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| The "rotzeiach" Yeoshua Dadon |
*בית שמש חדשות*
The suspect who allegedly shot and wounded two Jews near synagogues in L.A. last week was out on bail for charges related to possessing a loaded gun on a public university campus last year.
Jaime Tran, 28, was arrested last week in connection with the shootings, which are being investigated as hate crimes. According to local police, the former dental student, who is now apparently homeless, had a history of making antisemitic statements.
Moreover, he had previously been arrested for a gun-related crime — but was out on bail. The Los Angeles Times reported (emphasis added):
The arrest Thursday evening of a suspect confirmed fears that the attacks were targeted. Jaime Tran — who authorities say has a history of making antisemitic statements, often specifically about Persian Jews — was taken into custody in connection with the shootings.
Tran, 28, was charged Friday with federal hate crimes. He admitted to police that he searched for a kosher market on Yelp before the shootings, according to a complaint unsealed in federal court in Los Angeles. If convicted, he faces life without parole in federal prison, prosecutors said. He was caught July 3 carrying a loaded handgun onto the Cal State Long Beach campus, according to the Los Angeles County district attorney’s office. Police got a call about a man with a gun near the engineering school and approached him. Tran surrendered and told officers he was carrying the weapon for protection, according to prosecutors. That case, for which he was out on bail, remains open.
This sick criminal is the direct cause of supplying our children with illegal drugs. He was on the frontline as a pharmacist and had a great opportunity to talk to these teenagers of the dangers of taking drugs instead he supplied them with it. Howsick and demented?
A pharmacist in cahoots with crooked doctors admitted to illegally selling about $1 million worth of oxycodone pills out of his Queens drug store, the feds say.
Daniel Russo, 44, of Cedarhurst, LI, copped to conspiracy to distribute and possess with intent to distribute oxycodone, distribution and possession of oxycodone, and filing false personal and corporate tax returns in Brooklyn federal court Friday, according to prosecutors.
“Russo was a drug dealer in a white coat,” Breon Peace, US Attorney for the Eastern District of New York, wrote in a statement.
“He abused his pharmacy license and the trust placed in him by the community to illegally distribute enormous amounts of oxycodone, spreading misery in the community and fueling addiction, all to enrich himself.”
The owner of Russo’s Pharmacy in Far Rockaway conspired with medical professionals and employees to fill fraudulent prescriptions of the addictive drug in exchange for hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash between 2011 and 2014, prosecutors alleged.
Russo then failed to report more than $1 million in earnings, much of which he made from the illicit drug scheme, officials said.
More than a dozen doctors who Russo filed prescriptions for have already been convicted in connection with the oxycodone distribution scheme, according to the Department of Justice.
“At the same time Daniel Russo was illegally peddling oxycodone out of his pharmacy, he was pocketing – and not paying taxes on – income from those sales and others in his business,” said Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Goldberg.
“Everyone is required to pay their fair share of taxes, whether they make their money legitimately or through criminal activity,” the prosecutor said in a statement.
Russo now faces up to 67 years in federal prison, according to the feds.
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| Amichai Chikli |
Israeli Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli rebuked U.S. Ambassador Tom Nides on Sunday, after the American envoy jumped into the debate over Jerusalem’s proposed judicial reform package.
“I say to the American ambassador, slam the breaks on yourself and mind your own business,” said Chikli regarding Nides’s call for the Israeli government to modify its initiative. “You’re not the sovereign here. We’d be happy to debate with you international or security affairs, but respect our democracy,” he added.
“The relationship with the United States is very important, but this intervention by Nides is very problematic,” said Chikli.
Yeshiva Torah Temimah, the school that supported Kolko, the sexual pervert, has been sold to Satmar.
The purchase of the building was revealed at a Motzei Shabbos dinner benefiting the Mosdos of Satmar in Boro Park under the leadership of the Satmar Rebbe of Williamsburg, HaRav Zalman Leib Teitelbaum.
