“All over the US, Shabbat is being rebranded for the current times, moving beyond the family kitchen table and the synagogue”

TABLET MAG
A Different Spin on Shabbat
Flora Tsapovsky
September 15, 2024

This past summer, New York-based Jewish screenwriter Yoni Weinberg attended Sababafest, a three-day music festival in New Jersey that was advertised as “the happiest Shabbos of the year.” That weekend delivered something Weinberg has been increasingly craving: a relaxed, safe, good time. At the same time, Genevieve Medow-Jenkins, the founder of Secular Sabbath, was hosting a breathwork, gong bath, and tea ceremony event at a local spa in West Hollywood, California. Meanwhile, that same weekend in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, Shabbat Club was gathering at Moabet, a chic event space, over hummus and wine…Shabbat now finds itself as the centerpiece of clubby parties, holistic wellness experiences, social singles outings and interfaith dinners. While the central characteristics of Shabbat—unplugging from devices and fostering human connection—have always been malleable and easy to harness for different audiences, this time around, the urgency feels palpable. READ MORE

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Shin Bet says the incident is “an example of the great efforts of the Iranian intelligence agencies to recruit Israeli citizens to promote terrorist activities in Israel”

12I24NEWS
Israeli recruited by Iran in plot to kill Netanyahu, Gallant
September 19, 2024

An Israeli citizen was recruited by Iranian intelligence agencies to assassinate Israeli leaders, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, according to a joint statement by the Shin Bet security agency and Israel Police. Identified as 73-year-old Moti Maman from Ashkelon, he was taken into custody last month. In addition to Netanyahu, the conspiracy aimed to kill Defense Minister Yoav Gallant and the head of the Shin Bet Ronen Bar. The Israeli was smuggled twice into Iranian territory and received payment for carrying out missions. READ MORE

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News flash: Making deals with Islamic terrorists doesn’t work

JNS
Biden admin pushes Israel to give land to Hezbollah
Daniel Greenfield
September 9, 2024

The appeasement lobby only has one big idea when it comes to Islamic terrorists and any other enemies:
1) Give them land
2) When the terrorists attack anyway, explain that it’s because they didn’t get enough land last time
3) Give them more land
4) When the terrorists attack anyway, explain that it’s because they didn’t get enough land last time.

Israel has been living through this particular “peace process” nightmare for a generation. Now, faced with growing Hezbollah attacks, the Biden administration has one big bright idea. READ MORE

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Germany takes sides, selling to Hamas supporters, not Israel

JPOST
Germany delays selling weapons to Israel but continues sales to Qatar, sparking criticism
Benjamin Weinthal
September 15, 2024

Germany’s federal government continues to ignore Israeli requests to purchase weapons, according to a Sunday report in the mass circulation daily Bild. The paper wrote that “However, sales of heavy weapons systems to the Emirate of Qatar – one of the most important supporters of the terrorist group Hamas – were approved.” According to Bild, “Last year, the Israeli government had already requested the purchase of several thousand pieces of ammunition for its main battle tanks, and there were further requests for other types of armament.” READ MORE

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“Harris’s unswerving support for the “two-state solution” is tantamount to handing victory to the perpetrators of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust”

JPOST
If you support Israel, you need to vote for Trump
Marc Zell
September 19, 2024

Disregarding the hyperbole and examining the records and statements of both US presidential candidates, there can be little doubt that President Donald J. Trump is the candidate of choice for those who support Israel and a reinvigorated American foreign policy. The Biden-Harris administration and the Democratic Party have largely abandoned Israel and created a toxic environment for Jews in general. “She hates Israel,” Trump declared in his recent debate against Vice President Kamala Harris. “If she is president, I believe that Israel will not exist within two years.” Immediately after taking office, the Biden-Harris administration restored American subsidies for the Palestinian Authority and UNRWA, pumping hundreds of millions of dollars into the coffers of the Palestinian Arabs, including Hamas. READ MORE

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“The Rafah Brigade has been defeated. Their four battalions have been destroyed, and we have completed operational control over the entire urban area”

COMMENTARY MAG
Hamas On The Ropes: A Progress Report
Jonathan Schanzer
September 12, 2024

The Israel Defense Force (IDF) announced today, September 12, that the southern army of Hamas in Gaza, called the Rafah Brigade, had been dismantled. The spokesman’s office said 2,000 Hamas fighters had been killed, and that 80 percent of the tunnels in the area had been destroyed. This comes just days after Israeli Defense Minister Yoav Gallant declared that Hamas no longer existed as a military force in Gaza, and that it was time for Israel to head north because a war with Hezbollah in Lebanon is looming. What to make of this? There can be no doubt that Hamas is a spent force. The estimates of Hamas fighters killed during this war vary, but it’s safe to say that the number stands at 18,000 or even more. READ MORE

TIMES OF ISRAEL IDF declares Hamas’s Rafah Brigade defeated; no active cross-border tunnels found The Hamas terror group’s Rafah Brigade has been decimated, at least 2,308 of its operatives have been killed by the Israel Defense Forces, and over 13 kilometers (8 miles) worth of tunnels have been destroyed, military officials told reporters in the Gaza Strip’s southernmost city on Thursday. Now, as the IDF maintains control of the entire city and the border area with Egypt, known as the Philadelphi Corridor, combat engineers are completing their investigations of a few dozen Hamas tunnels that have not yet been demolished…

JNS IDF soldier killed in Samaria truck-ramming attack IDF Staff Sgt. Geri Gideon Hanghal, 24, from the city of Nof HaGalil in northern Israel, served in the Nachshon Battalion of the Kfir Brigade.

