Rachel Jacobs Mother of 2 year old Missing: UPDATED

Rachel Jacobs, daughter of former Michigan state senator, among 7 dead in Amtrak train derailment

Rachel Jacobs was a go-getter with a weakness for Motown who commuted by Amtrak from Manhattan to her job in Philadelphia.

On Wednesday, her loved ones found out she was never coming home.

“We are just frantic waiting to hear news from my daughter,” Gilda Jacobs told The Daily News just before took off for the East Coast to find her daughter.

FACEBOOK

Jacobs, who lived in Stuyvesant Town, left behind her husband, Todd Waldman, their son, Jacob, and Detroit Nation — an organization of former Motown residents devoted to helping their struggling hometown gets back on its feet.

Several hours later, the former Michigan state senator was on a plane to New York City when the news broke that her 39-year-old daughter was among theseven people who perished when the train ran off the rails in Philadelphia.

Jacobs, who lived in Stuyvesant Town, left behind her husband, Todd Waldman, their son, Jacob, and Detroit Nation — an organization of former Motown residents devoted to helping their struggling hometown gets back on its feet..

“She loved Detroit,” a heartbroken friend who asked not to be identified said. “She wanted to help out her hometown and found a way to get all the expat Detroiters involved in helping the city out.”

Jacobs, CEO of a technology education company called ApprenNet, also loved the music Detroit made famous.

LUCAS JACKSON/REUTERS

Jacobs commuted by Amtrak from Manhattan to her job in Philadelphia.

“I grew up on the Temptations and the Four Tops,” Jacobs said on a website, where she described her joyous Jewish wedding.

Daylight on Wednesday revealed the devastation caused by an Amtrak train derailment in Philadelphia that left at least six people dead and dozens injured, several critically, in a terrifying wreck that plunged passengers into darkness and chaos. 

 One of the victims is a 21-year-old Jewish man from Far Rockaway. His name is Justin (Avraham Yitzchak) Zemser Z”L. Authorities are releasing the body to the family without any autopsy.

Additionally, friends of a woman named Rachel Jacobs were showing her photo at the 30th Street Station in Philadelphia. She is the CEO of ApprenNet, a Philadelphia technology firm. She texted her husband that she was on the train and has not been seen since.

Some passengers had to scramble through the windows of toppled cars to escape. One of the seven cars was severely mangled.

Train 188, a Northeast Regional, was en route from Washington to New York with 238 passengers and five crew members when it jumped the tracks as it was rounding a sharp curve in the city’s working-class Port Richmond section shortly after 9 p.m. Tuesday, authorities said.

The accident closed the nation’s busiest rail corridor between New York and Washington as federal investigators from the National Transportation Safety Board arrived to begin examining the twisted wreckage and determine what went wrong.

“It is an absolute disastrous mess,” Mayor Michael Nutter said. “I’ve never seen anything like this in my life.”

Nutter confirmed five deaths and said not all the people on the train had been accounted for. Temple University Hospital said Wednesday a person died there overnight from a chest injury.

More than 140 people went to hospitals to be evaluated or treated for injuries that included burns and broken bones.

Amtrak said the cause of the derailment was not known.

Passenger Jillian Jorgensen, 27, was seated in the quiet car — the second passenger car — and said the train was going “fast enough for me to be worried” when it began to lurch to the right.

The train derailed, the lights went out and Jorgensen was thrown from her seat. She said she “flew across the train” and landed under some seats that had apparently broken loose from the floor.

Jorgensen, a reporter for The New York Observer who lives in Jersey City, New Jersey, said she wriggled free as fellow passengers screamed. She saw one man lying still, his face covered in blood, and a woman with a broken leg.

She climbed out an emergency exit window, and a firefighter helped her down a ladder to safety.

“It was terrifying and awful, and as it was happening it just did not feel like the kind of thing you could walk away from, so I feel very lucky,” Jorgensen said in an email to The Associated Press. “The scene in the car I was in was total disarray, and people were clearly in a great deal of pain.”

Early Wednesday, authorities on the scene seemed to be girding for a long haul. Several portable toilets were delivered for investigators and recovery workers. Heavy equipment was brought in, and Amtrak workers in hard hats walked around the wreck.

