Justice Aaron Barak Former Chief Justice of the Israeli Supreme Court is an Enlightened Despot

 

This article is a must read. It was first published in the New Republic in 2007! 

Aharon Barak, a long-serving justice (eventually the chief justice) of the Supreme Court of Israel, who recently reached mandatory retirement age, is a prolific writer, and this is his most recent book. It is an important document, less for its intrinsic merits than for its aptness to be considered Exhibit A for why American judges should be extremely wary about citing foreign judicial decisions. Barak is a world-famous judge who dominated his court as completely as John Marshall dominated our Supreme Court. If there were a Nobel Prize for law, Barak would probably be an early recipient. But although he is familiar with the American legal system and supposes himself to be in some sort of sync with liberal American judges, he actually inhabits a completely different--and,to an American, a weirdly different--juristic universe.

 I have my differences with Robert Bork, but when he remarked, in a review of The Judge in a Democracy, that Barak "establishes a world record for judicial hubris," he came very near the truth.

Florida Jewish man brutally sucker punched.

 

A Jewish man speaking Hebrew on his phone while riding his bicycle in Broward County, Florida was sucker punched by a passerby who also hurled antisemitic abuse at him.

The Broward County Sheriff’s Office (BSO) said it was still looking for the suspect, Local 10 reported.

The incident occurred in Dania Beach on February 7 at approximately 5:30 p.m., the department added.

BSO said in a statement that the vicious punch “caused the victim to fall off the bike and to the ground.”

“The attacker then approached the victim, who stood up. A few seconds later, the subject walked away,” they said.

Law enforcement identified the attacker in a separate incident caught on video in which he was in a verbal altercation with workers near the scene of the assault.

He was also captured on cell phone video accosting people who ran over to help the victim after he was knocked off his bicycle.

Rabbi Joe Soshtain of the Young Israel of Hollywood Synagogue called the incident “appalling.”

“That you can’t walk on your own streets and ride in your own streets, it’s a terrible, terrible feeling and things have to change,” he told the news outlet.

The victim was taken to hospital but has been released and is expected to recover.

Iran is ‘mapping’ Jewish leaders worldwide

 

The Iranian government is “mapping” Jews around the world with plans to kill them if Israel attacks Iran, according to a report in London’s Jewish Chronicle.

Catherine Perez-Shakdam, a Middle East scholar and research fellow at a think tank, met Iran’s Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei in February 2017. She believes that he was unaware that she is Jewish.

According to Perez-Shakdam, the only thing Khamenei fears is an Israeli attack. “He believes Netanyahu’s threats, and he knows that for now, Israel is militarily superior,” she told the paper. “He feels that the Iranian regime can’t sustain a defeat.”

During her trip, Perez-Shakdad was told of a plan to “map key Jewish figures around the world for Iran’s assassination squads,” per the Chronicle.

“The idea was to identify all prominent NGOs run by Jews, who was doing what in each business sector, the important rabbis,” she said. “They wanted to figure out their influence and where they lived with their families in order to target them.”

The paper noted that in November, British intelligence’s MI5 stated it had foiled 10 assassination attempts in just one year. It did not say if any of those attempts targeted Jews.

Zera Shimshon Parshas Mishpatim

 

UFO shot down by $400K US missile may have been a $12 hobby balloon

 

One of the UFOs shot down last weekend by the US Air Force with a $400,000 missile may have simply been a $12 balloon belonging to an Illinois enthusiast club, a report said.

The Northern Illinois Bottlecap Balloon Brigade told Aviation Week on Thursday that it fears one of its diligently-tracked gasbags that recently went missing was mistaken as the mystery object taken out by the military over Canada on Saturday.

The Pico Balloon — a silver-coated, cylindrically shaped object — reported its last position at 38,910 ft. off the west coast of Alaska on Friday.

By Saturday, based on the balloon’s projected path, it would have been over the central part of the Yukon Territory around the same time a military Lockheed Martin F-22 shot down an unidentified object of a similar description and altitude in the same Canadian vicinity, the outlet reported.