ISRAEL HAYOM Unit 8200 commander announces resignation, concedes intel lapses Brigadier General Yossi Sariel, the chief of Israel’s famed SIGINT unit, notes that he failed to sound the alarm about Oct. 7 despite gathering valuable data and sharing it. He is the third senior IDF officer to step down over the past year since the start of the war.

NEW YORK POST IDF reveals the bloody Hamas tunnel where Hersh Goldberg-Polin and other hostages were held and killed The latest footage from the IDF comes following reports that Goldberg-Polin and the other hostages tried to fight off the terrorists before they were slain. “Several of the six are assessed to have defended themselves and struggled with those who shot them,” Channel 12 News reported. The Israeli outlet cited an IDF report finding that “Hersh, Ori, Alex and Almog defended Eden and Carmel” before they were killed. 

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“Papers captured by the IDF and information obtained under interrogation may indicate how the Hamas terror chief plans to escape his dire predicament”

FDD
Israel Offers to Allow Sinwar Safe Passage Out of Gaza to Free Hostages
September 11, 2024

Israeli ceasefire negotiators offered Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar safe passage out of the Gaza Strip in exchange for the release of all of Israel’s hostages, Israeli hostage envoy Gal Hirsch told Bloomberg News on September 10. Hirsch added that the offer would also require Hamas to cede control of Gaza and for the enclave to be demilitarized and deradicalized. “I’m ready to provide safe passage to Sinwar, his family, and whoever wants to join him,” Hirsch told the publication’s Washington bureau during an interview. “We want the hostages back. We want demilitarization, de-radicalization and of course — a new system that will manage Gaza.” READ MORE

THE JC Sinwar’s secret plan to ‘smuggle hostages to Iran’ Intelligence sources have told the JC that Sinwar’s plan was to smuggle himself and the remaining Hamas leaders along with Israeli hostages through the Philadelphi corridor to Sinai and from there to Iran. This was reportedly revealed during the interrogation of a captured senior Hamas official, as well as by information obtained from documents seized on Thursday, August 29, the day the six bodies of the murdered hostages were retrieved. Hamas has been insisting for months on taking control of the corridor while Israel has strongly resisted. This is why no deal or compromise has been agreed in the last eight months, despite the efforts of the US, Egypt and Qatar. READ MORE

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“It was the existence of Jews that made them a provocation to the Nazis, just as the existence of Israel, in any borders, inspired the Hamas massacre, as their 1988 Covenant, never revoked, makes abundantly clear. The towers were a similar provocation”

FREE PRESS
What September 11 Revealed: A writer looks back at a portent of the future.
Jonathan Rosen
Sep 11

…“While September 11 drove not only Israel but also many Jewish communities in Europe into unexpected political isolation,” Küntzel writes, “for the antisemites of Europe and the Arab world it served as a signal announcing the reawakening of antisemitism in its new globalized form.” In other words, the Islamism that drove the attackers on September 11 was fueled not only by a murderous hatred of the West but by a genocidal hatred of Jews and Jewish autonomy—a belief system as central to their project of global domination as it was to the Nazis they absorbed it from….Today it is possible to see the outline of the October 7 massacre nested in the mass murders of September 11, and to recognize, in the justifications and celebration of October 7, the portents of future barbarism.  READ MORE

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“The “Palestinian” flag being displayed on children’s backpacks, on jean jackets, and in public spaces has taken a symbol of pure evil and made it a part of our popular culture”

CONSERVATIVE CLARITY
Evil comes to Main Street: The “Palestinian” flag
September 9, 2024

…But now, the clarion call of the “Free Palestine” movement has graduated into something even more sinister and dangerous. You can now see the “Palestinian” flag almost everywhere because it has metastasized into the fabric of mainstream American culture to the point where, rather than being a symbol of hatred for America and Israel, you can see it on the backpacks of American teenagers, bumper stickers, and probably, in the not-too-distant future, on cereal boxes. It is important that people understand that the “Palestinian” flag stands for the hatred and destruction of Israel and, by association, America. It stands for the murder of Americans, Israelis, Jews, and Christians everywhere, along with the destruction of Western civilization, true democracy, capitalism, and ultimately, civilization itself. READ MORE

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“Though set decades ago, and filmed long before October 7, so many of the themes of the show feel ever prescient today”

KVELLER
‘Kissufim’ on Netflix Is a Timely and Harrowing Movie About What it Means to Be Israeli
Lior Zaltzman
September 4, 2024

In “Kissufim,” the first feature-length movie from Israeli director Keren Nechmad, actress Swell Ariel Or plays a character that has some similarities to her iconic “The Beauty Queen of Jerusalem” protagonist, Luna. Like “Beauty Queen of Jerusalem,” which takes place between the 1910s and 1940s, “Kissufim” is a period piece, taking place in 1977 in Kibbutz Kissufim, which nears the Gaza border. Or plays a young independent woman with dreams and aspirations of self-fulfillment, but unlike Luna, Eli doesn’t get to see any of those dreams come true. Or’s character Eli is based on Elian Gazit, who was killed by a grenade on a visit to Gaza’s market in 1980. READ MORE

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