"It is grotesque and hypocritical for Americans who hyperventilate about interference in our own democracy” to call for the Israeli leader's removal.
The primary “obstacles to peace” in Israel’s region are genocidal terrorists and corrupt PA leaders who repeatedly reject peace deals. Foreign observers who cannot keep this straight ought to refrain from interfering in the democracy of a sovereign ally.
I'm asking my readers to do your part in this scandal, call his office and voice your displeasure
This is a link to his webpage
https://www.schumer.senate.gov/contact
+1(202)224-6542
US Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer gave a speech on "a pathway to peace and achieving a two-state solution" today (Thursday).
In his remarks, Schumer called for the holding of new elections in Israel, saying that "Netanyahu has lost his way." He further called the Israeli Prime Minister an "obstacle to peace."
According to Schumer, Netanyahu is one of four obstacles to peace, the others being Hamas, "radical Israelis," and Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas.
Schumer's criticism of Netanyahu centered on the prime minister's "outright" rejection of the idea of the creation of a Palestinian state in the aftermath of October 7. All Israeli polls show that a clear majority of Israelis are also against the idea of a Palestinian state.
“The Netanyahu coalition no longer fits the needs of Israel," he said. "The Israeli people are being stifled right now by a governing vision that is stuck in the past.”
"This is a grave mistake for Israel, for Palestinians, for the region, and for the world," he claimed. "The only real and sustainable solution to this decades-old conflict is a negotiated two-state solution."
According to Schumer, Netanyahu has "dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing U.S. standards for assistance.”
“If Prime Minister Netanyahu’s current coalition remains in power after the war begins to wind down, and continues to pursue dangerous and inflammatory policies that test existing US standards for assistance, then the United States will have no choice but to play a more active role in shaping Israeli policy by using our leverage to change the present course," he said.
Schumer did criticize Hamas for deliberately causing much of the humanitarian crisis in the Gaza Strip. "Israel is by no means the only one responsible for the immense civilian toll. To blame only Israel for the deaths of Palestinians is unfair, one-sided, and often deliberately manipulative. And it ignores Hamas' role in this conflict."
He further criticized the media and the anti-Israel protestors for not acknowledging that Hamas' strategy of using human shields contributes to the death toll in Gaza.
He noted that, "Contrary to the unfounded, absurd, and offensive claims by some that the Jewish people are colonizers in their ancestral homeland, Jewish people have lived in the homeland continuously for more than 3,000 years."
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| Trudeau |
A Canadian law that aims to make social media platforms safer is getting flak for what some decry as government overreach.
Introduced late last month, the Online Harms Act, or Bill C-63, would allow judges to imprison adults for life if they advocate for genocide.
The law would also allow a provincial judge to impose house arrest and a fine if there were reasonable grounds to believe a defendant "will commit" an offense – a provision Wall Street Journal columnist Michael Taube likened to the 2002 film, The Minority Report.
Maragaret Atwood, author of The Handmaid's Tale, has criticized the bill as "Orwellian."
"If this account of the bill is true, it’s Lettres de Cachet all over again. The possibilities for revenge false accusations + thoughtcrime stuff are sooo inviting! Trudeau’s Orwellian online harms bill," Atwood wrote on Twitter.
Writing in Public, conservative author Stephen Moore called it the "most shocking of all the totalitarian, illiberal, and anti-Enlightenment pieces of legislation that have been introduced in the Western world in decades."
Citing a government spokesperson, the bill would increase the maximum penalty specifically for advocating genocide from 5 years to life imprisonment and from 2 years to 5 years, on indictment, for the willful promotion of hatred."
Justice Minister Arif Virani, who introduced the bill, said, as a father, he was "terrified of the dangers that lurk on the internet for our children."
He argued that laws exist regulating the safety of toys his kids play with, but not the "screen that is in our children’s faces."
