245 Israelis returning from abroad test positive for coronavirus

 

The new “Check2Fly” coronavirus testing lab at Ben-Gurion Airport's Terminal 3,

Some 245 Israelis who returned from abroad tested positive for the coronavirus in the past two weeks, Ynet reported.

Of the 245, some 30 flew to Israel from the US, 16 from Turkey, 27 from Ukraine, 11 from Russia, 8 from Holland and four from England, according to the news site. Some 26 Israelis who tested positive for the coronavirus were retuning from the United Arab Emirates (UAE), as well, according to the report.

All the above countries apart from the UAE are listed as red by the Health Ministry, meaning that Israelis returning from these countries must enter quarantine upon their return.

Some 90 flights that took place over the past two weeks are listed on the Health Ministry site as locations where Israelis may have been exposed to the coronavirus due to the presence of a confirmed patient.

The 245 who tested positive for coronavirus are among the approximately 44,000 Israelis who have returned to Israel from abroad since the beginning of December.

On Sunday, the Health and Transportation ministries decided to update the country's coronavirus travel policies. Many of the new regulations are aimed at preventing the formation of crowds in the airport.  Included in these updates is a doubling of available check-in counters and earlier available check-in times for travelers. 

A team will also be formed to improve the computer interface in order to shorten waiting times during which travelers are grouped together in lines.

The Health Ministry said that it expects around 240 Israelis to return from visits to the UAE with positive COVID-19 diagnoses during the month of December, Haaretz reported Sunday.

Last week, the Foreign Ministry vetoed turning the United Arab Emirates into a “red country,” which would have meant that arrivals to Israel would have to enter quarantine.

The Health Ministry had decided to designate the UAE “red” earlier the same day, due to the large gatherings of Israelis in Dubai in recent weeks, but Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi asked Health Minister Yuli Edelstein to consult with the Foreign Ministry before any future decisions are made about the UAE.

Idan Zonshine and Lahav Harkov contributed to this report.

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Remembering the rabbi of Buchenwald

 

The date was April 11, 1945, and what Rabbi Schacter was about to 
experience would change his life forever.

On a sunny afternoon 75 years ago this spring, Chaplain Herschel Schacter was drinking coffee with several officers from his unit, the Eighth Corps of the Third US Army, on the outskirts of Weimar, Germany, when “a friendly Colonel, a nice man” approached. 

“You know, this may be of interest to you,” the colonel began. “We just got word that our troops penetrated a place called Buchenwald. It’s some kind of concentration camp, I think.” 

The date was April 11, 1945, and what Rabbi Schacter was about to experience would change his life forever. 

Schacter and his assistant, Private Hyman Schulman, drove five miles to the site. The German guards had fled as American forces arrived earlier that day. Trembling, Schacter stepped through the front gate. His eye “caught a glimpse of a tall chimney with billowing smoke still curling upward.” It was Buchenwald’s crematorium. 

“I scarcely could believe my eyes,” he later recalled. “There I stood, face to face with piles of dead bodies strewn around, waiting to be shoveled into the furnace that was still hot. It was just an incredible, harrowing sight. I stood there for a while in utter confusion and disbelief. I then began to really feel what this horror was all about.” 

A GI led the rabbi to a nearby prisoners’ barracks.

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Shuli Rand on marrying a second wife: I want to be free

 

The news that a Charedi celebrity, who has been in a dispute with his wife for many years, had received permission from a rabbinical court to marry a second wife, sparked outrage on the internet. It is now possible to reveal that the haredi in question is Shuli Rand.

Rand and his wife in Ushpiziin happier times

Rand, who is in a long-running dispute with his wife and the mother of his children, Michal Rand, began dating the television host and journalist Tzofit Grant in the past year.

On Thursday, Rand was interviewed by Hen Lieberman on Channel 13's "The Source," to tell his story. 

"The court still hasn't given me permission," Rand said on the show. "No one has given me permission. Michal came and publicized it beforehand with a loud shout. She calls it bigamy and so on and so forth."

Why can a man get a permit and women can't?

"Okay, it's true that there is no situation in Judaism to let a woman, as long as she is in the definition of being married, get married. There is no such thing. On the other hand, with a man there is such a thing, if it is discrimination it started somewhere our holy Torah was written. Okay, that's the way it is."

There are other ways and a man according to Jewish law can live with another wife.

"I want a permit, I want to be free."

Rand additionally spoke about his wife Michal and the special process he requested which includes the approval of 100 rabbis. "The court has made tremendous efforts including exorbitant proposals to resolve this matter financially, because it could have been ok if I was Bill Gates. I'm not sure, perhaps. But I, all that can be given to a person, that I was able to give, what I have and what I don't have..."

What is the amount that she (Michal) wanted?

"NIS five million, something like that, five million."

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Rabbi Fabian Shonefeld Passes On

 

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Robot Distributing Chanukah Donuts In Hospital

 

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A Premature Autopsy Report on Trump

Recently, there has been a plethora of autopsy reports on US President Trump, including a well-written one on Arutz Sheva, which I will address in friendly fashion below..

There is a famous quip "the operation was a success but the patient died." I reformulate that quip herewith. to say:

"Mr. Trump’s candidacy was successful, he prevailed, but Mr. Biden was elected.."

Though the Arutz Sheva autopsy report is well-done, Mr. Trump is not cooked. Patient/candidate Trump is still alive. Mr. Trump’s flaws, as presented by Dr. Chaim C. Cohen, a writer with much the same academic credentials as I have - PhD, years of college teaching, etc. - in explanation of Mr. Biden’s apparent success, do not explain Mr. Biden’s apparent victory. The evidence does not explain Mr. Trump’s failure to win the presidency, because, certainly, he did win the election in a popular vote and what should have been an electoral college landslide.

