הלם ותדהמה ▪︎ עבריין מין מבית שמש נלכד למרות התפרעות ההמונים
I'm willing to be convinced by a valid halachic argument. I'm not willing to be convinced by cliches, the misreading of sources, or shallow argumentation.
Two nights ago, a student from a local yeshiva called our house; he asked for money so that the institution could meet its budget. After inquiring about the number of students learning in this yeshiva and how long it had been open, my wife Aliza asked how many of its students had joined the army since the yeshiva’s founding. “None!” he answered proudly.
In the course of explaining why he and the other students should not be drafted, he reasoned that because they learn for twelve hours a day, they are both working harder, and accomplishing more for the security of the country, than the soldiers who are on the front lines.
Aliza didn’t even bother telling him that our son Yaakov, who is serving in the north of Israel, routinely wakes up at 3 or 4 in the morning to begin his day. Given that context, her interlocutor’s boast about learning twelve hours a day is somewhat less impressive; while his claim that he is working harder than our soldiers, who risk life and limb alongside experiencing oppressive heat by day and the cold frost at night, with sleep escaping from their eyes (see Bereshit 31:40) is a perfect example of breathtaking ingratitude alongside ignorant self-congratulation.
(He also tried proving his point by asserting that most of Israel’s wars have begun during bein hazmanim, when the yeshivot are on vacation. One wonders how common this argument is, and - if it has become a real talking point - why almost every yeshiva in Israel will be on bein hazmanim for the next three weeks, rather than insisting that vacation be canceled and the regular yeshiva schedule be maintained. At the very least, if the students genuinely need a vacation and a given yeshiva’s administration authentically believes that study is an indispensable part of the war effort, they should stagger the time off so that the yeshiva is well-populated every day of the year. The fact that this solution is generally ignored can lead an honest person to wonder if the ultra-Orthodox population actually believes its own arguments.)
At least this student’s foolish and arrogant callousness is easy to dismiss. More troubling from an Orthodox perspective is the regular misuse of sources, and the repeated claim that they prove something different from what they actually say.
A typical example of this is the oft-cited Yerushalmi (Chagigah 1:7) which demonstrates that scholars are the true guardians of the city, and the local guards are, at best, secondary to the effort. The problem, of course, is that the Yerushalmi doesn’t say what people presume that it says.
Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai taught: If you see towns that were uprooted from their place in the Land of Israel, know that [the reason is that] they did not contribute to the salaries of teachers of Tanach and Mishnah. What is the textual source of this? [The verse says,] “Why is the land destroyed, torn down like a desert with no passers by? Hashem answered, because they abandoned My Torah.”
Rabbi Yehuda HaNasi sent Rabbi Chiya, Rabbi Asi, and Rabbi Ami to pass through the cities of the Land of Israel in order to establish teachers of Tanach and Mishnah for them. They entered one place and found neither teachers of Tanach nor teachers of Mishnah. They said to [the populace], Bring us the guards of the city, and they brought the watchmen [who stand by the gate]. [The rabbis] said to them, Are these actually the guards of the city?! These are nothing other than the destroyers of the city! So they asked them, Who, then, are the guards of the city? They answered, The teachers of Tanach and Mishnah. That is the meaning of the verse, “If Hashem does not build the house, its builders work for nothing; if Hashem does not guard the city, the guard watches for no reason.”
Only a wanton misreading of this source would indicate that students learning Torah in a Ramat Beit Shemesh yeshiva have any effect on the war effort. First of all, the Yerushalmi is discussing the failure of local communities to pay their teachers - and, according to commentators like the Korban HaEdah, specifically the teachers of children. The entire purpose of the rabbis’ visit to the local town was to encourage them to hire teachers, not to open another kollel or to convince the local populace to spend more time learning Torah. Moreover, the entire episode, along with Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai’s introductory statement, attempts to demonstrate that the presence (and paying) of teachers in a city serves to protect that city - not the Land of Israel in general, and certainly not the wider Jewish population across the globe. Finally, there is every reason to believe that this passage is aggadic rather than halachic in nature - that is, it is not part of the Talmud’s legal writings. Aggadata must be read with extreme care and should be taken very seriously; it should not, however, be used as the basis of legal argumentation.