Human remains found in area where Moshe Kleinerman vanished

 

Over the last few weeks, the Israel Dog Unit (IDU), a nonprofit specializing in search and rescue, has been searching an area in the Meron region where human remains had been located.

The search comes as part of ongoing attempts to locate multiple people who have vanished in the area, including Avraham Moshe Kleinerman and Moshe Ilovitch, and was conducted alongside Israel Police officers, ZAKA volunteers, and park rangers from the Nature and Parks authority.

Rabbi Arrested, Banned From Cleveland Universities Over His Anti-palestinian Activism

 

For days, students and police at Cleveland State University had been trying to figure out who stole a banner belonging to a campus Palestinian rights group.

The banner, which belonged to the student group Palestinian Human Rights Organization, read “CSU Solidarity for Palestinian Rights” and was illustrated with an outline of Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip collectively emblazoned in the Palestinian flag. A dove holding an olive branch appeared on top of the image.

Then, on Jan. 19, police charged their top suspect: a local Orthodox rabbi, whose presence on campus had become all too familiar. A few days later the man confessed to the theft on Instagram, announcing that he had stolen the banner from the school’s student center “as an act of civil disobedience.”

“This incitement to annihilation of Israel should have never been permitted at CSU,” Rabbi Alexander Popivker, a 46-year-old Cleveland Heights resident whose neighborhood is six miles from the school, wrote on social media accompanied by a picture of the flag he stole.

Suspect in LA Shul Shootings Arrested

A man has been arrested in the case of two shul shootings this week in LA.

The LAPD says the suspect was arrested in Riverside County and evidence was seized that included a rifle and handgun.

Although police initially said there was no evidence to confirm antisemitism, they say the circumstances led them to pursue the investigation as a hate crime.

Earlier, the LAPD issued a press release stating that the February 15 and 16 shootings on Pico Boulevard “may have involved the same suspect”: an Asian male with a goatee driving a white compact vehicle.

“The Los Angeles Police Department is aware of the concern these crimes have raised in the surrounding community,” the statement said. “We have been in close contact with religious leaders as well as individual and community stakeholders. In addition, we are re-allocating police resources to provide a highly visible preventative presence in the area.”

The report certainly increases the likelihood that the shooter is an antisemite who was specifically targeting Jews.

In addition, the Jewish Journal quoted a reputable source who claimed that the local police informed him that they had apprehended a suspect, however that has not been confirmed.

On Thursday, an orthodox Jew was shot by a man in a car, after leaving Shul. It was the second such incident in two days. According to reports, at 8:20 a.m. a man was walking out of shul when a suspect identified as a white male shot him.

The incident happened near S. Bedford Street and Pico Boulevard on the westside of Los Angeles.

Less than 24 hours prior, a man was shot leaving a Shul at about 10 a.m. nearly a block away. That victim was also struck in the arm and listed in stable condition.

Rapid cancer test can diagnosis patients with just a splash of urine

 

A simple urine sample may be all you need to diagnosis cancer soon. Researchers in South Korea are developing a new rapid test that looks at the metabolites in urine which reveal the presence of certain cancers in the body. Their success is paving the way for a simple strip-type sensor that alerts patients long before life-threatening symptoms emerge in late-stage cancers.

Right now, the team says this test can detect prostate cancer and pancreatic cancer with near-perfect accuracy. The test works by irradiating light after placing a small volume (10uL) of urine droplets on the testing surface.

Study authors focused on the differences in metabolomic components present in the urine of cancer patients and healthy people. When cancer cells start to multiply in a person’s body, they secrete different metabolites into urine because the disease is altering the patient’s metabolism.

Researchers developed a surface-enhanced Raman scattering sensor which amplifies the signs of these metabolites by more than one billion times. They did this by forming a coral-shaped plasmonic nanomaterial on porous paper. When scientists put a patient’s urine into the sensor and irradiate it with light, the cancer metabolite signals literally “light up” on the sensor surface. Using artificial intelligence to analyze their results, the team was able to distinguish up to 99 percent of prostate and pancreatic cancer patients from healthy samples.

Daniel Dresner A Therapist in Monsey Beat and Sexually Abused his Chareidie Clients