All seven train cars, including the engine, were in “various stages of disarray,” Nutter said. He said there were cars that were “completely overturned, on their side, ripped apart.”

An AP Press manager, Paul Cheung, was on the train and said he was watching a video on his laptop when “the train started to decelerate, like someone had slammed the brake.”

“Then suddenly you could see everything starting to shake,” he said. “You could see people’s stuff flying over me.”

Cheung said another passenger urged him to escape from the back of his car, which he did. He said he saw passengers trying to get out through the windows of cars tipped on their sides.

“The front of the train is really mangled,” he said. “It’s a complete wreck. The whole thing is like a pile of metal.”

Gaby Rudy, an 18-year-old from Livingston, New Jersey, was headed home from George Washington University. She said she was nearly asleep when she suddenly felt the train “fall off the track.”

The next few minutes were filled with broken glass and smoke, said Rudy, who suffered minor injuries. “They told us we had to run away from the train in case another train came,” she said.

Another passenger, Daniel Wetrin, was among more than a dozen people taken to a nearby elementary school.

“I think the fact that I walked off kind of made it even more surreal because a lot of people didn’t walk off,” he said. “I walked off as if, like, I was in a movie. There were people standing around, people with bloody faces. There were people, chairs, tables mangled about in the compartment … power cables all buckled down as you stepped off the train.”

Several people, including one man complaining of neck pain, were rolled away on stretchers. Others wobbled as they walked away or were put on buses. An elderly woman was given oxygen.

The Port Richmond neighborhood is a mix of warehouses, industrial buildings and homes.

The area where the wreck happened is known as Frankford Junction. It is not far from the site of one of the nation’s deadliest train accidents: the 1943 derailment of the Congressional Limited, from Washington to New York, which killed 79 people.

Amtrak’s busy Northeast Corridor serves more than 11 million passengers a year.

The mayor, citing the mangled train tracks and downed wires, said: “There’s no circumstance under which there would be any Amtrak service this week through Philadelphia.”

North Korea Executes Defense Chief With An Anti-Aircraft Gun because he took a nap during Kim Jong Un's Speech

Senior North Korean military officer Hyon Yong Chol (R, front) attends the 4th Moscow Conference on International Security (MCIS) in Moscow in this April 16, 2015 file photo. 

North Korea executed its defense chief by putting him in front of an anti-aircraft gun at a firing range, Seoul’s National Intelligence Service told lawmakers, which would be the latest in a series of high-level purges since Kim Jong Un took charge. 

Hyon Yong Chol, who headed the isolated nuclear-capable country’s military, was charged with treason, including disobeying Kim and falling asleep during an event at which North Korea’s young leader was present, according to South Korean lawmakers briefed in a closed-door meeting with the spy agency on Wednesday. 

His execution was watched by hundreds of people, according to NIS intelligence shared with lawmakers. It was not clear how the NIS obtained the information and it is not possible to independently verify such reports from within secretive North Korea. “The NIS official said it had been confirmed by multiple sources. It is still just intelligence, but he said they were confident,” Shin Kyoung-min, a lawmaker and member of the opposition New Politics Alliance for Democracy, who attended the briefing, told Reuters. 

Experts on North Korea said there was no sign of instability in Pyongyang, but there could be if purges continued. 

Kim had previously ordered the execution of 15 senior officials this year as punishment for challenging his authority, according to the NIS. In all, some 70 officials have been executed since Kim took over after his father’s death in 2011, Yonhap news agency cited the NIS as saying. “There is no clear or present danger to Kim Jong Un’s leadership or regime stability, but if this continues to happen into next year, then we should seriously start to think about revising our scenarios on North Korea,” said Michael Madden, an expert on the country’s leadership who contributes to the 38 North think tank in Washington. 

Koh Yu-hwan, a North Korea specialist at Dongguk University in Seoul, said the regime could “reach its limit” if Kim’s purges continued. “But it’s still too early to tell,” said Koh. 

The lawmakers said Hyon, 66, was executed at a firing range at the Kanggon Military Training Area, 22 km (14 miles) north of Pyongyang, according to the NIS. The U.S.-based Committee for Human Rights in North Korea said last month that, according to satellite images, the range was likely used for an execution by ZPU-4 anti-aircraft guns in October. The target was just 30 meters (100 feet) away from the weapons, which have a range of 8,000 meters, it said. 