In sum, the Yerushalmi is probably not meant to serve as a legal argument in the first place - but even if someone insists on understanding it as a practical halachic guide, it asserts that vulnerable cities can protect themselves by hiring and paying teachers who will teach in that same city. Accordingly, if we take the words of the Yerushalmi seriously, cities on the Lebanese and Gaza borders should quickly hire more teachers who will teach Torah to the local children, and the population of Torah observant Jews should eagerly volunteer their services in this regard. Needless to say, this has not happened; I have not heard anyone urging that we implement this Yerushalmi-based solution. Instead, we only hear the refrain that more Torah learning by more people is the answer to Israel’s security needs.
This Yerushalmi, of course, is only one of many texts that are cited (sometimes mistakenly so) to demonstrate that Torah learning, rather than military effort, is the primary way that Israel is protected from its enemies. Other texts may potentially show this more effectively than the Yerushalmi in Chagigah - but we rarely are proffered sophisticated analysis of these sources.
When talmidei chachamim are presented with a halachic question or problem, they typically respond by marshaling all the available halachic sources and then presenting a cogent and well-reasoned argument. To our real regret, not enough scholars have done this when it comes to defending the ultra-Orthodox exemption from the IDF. Rather than offering classic halachic reasoning, too many Chareidi leaders present platitudes and cliches, while citing sources in ways that would never pass muster in an honest halachic dialogue. Aggadata is presented as halacha, while context is frequently ignored.
If the Chareidi leadership wants Israel’s non-Chareidi Orthodox population to respect their anti-army attitude - never mind giving money to the yeshivot which encourage this behavior - they need to present reasoned halachic justifications, rather than pointing to random aggadic sources and insisting that the rest of us trust the Torah intuition of Chareidi gedolim.
Perhaps they have a convincing argument. Until they say what it is, the rest of us have every right to demand more - and to demand that they show some humility instead of proudly advertising that none of a yeshiva’s students had ever joined the IDF.
I mention this because the White House has launched an all-out attack on one of Netanyahu’s cabinet ministers, marking him as a threat to peace and tranquility on the planet. National Security Communications Advisor John Kirby on Saturday announced:
“We are already in preparatory discussions for the senior meeting that will take place on Thursday in Doha or Cairo. The Prime Minister of Israel immediately welcomed this initiative and confirmed that his team will be there and that they’ll be prepared to finalize the details for implementing the deal. Qatar and Egypt are working on the Hamas side to bring them to the table as well. …
“We’ve seen some statements from some quarters in Israel, over recent days, attacking the deal. I just want to underscore how wrong this is, not only in substance, but also jeopardizing the lives of the hostages and running counter to Israel’s own national security interests.
“Some critics, like Mr. Smotrich, for example, have claimed that the hostage deal is a surrender to Hamas or that hostages should not be exchanged for prisoners. Mr. Smotrich essentially suggests that the war ought to go on indefinitely, without pause, and with the lives of the hostages of no real concern at all. His arguments are dead wrong. They’re misleading the Israeli public. And I want to take just a moment, if I could, to address some of those claims.”
In the 2020 election, Joe Biden carried Michigan with 50.6% of the vote to Donald Trump’s 47.8%. In the last 10 presidential elections, the Democratic candidate has won the state 7 times, while the Republican has won it 3 times. Michigan is a swing state par excellence. It sends 16 delegates to the Electoral College. There’s no Democratic victory on November 5 without Michigan.
Sitting at the gate in the New York airport waiting for our return flight home after visiting family, I felt a sense of calm wash over me as the boarding area began to fill with Israelis.
Some were eating, others praying, still others were taking up seats with their oversized shopping bags. Many talked excitedly in rapid Hebrew.
Was it the loudness, the interactions, the not-so-well-behaved kids, the woman who asked me to watch her valuable belongings so she could go to the washroom, or simply the familiarity of “home” before I even left the ground that felt so wonderfully comforting? I knew I just wanted to be home already.
Leaving Israel is always difficult for me, but this year it felt even more so. My husband and I had not been out of the country in over a year, and with children in the reserves, I had mixed feelings about leaving Israel at all. It didn’t feel entirely right, and there was a sadness and longing that followed me wherever I went.
