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Ruth King

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Danyela Souza Egorov New York Charter Schools Aren’t Stealing Public Schools’ Dollars Opponents make the allegation to block educational opportunity.

By on September 29th, 2025

https://www.city-journal.org/article/new-york-charter-public-schools-funding

Earlier this month, more than 15,000 families from 200 charter schools across New York City marched on the Brooklyn Bridge to support charters. They asked, among other things, that the state lift its cap on the number of charter schools; that charters get equitable funding; and that charters be allowed to share space in existing public school facilities.

The families assembled represented the more than 150,000 New York students currently attending charter schools, as well as the many more on waiting lists. One of their chants—“Stop the no! Let charters grow!”—highlights how New York State has maintained a cap of 460 charter schools since 2015.

Elected officials often explain their reluctance to lift the cap by citing the persistent argument that charter schools take resources away from New York City public district schools. In 2023, State Senator Jabari Brisport, for example, opposed lifting the cap in exactly those terms: “Every time another (charter) opens, the funding gets shifted there,” he said. “And then the first thing that our public schools cut when they lose their funding is after-school and extracurriculars.” State Senator Cordell Cleare added, “This takes away from the public school students. It shows them inequity, it shows disparities, and it sends a message that we’ve given up on traditional public schools.”

The problem with this view is that the pie of public school dollars isn’t fixed—it keeps growing. Charters now enroll 15 percent of the city’s student population. Yet, this expansion has not negatively affected the New York City Department of Education (DOE) budget. Data from the city’s Independent Budget Office show that the DOE budget exceeded $20 billion in 1999 ($22 billion in inflation adjusted 2022 dollars), when the state’s first charter opened. Since then, despite significant enrollment declines, the DOE budget swelled to nearly $40 billion as of 2024—of which, only $3.17 billion constitutes charter school “tuition.”

Some officials, including Andrew Pallotta, president of New York State United Teachers, are recognizing this budget reality. As of early 2023, he had opposed lifting the charter cap in order to “limit the financial burden on the public school district.” This year, he shifted the focus of his opposition, attacking the “corporate charter school industry” and arguing that “many charters operate without meaningful public input or accountability to taxpayers.”

Some public schools do struggle with reduced budgets due to enrollment loss. But the DOE could address these challenges by reallocating its vast budget more effectively. The district continues to operate many small, financially unsustainable schools that should be closed or consolidated. Doing so would free up resources for the remaining schools, improving educational quality for more students rather than propping up low-enrollment, underperforming institutions. The DOE should also reconsider the need for 32 school districts, which range in size from 4,000 to 39,000 students. Merging the smallest districts and reinvesting the savings could better support schools serving the highest-need populations.

Parents are leaving these schools for charters because they are dissatisfied—not for lack of funding. Polling from EdTrust New York shows that 51 percent of voters and 50 percent of parents believe that the education system is on the wrong track.

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ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Will Meloni give in to the pro-Palestine mob? Protests, riots and strikes over Gaza have pushed the Italian PM to waver on her principled defence of Israel. Dominic Standish

By on September 29th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/09/29/will-meloni-give-in-to-the-pro-palestine-mob/

Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni has been one of the few European leaders not to have lost her head over the war in Gaza. Not only has she refused to give credence to the baseless claim of an Israeli ‘genocide’, she has also made recognising Palestinian statehood conditional on Hamas surrendering. After all, it was Hamas that started the current war, and that has ruthlessly prolonged it, with its refusal to return the hostages it captured on 7 October 2023.

Yet Meloni has never been under more pressure to abandon Israel and back Palestinian statehood unconditionally. Last week, Italy went pazzo over Gaza. Protests and riots were sparked by Italy’s refusal to join other Western countries in recognising a Palestinian state. Weathering these protests will be the biggest test of her leadership to date.

The protests kicked off last Monday, when a number of Italy’s powerful unions called for a day of strikes across the country, impacting as many as 75 cities and towns. Among the unions protesting the ‘inertia’ of Italy in recognising Palestine was the Italian General Confederation of Labour, by some way Italy’s biggest union. Consequently, Italy was effectively shut down for a day. In the port city of Genoa, ships and containers were blocked on the unlikely grounds that they were being used to smuggle weapons into Israel, stifling trade and tourism.

The biggest protests took place in Milan and Rome. In Rome, at least 20,000 people gathered outside the city’s Termini station. In Milan, the number was estimated to be closer to 50,000. Clashes at the main train station, Milano Centrale, injured as many as 60 police officers in the process.

