Highland Park sets a new standard.

Posted on August 12, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

STANDWITHUS
Highland Park Becomes First City in Illinois to Pass the IHRA Definition of Antisemitism into Law
August 12, 2025

In an historic unanimous vote of 7-0 on August 11, the Highland Park City Council passed an ordinance that officially adopts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of Antisemitism. This landmark legislation positions Highland Park as the first city in Illinois to enshrine this definition through an ordinance rather than a resolution. The ordinance requires the city manager to incorporate the IHRA working definition and its eleven contemporary examples when implementing employment and anti-discrimination policies. StandWithUs extends its heartfelt gratitude to Councilmember Annette Lidawer for her leadership and determination in advancing this essential legislation. The organization also thanks Mayor Nancy Rotering for facilitating the ordinance’s vote. READ MORE

JERUSALEM POST Highland Park Becomes First Illinois City to Enshrine IHRA Antisemitism Definition in Law In a landmark decision, the Highland Park City Council in Illinois voted unanimously, by a 7-0 margin, earlier in the week to formally enshrine the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) Working Definition of Antisemitism into municipal law. Highland Park, a suburban community situated 25 miles north of Chicago and home to a large and vibrant Jewish population, has made history as the first city in Illinois to adopt the IHRA definition not just in the form of a resolution — as other municipalities have done — but as a binding ordinance. This elevates its status from symbolic support to enforceable law, ensuring that it will have tangible, long-term impact.

STANDWITHUS “Guide to Understanding & Adopting the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism”

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“While support for Israel remains stable (and high) among Republicans, it has cratered among Democrats — just 8 percent of Democrats approve of Israel’s military action in Gaza, down from 36 percent just after the attacks”

Posted on August 11, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

POLITICO
The new politics of Israel
Charlie Mahtesian and Calder McHugh
August 12, 2025

Would you have voted to oppose sending weapons to Israel (as more than half of Senate Democrats recently did)? How do you think the next administration should handle our relationship with Israel? Do you think it’s time to recognize a Palestinian state? But Pete Buttigieg, a top 2028 Democratic presidential prospect who was queried on Pod Save America on Sunday, still dodged them. His responses, in which he discussed a two-state solution and opposition to Trump, elicited an angry and dismissive response online, in particular from progressives…These rock-bottom levels of [Israel] support explain the subtle, but increasingly noticeable, recalibrations that are taking place among Democratic candidates and elected officials. It reveals that traditional solid support for Israel is no longer politically sustainable in a restive party where the energy is on the left and among its youngest members — the two quarters where sympathy for Palestinians and support for an independent Palestinian state is highest. READ MORE

FORWARD JB Pritzker: Blocking arms sales sends Israel ‘the right kind of message’
Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker on Sunday endorsed a Senate push to block U.S. arms sales to Israel, calling it “the right kind of message” to pressure Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to address the humanitarian crisis and reports of starvation in Gaza. “It’s the right kind of message, which is that Israel needs to make sure that the food assistance that ought to go to innocent Palestinians arrives there,” Pritzker said on NBC’s Meet the Press. “And they should do everything in their power to prevent the starvation that I think we’ve all seen.” A record 27 Senate Democrats — a majority of the caucus — supported the pair of resolutions introduced by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the Jewish Vermont Independent and longtime critic of U.S. aid to Israel, to block weapons transfers. 

FRONT PAGE MAG Buttigieg Endorses Arms Boycott, Terror State in Israel Buttigieg announcing that he’s for an arms embargo on Israel and he would recognize an Islamic terrorist state in Israel. That’s not surprising since the last time he ran, Buttigieg had endorsed ending aid to Israel. The media is making this seem like a big win and a pivot to build momentum for a fundamental anti-Israel shift by the Democrats. In his foreign policy address, he falsely claimed that “the Netanyahu government is turning away from peace” and warned Israel, while, referring to himself in the third person, that “President Buttigieg would take steps to ensure that American taxpayers won’t help foot the bill.”