Frum Jews Protest against Agudah/Pearls in front of State House in Albany, March 5, 24
Judith Raanan, a Chicago-area resident who was kidnapped together with her daughter, Natalie, by Hamas during its October 7 attack on Israel, said her captors were greeted as heroes when she and her daughter arrived at a Gaza hospital.
“The minute we came in, all the nurses were standing there and going like this [cheering]. They were all so happy that they came back with prey, with Israeli-Jewish prey,” Raanan told NewsNation in an interview on Wednesday.
Judith and Natalie Raanan were the first hostages to be freed by Hamas. They were released on October 20, after nearly two weeks in captivity.
At the hospital, Raanan said she interacted with a man she believed to be a “very high-ranked” Hamas leader who spoke “brilliant Hebrew.”
The two were kidnapped from Kibbutz Nahal Oz on October 7. Raanan said she and her daughter had been sleeping when they received a phone call warning them not to go outside.
“I started walking towards the room of my daughter, and that was also the moment that a rocket hit the bedroom where I was,” Raanan recalled.
Realizing an attack was underway, Raanan explained to her daughter what was happening.
“I simply said, ‘Honey, do you remember how you’ve seen the movies? Those guys that have all this military artillery and stuff that come with guns and all? That’s what’s going to come through the door, so don’t panic.'”
Raanan recalled armed terrorists bursting into the room while she and Natalie were still in their pajamas.
“My girl was afraid. She said, ‘Mom, I’m afraid to be raped.’ I said nobody’s going to do nothing to you,” Raanan said.
The terrorists held the two at gunpoint and ordered them to convince neighbors to leave the safe rooms where they were hiding, she recalled.
“He’s telling me, ‘You tell them to get out, you tell them to get out, or I’m going to bomb the whole building,'” said Raanan.
The terrorists rounded up the hostages they’d managed to capture and marched them, zip-tied and at gunpoint, through the desert to the Gaza border, Raanan continued, adding she was badly cut when one of the terrorists removed her restraint with a sharp knife.
Once in Gaza, the hostages were taken by a group of men in a car to the hospital. All the while, Raanan said she worried for her family.
On the remaining hostages, Raanan told NewsNation, “We have hostages that are going through mental, physical, emotional hardship and need to be released.”
The Biden administration is expected to impose new sanctions on two outposts in Judea and Samaria that were supposedly used as a base for attacks by Israelis against Palestinian Arabs, Axios reported on Thursday citing three US officials.
A US official said the sanctions against the two outposts are meant to send the message that the US is targeting not only individuals but also entities that are involved in giving logistical and financial support to "attacks against Palestinian civilians."
According to the report, the second round of US sanctions against Israelis, which is expected to be imposed as early as Thursday, will also include sanctions against three Israeli citizens. The sanctions would freeze assets the three settlers and two outposts might have in the US, ban them from getting a visa to enter the US, and block them from using the US financial system.
Last month President Joe Biden signed an executive order allowing the US to sanction Israelis accused of "settler violence." Shortly thereafter, the US State Department announced sanctions against four Israeli citizens.
The sanctions have proven detrimental to their subjects after some Israeli banks decided to freeze the accounts of those who were sanctioned.
In a speech marking Ramadan, Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah asserted that Israel will ultimately lose the war in Gaza, even if it enters Rafah. Directing his comments at Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Nasrallah declared, “Even if you go to Rafah, you have lost the war.”
Nasrallah emphasized that Gaza’s residents will not surrender to Israel, despite the massacres, and will continue to embrace the resistance. He questioned, “Who are you negotiating with if Hamas has been defeated?”
Addressing internal Israeli debates, Nasrallah pointed to the “political crisis with the Charedim” serving in the IDF, predicting that it would lead to the collapse of the state. He also referenced Opposition Leader Yair Lapid’s remarks that the IDF lacks sufficient manpower to wage a war on the northern front.
Foreign Minister Naledi Pandor made the comment earlier this week at a Palestinian solidarity event attended by officials from South Africa's ruling African National Congress party.
