accused of heartlessness. Economic considerations are nothing compared to saving lives, they are told. So I’m not going to talk about the economic effects—I’m going to talk about the deadly effects on health, beginning with the fact that the U.N. has estimated that 130 million additional people will starve this year as a result of the economic damage resulting from the lockdowns. In the last 20 years we’ve lifted one billion people worldwide out of poverty. This year we are reversing that progress to the extent—it bears repeating—that an estimated 130 million more people will starve. READ MORE

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Global Imams Council adoption of IHRA definition of antisemtism comes after hearing from office of US Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Anti-Semitism Elan Carr, calling on the council to do so

Posted on October 29, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
Largest NGO of imams worldwide adopts universal definition of anti-Semitism
by Jackson Richman
October 29, 2020

The largest nongovernmental organization of imams in the world, the Global Imams Council (GIC), has adopted the widely accepted International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of anti-Semitism. The council’s governing board, senior imams committee and advisory committee unanimous voted on Monday to adopt the IHRA definition. This was followed by an overwhelming majority vote on the same day by the general council of imams and the council’s members worldwide. The council’s membership consists of more than 1,000 imams from all Islamic denominations and schools of thought, according to its website. READ MORE

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