Blinken, Biden's "Court Jew" Nods to Syria & Signals a Cooldown in US-Israel ties.

 Secretary of State Antony Blinken’s statement Monday regarding Israel’s position in the Golan Heights has resonated in two contexts: as yet another indication of the change taking place in the US-Israeli relationship, and as a substantive statement on the issue at hand. 

When asked by CNN about the Biden Administration’s view of the Trump Administration’s endorsement of Israel’s annexation of the Golan, Blinken responded that “leaving aside the legalities of that question, as a practical matter, the Golan is very important to Israel’s security. ” 

He continued:

As long as Assad is in power in Syria, as long as Iran is present in Syria, militia groups backed by Iran, the Assad regime itself – all of these pose a significant security threat to Israel, and as a practical matter, the control of the Golan in that situation I think remains of real importance to Israel’s security. Legal questions are something else. And over time, if the situation were to change in Syria, that’s something we’d look at. But we are nowhere near that. 

Israel and the American Jewish community are preoccupied with the question of whether the Biden Administration is distancing itself from Israel or rather from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. In the same CNN interview, Blinken was asked about US President Joe Biden’s tardiness in responding to Netanyahu’s congratulatory phone call. He stated that the phone call will be made soon. But the fact of the matter is that President Biden is taking his time in calling Netanyahu, thus indicating that the very close relationship, the intimacy, between the White House and Israel’s Prime Minister is over, that Israel will have to get used to being a friend and ally of the US, one among other friends and allies. 

This is hardly surprising. The Biden Administration is busy exorcising numerous elements of the Trump period and close intimacy with Netanyahu is one of them. Time will tell whether Biden is also exacting a price from an Israeli prime minister who identified fully with one side of the aisle and humiliated a US president by speaking against him in Congress. Secretary Blinken took yet another step by dissociating the current administration from the full endorsement of Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan that had been made by its predecessor.

But Blinken’s statement is also important in the context of the unfolding Syrian crisis. He gave Israel full backing in its campaign against Iran and Hezbollah’s effort to embed themselves militarily in Syria and indicated support for a policy seeking an end to the Asad regime and Iran’s presence in Syria. At the same time, he put a marker for a future Syrian regime indicating that in a post-Asad era, and when the Iranian threat is lifted, that regime could hope to revive the quest for a peaceful return of the Golan. He indicated that it is a remote prospect, but a prospect it is.

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Rav Amnon Yitzchok Upset at the "Shas'nickers" that Photoshopped Him Taking the Vaccine that he Opposes

 

Original Photo 

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Little Boy Draws a Likeness of the late Bobover Rebbe

 

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Hilarious... Watch CNN Predict in October that Florida Would be a "house on fire" in "eight to ten weeks...

Meanwhile everyone from New York is rushing to the "house on fire." 

Thread. https://t.co/GNW1DpUQ65

— Brit Hume (@brithume) February 13, 2021

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Trump Acquitted Yet Again... The Only Thing Uniting the Fractured DemonRats is the Hate For Trump!

 

And so the verdict is in. . . Hallelujah. It’s over. 

The acquittal of former President Donald Trump in his second impeachment trial is a fitting outcome to a case that should not have happened. Never before has a former president been impeached and put on trial, and it should never happen again. 

This was a show trial, an attempt by Democrats to humiliate Trump after his election defeat and force Republicans to side with him or against him. While the president’s speech before the Capitol riot was at times too angry and bitter, there was nothing in it that could reasonably be seen as intending to incite an insurrection, as the single House article charged. 

In fact, the case was in many ways the mirror image of the partisan putsch that Dem leaders Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer engineered over the Ukraine piffle almost exactly a year ago. 

In the long history of our republic, there have been only four presidential impeachments, and two of them came courtesy of Pelosi and Schumer in the last two years. That’s making history in all the wrong ways. 

They have normalized impeachment as a partisan weapon, which is the last thing our country needs. The growing instances of violence are being stoked by extremist demands for political purity, and the efforts to convict Trump and boot him from the ballot last year and in 2024 are dangerous provocations. 

The final vote of 57-43 fell 10 votes short of the two-thirds needed for conviction, and was only a vote or two closer than was predicted before the circus began. The mutual decision to backtrack on the call for witnesses earlier in the day was a merciful sign that it was all over but the voting. 

