Bnei Brak
A Charedi IDF reservist stands tall during the memorial siren, his children by his side — a quiet salute to Israel’s fallen and a heartfelt prayer for the hostages’ return.Wednesday, April 30, 2025
Zero mercy. President Trump just called out ABC to their faces for covering up for Biden
Trump puts the interviewer on ABC in his place after he tried denying that Kilmer Abrego Garcia is part of the MS 13 gang and that the tattoos on his hands were "photoshopped."
President Trump goes off on ABC News’ Terry Moran after he asks him about his confidence level in Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth.
Trump: He’s a very good defense secretary.
Moran: Do you have a 100% confidence in him?
Trump: Do I have a 100% confidence in anything? It's a stupid question… Only a liar would say I have a 100% confidence.
I don't have a 100% confidence that we're gonna finish this interview.
Beit Shemesh: A City of Heroes
Hundreds of people attended memorial ceremonies in Beit Shemesh yesterday evening.
Today the city remembers the 127 residents who gave their lives in Israel's battles and terror attacks.
Abbas: According to Quran, Jewish Temple stood in Yemen
Great News! Now we can all go up to the Har Habayit!
Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas claimed last week that in the Quran, the Jewish Temple is described as being in Yemen.
“In the Noble Quran—and I believe that also in other divine books—it says that the [First and Second] Temples were in Yemen,” said Abbas on April 23 in a televised speech during the 32nd PLO Central Council meeting in Ramallah.
He made the remarks in the context of his claim that Israeli authorities were targeting Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa Mosque, which is built on the Temple Mount, where the Jewish Temple used to stand.
“The Jews say, ‘This is ours, that was ours….’ No. That’s not what the Quran says,” said Abbas, according to a translation of his Arabic-language speech by the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI.)
Scholars, including Nadav Shragai in his 2020 book “Al-Aqsa Terror: From Libel to Blood,” have identified false claims about the Quran’s localization of the Jewish Temple as a trend in a recent attempt at historical revision by Palestinian nationalists to deny Jewish ties to the place and strengthen Muslim or Arab ones.
“The attempts by Palestinian leaders like Yasser Arafat or Saeb Erekat to cast doubt on the Temple’s existence on the Mount or to distance it from that location by claiming that there was indeed a Temple, but in Nablus or Yemen, stem from one sole motive,” wrote Shragai: “The desire to expunge from the Temple Mount a competing Jewish historical narrative and a competing historical and religious awareness, since these could becloud their own historical and religious narrative on the Mount.”
Abbas’s predecessor, Yasser Arafat, also repeated this theory. On Sept. 25, 2003, Arafat told Arab leaders from northern Israel that no Jewish Temple had existed in the Land of Israel, but rather in Yemen. Arafat told his listeners that he had visited Yemen and seen with his own eyes the site upon which Solomon’s Temple once stood.
The previous year, another top PLO figure, Haj Zaki al-Ghul, stated that King Solomon had ruled over the Arabian Peninsula, and that it was there, not in Jerusalem, that he built his Temple.
Professor Yitzhak Reiter of the Jerusalem Institute for Policy Research, in a 2011 essay in The American Interest, traces the Yemen canard to Kamal Salibi, professor emeritus at the American University of Beirut and subsequently director of the Royal Institute for Interfaith Studies in Amman. In a 1985 book, Salibi claimed that biblical Jerusalem was located in the Arabian Nimas highlands, halfway from Mecca to Yemen.
The Quran does not name Jerusalem, but for centuries, Muslim scholars have acknowledged that the Jewish Temple stood there, including in the writings of Abu Jafar Muhammad bin Jarir al-Tabari, Muhammad al-Idrisi, who visited Jerusalem in the 12th century, theologian Taki ad-Din Ahmad ibn Taymiyyah (1263-1328) and 14th-century historian Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun, according to Shragai.
The current Muslim denial of this history, particularly since 1967, is a relatively recent political fabrication aimed at delegitimizing Jewish claims and justifying incitement and violence under the false claim that “Al-Aqsa is in danger,” he wrote.
In the same speech, Abbas also used sharp-worded language against Hamas, urging it to free the Israeli hostages it is holding.
“[Hamas says:] ‘We won’t release the American hostage.’ You sons of dogs, release the [hostages] and spare us this! Strip the [Israelis] of their excuses,” he exclaimed.
That part of his speech grabbed headlines worldwide, with some commentators presenting the statement as evidence that Abbas is a pragmatist working to de-escalate the war in Gaza. Others interpreted Abbas’s criticism of Hamas as posturing for Western audiences, meant to serve the Palestinian Authority’s agenda of taking over Gaza from its arch-rival Hamas under Israeli and Western auspices.
Tuesday, April 29, 2025
Thank you, Hashem for the State of Israel!
