Zera Shimshon Parshas Chaya Sarah

 

BBC Gives a "shvache" Apology to Trump after facing a Billion Dollar Lawsuit

 

The numbers 6 & 7 May not be a Segula for you at all!

 

Netanyahu Leads in Polls despite Huge Leftists Protests

 A Channel 12 News poll published this evening shows that if elections were held today, the Likud party, led by Netanyahu, would receive 27 seats, followed by Naftali Bennett's party with 22-unchanged from last week.

The Democrats party, led by Yair Golan, would receive 10 seats (a decrease of one seat), while Yesh Atid, Shas, Yisrael Beytenu, and Otzma Yehudit each receive 9 seats. The Yeshar! party of Gadi Eisenkot is strengthening, with 8 seats. United Torah Judaism would get 7 seats, and Hadash-Ta’al and Ra’am would each receive 5 seats.

Parties not passing the electoral threshold: Blue and White (2.9%), Religious Zionism (2.5%), Balad (1.6%), and the Reservists Party (1.2%).

Charedim Should be Shamed, not Pressed into Service

by Saul Sadka

A few weeks ago I was sitting around a table here in Tel Aviv with a group of well known locals. We played a game where everyone had to offer an “unpopular opinion.” And I went all out, people actually gasped, so I suppose I won, since I proposed:

 “Haredim should not be forcibly conscripted to the IDF.”

Most Haredim are fascinated by the world beyond their shtetls. They are avid consumers of news and, secretly—though officially non-Zionist for arcane religious reasons—identify with the State of Israel.

Yes, it is unjust and shameful that they refuse to serve in the armed forces alongside their brethren, and they should indeed be shamed and penalized for that. The current official Haredi units are composed mostly of people on the margins of their society, or of those who have all but left it. In their hearts, even if they won’t admit it, most Haredim know that their side was wrong about Zionism and Herzl—and that the leader of the religious Zionists, Rabbi Kook, was correct.

It isn’t me saying that, but one of the most senior rabbis in the Haredi world (whom I won’t name, since it was a private conversation), related to nearly every Lithuanian rabbinic giant of the last generation, told me recently: “Everyone knows Rabbi Kook was correct.”

They cannot admit this to each other, since the core creed of Haredi Judaism is that “Everything new is forbidden.” Hence the clothing choices preserved from whichever era was deemed best for each subgroup: 18th-century garb for the Hasidim, early-20th-century attire for the yeshiva types, and early-1970s shift collars over jacket lapels for the religious Zionists, who still pine for the era when Sinai was Israel.

The thing to know about the Haredim is that they see themselves as the True Jews. Anyone who comes to prick their bubble—for it is a bubble—they have been trained to see as the latest incarnation of the eternal enemy of the True Jews. But more and more, the cognitive dissonance is breaking through. It is the Jihadis who are the true enemy—they know this deep down—and their daily study of ancient texts isn’t actually what protects their families from the Jihadis. It’s the guys and girls with the guns.

If pressed, the Haredim will argue that while all Israel is one nation, they are the soul and the secular are the body. But they’ve actually got it the wrong way round. Studying ancient texts in the same way generation after generation, while not contributing productively or equally bearing the burdens of society, is not “soul.” Their culture and even language increasingly cringe toward mainstream Israeli culture; little that is original emerges from Haredi society.

It is, in fact, the secular who are the soul—who have truly built a new Jew. The Haredim are, accidentally, the body—their profligate birthrate has buried the hopes the local Arabs once had of outnumbering, and thus overcoming, their Jewish neighbors. The secular though they we were body, but turn out to the soul. The Haredi think they are the soul but are actually the body. The message: Don’t force things to hard.

Soft shaming for being “yellow” will have more effect, and with less of the negatively side-effects of any attempt at forced conscription. Israeli politicians should avoid the easy point-scoring they can achieve here and focus instead on the long game.

Oh oh! Defiance on Tehran’s metro

 

Rare defiance on Tehran’s metro: soldiers wave Iran’s pre-revolution lion flag

the country’s original flag, bearing the lion-and-sun emblem used before the Islamic Revolution, a direct challenge to the symbols of the current regime.  

For uniformed soldiers to display that flag in public is a bold act of protest in a state that harshly punishes dissent, especially inside the security forces. 

The lion-and-sun banner has long been adopted by regime opponents as a symbol of a free, pre-Khomeini Iran

Iran has lots of missiles but zero water...Millions will have to flee

 

*Tehran’s Water Is Failing Fast, and Iran Says Millions May Have to Flee*

Iran warns it may have to evacuate its own capital as the taps run dry and key dams hit “empty.” 

