Monday, August 18, 2025
The Hornet's Nest
Some argue Jews would be safer dispersed or that Israel’s location is a strategic mistake. History proves otherwise. Israel may sit on a 'hornet’s nest,' but for the first time in 2,000 years, Jews can defend themselves together.
Sometimes you meet a tourist, who asks you: Tell me, why? Why do you insist on living right at the foot of the volcano?
After all, there are other places in the world, quiet corners, without smoke or noise, and solid ground that won't tremble beneath your feet.
Why don't you move away from here, and look for a safer place, where you can finally live in peace, once and for all?
Well-meaning friends of the Jewish people often offer two pieces of advice: First, that Jews would be safer without a state of their own, and should have remained dispersed among democratic nations. Second, that if Jews must have a homeland, Israel's location, surrounded by hostile neighbors, was a catastrophic choice.
Both arguments are dangerously wrong.
The Historical Case Against Dispersal
Jews constitute merely 2% of the world's population. History teaches us that dispersal offers no protection. While American Jews fare relatively well today, European Jews face rising antisemitism. We need not recount the horrors that befell German Jewry, a community that had once welcomed and integrated us. The pattern repeats across centuries and continents: Jews fleeing Spain, England, France, Russia, and countless other nations that initially offered sanctuary. Dispersal doesn't guarantee safety; it almost always ensures vulnerability.
Critics suggest Israel should have been established elsewhere: Wyoming, Uganda, Madagascar, the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Oblast, Cyprus, or Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. This geographic second-guessing, while understandable, misses a fundamental truth about collective security.
Consider a simple thought experiment: Ten people must traverse dangerous territory. Should they travel separately or together? The answer is obvious. Ancient wisdom teaches that there is safety in numbers. Try breaking ten sticks bound together versus snapping them one by one; the principle is elementary yet profound.
So should Jews scatter across the globe, a few hundred here, a few thousand there, some tens of thousands elsewhere? History demonstrates what happens to such isolated communities: they become easy pickings.
Recent Events Illustrate the Pattern
We're not suggesting American Jews should immediately make Aliyah, but recent events remind us that Jews have been killed in twos and threes across America before. The pattern of isolated attacks on dispersed Jewish communities demonstrates precisely why geographic concentration matters for collective defense.
The recent murder of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim RIP outside Washington's Jewish Museum illustrates this principle. These two young Israeli Embassy staffers were gunned down in cold blood. But the truly chilling aspect wasn't the murder itself. Sadly, such attacks on Jews occur with disturbing frequency.
What should terrify us even more is the response. Former Jordanian Interior Minister Mazen Turki El-Qadi suggested Israel orchestrated the murders to "lessen Western-American pressure" under the guise of fighting so-called antisemitism. Rebecca Rothstein, a Maryland middle school math teacher, dismissed the victims as "2 racist white folks." (One shudders to imagine what narratives she weaves into her lesson plans, shaping young American minds with such casual hatred.) Iranian state media's Kayhan praised the alleged killer Elias Rodriguez as "Our Dear Brother" who sent "Two Wild Zionist Beasts" to hell. They proclaimed him the "American Sinwar" and heralded "a new axis of resistance."
This reaction pattern, where isolated attacks on Jews are either ignored, celebrated, or blamed on the victims themselves - demonstrates why dispersal fails as a security strategy. When Jews are scattered in small, vulnerable communities, each attack appears isolated and manageable to outside observers. The broader pattern of antisemitic violence gets lost.
The Hornet's Nest Reality
Yes, Israel sits on a hornet's nest, surrounded by a billion hostile neighbors. In 2002, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah even gloated about this, declaring that Jews gathering in Israel saves their enemies "from having to go to the ends of the world, for they have gathered in one place, and there the final and decisive battle will take place."
But here's what Nasrallah and others fail to understand: Would Jews be safer scattered in small communities worldwide, easy targets for the Rebecca Rothsteins and Elias Rodriguezes of the world? History and logic say a loud "no."
When Jews are dispersed, each attack seems isolated, local, manageable. When Jews are concentrated in a sovereign state with a military, intelligence services, and diplomatic leverage, they can defend themselves collectively. The hornet's nest may be dangerous, but at least Israel can sting back.
Huckabee hits back at BBC’s Lying Gaza report: Retraction? As likely as ice cream in hell
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee on Sunday mocked the BBC after the British network once again published misleading information on the war in Gaza.
Earlier on Sunday, the IDF published a rebuttal of claims by the BBC that a Palestinian Arab woman who had been allowed to leave Gaza for medical treatment had died of malnutrition.
The woman, Marah Abu Zohry, arrived in Pisa on an Italian government humanitarian flight on Wednesday night.
On Friday, after undergoing tests and starting treatment, she died of a sudden respiratory crisis and cardiac arrest. Italian news agencies said that she was suffering from severe malnutrition.