By Tzvi Fishman
For me, one of the most poignant events of Israel Memorial Day has been attending the memorial ceremony at my children’s and grandchildren’s religious kindergartens, grade schools and high schools, during which the students tell stories about brave Israeli soldiers who have fallen defending our cherished Homeland, the greatest sacrifice and sanctification of G-d that a Jew can make.
How proud it makes me feel to watch the youngsters act out the famous battle of Givat HaTachmoshet, one of the decisive battles of the Six Day War. After the long memorial siren that is sounded all over the country, the children parade with Israeli flags around the auditorium in tune to rousing Israeli melodies of patriotism and valor.
“Thank you, G-d,” I say quietly while I watch. “Thank you for making me realize that George Washington isn’t the founder of my country and that my children have never heard about Davy Crockett and Daniel Boone. Thank You G-d for bringing me to the Land of the Jews and teaching me the true meaning of Torah, which isn’t just performing individual precepts like kashrut and Shabbos, but also helping to build the Holy Jewish Nation in its Holy Land, to serve in Tzahal and play a part in the exalted mitzvah of conquering the Land and defending it against enemies who rise against it.
Thank You for giving me healthy, wonderful children and grandchildren who are all growing up as Jews through and through, celebrating Israel’s Memorial and Independence Days, and not someone else’s, children who will grow up to become soldiers of Israel and defend Your inheritance of the Jews, and not do everything they can to dodge army service like young Jews do in other countries.”
Only an oleh who lives in Israel can appreciate the incredible difference between religious kids who grow up in Israel and their Diaspora counterparts. Kids in Israel are a different species of child, a totally different breed. Sure they like candy and Coke and playing basketball like all children, but their heads are in a completely different place. Even those who are not as close to the Torah as we would like, they are all ready to fight and die for their fellow Jews and to defend Hashem’s chosen Land.
The wars they learn about are Jewish wars.
Their war heroes are Israeli.
Their flag is the Star of David – not the Stars and Stripes of someone else’s country.
Their songs of patriotism are Israeli.
They celebrate Israel’s independence and not the Fourth of July or Bastille Day.
The history they learn is the history of Abraham, Moses, Joshua, and King David, Rabbi Akiva, the Maccabees, and the heroes of the Jewish Underground who fought against all odds to chase the British out from our Homeland so that Jews could live proudly in a country of our own.
Instead of growing up being American kids who are Jewish, they are Children of Israel, just as we are called in the Bible.
As Israeli jets roar over Jerusalem practicing for the air show on Yom Ha'Atzmaut, I thank G-d that my kids and JEWISH grandchildren are where they belong – in the Land that G-d gave them and where He wants them to be. As Israeli helicopters streak by outside my window, I thank G-d for opening my eyes to the fact that being Jewish means being absorbed in Jewish history, and celebrating JEWISH independence, and living in the Jewish Land and performing the mitzvot in the place they were meant to be performed.
Thank you G-d for having opened my ears and helping me to actualize the goal of our prayers in bringing me home to live a life of Torah in the Land you gave to my forefathers, as we pray every day, three times a day, in the Amidah prayer, “Sound the great shofar of our freedom; lift up the banner to bring our exiles together, and gather us from the four corners of the earth.”
How a bereaved wife responded when a high school principal tried to silence her
Sigal, the wife of Kibbutz Be'eri Security Coordinator Arik Kraunik, who fell during the October 7th Massacre, delivered a lecture on Monday to the students of the Hartman High School in Jerusalem.
In her lecture, Sigal discussed the loss of trust in her neighbors in Gaza. She quoted Avida Bachar, a survivor of the massacre who lost his wife Dana and son Carmel, and was himself wounded, who said that it was a good thing the massacre did not occur in Judea and Samaria because that way he understood how guilty the Gazans were.
In a post on social media, the bereaved wife described how her words upset the school's principal. "With a crowd of about 400 students in the auditorium, I began the lecture, which has already been given over 250 times. In the middle, the girl who invited me came over, motioned for me to stop, and whispered in my ear: 'The principal says that this is not the message the school wants to give, and if possible, skip this part and get straight to the personal story."
Kraunik recounts how, at that moment, she gathered strength from something that ex-IDF general Ofir Winter once said about humility. "I stopped, I took a breath, and then Ofir Winter's spirit stood before me and reminded me of the new meaning of humility that I learned from him. I told her: 'This is the lecture, this is my truth, and if the principal doesn't like it, I can get off the stage and go home.' I didn't even get to finish my sentence, and suddenly a fierce round of applause was heard throughout the auditorium. The students clapped loudly. I saw the principal look at the one who invited me and motioned to her to continue.
"That's how the victory of the spirit is born! Education needs to allow children a choice. Democracy grants a space for every opinion and free choice. I only continued the lecture for those pure faces and hands that expressed what the heart wanted," she concluded.
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