For Trump, the acquittal allows him to begin moving on with his life and focus on what role he wants to play in the 2022 midterms and whether he wants to run in 2024. He must also deal with the fact that various prosecutors are looking at his businesses and other ­issues. 

Beyond that, expect Democrats to be especially creative in trying to keep Trump’s name in the headlines. 

Nothing unites their fractured party like hating him, and Saturday’s failure will provide more fuel for their perpetual outrage.

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Mom found "SOS" in box of decorations—Which Exposed China’s Re-education Camps

Religious dissident Sun Yi, locked up by China in the Masanjia Labor Camp, used his sparse English vocabulary to pen numerous SOS letters -- one of which was found by Julie Keith.

In 2012, Oregon mother Julie Keith opened a package of Halloween decorations from her local Kmart. Inside, she found something far more unsettling than a bunch of plastic skeletons and gravestones: an SOS letter from the prisoner who made them. 

Written neatly in a blue pen, it read: 

Please kindly resend this letter to the World Human Right[s] Organization. Thousands [of] people here who are under the persecution of the Chinese Communist Party Government will thank and remember you forever. 

Julie froze. 

“Is this a prank?” she thought. 

The 42-year-old read on as the note detailed inhumane work conditions and the fact that many workers were imprisoned despite having committed no crimes. She Googled the name of the labor camp mentioned in the note: Masanjia. It was real. She tried contacting various human rights organizations and finally went to the Oregonian newspaper, which published a story about the SOS. 

Then she waited. 

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Cuomo's Order Led to the Death of 15 thousand Seniors ..Now the Crap is Hitting the Fan

 

It’s happening. pic.twitter.com/yUfMHXrSCY

— Janice Dean (@JaniceDean) February 12, 2021

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Medieval Jewish Headstones Discovered Inside Wall In Germany

Mainz Cathedral aerial panoramic view, located at the market square of Mainz city in Germany

Construction works recently uncovered 18 Jewish gravestones from the Middle Ages that were built into a wall in the old town of Mainz, Germany.

According to Germany’s Ministry of Culture, the gravestones were used in the walls as fillers and may date as far back as the 11th century, Israel Newsstand reported on Thursday.

Ministry spokesman Markus Nöhl said the tombstones “are centuries-old evidence of Jewish roots and tradition in Mainz.”

He explained that after Jews were expelled from Mainz in 1438, ownership of the town’s Old Jewish Cemetery was turned over to the municipal. A section of the cemetery site was leased out as a vineyard, resulting in a large number of headstones being removed and reused as building materials.

“Many medieval headstones that were used as building material were rediscovered in the 19th and early 20th centuries, among other things, during works to regulate the Rhine River, during the construction of the Hessische Ludwigsbahn [railway] in the south of the city, and in connection with the de-fortification of the city,” he said, adding that this also applies to the headstones recently found.

The rediscovered headstones also feature inscriptions, many of which are written in Hebrew, that Nöhl said provide “valuable information about the deceased as well as historic events.” Some have engraved eulogies for community officials, scholars, benefactors and martyrs, “both men and women, and they offer a uniquely precise insight into the internal structure” of the surrounding communities, he told Israel Newsstand.

The headstones are now at a depot at the General Directorate of Cultural Heritage for further processing and will then be used for scientific research.

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"We Gedoilei Yisrael" Can Stop this Sickness .... Tchakove Rebbe to the Late Rav Solveitchik Who Succumbed to the Virus

This exchange took place when Rav Soloveitchik went to be menacheim avil the Tchakover Rebbe who was sitting shiva for his wife...

Tchakove Rebbe : "I am asking... Maybe ... We the Gedoilie Hador can cancel this sickness" 

Reb Dovid Soloveitchik: "What??"

Tchakove Rebbe : (repeats) "Maybe ... We the Gedoilie Hador can cancel this sickness , may G-d save us from that?"

Reb Dovid Soloveitchik:  "I can't .......but maybe you can.. you are a rebbe."

(laughter from those sitting nearby)

Reb Dovid Soloveitchik:  "Litvishe can't do anything ... only rebbes ..Litvishe aren't worth anything.."