Tehran is already seeing pressure cuts, dry neighborhoods and panic buying of water tanks, as years of regime mismanagement collide with a brutal drought and rising public anger.

The same regime that funds terror proxies across the region is now telling millions of its own citizens to prepare for rationing – and possibly to leave their city – because it failed to secure something as basic as drinking water.

Chareidie Torah Leaders Finally Admit What we All Knew That their refusal to serve in the army isn’t about Torah!

 

by Nochum Weiss

There’s no other way to say it. The Charedi refusal to serve in the army isn’t about Torah. It’s about fear of exposure. Of losing control.

The official line - “we’re protecting Torah” is a non-starter. There’s more Torah study today than at any point in Jewish history. Nobody is threatening the Torah. 

What’s being protected is the system of control that depends on isolation.

Because the moment a young man or woman spends time in a mixed environment - hearing other accents, seeing other Jews who live differently but are still committed - the illusion starts to break. In the army, they learn to make decisions, to function without rabbinic oversight, to stand on their own. That independence is dangerous - not because it corrupts, but because it empowers.

And so, they don’t just refuse combat. They refuse any participation¹ - intelligence, logistics, tech, cooking - anything that could integrate them into national life. Because integration means exposure. Exposure means curiosity. And curiosity means the possibility of doubt.

The whole thing is a tantrum frozen in time. In 1948, Ben-Gurion treated it like one. He said fine - let a few hundred boys sit and learn². The child was small then. It was crying, and he figured it would grow up eventually. But it didn’t. It grew older without growing up.

Now the child is a full-grown adult still screaming on the floor, kicking its legs, demanding everyone else stop what they’re doing to accommodate its fear.

You can see it clearly in moments like this confrontation after October 7. A group of reservists met with Rabbi Tzvi Friedman. They spoke about a country in crisis. The house is on fire, they said. Everyone needs to grab a bucket.

Friedman didn’t argue the facts. He said the fire was irrelevant.

“Being in secular Israeli society,” he told them, “is worse than death.”

Separate Charedi units? “The army is one body; its spirit will seep in.”
Zionist culture, he said, “isn’t Judaism.” Hundreds of students had already signed declarations accepting death over enlistment.

When your entire world is built on the belief that isolation equals holiness, exposure feels like extinction. Zionism isn’t the issue - it’s just the symbol for a Jewish life that doesn’t require rabbinic permission to exist.

A faith that collapses the moment it meets the world isn’t faith. It’s fragility disguised as holiness.

And the fragility runs deep. They reject Zionism yet demand its funding. Call others immoral while depending on their labor and taxes. Preach spiritual strength but cannot survive a single draft notice without threatening to unravel.

That’s not holiness. That’s institutionalized weakness.

When yeshiva institutions spoof “Bring Them Home” imagery and protesters co-opt hostage symbols, that weakness turns into moral blindness.

And the rest of Israel keeps feeding it. Billions in funding. Deferments. Deference. All to maintain a fantasy of unity that no longer exists. Because the Charedim don’t see themselves as part of the Jewish people anymore. Not really. Ask them if the Dati Leumi community’s Torah counts. Ask them if the soldiers who pray before battle are serving God.

There’s no fixing this. Not through understanding. Not through appeasement. You can’t reform people who refuse to participate in the same moral universe.

The only real solution is financial. No more double standards. If you want to live outside the state - fine. But then live outside the state. No funding, no subsidies, no stipends for eternal dependency. You can’t take billions from the public purse while rejecting every public duty. Pick a side.

Because this isn’t going to end well. The child is grown now. It’s time to stop pretending the tantrum is sacred.

The left is pushing another desperate anti-Trump hoax – a false Epstein smear campaign

 The party that cries wolf is at it again.

Democrats are back in Congress after their shutdown to launch another anti-Trump hoax.

This time, it’s not a fictional “pee tape” but the old Epstein horse they keep flogging.

On Wednesday, House Oversight Committee Democrats selectively released three emails among 23,000 handed over by the estate of the late pedophile financier Jeffrey Epstein to try to implicate Donald Trump, yet again, in Epstein’s sexual abuse of underage girls.

Of course, the Oversight Dems, who include such adornments to Congress as Jasmine Crockett, Ayanna Pressley and Rashida Tlaib, left out crucial information that exonerated the president, instead claiming the emails “raise serious questions about Donald Trump and his knowledge of Epstein’s horrific crimes.”

In the first email, Epstein writes to his now-jailed pimp Ghislaine Maxwell on April 2, 2011: “i want you to realize that that dog that hasn’t barked is trump. [Redacted name of victim] spent hours at my house with him , he has never once been mentioned. police chief. etc. im 75 % there.”