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“It’s time to demand that Qatar put Hamas leaders on a plane and send them to Israel. Until Qatar does so, Qatar should be considered a state sponsor of terrorism”

Posted on August 10, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

DANIEL RUBENSTEIN SUBSTACK BLOG
Qatar Told Hamas to Keep the Hostages
August 7, 2025

…“How many of you know that on the afternoon of October 7, 2023, while Hamas’s massacre was ongoing, Qatar condemned Israel?” In a room of about 70 American Jewish leaders, one hand went up. One hand. It was a man who followed me on X and had seen me make this point many times. What does this simple and forgotten point about Qatar have to do with the delegitimization of Israel? In a word: everything. Most people have no idea that Qatar is waging a massive information warfare campaign against Israel. If you don’t know who is fighting you, how can you win? Please understand: It’s not possible to talk about the “delegitimization of Israel” without talking about the role that Qatar plays in that delegitimization. READ MORE

ISRAEL HAYOM Qatar emerges as regional air power with US and Israeli technology despite terror ties A report by MEMRI reveals that Qatar, an ally of Iran, Pakistan and Turkey, a promoter of radical Islam, and owner of a media channel that spews venomous incitement against Israel, is buying advanced fighter jets from the US equipped with cutting edge American technology, which also includes Israeli developed systems.

GATESTONE Khaled Abu Toameh: Hamas’s Plan to Undermine America’s Arab Allies After rejecting all proposals for a ceasefire-and-hostage deal, the Iran-backed Palestinian terror group Hamas is now trying to incite Arabs to revolt against their own governments under the pretext that the Arab leaders have failed to help the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Recently, senior Hamas official Khalil al-Hayya, who together with his family moved from the Gaza Strip to Qatar before the October 7, 2023 Hamas-led invasion of Israel, called on Arabs to “march toward Palestine by land and sea and besiege the Israeli embassies in Arab countries, especially Egypt and Jordan.”

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“Halacha would see neutralizing the Hamas power base in Gaza City not as an act of conquest for conquest’s sake, but as fulfilling a mitzvah to save life (pikuach nefesh)”

Posted on August 9, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
Jewish sources say a lot about conquering Gaza City
Joshua Hoffman
August 9, 2025

…The Torah recognizes that war is sometimes necessary, but never desirable. In the Book of Deuteronomy, we find laws distinguishing between a milchemet mitzvah (obligatory war) and a milchemet reshut (permissible war). Maimonides explained that a milchemet mitzvah includes wars of self-defense against enemies who threaten Jewish lives. By any reasonable halachic measure, the battle for Gaza City — against an armed faction sworn to Israel’s destruction, which has already carried out massacres and kidnappings — is a milchemet mitzvah. The Torah commands, “Do not stand idly by the blood of your fellow.”¹ Allowing Hamas to regroup, rearm, and plan future attacks would be the very definition of standing idly by. Meanwhile, the Talmud articulates the principle of rodef: If someone pursues another with intent to kill, one is permitted, even obligated, to stop the pursuer by any means necessary. Hamas, by both ideology and action, functions as a rodef against Israel. As such, . READ MORE

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“All while the actual Arab nations that initiated the war continue to hold most of these “refugees” in permanent limbo, denied citizenship and rights in their countries for more than 75 years”

Posted on August 8, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

ALGEMEINER
The ‘Right of Return’ Isn’t a Right — It’s a Means to Attack Israel
Micha Danzig
August 8, 2025

…In the obsessive international discourse around the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, “right of return” has become a sort of incantation. Palestinian officials brand it a moral imperative. NGOs declare it a human right. And diplomats in Brussels and Ottawa parrot it as a required ingredient for peace. But this “right of return” is not about justice or reconciliation. It is not even about return. It is a carefully constructed euphemism for a population-based dismantling of Israel — a strategy to undo what conventional warfare failed to accomplish between 1947 and 1973. It’s the idea that the Jewish State — the only one among the 195 nations on Earth — should agree to import millions of hostile foreign nationals, the descendants of refugees from a war started by five Arab armies and multiple Arab militias openly trying to annihilate it. READ MORE

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Former Obama speechwriter finds neutral ground with his right-wing knuckle-dragging brother-in-law