The building being purchased by the chassidus is located on the corner of Ocean Parkway and Ditmas Avenue, and housed Torah Temimah’s Mesivta and Bais Medrash for decades.
Yeshiva Torah Temimah was founded and built by the Rosh Yeshiva, Rabbi Lipa Margolis, in 1958. Rabbi Margolis started off as a bus driver for Yeshiva Torah Vadaas and then graduated to being their star fund raiser. When R' Margolis started his own Yeshivah, he called it Yeshiva Torah Vadaas. The Real Torah Vadaas then took him to Bais Din, and R' Margolis was forced to change the name to Torah Temimmah.
The yeshiva grew to prominence between 1980 and 2000. He was Niftar in January 2022. The Rosh Yeshiva, Hagoan HaRav Shlomo Feivel Schustal, left the Yeshiva around 10 years ago, and opened his own Bais Medrash in Lakewood due to the number of Bochrim at the yeshiva growing smaller as the Litvish community in Flatbush declined.
Satmar announced that the name of the building will be “Binyan Lipa Friedman,” who donated $5 Million dollars towards the purchase. Lipa is a son of the famous “Moshe Gabbai” of Satmar.
Torah Temimah still runs a vibrant Yeshiva K’tana and Mesivta in their original building on the same street, located at 555 Ocean Parkway. Sources say that the funds of this building sale will not be going to the current Yeshiva Torah Temimah on Ocean Parkway, but to the other Mosdos of the original Torah Temimah, currently located in Staten Island.
The news is bittersweet for thousands upon thousands of Bochrim (now married with children) who learned in Torah Temimah, and for those who were abused by the Yeshiva's star teacher, Rabbi Kolko who abused any boy that could walk.
Harav Shmuel Shmelke Leifer zt”l of Boro Park, passes away.
Throughout his life, Rav Shmuel was a sought-after speaker, whose sagely advice was absorbed by thousands of people. He was particularly vocal about his opposition to yeshivos turning bochurim away, which he strongly believed them astray.
He was also the rav hamachshir on many kosher eateries in Boro Park for several decades.
The levayah is scheduled to take place Monday morning at his Beis Medrash at 16th Avenue & 55th in Boro Park.
A dedicated volunteer for Chesed Shel Emes Florida was found dead Sunday morning in a North Miami Beach parking lot, the victim of what is believed to be an apparent robbery.
40 year old Hershy Schwartz was fatally shot in his car near North Miami Avenue and NE 167th Street.
Chesed Shel Emes director Mark Rosenberg learned of the homicide when North Miami Beach Police contacted him at 12:30 PM and told him that he was listed as Schwartz’s emergency contact.
Schwartz was engaged to Rosie Brustowsky of Lakewood, New Jersey, and his wedding was to take place next week in Lakewood.
“He was a person who didn’t know how to say no,” Rosenberg said. “He was literally a walking chesed shel emes and he took pleasure in bringing relief to others.”
Originally from Monsey, Schwartz had been living in Florida for more than 10 years and worked for an electric company.
Rosenberg said that Schwartz, who ran CSE’s shiva gamach that lends out Torahs, chairs, tables, water coolers and other items to mourners, was like family.
“Everybody knew that if you needed something done, you went to Heshy,” said Rosenberg.
Police are continuing to investigate Schwartz’s death, which does not appear to be an anti-Semitic attack.
There will be a 12 AM funeral for Schwartz at Yeshiva Toras Emes in North Miami Beach, 1051 North Miami Beach Boulevard, with a second funeral to be held on Monday in New York at 12:30 PM at Spring Valley’s Nikelsburg Shul, 6 Milton Place.
Schwartz will be laid to rest on Monday afternoon in Kiryas Joel.
Under attack by transgender radicals from inside and outside the paper, top editors of The New York Times face a problem so difficult, I feel sorry for them. Well, almost.
The hesitation is warranted because the editors have only themselves to blame. After abandoning standards of fairness to push a crazy woke agenda, they are suddenly discovering that appeasing the far left is impossible.