The protests have put serious pressure on Meloni. Indeed, there are already signs that she may be buckling. The first hint of this was in her government’s response to the Global Sumud Flotilla, which has Greta Thunberg on board. Last week, the flotilla’s communication system was temporarily disabled by ABBA music, a prank many suspect to have been carried out by the Israel Defence Forces (IDF). As two Italian MPs are part of this woke armada, Meloni’s defence minister, Guido Crosetto, has ordered an Italian naval ship to give safe passage to the boats. Israel has promised to intercept the ship before it reaches Gaza. This raises the question: what does the Italian government intend to do then? Engage in a naval battle with Israel in the Mediterranean?

Then, there was Meloni’s address to the UN General Assembly on Wednesday. ‘It is Hamas that started the war’, she began by saying. ‘It is Hamas that could end the suffering of the Palestinians by immediately freeing all the hostages. It is Hamas that seems to thrive on the suffering of the Palestinian people.’

Then, she turned her ire on Israel, which she accused of ‘violating humanitarian norms’ and massacring civilians. She said the IDF’s actions against Hamas were not proportionate. And she also promised to recognise Palestine, if two conditions are met: the release of all hostages, and the assurance that Hamas would play no role in government.

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The Gaza flotilla: the Woke Man’s Burden Anti-Israel activism is neo-colonial arrogancein the drag of pacifism. Brendan O’Neill

By on September 29th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/09/29/the-gaza-flotilla-the-woke-mans-burden/

I’m old enough to remember when being a peacenik meant you wanted less Western meddling overseas, not more. Seems things have changed. Exhibit A: the Gaza flotilla. These smug sea-farers pose as peace activists, like Mother Teresa in a keffiyeh. Yet behind the humanitarian pantomime there lurks a brutish neo-colonial urge to rally the mighty nations of the West against the uppity little state of Israel. Some on the flotilla are openly calling on powerful states to send their warships to help ‘break’ Israel’s blockade of Gaza. You can call that ‘aid’ if you like – I call it warmongering.

The war-lust of these oceangoing narcissists was spelt out in a column in the Guardian last week. It was written by David Adler, head of the Progressive International think-tank and sailor on one of the boats headed for Gaza. It is not enough for states to ‘offer protection to our civilian fleet’, he said, referencing Spain and Italy’s decision to send frigates to guide the flotilla through the Med. No, you must ‘join us’. You should be ‘deploying vessels’, he said, and ‘at the scale that corresponds to the severity of Gaza’s present suffering’. He ended with a battle cry that will have had the bourgeois Israelophobes who lap up the Guardian cheering over their granola: ‘It is not too late for states to step up and join our mission.’

There is no vacillation here. Mr Adler did not mince his words. This is an invitation to nations with warships to sail upon a sovereign state and compel it to change its policies. We used to call that imperialism. As if his Guardian call to arms were not clear enough, Mr Adler followed it up with a video missive from his boat. We are not satisfied with ‘states sending frigates to protect the flotilla’, he said. No, you must ‘JOIN the mission, sail alongside us, break the siege’. It is time, he said, to ‘amp up the pressure’. He signed off his imperious cry with the fire emoji. Nearly 10,000 people on X have given a thumbs-up to this plea for the powerful to send their ships to rebuke the Jewish State.

Look, I don’t want anything to happen to the people on these boats. It is not a crime to be an incalculably vain white saviour so high on your own sanctimony that you have convinced yourself you can stop a war. And yet if Israel views this flotilla as a problem, can we blame it? Spokespeople for the flotilla are petitioning for naval intervention against it. They want foreign ships to ‘smash’ Israel’s war aims. ‘We’re just bringing baby food’, they say in one breath, and then ‘It’s time to amp up the pressure’ in the next. There isn’t a nation on Earth that would not be profoundly unsettled by the sailing of 52 boats towards its waters, especially when those boats are praying for foreign armies to join them. It is a rancid double standard so typical of Israelophobia to expect Israel and Israel alone to be chill about such a conceited incursion into its sovereign territory.

Mr Adler is not the only flotilla bloviator who dreams of navies joining their crusade. Witness the glee with which the boat people and their cheerleaders in the bourgeois press greeted the news that Spain and Italy had deployed frigates to guide the flotilla following reported drone attacks and communications interference. The flotilla’s official X account posted video footage of Italy’s navy ship to the delight of followers. ‘Viva Italia!’, tweeters cried. ‘Una bella nave!’ (‘a beautiful ship’), said one. Peace activists calling a warship ‘beautiful’? I don’t recall anything like that from my activist days.