Posted on August 8, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

CODDLING OF THE AMERICAN MIND
Yes: Is It Time to Stop Snubbing Your Right-Wing Family?
Michael Ziffra, MD
August 7, 2025

Is it time to stop snubbing your right-wing family? That’s what a recent New York Times essay asks. It was penned by David Litt, a former speechwriter for President Barack Obama, who characterizes his political leanings as left-of-center. Litt relates his experience of deciding several years ago to shun his brother-in-law Matt, due to a variety of fundamental political disagreements. The issue that prompted the rift involved Matt’s decision to not get the COVID vaccine, but Litt’s differences with his brother-in-law continue far beyond one issue. The two men clearly have very different worldviews and belief systems. Litt says they stand “on opposite sides of a cultural civil war.”…Litt believed that the ostracism would force Matt to see the error of his ways — to not only adopt Litt’s views on the COVID vaccine, but to also abandon his other right-wing views. READ MORE

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PM says plan is to capture entire Strip, remove Hamas, hand it to non-PA ‘Arab forces’

Posted on August 7, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Netanyahu: Israel to take military control of all of Gaza, but ‘we don’t want to keep it’
Stav Levaton
August 7, 2025

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Thursday, ahead of a key cabinet meeting on the next stage of the Gaza war, that Israel intends to take control of the entire Strip, then hand it over to an unspecified Arab governing force. The premier said a “detailed plan” will be developed for this post-Hamas government, and that it will not place Israel in control of the Strip as a civil government, nor allow the Palestinian Authority to play a role. Asked in a Fox News interview if Israel will take over the entire 26-mile strip, Netanyahu said: “We intend to, in order to assure our security, remove Hamas there, enable the population to be free of Gaza (sic), and to pass it civilian governance.” But, he stressed, “We don’t want to keep it. We want to have a security perimeter, but we don’t want to govern it. We don’t want to be there as a governing body.” READ MORE

ISRAEL HAYOM Amit Segal: The painful truth Netanyahu must tell the public This week, Israel’s team for the hostages and missing persons debated whether the video showing Evyatar David in Holocaust like conditions marked a shift toward a new threat to kill the hostages. Their conclusion: it did not. They assessed that Hamas was trying to use David for its “Starving Gaza” campaign and failed to realize that the footage showed the opposite, that Gaza is the one doing the starving. But Israeli officials believe the situation will change if Israel actually storms Gaza City. Until now, Hamas has used the hostages as a kind of “get out of jail free” card whenever it found itself in military trouble – and to extend the Monopoly metaphor, to send Israel back to the starting square, “GO”.

COMMENTARY Seth Mandel: Rising Sa’ar Israel had bent over backwards to produce a cease-fire agreement, and the pressure was on Hamas. Then the three stooges [Macron, Starmer and Carney] jumped into the fray to recognize a “state of Palestine” and signal to Hamas that these three countries had the terror group’s back. Hamas then blew up the talks, since the West made clear it would gain the benefit of a cease-fire without having to make any concessions to Israel—most significantly, it wouldn’t have to free any hostages. The lives this blockheaded intervention cost, and the damage it did to attempts to free Gazans from Hamas, make this blunder an unforgettable one. And I mean that literally: France, the UK, and Canada should not be allowed to forget it, not in the near future, anyway.

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Hughes: Hamas’s strategy is to maximize suffering on its own side—and then have the world blame Israel. Our moral confusion is its chief asset

Posted on August 7, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

FREE PRESS
The Simple Truth About the War in Gaza
Coleman Hughes
August 4, 2025

…Genocide is the intentional physical destruction of a people in whole or in part. Israel’s aim in Gaza is not to destroy the Palestinian people as a whole, nor is it to destroy Gaza and Palestinians in particular. The Gaza Health Ministry reports that about 60,000 people have been killed in Gaza in 22 months of war. Israel says that about 20,000 Hamas fighters have been killed. Both may be exaggerating their numbers, but let’s take them at their word. Assuming 60,000 people have been killed, that’s about 3 percent of Gaza’s pre-war population. The Nazis killed over 60 percent of European Jews. The Ottoman Empire killed over 50 percent of the Armenians in its territory. Hutu extremists may have killed close to 80 percent of the Tutsis in Rwanda over 100 days in 1994. Those were genocides. READ MORE