The crash course in common sense comes with the lesson that the more you give the radicals, the more they want. And they don’t ask, they demand and make threats.
How did the Gray Lady not see this coming?
The pot boiled over last week when thousands of activists, celebrities and supporters, who include some staff writers and occasional contributors, blasted the paper’s coverage. They claimed in a letter there is a pattern of “editorial bias in the newspaper’s reporting on transgender, non-binary, and gender nonconforming people.”
A second letter from more than 100 groups, including GLAAD and the Human Rights Campaign, accused the paper of publishing “fringe theories” and “dangerous inaccuracies.”
NBC reported that a billboard truck drove around the paper’s headquarters with messages such as, “Dear New York Times: Stop questioning trans people’s right to exist & access medical care.”
At first glance, the allegations seem preposterous, even a joke. After all, the paper’s coverage of transgenders is generally so fawning that it feels as if it belongs to a cult. Exhibit A was a gushy November profile under this headline: “For Ghana’s Only Openly Transgender Musician, Every Day Is Dangerous.”
Well, folks, that’s all the news from Africa!
If that isn’t woke enough, what would be? But too much is never enough for the activists, and the last thing they want is fair coverage because that would give legitimacy to critical views. In their absolutist world, there is only one acceptable view: theirs.
And so the mob is coming for the Times because the editors had the gall to publish less-than-cheerleading articles about gender surgeries on minors and other issues. An op-ed defending author J.K. Rowling, Public Enemy No. 1 in TransWorld, also made heads explode.
Despite the absurdity of the attacks, which include the demand that the Times hire four transgender writers within three months, the stakes are high for media outlets everywhere. Given the Times’ prominence, if the editors fail to defend independent journalism, other newsrooms will face pressure to fall in line and most will surrender.
Some already have. Take NBC. At the end of its article on the Times, it added an editor’s note that reads: “The writer of this article is a member of the Trans Journalists Association, one of the supporting signatories on the open letter penned by former and current Times contributors.”
That used to be called a conflict of interest and the writer wouldn’t be permitted to cover the story. Now it’s simply disclosed as if that absolves the perception of bias.
Meanwhile, the Times already faces a similar test of standards involving some black employees. Although it has operated on a virtual quota system for years to hire nonwhite journalists and corrupted its coverage to spot white supremacists behind every tree, the head of the union representing newsroom employees nonetheless calls the paper a racist bastion.
During a one-day strike over stalled contract talks, Susan DeCarava said no black employee, including 1619 Project guru Nikole Hannah-Jones, ever received the highest possible rating from managers. That proves, she told Fox News, the review process “is weighted against people of color.”
Fortunately, there is some reason for hope on the transgender front. Responding to the criticism, top newsroom editor Joe Kahn and opinion editor Kathleen Kingsbury defended the coverage and fired back at employees and contributors who joined the barrage.
“Participation in such a campaign is against the letter and spirit of our ethics policy,” they wrote in a staff email obtained by The Post, adding: “We do not welcome, and will not tolerate, participation by Times journalists in protests organized by advocacy groups or attacks on colleagues on social media and other public forums.”
It was an appropriately tough response, but guild leader DeCarava quickly struck again. In a letter, she said employees have a right to protest the coverage, claiming it was a violation of federal law for editors to “threaten, restrain or coerce employees from engaging in such activity.”
That sounds like an overstatement of worker rights in a private company, but it adds to the pressure on management. Yet the reality remains that if punishments are not forthcoming, sound rules against employees participating in social and political movements are meaningless.
If, however, the participants are penalized, the editors are likely to face a larger staff revolt and perhaps suffer subscription cancellations by far-left readers.
Recent history shows editors at the Times serve at the mercy of the staff. Respected op-ed editor James Bennet was canned by the publisher after running a piece by Sen. Tom Cotton in 2020 that urged then-President Donald Trump to call in the military to put down urban riots.