The country was just so unstable that I knew something could happen at any time. If it did, I wanted, or needed, to be close to home. Try to explain that to someone who doesn’t live here as they look at you as if you were crazy.
I also anticipated increased antisemitism outside of Israel, and I felt that few people would understand the difficulties we have endured over the past year.
Despite my dread, I saw pictures of our hostages plastered all over Manhattan, with few actually defaced. In the suburbs, many homes had Israeli flags, and others had signs on their front lawns declaring in big bold letters, “We stand with Israel.”
While pleasantly surprised, it was not enough to distract me from the news back home. Out of sight was definitely not out of mind.
The IDF and ISA on Saturday struck terrorists operating in a Hamas command and control center, which was embedded inside a mosque in the Al-Taba’een school compound.
The command and control center served as a hideout for Hamas terrorists and commanders, from which various attacks were planned and advanced against IDF troops and the State of Israel.
Following an intelligence investigation, it can be confirmed at this time that at least 19 Hamas and Islamic Jihad terrorists were eliminated. These terrorists operated in order to advance and carry out attacks against IDF soldiers and the State of Israel from inside the compound.
According to the IDF, the target of the strike was "15-25 terrorists, including senior terrorists who acted at the site to advance the execution of terror attacks. The compound is located within a civilian area where there is a school and a mosque. The only part of the mosque which was hit was the men's level, an area where there were no women and children. It was struck following confirmation by the pre-strike intelligence activities."
The strike was carried out using three precise munitions, which, according to professional analysis, can not cause the amount of damage that is being reported by the Hamas-run Government Information Office in Gaza. Furthermore, no severe damage was caused to the compound where the terrorists were situated.
Prior to the strike, numerous steps were taken to mitigate the risk of harming civilians, including the use of a small warhead, aerial surveillance, and intelligence information.
Following the strike, the IDF stressed, "The Hamas terrorist organization systematically violates international law and operates from within civilian infrastructure and shelters, brutally exploiting the civilian population and institutions as human shields for their terror activities."
In Gaza, reports claim that over 100 people were killed in the strikes.
The IDF is continuing to investigate the reports of a higher number of casualties, to verify if there is truth to them. However, the IDF noted that "Hamas has been caught a number of times lying with regards to everything connected to IDF strikes and its own strikes. Every IDF strike carried out against terrorists is exaggerated by Hamas with no regard for reality. Hamas continues to lie to the world."
The Egyptian Foreign Ministry condemned the incident, claiming that "the intentional killing of Palestinians in a Gaza school shows that Israel is not interested in ending the war in Gaza."
Nancy Grace has revealed a catalogue of evidence in the case of Pennsylvania teacher Ellen Greenberg whose death was controversially ruled a suicide after she suffered 20 stab wounds.
The case was catapulted even further into the spotlight recently when Josh Shapiro emerged as a potential running mate for Kamala Harris.
As the state's Attorney General Shapiro had doubled down on the suicide ruling and blocked an attempt by Ellen's family to have the case reinvestigated.
That has been cited as one of the reasons Shapiro was not selected by Harris, who opted for Minnesota Governor Tim Walz instead.
On January 26, 2011 Ellen, 27, a first-grade teacher with a 'megawatt smile,' was found dead in her Philadelphia apartment.
Ten of the 20 stab wounds were to her neck and the back of her head.
Assistant Philadelphia Medical Examiner Marlon Osbourne initially ruled her death a homicide, but changed it to suicide after a meeting with police and prosecutors.
In her upcoming book What Happened to Ellen? An American Miscarriage of Justice, Nancy reveals a series of reasons why she believes that should be changed back to homicide.
Crucially, an expert tells her three of the wounds were inflicted post-mortem.
And her investigation uncovers that a lawyer present at the meeting with the medical examiner has been given immunity in the case.
Last week, Pennsylvania's Supreme Court finally agreed to hear arguments from Ellen's parents, Joshua and Sandee, as they try to gain legal standing to challenge the suicide ruling.
Nancy, who has visited with the Greenbergs, told Dailymail.com they have been through 'Hell and back.'
Commenting on the three post-mortem wounds, Nancy said: 'Her heart is no longer beating and she's still stabbing herself, really?'