(laughter from those sitting nearby)

Reb Dovid Soloveitchik:" I saw "gedoiie hador" you (gestering to the Tchakover rebbe) also saw Gedoilei Hador"

Tchakove Rebbe :"I saw Gedoilei Hador and I know Gedoilei Hador"

Reb Dovid Soloveitchik teasing : "Maybe a Bais Din or the Eida Ha'Chreidis ...they are gedoilei hador"

Tchakove Rebbe : "But you have the power."..

Reb Dovid Soloveitchik: "Not me .......maybe you"

Tchakove Rebbe : "without humility..don't practice humility now "

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Karma! Now the DemonRats Watch Their Own People Provoking Violence at Impeachment Trial

 

Trump's defense team plays a compilation video of House Democrats objecting to the Electoral College results in 2017 pic.twitter.com/IzAyW7KqQQ

— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) February 12, 2021

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Mad Biden is Considering Travel Restrictions on Floridians... While Allowing Criminals to Come Into Our Borders

 

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A post shared by Vosizneias (@vosizneias)

Rabbis defend congresswoman after Democrats ‘distorted her intent’ with Hitler comparison

 

We wrote about this on Jan 7 when the Jewish Mamzer Jonathan Greenblatt, of the ADL, bashed her when she rightfully said , ‘Hitler Was Right On One Thing whoever has the youth has the future." 

Representative Mary Miller (R-Ill.) met with the Rabbinic Board of the Coalition for Jewish Values (CJV) and other rabbinic leaders last week, who defended her after she was condemned for a Nazi comparison she made at the Jan. 6 Trump rally.

“She was subjected to shameful attacks that, if one views the video of her remarks, unquestionably distorted her intent and perspective,” said Rabbi Ze’ev Samson, Midwestern Regional Vice President of the CJV.

Prior to the Capitol riots, Miller had said to the crowd, “If we win a few elections, we’re still going to be losing unless we win the hearts and minds of our children. This is the battle. Hitler was right on one thing. He said, ‘Whoever has the youth has the future.’”

Democrats quickly pounced on Miller’s comments, focusing on the Hitler comparison, which the congresswoman explained in a tweet the next day was meant as “a denunciation of evil dictator’s efforts to re-educate young people and similar efforts by left-wing radicals in our country today.”

Miller, who later apologized for making the comparison, had been referring to increasing efforts in U.S. schools to educate children to adopt a left-wing worldview, a trend that has accelerated in recent years. The New York Post recently ran the testimony of a father with two children in the Manhattan public school system who complained of left-wing “brainwashing.”

Another rabbi at the meeting, Moshe Parnes, Southern Regional Vice President of the CJV, said that Miller in fact mirrored an approach common in Jewish thought – to learn lessons from one’s enemies.

“Representative Miller is clearly sympathetic to the Jewish community and emphasized that she wants to be responsive to our concerns. So we were happy that we responded to her invitation and gave her the opportunity to further clear the air,” he said.

Other participants expressed their support and asked Miller about her perspective on Israel and the BDS movement.

At the meeting, Miller again apologized and expressed regret for her choice of words. She explained that her intent was to highlight the importance of guiding our youth in the right direction. She answered questions from Jewish community members and learned more about their concerns.

“While I do regret the words I used to illustrate my message about instilling values in our children, I believe God is using this experience for good,” Miller said.

“The great discussion from our meeting only proves this. Connecting and learning from the Jewish community becomes more important every day with anti-Semitism on the rise. I am grateful to be a small part of the solution,” she added.

“I am thankful to have had the opportunity to meet and speak with the Rabbinic Board of the Coalition for Jewish Values and other rabbinic leaders,” Representative Miller said after the meeting.

The CJV represents over 1,500 traditional, Orthodox rabbis in American public policy. CJV has previously issued a statement in support of Miller.

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Avraham Bedman 36 Dead from Covid Because he Listened to the Anti-Vaxxers

By Paul Shindman, World Israel News

Members of an ultra-Orthodox synagogue were furious when they found out a member who died of the coronavirus had refused to get vaccinated because he believed false rumors spread in the community that the vaccine could make him sterile, the haredi news website Kikar Shabbat reported Wednesday.

Avraham Bedman, 36, had existing coronary problems and died this week due to complications from the coronavirus. His synagogue in the Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramot said Bedman had been “murdered” by fake news in the community and launched a campaign against the people who spread the rumor that the vaccine against coronavirus could make men sterile. 