In leftish circles there’s a palpable relish over the sailing of Western warships in the direction of Israel. ‘Wow’, cried Owen Jones. ‘Spain is offering direct military protection to the flotilla…. So what now, Israel?’ He sounds like those white-haired war hawks who said ‘Checkmate, Saddam’ when US frigates besieged the Persian Gulf in 1990. Novara Media could barely contain its excitement when Turkey joined the ‘protection’ of the flotilla. ‘Civilian boats now flanked by four warships from three different countries’, it crowed. And that’s a good thing? Warships in the Med? Next time a Blair-like leader puffs himself up as a ‘humanitarian’ as he engages in militaristic manoeuvres against a state that he’s branded evil, I don’t want to hear a word from the left – for that’s what they’re doing right now.

Of course, it is highly unlikely that Spanish, Italian or Turkish warships will cross into the 12 nautical miles off Israel that count as Israeli waters – however much the flotilla’s faux-hippies might desire such a disastrous ‘amping up’ of pressure. And yet even their accompaniment of the flotilla through the Med could cause a flare-up in diplomatic affairs. As the Middle East Forum points out, that literal ‘NATO warships’ are ‘escorting a flotilla’ that is on a ‘collision course… with the Israeli navy’ is a big problem. Imagine if the Armada de México, the second largest navy in Latin America, were to escort to the edge of American waters 52 boats packed with people who think America is the scummiest nation on Earth. The US would be pissed. Well, Israel has a right to be pissed, too.

The flotilla looks less like ‘a protest’ and more like a ‘provocation’, says the Middle East Forum – and one which, courtesy of those frigates and the activists’ call for more navies to join in, could have ‘military consequences’. It’s hard to disagree with this assessment. If the flotilla’s aim were merely to drop off aid to Palestinians, why would it so noisily savour the arrival of warships and dream of their sailing all the way to the shores of Israel-Gaza? We need cool heads. These Israelophobic sailors might want to ‘amp up the pressure’ but Israel should refuse to do so. It should calmly intercept their boats and send the passengers home.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Keir Starmer’s colonial arrogance over Palestine The days of Britain redrawing the maps of the Middle East should be consigned to the history books. Limhor Simhony Philpott

By on September 29th, 2025

https://www.spiked-online.com/2025/09/28/keir-starmers-colonial-arrogance-over-palestine/

“The uncomfortable truth is that this conflict is not about lines on a map. Hamas is waging a religious war against Jews. To pretend otherwise is wilful blindness. To recognise a Palestinian state now is not an act of courage, but of weakness in the face of pressure from anti-Israel and anti-Western extremists.”

Keir Starmer’s decision to recognise a Palestinian state is being dressed up as a bold moral gesture. His supporters frame it as a step towards peace and justice in the Middle East – all very noble-sounding. But scratch the surface, and the move looks less like moral leadership and more like the latest instalment in Britain’s long, disastrous habit of meddling in the region.

The idea that statehood can be bestowed by Western fiat is pure imperial fantasy. We’ve been here before. From the Sykes-Picot Agreement in 1916, when Britain and France carved up the Ottoman lands like slices of cake, to the Balfour Declaration a year later, Britain has always presumed it could redraw borders and manufacture states with a stroke of a pen.

The results were disastrous. Britain and France artificially created Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, installing pliant kings and ignoring ethnic and religious realities. They split the Kurds across four different states, dooming them to a century of statelessness and persecution. During the Palestine Mandate (1920-1948), Britain swung between contradictory promises, first to the Jews, then to the Arabs, stoking resentment on both sides. In Lebanon, French colonial meddling hardened sectarian divides that still fuel political paralysis and violence today. In short, the imperial powers mistook maps for reality on the ground, and in doing so sowed the seeds of endless conflict.

It is astonishing that, after all this, Westminster still imagines it can ‘solve’ the conflict by declaration. Recognition of Palestine from London doesn’t bring peace closer. If anything, in the wake of the 7 October 2023 attacks, it rewards extremism while sidelining the difficult, grinding work of institution-building, negotiation and compromise.

What makes this even more absurd is the hypocrisy. The same anti-Israel activists who denounce Israel as a ‘colonial project’ are cheering Britain’s latest colonial gesture – a decision taken in Whitehall and imposed on the Middle East, without the consent of the people who actually live there. Apparently, colonial meddling is fine, so long as it’s in service of fashionable causes.