An expert also said one of the stab wounds 'nicked' Ellen's spinal cord cutting the dura, the membrane around it, yet she would have had to be still stabbing herself after that.
In addition, Ellen was also found sitting propped up against a kitchen cabinet.
'Why is there then blood going horizontally from her nose toward her ear? I believe in the law of gravity,' said Nancy. 'The scene was staged, her body was moved. There's been a cover up.'
She added that Ellen would have had to stab herself with a right hand motion, going left to right, then rotate the knife and stab right to left. 'That did not happen,' she said.
She added that the kitchen was 'extremely clean' when there should have been a 'bloodbath'.
'It stinks to high heaven. How can anyone go along with that?' she said.
At the time, no fingerprints were taken from the knife found still plunged in Ellen's chest, and police did not video the scene,
No luminol was used at the scene to look for signs of diluted blood.
The apartment manager was given permission to have it professionally cleaned. He took video before and after, but the video was 'lost' by police.
Nancy said a female prosecutor who was at the meeting with the medical examiner in 2011 had been given immunity in the case.
'Why do people get immunity? Usually when the state believes that person has information.
'We have been told the female prosecutor that has been given immunity was in the meeting with the medical examiner,' she said.
Shapiro's involvement came to the fore again in recent weeks.
It reemerged that Shapiro had been Pennsylvania Attorney General when in February 2022 his office announced it had reviewed the case and stuck by the suicide ruling.
In July 2022 Shapiro recused himself from the case without offering a detailed explanation.
In a statement his office said: 'While the Office of Attorney General does not have an actual conflict in this matter, circumstances beyond our control have created the appearance of a conflict and our involvement is no longer serving one of the primary purposes of the District Attorney’s original conflict referral.'
Shapiro's 'mishandling' of the case had caused 'anger, hurt, outrage' for Ellen's family, Nancy said.
'lt hit the fan when Shapiro was on the shortlist for VP.
'Instead of saying this is beyond wrong he doubled down. He blocked a reinvestigation of the case, he fought it tooth and nail.
'What they should have done is say we don't know what happened so lets have a hearing.'
Nancy described Ellen as a 'poster teacher for first grade' who loved her students.
She was also a 'Daddy's girl' who loved going to sporting events with her father and played softball.
She said it had been a 'very long ordeal' for the Greenbergs as they try to get the ruling changed. 'They tried and tried and tried,' she said.
Ellen was found with 10 stab wounds from a 10-inch knife to her neck and the back of the head, and 10 to her stomach, abdomen, and chest.
Her fiancé Sam Goldberg told police he broke down the door, which was locked from the inside, found her, and attempted CPR while on the phone with 911.
The Greenbergs sued the medical examiner's office and Osborne in 2019 but were rejected by the Commonwealth Court last September.
The Pennsylvania Supreme Court has not granted their appeal to hear the case as a 'matter of statewide importance'.
Following that decision Sandee told Dailymail.com: 'We're smiling, we're very optimistic. I hope we're making our daughter proud. There's been a lot of frustration, but we haven't given up,' Sandee said.
The court will hear arguments on whether 'executors and administrators of an estate have standing to challenge an erroneous finding recorded on the decedent's death certificate.'
Nancy said she wanted the case 'ruled appropriately' as a homicide and anything else would be 'putting the cart before the horse'.
'Then and only the will this case proceed to an appropriate homicide investigation,' she said.
With the prospect of a major regional war erupting between Israel and Iran, there remains little said about the as-yet-acknowledged Israeli nuclear weapons program. Unofficially, everyone knows that the embattled Jewish democracy has it.
Beyond that, however, the entire program is shrouded in secrecy.
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Democratic vice presidential nominee Tim Walz, on at least five occasions as governor of Minnesota, hosted a Muslim cleric who celebrated Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack last year on Israel and promoted a film popular among Neo-Nazis that glorifies Adolf Hitler, the Washington Examiner found.
The imam, Asad Zaman of the Muslim American Society of Minnesota, joined other Muslim leaders in May 2023 for a meeting about mosque security with Walz’s gubernatorial office in Minnesota. Zaman also spoke at a May 2020 event to call for peaceful protests with the governor during the riots in Minnesota sparked after George Floyd’s death. In April 2019, the cleric delivered an invocation before Walz’s state address — just months after Zaman called for an end to a government shutdown at a press conference with Walz in January 2019.