An announcement sent to members of the Mishkan Shraga synagogue said Bedman died because someone had talked him out of getting the vaccine.

“Now, when the blood is boiling, it should be noted that Avraham – who was at a certain risk – refrained from getting vaccinated for fear of harming his fertility,” the announcement said. “The same person who told him this nonsense, and those who distribute it at all, are murderers.”

The synagogue said that everyone in their community “should use this painful case to arouse and warn of the duty to get vaccinated and prevent the death of adults and young people.”

“He had the opportunity to be vaccinated, already at the beginning of the vaccination operation, because he was at risk, but he said he heard that it might cause him not to be a father,” congregation member Rabbi Yishai Lesser told Kikar Shabbat, adding that “Avraham was a cheerful man full of joy of life.”

Rabbi Lesser said another resident of the Ramot neighborhood is currently hospitalized with the virus because he, too, was afraid of getting vaccinated.

“We must publish and warn against these lies,” Lesser said.

Widely read in the ultra-Orthodox community by those who use the internet, Kikar Shabbat has regularly posted calls from leading rabbis of different haredi communities urging their followers to get vaccinated.

After the Health Ministry released figures showing that members of the Bukharan community in Israel had low vaccination rates, senior rabbis of the community published a letter saying it was a Torah precept for everybody to get vaccinated against the coronavirus.

Rabbi Zavdia Cohen, senior leader of the community, wrote that the rabbis gave a “a clear Torah opinion on the sacred duty of each and every young man and woman to receive vaccination immediately.”

“This call is within the scope of Torah and mitzvos [commandments] and … you should not pay any attention at all to those who slander against the vaccine because their words are nonsense and the Torah has already commanded us to heal.”

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Jen Psaki can’t answer whether Israel and Saudi Arabia are ‘important allies’

 

White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki gave a vague, rambling answer Friday when asked at a briefing to reporters whether the Biden administration considers Saudi Arabia and Israel to be “important allies.”

“Can you please just give us a broad sense of what the administration is trying to achieve in the Middle East?” a reporter asked — in follow-up to an earlier question asking why President Biden has yet to call Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“For example,” the reporter asked, “does the administration still consider the Saudis and the Israelis important allies?

Rather than saying simply, “Yes,” Psaki gave this answer, according to a White House transcript of the late-afternoon briefing.

“Well, you know, again, I think we — there are ongoing processes and internal interagency processes — one that we, I think, confirmed an interagency meeting just last week — to discuss a range of issues in the Middle East. 

“We’re — we’ve only been here three and a half weeks, and I think I’m going to let those policy processes see themselves through before we give, kind of, a complete laydown of what our national security approaches will be to a range of issues,” she added.

Earlier in the press briefing, in insisting that Biden’s failure to call Netanyahu is “not an intentional diss,” Psaki said, “Obviously, we have a long and important relationship with Israel, and the president has known him and has been working on a range of issues that there’s a mutual commitment to for some time.

“It is just a reflection of the fact that we have been here three and a half weeks, he’s not called every single global leader yet, and he is eager to do that in the weeks ahead.”

A reporter followed up: “But he has called every other major ally in Europe and Asia,” to which Psaki answered, ‘He’s called many of them.”

“That is true,” she continued, adding, vaguely, “Some would argue they haven’t received calls yet, and they are still eager to receive them.”

“But I can assure you he will be speaking with the prime minister soon, and he’s looking forward to doing that.”

She declined to indicate when the call would happen, even to say if it would be a matter of days or weeks.

“They’ve known each other for some time,” she said. “There are certainly areas of mutual interest.”

“And as soon as he makes that call, we will let you all know.”

Psaki was also non-committal when asked more than a week prior about the lack of call to Netanyahu.

“We have a long and abiding relationship with Israel, an important security relationship, I’m sure they’ll discuss that and a range of issues when they do connect,” she said.

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Zera Shimshon Parshas Mishpatim

 

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Rabbi Yitzchok Dovid Grossman Breaks With "Chareidie Tzaddikim" and Asks For "Achdus" Between the Chilonim & Chareidim

 

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Saudi Blogger Tells Bnei-Brak to Go Eat Chulent and Get Vaccinated

Preparing Cholent in Bnei-Brak for Vaxxers

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Askanim Trying to get R' Chaim Kanievski to Say That "Matanas Le'evyoinim" should Go to "Kupat Haeir" He Refuses!