Newsroom activists denounced the article, and publisher A.G. Sulzberger, after initially supporting Bennet’s decision, buckled and Bennet walked the plank.
Similarly, acclaimed science writer Donald McNeil was fired in 2021 after 150 colleagues signed an angry letter when they learned he had been lightly disciplined for using the N-word in a conversation with teenagers on a Times-sponsored trip two years earlier. According to McNeil, then editor Dean Baquet said he knew McNeil was not a racist but forced him out, saying, “Donald, you’ve lost the newsroom. People are hurt.”
In another era, Times editors ran the newsroom instead of letting it run them. The legendary A.M. Rosenthal would listen to critics inside and out, including big advertisers, then usually tell them to buzz off because the paper couldn’t be bought or bossed.
His job, he famously said, was “to keep the paper straight” instead of letting reporters tilt coverage to the left. He had that passion inscribed on the footstone of his gravesite.
As for the staffers and contributors who publicly attacked their colleagues over the paper’s transgender coverage, Rosenthal wouldn’t have hesitated to hand out pink slips.
Indeed, he had a firm, clear view of conflicts of interest, which he demonstrated by firing a top female reporter who slept with and received expensive gifts from a politician she covered. The misconduct took place when she worked for another paper, but became public soon after she joined the Times. Rosenthal asked her if the report was true, she said yes and he told her to clean out her desk and never come back.
Staff members who requested a meeting were making a case the firing was too harsh when Rosenthal interrupted them to explain his unforgettable rule:
“You can screw elephants if you want to, but then you can’t cover the circus.”
The Movement for Quality Government (MQG) in Israel is the far-left organization at the epicenter of the Israeli left’s war against the Netanyahu government. MQG began its current campaign of delegitimization, subversion and demonization immediately after the Netanyahu government was sworn into office on Dec. 29. The next day, MQG petitioned the Supreme Court to prevent Shas leader Aryeh Deri from serving as a minister in the government.
There was no legal basis for the petition. But that didn’t bother the lawyers at MQG.
In its petition, MQG claimed that the terms of a plea deal Deri reached with the State Prosecution last year on tax reporting errors barred him from serving as a minister. Never mind that nothing in the plea deal stipulated anything of the sort or that 400,000 Israeli voters cast their ballots for Shas with the full expectation that Deri would serve as a senior minister.
Just over two years ago, C, then a very recent new immigrant to Israel, met D, a native Israeli man and the two began dating. Just weeks later, D proposed and convinced his fiancé that they should marry privately, outside of the authority of the Israeli Rabbinate – as required by law. Despite her initial insistence to proceed with the official channels, C eventually relented, and the marriage went ahead.
Already in the early days of the marriage, D began to abuse his wife, and the violence only intensified over time. About a year and a half ago, despite being in the latter stages of pregnancy, C realized that she couldn't suffer any longer and needed leave the marriage. She turned to the local branch of social services for assistance.
To C's great shock and dismay, after sharing her story with the office’s social worker, she was informed that another woman had approached the same office with an incredibly similar story. To everyone's surprise, further investigation confirmed that D was in fact married to both women – having married both women in private, unofficial ceremonies.
“From the very beginning he said that he wanted to marry another woman, but I never believed he’d actually do it,” C said. “In retrospect, I can even point to the exact day that he got married. It was just before Chanukah, and he had gotten all dressed up, like a groom. He left the house and didn’t come back for a week. When he finally returned, he announced that from now on, he would only be spending every other week with me.”
With these shocking new details in hand, C contacted the Ohr Torah Stone organization's Yad La’isha, the world’s largest, most comprehensive and experienced advocacy center for agunot. “Our first motion was to open a personal status file at the Rabbinical Court, to prove that C was indeed a married woman despite the fact that because of the private ceremony, she was still listed as single by the Interior Ministry,” explains Yad La'isha staff Adv. Dina Raitchik. “During the court proceedings, the man admitted he had a number of wives and even had the audacity to complain to the court that he wasn’t able to manage all of his marriages.”