She also encouraged people to protest outside the embassies of what she called the “five primary supporters” of Israel and its military action in Gaza. She didn’t name them but almost certainly was referring to the United States, the U.K. and Germany among others.
“I have already issued a statement alerting those who are South African and are fighting alongside or in the Israeli Defense Forces: We are ready. When you come home, we are going to arrest you,” Pandor said, to rapturous applause from the audience.
In December, the foreign ministry said that the South African government was concerned that some of its citizens or permanent residents had joined the IDF to fight in Gaza and warned that they could face prosecution if they hadn't been granted permission to do so under South Africa's arms control laws.
One thing is clear to almost everyone in Israel: The world has changed since Simchas Torah. There is no going back to the way things were.
The subhuman monsters who murdered raped, and beheaded our brothers and sisters have shaken the world. In Israel, for the most part, there is a tremendous unity of purpose and a sense of brotherhood to fight together for our national future. Unlike what was going on before October 7, when left and right, religious and secular, were at each other’s throats, there are now countless examples of Jews of all types coming together, appreciating each other, finding common ground as Jews, and hoping together for Hashem’s help. Many see in this great hope that it is part of the necessary conditions that will hopefully lead to our final redemption, speedily in our days.
However, I believe that the current scenario is very fragile. I am old enough to have lived through the Six-Day War, the Yom Kippur War and intifadas and other crises and have seen similar unifying moments (although this seems to be the most powerful yet). In all those cases the unity waned soon after the crisis abated, and unfortunately, the sinas chinom that we Jews excel at returned quite quickly.
It is already happening. The leaders of the “Kaplan Movement,” who regularly led rallies of tens of thousands paralyzing the country and did so much damage in the name of “democracy,” found themselves on October 8 without a platform on which to bloviate and feel important. Unfortunately, they found a way to be “relevant” again. They are leading a growing movement that is cynically using the pain of the families of hostages to whip up anti-Netanyahu and anti-government protests, blaming him and the government for the security failures on October 7 and demanding that Netanyahu resign immediately. (They, of course, refuse to admit their part in causing the national weakness that our enemies saw, and blame it all on others.) They have returned to the streets in Kaplan and at the homes of cabinet ministers, and soon will attempt mass rallies countrywide.
While this is, thankfully, still only a minority view, the seething hatred of many is still just under the surface, waiting to be stoked by extremists on both sides. There is enormous resentment against the leadership of the army and the government that left Israel so vulnerable on October 7. Most sane people understand that a day of reckoning must come after the war, but the anger and desire for heads to roll bubbles up more and more frequently. When this finally happens, it is hard to envision that much unity will survive.
My concern, however, is mostly with the charedi public. As I wrote repeatedly before October 7, it is plain that much, if not most, of the anger and protests that were going on were not caused by “Judicial Reform” but by the anger and fear that the secular public has of the growing power and numbers of the religious, and particularly the charedi, community. They feared that the predominantly secular liberal State of Israel is in danger of becoming far more religious and conservative, and were strengthened in those fears by slander and lies in the media and from the intelligentsia.
Ungvar is in Ukraine! Jews who lived there before WW2 were practically all murdered by the Nazis, very few survived!
Someone tell R' Yosef, there is a war in Ungvar today!
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| Meraglim "the Gedoilei Hador" of the "dor deah" |
On Sunday, the people of Beit Shemesh elected a new mayor, Shmuel Greenberg. He is affiliated with the ultra-Orthodox Degel HaTorah political party, and he defeated the incumbent mayor, Aliza Bloch, who is Orthodox but not part of the Chareidie world. The election wasn’t particularly close; Greenberg won 58% of the vote. It’s hardly likely that last-minute electioneering saved him from defeat. Greenberg won and was always going to win. So why did some rabbis, ostensibly in the name of Torah values, resort to slander in order to ensure his election? |