In response, the Coordinator of Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT) tweeted: "The facts, which the report did not mention: 20-year-old Marah Zohry suffered from leukemia."
Journalist Melanie Phillips criticized the BBC and wrote on X, “Israel helps evacuate cancer sufferer from Gaza to Italy. She dies there of leukemia. BBC suggests Israel starved her to death. To the BBC, even cancer is Israel’s fault.”
Huckabee shared Phillips’ response and wrote, “Will the BBC retract the story and apologize? Of course. The same day a Baskin Robbins opens a franchise in hell.”
The BBC later added to its article Israel’s explanation that the woman suffered from leukemia.
The BBC has continuously come under fire over its anti-Israel bias, which has reared its head even more since October 7, 2023.
In November of 2023, the corporation published an apology after falsely claiming that IDF troops were targeting medical teams in battles in and around the Shifa Hospital in Gaza.
Before that, the BBC falsely accused Israel of being responsible for an explosion at a hospital in Gaza, which the IDF proved was caused by an Islamic Jihad rocket. The network later acknowledged that “it was false to speculate” on the explosion.
Earlier this year, the BBC faced mounting scrutiny for using the son of a senior Hamas official as a narrator in its documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a Warzone.”
Following the criticism, the British broadcaster acknowledged that there were “serious flaws” in the program. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer later said he is "concerned" by the documentary.
In another incident several months ago, BBC News presenter Nicky Shiller referred to three hostages who were released by Hamas as “prisoners”, similar to the term used for the terrorists imprisoned in Israel.
His remarks sparked an uproar, leading the network to apologize.
A day with the FBI: My perp walk, handcuffs, strip search and leg irons for a politically motivated misdemeanor
 |
| Navarro served in President Trump’s first term — and is also an adviser in his second. |
It is an interesting thing to suddenly lose one’s freedom. It would be very interesting on this day, June 3, 2022.
The first thing FBI agents do when they grab you is pull your arms behind you and put you in handcuffs.
No matter how gently they might try to do it, it’s still going to take a pretty good pull on your shoulder sockets. And in this case, they weren’t particularly gentle.
I no doubt appeared to these five armed FBI agents to be a very dangerous hombre. After all, I was 74 years old, I weigh 145 pounds soaking wet and top out at a gargantuan 5’7″.
Once I was handcuffed, they walked me out the back door of the gangway at Reagan National Airport and down some portable steps onto the tarmac, where they had a tiny car waiting to transport me first back to the FBI headquarters — it’s across the street from my apartment — and then eventually to the courthouse.
Sunday, August 17, 2025
140 Chareidim enlisted in the Army on Thursday
כ-140 בני הציבור החרדי התגייסו ביום חמישי לשירות בתפקידים ובמסלולים תומכי הלחימה החרדיים בצבא
One Of The Most Miraculous Events In Human History: The Rebirth Of Hebrew As A Living Language
 |
| Eliezer Ben Yehuda |
What is fascinating is that millions of Jews speak Hebrew and no other language! Many Charedim speak only Hebrew! A Miracle indeed! Saul Jay Singer
Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858-1922), the “Father of the Modern Hebrew Language,” is best known for one of the truly great socio-linguistic events in world history: his virtually single-handed revival of Hebrew as a spoken language, which for centuries had been used only for Jewish prayer.
He accomplished this at a time when there was not a single person who conversed in Hebrew as a mother tongue, when the resurrection of a dead language had never occurred in all human history, and when virtually no one else believed it possible. His philosophy may perhaps best be summarized by a famous quote in which he combines his fervent Zionism with his obsession with a return to Hebrew as a lingua franca: “Just as the Jews cannot really become a living nation other than through their returning to their ancestral land, so too, they are not able to become a living nation other than through their returning to their ancestral language.”
As one commentator pithily observed, “before Ben Yehuda, Jews could speak Hebrew; after him, they did.”
No! Your Sandwich is not Halal!
Call it rude, but this is exactly the attitude all Western restaurants should have towards anyone demanding halal food.
— 𝐍𝐢𝐨𝐡 𝐁𝐞𝐫𝐠 ♛ ✡︎ (@NiohBerg) August 16, 2025
There is no reason why establishments should accept meat that comes from a deliberately torturous and painful slaughter method. It should be banned completely. pic.twitter.com/o8jpds3yTk
This is a real video
This is a real video https://t.co/C0T3cHLDZ7
— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 16, 2025
U.S. Suspends All Visitor Visas for Gaza Residents
The U.S. State Department has frozen all visitor visas for Gaza residents, announcing a “full and thorough review” of recent humanitarian approvals.
The move came after investigative journalist Laura Loomer posted videos claiming Palestinians had entered the U.S. via San Francisco and Houston, sparking Republican outrage.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)