In a hearing that took place last week, D conceded to quickly grant C a get, or traditional Jewish writ of divorce, freeing her from the marriage to begin a new life.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has agreed to a number of concessions to the Palestinian Authority, as part of the Biden administration’s push to broker a deal between the two sides to lower tensions during the Islamic holy month of Ramadan, Walla reported Sunday evening.
According to the report, two Biden administration officials say that the US has secured “understandings” with Jerusalem and Ramallah, under which both Israel and the Palestinian Authority will refrain from unilateral moves over the next few months.
The understandings, disclosed earlier this month, were reportedly finalized only following heavy pressure from the Biden administration.
Under the tacit agreement, the Palestinian Authority will hold off on its plans to have the United Nations Security Council vote on a resolution condemning Israeli construction in Judea and Samaria.
The resolution, drafted following the Israeli Cabinet’s decision to authorize nine communities in Judea and Samaria, is slated to be brought up for a vote by the 15-member council on Monday, and would demand Israel "immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory."
The text "reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law."
The United States hinted Thursday it would likely veto the resolution, with State Department spokesman Vedant Patel calling the resolution “unhelpful.”
To avoid being forced to use its veto in the Security Council, the Palestinian Authority is expected, under the new arrangement, to call to have the vote on the resolution dropped from the Council’s agenda.
In exchange, Israel has reportedly agreed to freeze construction projects in Judea and Samaria and to halt or significantly reduce the demolition of illegal Arab structures in eastern Jerusalem, Judea, and Samaria.
The duration of the construction freeze and reduction in demolitions is unclear, though the report claimed the US is hoping to reduce tensions during the upcoming Islamic month of Ramadan which lasts from March 22nd to April 20th.
An Israeli diplomatic official quoted in the report denied that any understandings regarding construction freezes in Judea and Samaria were reached.
Texas GOP Rep. Ronny Jackson, a former White House physician, is calling for an end to the "cover-up" of President Biden's health after the president's physical earlier this week claimed that he is healthy and fit to serve as commander in chief.
"The majority of Americans can see that Biden's mental health is in total decline, yet there is no transparency from the White House on what’s going on, if anything, to address this issue and his inability to do his job," Jackson told Fox News Digital. "Yesterday's written physical exam report released by Biden’s physician, Kevin O'Connor, further confirms that this administration is still adamant about concealing the truth."
Jackson also took issue with the fact that the report from Biden's physical, the second one he's taken since entering office, made no mention of the president undergoing a cognitive test amid his "deteriorating mental health."
Against the background of the protest against the judicial reform and the growing concern in the legal community and the left-center politicians, there have been quiet, unofficial talks recently between Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s associates and representatives of the circles opposed to the legislation, with the aim of reaching a solution, Maariv reported on Friday.
Anyone reading the Maariv report is instantly reminded of the “Greek island affair” of 2001, where businessman David Apple employed Ariel Sharon’s son Gilad as an extremely highly-paid consultant – which the police and the prosecution believed was Apple’s way of bribing Sharon Sr. In 2004, the case against PM Sharon was dropped, and shortly thereafter, Sharon decided, after decades as the “father of the settlement enterprise,” to turn into the executioner of the settlement enterprise, by expelling some 10,000 Jews from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria.
Look out, Jewish brothers and sisters, we may be treated to a remake of the same movie, this time starring defendant Benjamin Netanyahu who is facing three criminal indictments.
Border Guard Superintendent Yasser Asadi, who was documented this week blocking Otzma Yehudit MK Limor Son Har Melech to stop her from interfering with the uprooting of a Jewish vineyard in Binyamin, was active in the election campaign of Yair Lapid’s Yesh Atid party, Makor Rishon reported on Friday.
In an incident recorded during the evacuation of Kerem Ben-Eliyahu in Shiloh, Binyamin, four Border Guard officers surrounded Har Melech to prevent her from protesting in front of the bulldozers that uprooted the trees or trying to block them with her body
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.
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.
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.
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.