The Epstein victim whose name the Democrats gratuitously left out was Virginia Giuffre.

But we have already heard from her repeatedly, both under oath and in her posthumously released memoir, and she consistently states that Donald Trump was not involved in her abuse by Epstein, Maxwell, the British royal formerly known as Prince Andrew and others.

Giuffre never wavered in her statements that she knew nothing to implicate Trump in Epstein’s sordid crimes with girls mainly aged 14 to 17.

She committed suicide earlier this year, and now the Democrats are cynically using her tragedy as a weapon against Trump who she has explicitly absolved, over and over.

In a 2016 deposition, Giuffre said Trump “didn’t partake in any sex with us [and] never flirted with me.”

In her memoir “Nobody’s Girl,” she said Trump was not involved in any wrongdoing and “couldn’t have been friendlier” when she worked at his Palm Beach, Fla., resort Mar-a-Lago as a teenager before Maxwell recruited her.

by Miranda Devine 

Trump orders Israel to pardon Netanyahu or risk peace plan unravelling

 

Donald Trump has ordered Israel to pardon Benjamin Netanyahu to avoid the Middle East peace process unravelling.

Describing the prosecution as “political” and “unjustified”, the US president said pardoning the veteran prime minister would allow Israel to unite.

Mr Netanyahu was indicted in 2019 for breach of trust, accepting bribes and fraud.

The prime minister’s reforms limiting the power of the judiciary are said to be motivated by his criminal charges.

The prosecution also revealed deep splits in Israeli society, provoking rolling protests in the months before the start of the war in Gaza in October 2023.

The current trial at the Tel Aviv District Court is progressing extremely slowly due to regular requests for absence by Mr Netanyahu’s team for their client to attend to official duties.

It is rare for foreign leaders to interfere in the internal criminal proceedings of other countries.

However, Mr Trump – a long-time ally of Mr Netanyahu – strongly identifies with political leaders who have faced prosecution, given his own legal challenges in the years between his administrations.

In a formal letter to president Isaac Herzog, Mr Trump writes: 

“As the Great State of Israel and the amazing Jewish People move past the terribly difficult times of thee last three years, I hereby call on you to fully pardon Benjamin Netanyahu, who has been a formidable and decisive War Time Prime Minister, and is now leading Israel into a time of peace, which includes my continued work with key Middle East Leaders to add many additional countries to the world changing Abraham Accords.”

He adds: “Prime Minister Netanyahu has stood tall for Israel in the face of strong adversaries and long odds, and his attention cannot be unnecessarily diverted.”

While stressing that he respected the independence of Israel’s judiciary, he described the charges as politically motivated.

On a visit to Israel in October to mark the ceasefire and return of the hostages, Mr Trump suggested, in a whimsical manner, to Mr Herzog that he should pardon the prime minister during a freewheeling address to the Senate.

He later told reporters that he had not planned to make the intervention but had changed his mind when he felt support in the chamber for Mr Netanyahu, describing the intervention as “a little risqué”.

There is a growing political movement against the charges on the Right of Israeli politics.

A new piece of legislation has been proposed that would enable ministers to halt the prosecution and make it harder for Mr Netanyahu’s leading opponents to stand in next year’s election.

Although Mr Herzog built his political career in the Labor Party, he is one of the few leading figures in Israeli politics with whom Mr Netanyahu has not publicly fought or conducted a lengthy feud.

As president, he is the one person capable of quashing a criminal conviction.

Opponents of Mr Netanyahu argue that, due to the pared-back schedule of the trial, it does not materially hinder his ability to govern.

Were he to be convicted, that would inevitably trigger a political crisis that could potentially slow diplomatic advances with Arab neighbors.

However, some analysts believe that some Arab leaders, such as those in Saudi Arabia and Syria, would prefer to wait for Mr Netanyahu to leave office before normalizing relations with Israel, due to his controversial handling of the war in Gaza.

According to a report by Reuters, talks are currently in “deadlock” over how to handle the issue of Hamas disarmament and a future peacekeeping force for the Strip.

Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law and a key broker of the current peace, met with an anti-Hamas clan leader, Yasser Abu Shabab, during his recent trip to Israel, it has been reported.

Accused of being involved in organized crime, which he denies, Abu Shabab is one of a handful of clan bosses who have openly defied the terror group.

American officials are reportedly considering using their model of armed protection for families who want to move away from Hamas and methods of food distribution, as a model for humanitarian zones on the IDF side of the ceasefire line.