 Hyon was said to have shown disrespect to Kim by dozing off at a military event, the Seoul lawmakers said, citing the agency briefing. Hyon was also believed to have voiced complaints against Kim and had not followed his orders several times, according to the lawmakers. He was arrested in late April and executed three days later without legal proceedings, the NIS told lawmakers. 

“When the NIS is talking officially, they are relatively reliable. There are good reasons to believe it is true, but we cannot be 100 percent sure yet,” said Andrei Lankov, a North Korea expert at Kookmin University in Seoul. Last month, Hyon traveled to Moscow, where he spoke at a security conference. He was reported by North Korean state media to have appeared at an event in late April - shortly before the NIS told lawmakers he was executed - an outward indication that all was normal. 

North Korea is one of the most insular - and unpredictable - countries in the world and its power structure is highly opaque. The current leader is the third generation of the Kim family that has ruled with near-absolute power since the country was formed in 1948. Kim Jong Un’s father, Kim Jong Il, was appointed successor to the North Korean throne two decades before coming to power in 1994, during which time he was able to purge and alienate potential political challengers. 

Kim Jong Un, by contrast, has had few years to consolidate power. In 2013, Kim Jong Un purged and executed his uncle, Jang Song Thaek, once considered the second most powerful man in Pyongyang’s leadership, for factionalism and committing crimes damaging to the economy, along with a group of officials close to him. Lankov said that the purges in Pyongyang did not necessarily point to instability. “The common assumption is that it’s bad for stability, but I’m not so sure,” he said, adding it could be Kim consolidating his power base and removing people who had not sufficiently proved their loyalty. 

Pyongyang’s military leadership has been in a state of perpetual reshuffle since Kim Jong Un took power. He has changed his armed forces chief four times since coming to power, while his father, Kim Jong Il, who ruled the country for almost two decades, replaced his chief just three times. 

The South Korean spy agency told lawmakers that Ma Won Chun, known as North Korea’s chief architect of new infrastructure under Kim, was also purged or punished, the lawmakers said. Ma had also once served as vice director of the secretive Finance and Accounting Department in the ruling Workers’ Party and, until recently, was effectively the regime’s money man.

The Intrinsic Sanctity of the Land of Israel ... Shmittah etc..

Rabbi Yaakov David Willowski (1845-1913) of Safed, known as the 'Ridbaz,' was one of the most vociferous opponents to the hetter mechirah - the temporary sale of land in Israel to a non-Jew in order to avoid the restrictions of working the land during the Sabbatical year. 

More interesting than his Halachic objections to the sale, however, is the philosophical argument that the rabbi of Safed raised.

The stated purpose of the hetter, the Ridbaz wrote, is to uphold the mitzvah of Yishuv Ha'aretz, settling the Land, by allowing the fledgling agricultural settlements in the Land of Israel to grow and prosper. But if the legal sale is indeed effective, then the Land would lose its sanctity and the special agricultural mitzvot - tithes, the Sabbatical year, and so on - would no longer apply. And if the Land is not holy, there is no longer a mitzvah to settle the Land. Thus the hetter in effect undermines the very goal it was designed to support!

To paraphrase the Ridbaz: the whole purpose of our return to Eretz Yisrael is to fulfill its special mitzvot and experience its unique sanctity. If we use loopholes and legal fictions to avoid these mitzvot, we may as well be living in Warsaw or New York!

Rav Kook and the Hetter

Despite common belief, Rav Kook was not in fact the author of the hetter mechirah. 

This legal mechanism was first designed for the Sabbatical year of 1889. 

At that time, Jewish farmers in Eretz Yisrael, whose livelihood depended upon the export of wine and citrus fruits, turned to the leading Halachic authorities in Europe to find a way to avoid the ruin of the fragile industry they were struggling to develop. Were they to let the land lie fallow, the young orchards would suffer greatly, and the export business they had built up would be lost. They also feared that land left fallow could be lost to squatters and thieves. This was particularly problematic due to Ottoman Empire land laws, which allowed ownership of uncultivated land to be challenged by squatters

In response to this difficult situation, three prominent rabbis met in Vilna and devised the hetter mechirah, based on similar legal sales to avoid the prohibitions involved with bechorot (firstborn animals) and chametz on Passover. The hetter was approved by famed Halachic authority Rabbi Yitzchak Elchanan Spector. However, many prominent rabbis opposed it, including some of the greatest authorities of the time - and the controversy over the hetter mechirah was born.