Zaman, moreover, attended a May 2019 event that Walz hosted for Ramadan, social media posts show.
Walz’s ties to Zaman could serve as problematic baggage for the Minnesota governor as he campaigns with Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee. News of the ties also comes after a Washington Free Beacon report this week found Walz spoke at a 2019 event with an antisemitic scholar who has defended terrorism against Israel.
Zaman, who is from Bangladesh, said on Oct. 7 of last year that he “stands in solidarity with Palestinians against Israeli attacks.” That day, which saw 1,200 Israelis murdered by Hamas terrorists, he also shared an image of a Palestinian flag on Facebook in response to a post by Yusuf Abdi Abdulle, director of the Islamic Association of North America, declaring that “Palestine has the right to defend itself.” The Biden-Harris administration, Abdulle wrote in the post, was “on the wrong side of history” in “supporting the extremist Zionist regime and its illegal settlements.”
“We will throw the full force of the law at people. And whether you’re in this country committing crimes on the streets or committing crimes from further afield online, we will come after you,” Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley told Sky News.
Riots have broken out across the United Kingdom in recent days over rumors spread online that an asylum seeker was responsible for a mass stabbing at a Taylor Swift-themed dance event that left three girls dead and others wounded.
The murders, allegedly committed by a now 18-year-old British citizen born to Rwandan parents, sparked a series of violent protests that tapped into broader concerns about the scale of immigration in the U.K.
Footage of the violent clashes involving anti-immigration protesters and groups of counter-protesters, some of whom have been seen waving Palestinian flags, has gone viral on social media, and the government is warning that sharing such content may have serious consequences.
One key aspect that makes this apparent crackdown on social media particularly shocking to critics is that the British government is threatening to extradite American citizens from the U.S. to be jailed in the U.K. for violating their rules about political speech online.
A Sky News reporter asked Commissioner Rowley to further explain his warning, arguing that high-profile figures have been “whipping up the hatred,” and that “the likes of Elon Musk” have been getting involved.
She then asked what the police force’s plan would be “when it comes to dealing with people who are whipping up this kind of behavior from behind the keyboard who may be in a different country?”
Rowley answered by telling the reporter, “Being a keyboard warrior does not make you safe from the law.”
“You can be guilty of offenses of incitement, of stirring up racial hatred, there are numerous terrorist offenses regarding the publishing of material,” he said.
“All of those offenses are in play if people are provoking hatred and violence on the streets, and we will come after those individuals just as we will physically confront on the streets the thugs and the yobs who are taking — who are causing the problems for communities.”
Elon Musk has made headlines for criticizing Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s response to the riots over the past week, suggesting the UK is headed toward “civil war.”
He also responded to a video of someone allegedly arrested for offensive online comments with a question, “Is this Britain or the Soviet Union?”
Starmer’s spokesperson said there was “no justification” for Musk’s comments, adding that social media companies “can and should be doing” more to combat misinformation, the BBC reported.
He added that such companies “have a responsibility” to stop the spread of criminal activity and limit misinformation.
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| Neil Frias said he was posing with an Israeli flag outside the Olympic Aquatics Center in Saint-Denis when cops began interrogating him. |
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| The Cop |
French National Police violently arrested a Jewish man after he tried to take a photo with an Israeli flag outside an Olympic venue, the wounded tourist told The Post.
Neil Frias, was posing for a selfie with the Israeli flag outside the Olympic Aquatics Center in the Paris suburb of Saint-Denis when a trio of cops began interrogating him and asked if he was “inciting a riot, or a protest,” he recalled.
The officers demanded to know why he was taking a picture, according to a complaint made to the Inspector General of the National Police about the July 30 incident.
The cops seized Frias’ phone and “tried to rip” his flag, according to the complaint.
Frias, 35, was sent on his way after the cops verified his passport and saw he had a ticket to attend the France-Japan water polo match that afternoon.
Roughly 15 minutes later, however, as Frias stood in line at the facility’s main entrance to have his ticket scanned, a different group of five cops suddenly tackled him, he recalled.
Frias asked in French why the police were arresting him, with one of the officers allegedly responding that it was because he was “resisting,” the complaint read.