There are several indicators of Mr. Trump’s win. No incumbent president has ever lost re-election while his party gained seats in the House of Representatives. No incumbent president has lost a re-election bid while winning significantly more (10,000,000+/-) votes than in his previous election and significantly increasing his share of Black and Latino votes. There are about 55 counties, which, in election after election, are reliable predictors of a presidential outcome. Mr. Trump won about 50 of those counties.

If some statistically unsophisticated person would consider the above facts to be mere coincidences, he would probably consider the 2020 voting results in hypothetical State X: exactly 3,000,000 votes for Mr. Biden and Zero votes for Mr. Trump also to be a coincidence. After all, theoretically, it could happen that exactly 3,000,000 votes (not 2,999,999), constituting 100% of the votes cast, were cast for one of two candidates. Recall the actual 2016 voting results in two or three Philadelphia precincts in which more votes were cast than there were names on the voting rolls. I heard that in one previous presidential election there were some Philadelphia precincts in which there were no Republican votes cast at all! Might that have been a coincidence or anomaly?

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The Corona Vaccine, Purposeful Lies vs. Hard Scientific Facts

A guide for the perplexed: debunking false posts on the web, with explanations of the vaccine and answers to frequent questions.

Introduction:

On December 12, the FDA granted authorization to the corona vaccine developed by the Pfizer pharmaceutical company and its German affiliate BioNTech after it checked the results of the third stage of the vaccine trials.

This is an event of historic importance in the battle against the corona pandemic that has, in less than a year, killed close to two million people (1.7 m. so far) the world over and left millions of others with psychological and physical damage To that must be added the economic havoc the pandemic has caused.

This official authorization allows the vaccine to be given all over the world and with its 95% effectivity (as authorized by a specially augmented group of FDA scientists), there is no doubt it will cause a massive reversal of pandemic's spread and possibly even stop it completely.

The FDA check effectively erases all the arguments against the virus. The 92 page detailed and explanatory summary by Pfizer-BioNTech passed FDA muster on every facet of the third stage tests, including the efficacy of the vaccine and mainly in its description of the minor side effects to those vaccinated during the trial.

The FDA wrote: "The data provided by the Pfizer company passed our critical examination. The efforts to speed up the development of a vaccine did not negatively affect the scientific standards or trustworthiness of our investigative process." The FDA added that the vaccine may be administered to those over the age of 16. In Israel and the US, medical personnel and the elderly in nursing homes will be the first to receive the vaccine.

The FDA added that "the decision to authorize the vaccine was reached after an open and transparent process that included opinions of independent experts in health sciences, as well as a thorough in-depth evaluation of FDA scientists in order to ensure that this vaccination meets the strict and scientific standards of the FDA in anything connected to security, efficacy and quality of manufacture necessary to support it for emergency use."

On December 13, the New England Journal of Medicine published an applied science article by tens of the best scientists and doctors worldwide who took part in the third stage trials of the vaccine (no. BNT162b2 in the listing of clinical research trials). The article puts paid to the false attacks against the mRNA vaccines produced by Pfizer-BioNTech.

Part I: Questions and answers on the vaccine, explaining the facts in layman's terms:

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Michigan Attorney General Says Being Wished a Merry X-mas ‘Devastated’ Her Son

Attorney General Dana Nessel of Michigan tweeted her concern over President Trump’s use of “Merry Christmas” this weekend, according to CBN News.

While campaigning in Georgia in an attempt to secure Republican Senator’s seats, the President told the crowd: “Let me begin by wishing you all a very Merry Christmas. Remember the word? Remember we started five years ago and I said, ‘You’re going to be saying Christmas again,’ and we say it proudly again. Although they’ll be trying to take that word again out of the vocabulary. We’re not going to let them do that.”

Nessel later told her Twitter followers in response to Trump’s speech, “I remember the first time I was at a store with my son and an employee said ‘Merry Christmas’ to us. My son looked devastated and asked, ‘Are we the only people who don’t celebrate Christmas?’ I answered ‘No, and we are just as American as everyone else.’ Glad @JoeBiden knows that.”

But the now-deleted tweet brought an onslaught of responses chiding the AG for her disparagement of “Merry Christmas.”

She later tweeted, “Saying ‘Happy Holidays’ this time of year does not denigrate Christianity. It simply acknowledges and respects the great diversity of our nation and includes each and every one of us who call ourselves proud Americans.” 

A follower told Nessel in response: “Being offended is a choice. If you’re offended by an expression of goodwill, that’s a your problem. If someone wishes me Happy Hanukkah or Ramadan I just say thanks as it’s said with good intentions. Asking people of faith to not use these is telling them to hide their faith. Nope.”

Another was confused how the greetings could cause such harm. “There are only 2 holidays in December. I say Happy Hanukah to my Jewish friends and Merry Christmas to my Christian friends. I belong to neither religion, but somehow I manage these small gestures to goodwill without severe damage to my psyche.”

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BILL GATES WORTH $118.8 BILLION WANTS BUSINESSES TO STAY CLOSED

 

Man worth $118.8 billion says that average people should have their businesses closed down https://t.co/asBhlaETvm

— Ryan Saavedra (@RealSaavedra) December 13, 2020

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LISTEN AS THE MEDIA MOCKED TRUMP WHEN HE RIGHTFULLY PREDICTED THAT THE VACCINE WOULD BE READY THIS YEAR

 

The media. Lol. https://t.co/a739F7H0aJ

— Dan Bongino (@dbongino) December 14, 2020

 

.@IrwinRedlenerMD says Trump's claim there will be a #coronavirus vaccine by the end of the year is "preposterous."

Learn more: https://t.co/mOb9hhEyvr#11thHour pic.twitter.com/c2q66cNfuI

— 11th Hour (@11thHour) May 16, 2020

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