“With families confined at home, country belts out Four Questions, traditionally sung by youngest member of household, asking ‘Why is this night different from every other night?”

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

TIMES OF ISRAEL
Under Passover lockdown, thousands take to balconies to sing ‘Mah Nishtana’
by Staff
April 8, 2020

Tens of thousands of Israelis, locked down by the government and separated from their families on Passover, came out to their balconies to sing together Wednesday night…From Thursday morning until Friday, Israelis will again be permitted to move within their cities and towns for essential needs, but will not be allowed to leave city limits. Exceptions will be made for those who do not have supermarkets and pharmacies in their towns, but they may go only to the nearest town with those services. Jerusalem residents will be confined throughout the lockdown and curfew within the city zone they live in…READ MORE

JPOST No, your coronavirus quarantine isn’t comparable to Anne Frank’s There are quite a few things I’ve been seeing all over my social media feeds ever since the spread of COVID-19 forced everyone to social distance. There are the jokes about no longer wearing a bra, comments about being confused over what day it is and comparisons to Anne Frank hiding in an attic….On Twitter, if you search “Anne Frank” now, you will find an abundance of users tweeting about how they now know exactly how Anne Frank felt after a week in quarantine.

REUTERS Israel makes masks in public compulsory as Passover lockdown begins The Israeli government issued orders on Tuesday requiring citizens to wear face masks in public to try to stem the spread of the novel coronavirus as the country enters a lockdown for the Jewish Passover holiday.

TIMES OF ISRAEL Virus carrier nabbed on bus to J’lem, accused of deliberately endangering public A coronavirus carrier was arrested Sunday on a bus on its way to Jerusalem, on suspicion of deliberately spreading the disease. Police said in a statement that the suspect, a confirmed COVID-19 patient, was taken in for questioning on Route 1, and that all the other bus passengers were ordered to quarantine for 14 days.

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“Enduring Lightning took place over the deserts of southern Israel, where American and Israeli pilots rehearsed combined operations against a variety of simulated air and ground threats”

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

FOUNDATION FOR DEFENSE OF DEMOCRACIES
Despite Coronavirus, U.S. and Israel Conduct Combined F-35 Exercise
April 7, 2020
by Bradley Bowman and Mikhael Smits

Despite growing coronavirus concerns in both countries, the United States and Israel conducted a combined air-power training exercise on March 29, marking the first time U.S. and Israeli F-35s have trained together in Israel. The “Enduring Lightning” exercise improved the ability of the U.S. Air Force and its Israeli counterpart, the Israeli Air Force (IAF), to operate together and sent an important and timely message of deterrence to adversaries. Widely considered the most advanced fighter in the world, the F-35 is a fifth-generation multi-role fighter that combines exceptional sensor and network capabilities with advanced technologies that make it difficult to detect. READ MORE

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“In the end, Israel was established not by Great Britain but by the Jews themselves. It was done against not only British opposition but an invasion from five Arab armies, including those of countries that owed their own existence to the plan executed by Churchill and Lawrence”

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH REVIEW OF BOOKS
Lawrence of Judea: T. E. Lawrence and the Deal of the Twentieth Century
by Rick Richman
Spring 2020

…But T.E. Lawrence [of Arabia] also supported Zionism. He and Chaim Weizmann were close friends, and they held historic meetings and discussions about the Zionist goals. On January 3, 1919, Lawrence brokered an agreement between Faisal and Weizmann, weeks before the post–World War I Paris Peace Conference commenced. The Faisal-Weizmann agreement recognized the national aspirations of both Arabs and Jews and exchanged Arab support for the 1917 Balfour Declaration on Palestine for the promise of Zionist support for an Arab state beyond Palestine. At that time, Palestine comprised both the east and west banks of the Jordan River. READ MORE

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“The sad truth, however, is that if announcements of Israeli scientists producing a coronavirus cure and/or vaccine along with, were made tomorrow, it would change no minds in the BDS movement”

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
BDS co-founder: Israel should save us … and then die
by Jonathan Tobin
April 7, 2020

Advocates of Israel have always liked to joke that supporters of the BDS movement shouldn’t be selective about their efforts to convince the world to boycott the Jewish state. In particular, lately they have said that they are waiting to see what those who seek to isolate and destroy Israel will do if its scientists come up with a vaccine for the coronavirus…In a video posted on Facebook by an anti-Israel group, BDS co-founder Omar Barghouti said this past weekend that if Israel finds a cure for cancer or for a virus, then there is no problem to cooperate with it.” READ MORE