Nor does Starmer seem to have much understanding about the Palestinian cause. Its leaders have never been interested in establishing a state that will live peacefully alongside Israel. Neither the Palestinian Liberation Organisation nor Hamas have ever genuinely sought compromise and recognition of Israel as a Jewish state. Even the supposedly moderate Palestinian Authority, which currently governs the West Bank, has repeatedly rejected two-state offers.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Pearls Before Swine In Western Europe, Trump’s UN wisdom falls on deaf ears. by Bruce Bawer

By on September 29th, 2025

https://www.frontpagemag.com/pearls-before-swine/

When, since its founding in 1945, has as much truth been spoken in any UN chamber as was spoken by Donald Trump in his masterful hour-long oration on September 23? As part of “High-Level Week,” during which heads of government from around the world take their turns in the spotlight, most of them boring the General Assembly to death for fifteen minutes or so before shutting offstage, Trump was electrifying. Like J.D. Vance in Munich last February, he served up some home truths, mostly about the countries of Western Europe, which he criticized for failing to curb mass immigration, for relying on “green energy,” and for continuing to buy into the idea of climate change, which he described – wonderfully – as “the greatest con job ever perpetrated on the world.” He explained his preoccupation with Europe: “I love Europe. I love the people of Europe. And I hate to see it being devastated by energy and immigration. This double-tailed monster destroys everything in its wake…you want to be politically correct and you are destroying your heritage.”

You might expect at least some members of the Western European political establishment to appreciate Trump’s advice and recognize that he was speaking the truth. No, on second thought, you wouldn’t expect that, and neither would I. The men and women filling that auditorium on First Avenue would, with very few exceptions, be among the last people in the world to give a fair hearing to Trump’s views. They’re lockstep globalists for whom climate change (however it happens to be defined at the  moment) is an undeniable truth and mass Islamic immigration to Europe an absolute good. I’ve written before about the time, many years ago, when I tried to convince an audience of diplomats in Washington, D.C., that there was a dark side to the flood of Muslims that had been entering Western Europe for the past few decades. They dismissed everything I said out of hand, calling it “anecdotal” and implying that I was something of a hysterical fool. Even now, when the seriousness of the problem is far more obvious than it was then, members of the diplomatic corps cling to their fatuous certitudes.

Yes, some of the General Assembly delegates laughed the other day when Trump was being funny. And they applauded him at the end – a sharp departure from the utterly rude reception he got when he last addressed that body seven years ago. Yet they gasped when he dared to question the religion of climate change. And none of them, I’m sure, had their minds changed by anything he said.

As with the politicians and diplomats, so with the media. Throughout Western Europe, Trump’s speech was not just characterized as “scathing,” “blistering,” and so forth but was also roundly mocked. In Norway, where the four reporters who covered Trump’s speech for Dagbladet quoted Hilmar Mjelde, a poli-sci professor and so-called “US expert,” as calling Trump’s comments on climate change “really radical.” Eirik Løkke, another “US expert” – a category of Norwegian academics, by the way, who invariably turn out to understand almost nothing about America and Americans – called Trump an “extremely narcissistic” man whose “extremely childish” statements amounted to “babbling madness.” Løkke appears to have made the media rounds: he told NRK that Trump “has a problematic relationship with reality” and told VG that Trump had “flooded” the hall “with nonsense all the way through.”

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Thanks to the West’s ‘Useful Idiots,’ Iran’s Terror Proxies Celebrate Recognition of ‘Palestinian State’ by Moving Jihad to West Bank by Khaled Abu Toameh

By on September 29th, 2025

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21940/jihad-west-bank

The groups and their patrons in Tehran do not care if Palestinians in the West Bank are killed and displaced as a result of their terrorism. Iran’s mullahs and their Palestinian proxies have only one thing in mind: murdering Jews and eliminating Israel.

Those Western countries [France, the United Kingdom, Canada and Australia, among others]… have chosen to ignore that the PA is unwilling to confront the terror groups in the West Bank.

In the eyes of the Iranian regime, Hamas and PIJ, these moves could not have taken place were it not for the October 7 Hamas-led attack on Israel.

“Why are the countries recognizing a Palestinian state today? Before October 7, did any country dare recognize a Palestinian state? The fruits of October 7 are what caused the entire world to open its eyes….” — Ghazi Hamad, senior Hamas official, to Qatar’s Al-Jazeera, August 2, 2025.

Even if the war in the Gaza Strip ends, Qatar, Iran, Hamas and PIJ will never give up the fight to destroy Israel and replace it with a radical Islamist state. The attempt to transform the West Bank into a second base for jihad highlights that ending the war in the Gaza Strip will not end the dream of wiping Israel off the map.

As all eyes are fixed on the Hamas-Israel war in the Gaza Strip, the Iranian regime and its Palestinian terror proxies are working to move the fighting to the West Bank.