Cops shoved him against a tree before dragging him by his feet to the police van, causing bruising and bleeding, according to the complaint and photos of injuries shared with The Post.
“I came to Paris to support the Israeli team and be proudly united with the Olympics,” Frias, who had been volunteering with the Israeli Defense Forces for three months ahead of his Paris trip, told The Post.
“I am deeply disheartened with the fact of how the French National Police treated this whole situation and psychologically abused me.”
At the Saint-Denis police station, where Frias was detained for 27 hours, cops allegedly humiliated the battered visitor by telling him “to go drink the toilet water” and taking pictures of him with their cell phones, according to the complaint.
Frias said it took several hours to connect him with a translator, who ended up speaking Spanish, to explain his rights to an attorney.
Meanwhile, he waited eight hours before receiving medical attention, where he said the doctor diagnosed him with a sprain at the top of his spinal cord and a fractured rib.
Frias was charged with violently resisting arrest and trespassing onto a sports venue while drunk, according to a criminal summons. He denied both charges.
“I cannot restrain myself from thinking it has something to do with him taking one picture of himself with an Israeli flag,” Frias’ lawyer, David Cazeneuve, said, seething over the fact that a number of anti-Israel protesters who waved Palestinian flags and booed the Jewish state during its match against Mali were not immediately arrested like his client.
“There have been very odd things on this side.”
The National Police referred queries to the Bobigny district prosecutor, Eric Mathias, who did not respond to a request for comment.
For the first time since the start of the war against Hamas on October 7, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party has overtaken the MK Benny Gantz's National Unity, regaining its position as the largest in the Knesset.
According to a new poll by Lazar Research for Maariv, if elections were held today, the Likud party would win 22 Knesset seats, followed closely by National Unity with 20 seats.
Third-largest in the Knesset would be Yisrael Beytenu with 15 seats, followed by Yesh Atid with 13 seats.
Among the smaller parties, Sephardic-haredi Shas and Otzma Yehudit would win 10 seats each, while the "Democrats" (Labor and Meretz) would win nine seats. Ashkenazic-haredi United Torah Judaism (UTJ) would win seven seats.
The Knesset's Arab parties, Hadash-Ta'al and Ra'am (United Arab List), would win five seats each, followed by Religious Zionism with four seats.
Divided into blocs, the current coalition parties would win 53 seats, while the center-left parties would win 57 seats. The remaining 10 seats are held by the Arab parties, which traditionally do not join any coalition.
Note: This is not Elimelech Stern the Viznitzer Chusid who admitted that he knowingly spied!
One of the suspects in the high-profile espionage case that has shaken the Charedi community has been officially informed that the charges against him have been dropped, and he has been released. The prosecution conveyed this decision to the suspect’s lawyer, who quickly notified his client that he was completely exonerated from the complex case.
Attorney Yosef Roi Atias, representing the suspect, expressed his satisfaction with the decision in a statement to Kikar HaShabbat: “I am very pleased with the decision to close the case against my client.”
Atias further said, “He had no knowledge of the scheme concocted by the enemies yemach shemam, who exploited his innocence with great expertise. The state fully accepted our arguments and closed the case.”
Earlier this week, it was reported that the primary suspect in the espionage affair, a resident of the Ramat Beit Shemesh D neighborhood, admitted during his Shin Bet interrogation that at a certain point, he realized his handlers were agents of an enemy state. This admission contradicted his initial claim that he believed extreme left-wing activists had hired him to carry out actions against the government.
Iranian spies created fake online profiles impersonating Israeli users as part of a scheme to recruit Israeli civilians to carry out missions for Tehran, Israeli authorities said Thursday.
The accusation by the Shin Bet security agency marks the latest in a series of alleged Iranian plots trying to trick Israelis online, including a scheme uncovered in January in which Israelis were allegedly recruited to gather intelligence on high-profile figures for Tehran.
In the newer plot, Israelis were contacted by Iranians using accounts with Hebrew or Israeli names, including some claiming to provide employment services in Jerusalem and Haifa.
Iran had hoped to convince the marks to carry out missions that would have harmed state security, the Shin Bet says, without detailing the tasks. It is unclear if any Israelis were successfully recruited or if any information was passed to Iran; no charges or arrests were announced.