As rabbi of the town of Jaffa and its surrounding communities, Rav Kook needed to take a position regarding the hetter. While still in Europe, he had discussed the issue with his father-in-law, and they both decided against supporting it.

But after coming to Eretz Yisrael and seeing first-hand the great need for the hetter, Rav Kook changed his mind and became a staunch supporter of the leniency. Prior to the Sabbatical year of 1910, he penned a Halachic treatise in defense of the hetter mechirah, entitled Shabbat Ha'aretz.

The Sanctity of the Land

In his remarks defending the hetter, Rav Kook responded to the Ridbaz's objection that the hetter undermines its own stated goal - supporting the settlement of the Land of Israel - because selling the Land to non-Jews annuls its sanctity and circumvents its special mitzvot.

This argument, Rav Kook explained, is based on the false premise that the special holiness of Eretz Yisrael is limited to mitzvot ha-teluyot ba'aretz, those mitzvot that only apply in the Land. According to this view, once these special mitzvot are no longer binding, there is no longer any holiness to the Land and no mitzvah to settle it.

But this is not the true outlook of the Torah. Instead, we should compare the mitzvah of settling the Land of Israel to the mitzvah of studying Torah. While it is true that Torah study enables one to learn how to properly discharge all mitzvot, one cannot say that the value of Torah study is only as a preparation to fulfilling mitzvot. In fact, there is an intrinsic holiness in the act of studying Torah. Even when studying subjects which have no current practical application, this study is nonetheless invaluable. As the Sages taught: One who studies the laws of the Chatat offering is considered as if he offered a Chatat(Menachot 110a).

The holiness of the Land of Israel is independent of those mitzvot that may be fulfilled while living there. Just the opposite: the primary holiness of the Land is reflected in the mitzvah to settle it, and the obligation of mitzvot ha-teluyot ba'aretz is an expression of this special holiness. As the Sages taught, merely living in Eretz Yisrael is equal to all the mitzvot in the Torah - and this 'equation' includes those mitzvot that only apply in the Land.

Equal to all the Mitzvot

This statement about the overriding value of living in the Land appears in the Sifri (sec. 80) in the context of the following story:

"Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua and Rabbi Yochanan HaSandlar set out to travel to Nitzivim [in Babylonia] in order to study Torah from Rabbi Yehudah ben Beteira. But when they arrived in Sidon, they remembered the Land of Israel. They lifted their eyes, and their tears flowed. They rent their garments and quoted the verse: "You will expel them and dwell in their land" (Deut. 12:29). Then they returned home and declared: Dwelling in the Land of Israel is equivalent to all of the mitzvot of the Torah."

These scholars had pure motives for leaving Eretz Yisrael. They sought to learn Torah from one of the leading sages of the generation. Yet in the end, they decided that the mitzvah of dwelling in the Land takes precedence. They placed greater value on living in Eretz Yisrael, even at a time when the country suffered from foreign rule and economic hardship. The mitzvah of living in the Land was still in force, even though the Sages of that time found legal loopholes - similar to the hetter mechirah - to lighten the financial burden of certain mitzvot (such as Hillel's pruzbul, and avoiding tithes by bringing produce into the house by way of the courtyard or the roof (see Berachot 35b)).

Why did these scholars quote this particular verse, "You will expel them and dwell in their land"? Apparently, they noted that the word "their" is extraneous; it could have just read "and dwell in the land." They deduced from here that even when the Land of Israel has not been fully released from the control of foreign nations - even when it was still considered "their land," the land of the Canaanite nations, and many of the land-dependent mitzvot were not yet incumbent - we are nonetheless obligated to dwell in the Land.

This lesson was also valid during the time of Rabbi Elazar ben Shamua and Rabbi Yochanan HaSandlar. Even after the destruction of the Temple, even in a time of foreign rule, the mitzvah of dwelling in the Land is still equal to all the mitzvot.