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When it comes to the Middle East, former VP Biden has a history of endorsing woolly and reckless ideas”

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

BLOOMBERG
Biden’s Call to Ease Iran Sanctions Fits a Bad Pattern
by Bobby Ghosh
April 6, 2020

…Biden has doubled down on Obama’s Iran policy, saying he would, as president, return the U.S. to the deal — without first insisting that the regime in Tehran halt its murderous activities in Syria, Iran, Lebanon, Yemen and Gaza. He has never acknowledged that the agreement freed Iran to expand those activities, contributing to the slaughter of hundreds of thousands of people. Nor does he recognize that, by giving the regime access to billions of dollars in unfrozen assets, the nuclear deal strengthened the theocrats. Biden’s call for sanctions relief for the Islamic Republic is, likewise, unburdened by concern for the millions of people who daily suffer the consequences of Iran’s destructive policy. READ MORE

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“A bestselling and controversial book when first published in Lithuania, “Our People” has undermined many convenient truths that Lithuanians have told themselves about their nationalistic heroes”

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JEWISH JOURNAL
Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust and the Writers Who Revealed It
by Michael Berenbaum
April 3, 2020

“Our People: Discovering Lithuania’s Hidden Holocaust” is a powerful, poignant and painful exploration of the murder by bullets of Lithuanian Jews by Lithuanian nationalists — not Germans. The unusual team of writers consists of the granddaughter and grandniece of perpetrators, and the great nephew of a murdered Jew. Prominent Lithuanian writer Ruta Vanagaite and preeminent Nazi hunter Efraim Zuroff visited 35 killing fields throughout Lithuania — 234 mass Holocaust graves in that country — and five in Belarus, where Lithuanian police murdered 15,000 to 20,000 Jews in 1941-42 in that country alone. The authors personally were linked to many of these sites through family history. READ MORE

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Chag Sameach. A musical greeting from the Israel Philharmonic

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

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The Wuhan Virus pandemic “raises fundamental questions about how much economic interdependence nations want”

Posted on April 5, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

REAL CLEAR POLITICS
How the Wuhan Virus Will Change the World Order
by Charles Lipson
April 8, 2020

…The WHO is probably beyond repair. China won’t give up its authority there, and the U.S. shouldn’t give China more weight by withdrawing. But it should cut back sharply on funding, and so should other advanced democracies. Together, they should form a parallel organization, a NATO/Health entity that includes not only America, Canada, the U.K. and EU but also Israel, Ireland, Japan, South Korea, Australia, and Taiwan. All are established democracies with developed, high-tech economies and sophisticated medical research and public health systems. Their data can be trusted, and they are transparent enough to share it. They need an easy, institutionalized way to cooperate, outside the politicized, corrupted WHO. READ MORE

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Israel took a different approach to the coronavirus from the start because it’s a very different kind of society. Unlike the pampered West, Israel permanently lives in a state of potential emergency and existential threat.

Posted on April 2, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

JNS
For Israel, recognizing another enemy is second nature
by Melanie Phillips
April 2, 2020

Among the world’s democracies fighting the coronavirus, Israel has so far been by far the most successful. With a population of about 8.6 million, it had recorded at time of writing 33 deaths from COVID-19. The Deep Knowledge Group, a consortium of technology and analytics organizations, has ranked it in the fight against the virus as the safest country in the world. While Israel’s death toll is continuing to edge up, the country has contained the epidemic better than Britain, America or the stricken nations of Western Europe. Britain, with a population of some 67 million, had recorded at time of writing more than 2,300 deaths from the virus. In the United States, with a population of 327 million, more than 5,000 had died. READ MORE

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Daniel Pearl’s killers: “The re-arrest of the four gives the government time to put together a legal appeal against their acquittal”

Posted on April 2, 2020 by ArchitectGuy

REUTERS
Pakistan re-arrests four men acquitted in Daniel Pearl murder case
by Syed Raza Hassan and Gibran Naiyyar Peshimam
April 3, 2020

Pakistani authorities on Friday ordered the detention of four men set to be released after being acquitted by a court over the murder of U.S. journalist Daniel Pearl, and the government said it would challenge the acquittal next week. The High Court in the province of Sindh on Thursday acquitted the four, including Briton Ahmed Omar Saeed Sheikh, who was sentenced to death in 2002 for masterminding Pearl’s murder. The other three were sentenced to life. Wall Street Journal reporter Pearl, 38, was investigating Islamist militants in the city of Karachi, the capital of Sindh, after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the United States when he was kidnapped in January 2002. He was beheaded weeks later. READ MORE

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