URBAN WARFARE John Spencer: What Are Israel’s Choices in Gaza? The Insanity of Double Standards and Uninformed Analysis. War is uncertain by its nature. It is human. It is political. And it is absolutely uncertain. To say there is only one way for the war in Gaza to end is not connected to the complete history of war. To claim that Israel has already achieved its goals and should end the war is not accurate and is often disconnected from reality. Likewise, saying that Israel cannot achieve its goals is also untrue and full of double standards. From October 8 forward, Israel’s goals in Gaza, as stated clearly and consistently by its political leadership including the Prime Minister, the Minister of Defense, and members of the war cabinet, have not changed.

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“The Israeli flag becomes a prop, a shield against criticism, as they demand measures that would empower Hamas, weaken Israel’s deterrence, and make the survival of a sovereign Jewish homeland far less certain”

Posted on August 7, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

FUTURE OF JEWISH
Israel’s Far-Left is a national security threat
Joshua Hoffman
August 7, 2025

…After a few weeks of “unity” lip service from the Far-Left, “protests for the hostages” have become a regular fixture in Tel Aviv and other parts of the country. At first glance, they appear to be humanitarian rallies calling for the safe return of Israelis held by Hamas in Gaza. But if you actually go, you’ll see that the hostage cause has been hijacked. Yes, there are signs and speeches about the hostages — but woven into the banners, chants, and megaphone tirades are entirely unrelated demands: calls for Right-wing politicians to be jailed, inflammatory accusations against the government, and baseless claims about Israel’s conduct in the war. To add insult to injury, these Far-Left fanatics bring Israeli flags to these protests to make it seem like they appreciate our Jewish state, all the while advocating for policies and concessions that would dismantle it from within. READ MORE

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“Readers are apparently expected to have a sympathetic reaction toward “victims” who also happen to be terrorists”

Posted on August 7, 2025 by ArchitectGuy

FREE BEACON
AP Writes Puff Piece on Hezbollah ‘Victims’ of Israeli Pager Attack
Andrew Stiles
August 6, 2025

The Associated Press reached new heights of terrorist sympathy on Wednesday by publishing a compassionately credulous report on “the human toll of Israel’s exploding-pagers attack targeting Hezbollah,” the Iranian-funded terrorist group. The AP contacted the Hezbollah public relations department and was given the contact information of several “victims” of the September 2024 attack who agreed to discuss their “slow, painful path to recovery.”…Doing what comes naturally, the AP makes sure to note that the United Nations, a thoroughly unserious organization, and other so-called human rights groups have denounced Israel’s attack—without a doubt the most precisely targeted anti-terrorism operation in history—as an “indiscriminate” war crime. READ MORE

FREE PRESS The Editors: Mistakes at ‘The New York Times’ Only Go in One Direction On Tuesday evening, The New York Times quietly added an editors’ note amending their front-page story on hunger in Gaza from last week. The note and what it admits—about the story, the paper, and how this war has been covered by the media—deserves a lot more attention than it’s received, as does the actual state of hunger in Gaza. The initial story, titled “Gazans Are Dying of Starvation,” quickly rocketed around the internet when it was published on July 24. It was featured on the front page of the paper the following day, with a photo of a sick child being cradled in his mother’s arms. READ MORE

CAMERA BLOG When Journalists Become the Story On July 21, 2025, the Society of Journalists for Agence France Presse (AFP) put out a dramatic press release  about the imminent deaths due to starvation of “the last reporters in Gaza.” The press release referred to the heartbreaking cries of AFP employees who no longer have the physical capacity to work due to starvation, and mentioned 10 reporters — one freelance writer, three photographers, and six freelance videographers – who would die in the absence of intervention…  Missing from the crescendo of rising condemnation was criticism of Hamas for intercepting and disrupting the distribution of humanitarian aid or of the UN for rejecting offers by the Israeli and U.S.-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation to collaborate on distributing food and humanitarian aid to Gazans…

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