The author of Kaftor VaFerach (Rabbi Ishtori HaParchi, 1280-1355) similarly wrote that the sanctity of the Land of Israel is independent of the mitzvot ha-teluyot ba'aretz. 

His proof: 

why did Jacob, Joseph, and Moses all seek to be buried in the Land when it had not yet been conquered and sanctified?

In summary, Rav Kook concluded, it is not only possible to be lenient in our days, it is proper to do so, in order to encourage settlement of the Land. Furthermore, the hetter does not cancel all aspects of the Sabbatical year. It only permits those types of agricultural labor that are rabbinically prohibited. Thus the Sabbatical year is not completely uprooted. This hetter, Rav Kook explained, is similar to the permission - and obligation - to desecrate the Sabbath in life-threatening situations. As the Sages wrote: The Torah teaches that we should desecrate a single Sabbath for one whose life is in danger, so that he will be able to keep many future Sabbaths(Yoma 85b). Similarly, by permitting certain agricultural work now, we will enable the full observance of the Sabbatical year in the future.

Novominsker Rebbe Issues Direct Plea to President Obama regarding Iran

I got to give credit where credit is due! I have been hammering Agudah for not addressing issues that concern Israel's security, so now the Noveminsker addressed it..Kudos!

“Our tefillos, of course, are directed to Avinu shebashamayim, but I also feel compelled to address the leader of this great country.”

A deafening silence overtook the cavernous grand ballroom of the Hilton New York, as Rabbi Yaakov Perlow, the Novominsker Rebbe shlit”a, Rosh Agudas Yisroel of America, spoke these words during the organization’s 93rd annual dinner on Sunday evening.

The subject that prompted the Rebbe to address his words directly to President Obama was the impending “deal” with Iran regarding the rogue nation’s nuclear development. The Rebbe expressed deep concern about the threat an invigorated Iran poses toward Israel.

The Rebbe passionately invoked the 70th anniversary of the culmination of the Holocaust when discussing Iran’s “open declaration of genocide.” He bluntly stated that the diplomatic agreements currently being contemplated between the United States and Iran could well enable the radical regime to attain nuclear weapons “one way or another.”

“Mr. President, rise to the challenge of history,” the Rebbe implored, “and preserve life and freedom for a people who have been the whipping boys of history.”

PA Towns Surrounded by Jews Enjoy 0% Unemployment

Propaganda notwithstanding, it turns out that being surrounded by 'settlers' isn't all that 'suffocating.'

View from the hills of Samaria

Three Palestinian Arab towns in western Samaria that are surrounded by Jewish communities and seemingly “cut off” from the rest of the the Palestinian Authority (PA) are actually doing quite well for themselves, according to a report by the PA-based Safa news agency cited by blogger Elder of Zion.

The towns – Mas-ha, Qarawat Bani Hassan and Biddya, are bordered by Elkana on the west and Barkan on the east, and as the blogger notes, they form “islands of Arab brown among a sea of Jewish blue areas,” in amap provided by the pro-Palestinian B'tselem.

While PA propaganda portrays Jewish settlements as "strangling" Arab towns, the Safa article, in Arabic, actually says that the towns have an amazing zero percent unemployment rate.

The towns' merchants used to do brisk business with Jewish customers, but the great terror war of the 2000s scared off the Jews, and forced them to look for alternative markets. The town leaders decided to re-orient their economy around manufacturing. “Now they are filled with factories making glass, furniture and other goods,” writes Elder of Zion. “This has caused their land prices to increase tenfold, from 10,000 Jordanian dinars per dunam to 100,000 dinars.”

The new factories are reportedly attracting Arabs from all over Judea and Samaria, with workers' wages comparable to those of Arab workers in Jewish communities, at NIS 4000-7000 a month.

And yet, the business leaders of Qarawat Bani Hassan complain that the PA does nothing to help them, while taxing them heavily and treating them with suspicion.

“The story of Mas-ha, Qarawat Bani Hassan and Biddya shows that it isn't settlements that are ruining the economy under PA rule. It is PA rule itself, where jobs are used as political favors and corruption is the norm, where innovation is punished and laziness rewarded,” writes the veteran pro-Israel blogger. 

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked: Why is the Left Afraid of her?

Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked may be Israeli democracy's last hope of overthrowing an elitist clique which enjoys all the trappings of a Middle East dictatorship - and that's precisely why the Left are so determined to stop her.