In fact he said "No"! 

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The 800 Jewish Holocaust orphans of Selvino

Synagogue in Jewish quarter of Venice, Italy

 Poland’s “dignity” is offended by the truth—but only when that truth exposes a Polish official or citizen for having aided and abetted the Nazis and for having persecuted Polish Jews during the Nazi occupation. The Polish government has never tried any Polish historian or journalist for having described Polish individuals and clergy who fed, hid, and saved Polish Jews.

The honor of Poland is at stake and the Poles are deeply invested in presenting themselves as “victims”—of the Russians and of the Nazis, never also as the perpetrators of Jew-hatred and pogroms long before the Nazi armies came to town, and after they were driven out (Jewabne, Kielce).

Down the decades, I have learned bitter but complex truths about the French, Dutch, Belgian, Spanish, Hungarian, Greek, Croatian, Norwegian, and Ukrainian complicity in the Holocaust. Somehow, because I loved Italy (the art, the opera, the landscape, the cinema), I never looked too closely at their role during World War Two. Once, when I hired a guide to take me on a tour of Jewish Italy, she gave me a book which contained a fairly gruesome history of 2,000 years of Italian Jewish sorrows. And once, when I was living in Venice, it hit me hard when I learned that Venice—Venice! had also turned over its Jews to Hitler, albeit, not until 1943.

When I looked into the matter further, I understood that Italy had begun to disenfranchise its Jews in 1938, before Kristallnacht took place in Germany. Jewish children were no longer allowed to attend private schools, Jewish professors were exiled from all universities, from government and military service, as well as from banking and insurance industries. In 1939 and 1940, Jewish peddlers and shopkeepers’ licenses were revoked and all Jews who held stocks and bonds were required to turn them over to “Aryans.” If possible, matters worsened once Germany occupied Italy in 1943. According to Ms. Ilaria Pavan, a former Italian official investigating the “looting of property of Jewish Italian citizens,” as of 2010, such looting “totaled almost 1 billion in today’s values.”

As with Poland, all the European histories describe governments and individuals who were eager to expropriate Jewish property (real estate, homes, factories, art work, chinaware, clothing, bank accounts, furniture); eager to hand over the former Jewish owners to Hitler’s gas chambers. There are also accurate accounts of non-Jewish European who saved Jews and who fought Hitler’s armies as partisans.

There were heroes and villains, resisters and cowards, in every country.

What got me thinking about this all over again was my accidental discovery of a very moving eight-part miniseries, The War is Over, which is just now being live-streamed on MHZ in Italian with English subtitles. This RAI film is based on the book by Aharon Megged about the orphaned “children of Selvino,” and relates the true story of the 800 traumatized Jewish children who were rescued from concentration camps and ghettos all across Europe, who had no parents, no families, and who were physically, psychologically, spiritually, and sexually wounded, as well as educationally deprived.

From 1945-1948, the Milanese Jewish community, the municipality of Milan, soldiers of the Jewish Brigade (Moshe Ze-eri and Teddy Be’eri), the Jewish Agency, the Joint Distribution Committee, Youth Aliyah, and former anti-fascist partisan fighters, and Jewish and non-Jewish youth workers all took care of these children in an abandoned estate in northern Italy. They tried to heal them well enough so that they could make the journey to Palestine on those heroically “illegal” immigrant ships that the British stopped, fired upon, and forced to land in Cyprus. Eventually, some of these children joined Kibbutz Tze’elim in the Negev.

In 2019, after a seven year campaign, a museum opened in Selvino to commemorate this heroic rescue operation.

The miniseries is beautifully and soulfully acted (Michele Riondino, Isabella Ragonese, Valerio Binasco), but the children will steal your heart. Please watch it. Experience the past present.

Prof. Phyllis Chesler is a Ginsburg-Ingerman Fellow at the Middle East Forum, received the 2013 National Jewish Book Award,.authored 20 books, including Women and Madness and The New Anti-Semitism, and 4 studies about honor killing, Her latest books are An American Bride in Kabul, A Family Conspiracy: Honor Killing and A Politically Incorrect Feminist.

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