From crude, sexist comments to outright death threats, the hysterical reaction to the appointment of Jewish Home MK Ayelet Shaked as Justice Minister has been shocking even by the low standards of the far-left.

Now, the incitement has reached such levels that Shaked will be assigned a personal security detail - a rare occurrence in Israel, where MKs and ministers can regularly be seen walking in public safely without bodyguards.

Why?

She is, we are informed, a "danger to democracy" - for wanting to curb the powers of an unelected clique which currently has the ability to veto any Knesset legislation it so chooses: the Supreme Court.

Those votes you cast last March? 

Those legislators acting on your behalf? 

They are just putty in the hands of 15 people of the same political hue (guess which one), who "know better" - and who are by no means shy of "correcting" the State of Israel's democratic decisions (read: decisions not in-line with their own ideological vision), should they feel the need. That, we are told by Shaked's ferocious critics, is the true face of democracy. And you'd better believe it!

For those unaware of just how undemocratic the Supreme Court is as an institution, look no further than the body which selects its judges, the Judicial Selection Committee. 

The Committee is comprised of nine members. Of those, two are government ministers (including the Justice Minister and one other), two are MKs (one each from the coalition and opposition), and another two are members of the Israeli Bar Association. 

So far, so balanced.

But the remaining three are sitting members of the Supreme Court - granting them an effective veto over any candidate. It's also worth noting that according to convention the committee members selected from the Israeli Bar Association traditionally come from the Association's two largest - and leftist-dominated - factions.

Once selected, the only way to remove a Supreme Court Justice (other than them retiring) is for the Court of Discipline - headed by judges handpicked by the Supreme Court President - to disqualify them. 

A Justice can only be considered for disqualification if both the Justice Minister and Supreme Court President are in agreement, and after a majority vote by seven of the nine Committee Members.

Given that nearly all Justice Ministers have come from the political Left - with the remainder coming from the more "establishment" elements of the Likud party (Netanyahu's favorite was rumored to have been the distinctly anti-reform Likud MK Benny Begin) - the Supreme Court Justices have had a very sweet deal indeed: 

on the one hand, almost unlimited power to fashion the country in their image; and on the other, in the tradition of all Middle Eastern dictators, a phony legitimacy provided by an elaborate pretense of democracy in the shape of an opaque and cynically-stacked selection process.

To be sure, the issue is one of balance and independent 

oversight, and not any fundamental problem in having a robust judiciary (an important aspect of any functioning democracy). To that end, Shaked's ultimate goal should not be to render it impotent but rather to knock it down several pegs and pave the way for a desperately-needed reform in both its composition and the limits to its power (of which there are currently none whatsoever). 

Were the Supreme Court to be more balanced in its composition, it would not have gained the degree of resentment it has.

Instead, the Court acts as the Left's insurance plan; even if they lose the Knesset, the "Bagatz" can always make sure the country's trajectory doesn't swing too far away from their vision to prevent them from pulling it back eventually.

The Right, on the other hand, has no such safety net.

This clear agenda is reflected in even a brief glance at the instances in which the court has intervened to torpedo Knesset and government legislation - as well as when it has decided not to.

Deporting illegal immigrants? 

That goes against Israel's democratic fiber, so shoot it down they will - repeatedly!

Deporting Jews from Gaza? 

Preventing the gross miscarriage of justice - which undermines their own courts - of releasing convicted terrorist murderers just for a place at the table with the Palestinian Authority? Suddenly, it is "inappropriate" for the courts to intervene "in matters of government policy."

And of course, it doesn't help that the Basic Laws (Israel's amorphous and poorly-defined version of a constitution) which define the Supreme Court's powers are subject to interpretation by none other than... the Supreme Court.

Take for example the way in which the Courts have alternatively implemented and ignored the "Basic Law: The Knesset" as it suits them, to take de-facto control over who we can or cannot vote for (Ayatollah Khamenei could learn a thing or two).

In 1988, the Court accepted a petition to ban right-wing MK Rabbi Meir Kahane and his Kach party from running for election, based on an amendment made three years earlier to the Basic Law. According to that amendment, a candidate can be disqualified if he/she advocates for the "negation of the existence of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state; incitement to racism; [or] support of armed struggle, by a hostile state or a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel."

Rabbi Kahane's anti-Arab rhetoric was deemed to fall under that second category, and hence the Court upheld his disqualification.

Fast-forward to February 2015 and, for the umpteenth time, pro-Hamas MK Hanin Zoabi's ban on running was overturned by the Supreme Court - despite her being open about her negation of Israel as a Jewish state, as well as her clear and open support, again and again, "of armed struggle, by a hostile state or a terrorist organization, against the State of Israel."

Zoabi yes, Kahane no. 

The Court has spoken - and it needn't justify its double-standard to us mere mortals. No wonder Zoabi was laughing so hard.

Former Supreme Court President Judge Aharon Barak once compared his court to the sages of the Talmud (minus the commitment to halakha, of course) - fashioning the very shape of the Jewish people with a near-divine mandate. That is genuinely how they view themselves.

It should come as no surprise, therefore, that the appointment, for the first time, of a Justice Minister who has clearly voiced her intention to curb some of the Court's unlimited power, should be the subject of such ferocious hatred from the very political corner that Court has been doggedly advocating for and defending since the State's founding.

Even without the vulgar comments and threats to her life, Ayelet Shaked will face a tough time achieving the reforms she seeks to implement(which still require clear and comprehensive outlining to allow for public scrutiny).

Jewish Home leader Naftali Bennett achieved a major coup in netting both the Justice Ministry and the Constitution, Law and Justice Committee, but already there are moves to defang Shaked - for example by removing her from the Judicial Selection Committee in favor of a more pro-establishment Likud MK.

However, should she succeed against the odds, it will be nothing less than a revolution. By breaking the suffocating stranglehold of an unelected, leftist clique over Israeli democracy, she can pave the way for the Supreme Court's rehabilitation as a more balanced institution which actually represents the citizens of Israel.

Far from being a "threat to Israeli democracy," as the demagogues tell us, Justice Minister Ayelet Shaked may well be its last hope.

Ari Soffer

The writer is the Managing Editor of Arutz Sheva/Israel NationalNews. He was born in London, UK, and prior to his Aliyah to Israel in 2013 was active in a variety of pro-Israel and anti-extremism organizations. Today, he lives in the ancient Jewish town of Shiloh in Samaria, Israel.

The Kerry Guarantee

John Forbes Kerry is the 68th secretary of state of the United States of America. 

If you’re ever tempted to ponder American decline, or for that matter the decline of the West, you might pause to reflect that John Kerry was preceded in his august office by, among others, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, Henry Clay, Daniel Webster, William Seward, John Hay, Elihu Root, Charles Evans Hughes, Henry Stimson, George Marshall, Dean Acheson, Henry Kissinger, and George Shultz.

But leave aside such melancholy thoughts of the glories of the past. Let’s focus instead on the (admittedly grim) present. Let’s focus on something John Kerry said early last week. It is, even in light of his own sad record and by his own low standards, startlingly foolish. Here’s Kerry, in Jerusalem, attempting to reassure Israelis about Iran’s nuclear program:

I say to every Israeli that today we have the ability to stop [the Iranians] if they decided to move quickly to a bomb and I absolutely guarantee that in the future we will have the ability to know what they are doing so that we can still stop them if they decided to move to a bomb.

This Kerry guarantee is ludicrous. History shows, and every serious expert understands, that there can be no guarantee—let alone an absolute guarantee—that we will know everything the Iranian regime is doing in its efforts to acquire nuclear weapons technology. This would be the case even if Kerry were able, in the current negotiations, to secure a thoroughgoing and intrusive inspections regime, which he is not. With the inspections regime the Obama administration looks likely to settle for, we won’t be able to guarantee, we won’t even be able to have much confidence, that we’ll know what Iran is doing

To get a sense of how farcical Kerry’s “absolute guarantee” is, here’s what two of his illustrious predecessors, Kis-singer and Shultz, have to say about the prospective deal:

Negotiations that began 12 years ago as an international effort to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability, albeit short of its full capacity in the first 10 years. .  .  . Under the proposed agreement, for 10 years Iran will never be further than one year from a nuclear weapon and, after a decade, will be significantly closer. .  .  . In a large country with multiple facilities and ample experience in nuclear concealment, violations will be inherently difficult to detect. .  .  . Any report of a violation is likely to prompt debate over its significance—or even calls for new talks with Tehran to explore the issue. The experience of Iran’s work on a heavy-water reactor during the “interim agreement” period—when suspect activity was identified but played down in the interest of a positive negotiating atmosphere—is not encouraging.

Now, one could imagine a sophisticated case for a not-fully-reassuring deal, made by a more sophisticated negotiator than John Kerry: It’s not perfect, but some visibility into the program is better than none; we’ll probably pick up cheating once it’s been going on for a while; and, as Clint Eastwood put it, “If you want a guarantee, buy a toaster.” But we don’t have a serious or sophisticated negotiator. We have John Kerry. So the deal will be catastrophic. And the defense of it will be dishonest.

That’s why a group of senators fought over the last couple of weeks to strengthen the Corker-Cardin legislation—seeking to add to it standards that would make clear what an acceptable deal would be, and to create a process that would establish a fair playing field for debate and votes on the deal. The junior senators did their best. We salute them for struggling against the odds. But they could not overcome Corker’s resistance to modifying what he’d negotiated with the Democrats, other senior Republicans’ unwillingness to challenge a committee chairman’s work, the pro-Israel establishment’s commitment to bipartisanship, and a general lack of urgency about acting now to stop a bad Iran deal.

The effort was not entirely in vain. These senators at least began to educate their colleagues and the country in the many ways in which the deal toward which the Obama administration is hurtling is a very bad one. And perhaps the House will improve the legislation as it comes over to that body. 

What is crucial now is that the broader anti-nuclear Iran effort not take the next two months off while Kerry negotiates. What is crucial now is that opponents of a nuclear Iran put aside tactical differences to focus on the fundamental task: preventing—or laying the groundwork for defeating—a deal that paves the way toward a Middle East dominated and intimidated by a terror-sponsoring, America-hating, Israel-denying, nuclear-weapons-capable Iran, whose economy will be strengthened with sanctions removed and whose nuclear weapons infrastructure the “international community” will have blessed.

For our part, we “absolutely guarantee” that if there is no further effort to rally opposition to this deal until after it’s signed, it will be too late. That’s why some senators had a sense of urgency about shaping the debate now. They were rebuffed by their elders in the Senate. But the fight goes on. It is a fight against strengthening the Iranian regime at home and abroad, a fight against a nuclear shield for Iranian terror, a fight against a nuclear arms race in the Middle East, a fight for a strong America and for a secure Israel.

The battle over Corker-Cardin may be over. The fight to stop the Iran deal has just begun.

Happy Mother's Day!

Malka Leifer's community harassed abuse claimant: court

Sexual Pervert Malka Leifer

Members of an orthodox Jewish community threatened a Melbourne woman with ostracism if her sister didn't drop a civil sex abuse claim against a headmistress, the Victorian Supreme Court has heard.

The woman, whose two sisters made a complaint to police about alleged sexual assault at the Adass Israel School in Elsternwick Melbourne, was harassed and pressured shortly before her death from a heart attack at age 39, the court heard.

"They threatened her with her job, and her reputation and her children's marriage prospects," the woman's sister, and the claimant in the civil matter, told the court on Thursday.

The Adass Israel School in Elsternwick Melbourne and its former headmistress Malka Leifer are being sued by an ex-student who says she was sexually abused up to several times a week from age 15.

Last August Ms Leifer was arrested in Israel, where she fled in 2008 when sex abuse allegations emerged, and is facing extradition to Australia.

Another sister, who also alleges sex abuse, told the court it was impossible for people to speak out against authority figures in the insular, orthodox community.

"You wouldn't dare try because you would be ostracised," she told the court on Thursday.

"I tried and it didn't get me anywhere."

The first sister earlier told the court she was shielded from the outside world as a child, prevented from watching television or accessing the internet and was only allowed to read censored books.

Her first contact with the "outside" world was in 2011 when she was admitted to a clinic after she became suicidal, she told the court.

The woman suffered depression, post-traumatic stress, and had flashbacks that made it difficult to bond with her daughter, born in 2010, but was refused support or money for counselling from the school, she said.

The trial continues before Justice John Rush.