Recently, armed cells belonging to Iranian-backed Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) have escalated their terrorist attacks in the West Bank against Israeli soldiers and civilians. The Palestinian groups responsible for the death and destruction in the Gaza Strip over the past two years are even trying to fire rockets from the West Bank into the rest of Israel. The groups and their patrons in Tehran do not care if Palestinians in the West Bank are killed and displaced as a result of their terrorism. Iran’s mullahs and their Palestinian proxies have only one thing in mind: murdering Jews and eliminating Israel.

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Comey Faces Indictment, but His Real Crimes Remain Untouched James Comey’s indictment may grab headlines, but the real scandal is how many of his past abuses still escape legal or moral accountability. By Victor Davis Hanson

By on September 29th, 2025

https://amgreatness.com/2025/09/29/comey-faces-indictment/

We have no idea whether the current DOJ indictments will lead to a conviction of James Comey, namely that he authorized FBI subordinates to leak to the media and then lied about it, obstructing Congress in the process.

It may come down to the word of Comey, a known fabricator, against the testimony of his former subordinate, Andrew McCabe, an admitted liar. Take your pick.

We know, however, that Comey is not facing a Trumpian $500 million in potential fines, nor 93 indictments, nor the scrutiny of five different local, state, and federal prosecutors. Nor, like some of the J6 arrested, will he be sent to solitary confinement to await a trial in a year or two or be charged with “illegal parading.”

We also know of the crimes or unethical conduct for which James Comey is not currently being indicted or investigated.

He is not being charged with pleading amnesia or ignorance in 2018—e.g., “I didn’t know,” “I couldn’t recall,” “I didn’t remember”—a reported 245 times while under oath to House investigators and misleading them.

He is not being charged with leaking in 2017 a confidential FBI memo of a conversation with then President Trump—which he improperly stored in his personal safe, in violation of FBI protocols—to the New York Times via a third-party Columbia professor.

He is not being charged for falsely assuring the President of the United States in 2017 that he was not the object of the current Crossfire Hurricane “Russian collusion” investigation—when, in fact, Trump, as the Mueller investigation revealed, was the real target of almost that entire ruse.

He is not being charged for deliberately leaking an FBI memo of a conversation with President Trump for the purpose of injuring him by prompting the appointment of his friend and predecessor, Robert Mueller, as a special counsel to investigate the supposed crimes of Donald Trump. Comey’s gambit resulted in a 22-month and $30 million administration hiatus, only to find no actionable wrongdoing by Trump.

He is not being investigated for usurping the role of the DOJ in 2016 when, as an FBI investigator, he served simultaneously as investigator and prosecutor, creating a conflict of interest.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The Media’s Sins of Omission Are Getting Worse By Becket Adams

By on September 28th, 2025

https://www.nationalreview.com/2025/09/the-media-sins-of-omission-are-getting-worse/

NBC botches the coverage of a ‘Free Palestine’ shooter and an ICE encounter.

There’s a real problem in the media industry with reporters who prefer not to report.

Just as bad are the reporters who don’t know how to report.

These are issues we’ve covered in the past, but things aren’t getting any better. If anything, they’re getting worse.

Consider, for example, NBC News’ tortured handling last week of a deadly shooting at a wedding reception in New Hampshire.

The relevant facts, which were known at the time of NBC’s coverage, are that the alleged gunman, 23-year-old Hunter Nadeau, shot and killed one wedding-goer, 59-year-old Robert Steven DeCesare, and injured two others.

Just before opening fire on the wedding party, Nadeau reportedly said, “The children were safe,” and then shouted, “Free Palestine!”

Yet, as was first brought to my attention by Charlie Cooke, NBC practically had to be bullied into acknowledging accounts of the gunman’s reported words.

The shooting occurred on September 20 at roughly 9 p.m. By midnight, a local ABC News affiliate, WMUR, published an eyewitness account that claimed Nadeau had shouted, “Free Palestine!”

British tabloids were not far behind.

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RELIGION Comments turned off

Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement) Guide for the Perplexed, 2025 Yoram Ettinger

By on September 28th, 2025

1. Yom Kippur is observed on the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tishrei (October 2, 2025), starting at sundown of Wednesday, October 1.  Yom Kippur is a Super Sabbath (Shabbat Shabbaton in Hebrew), concluding 10 days of soul-searching and attempts of self-enhancement, which are launched on Rosh Hashanah, the first day of the Jewish year.

According to Leviticus 23:26-32: “The Lord said to Moses, that the tenth day of this seventh month [Tishrei] is the Day of Atonement…. Do not do any work on that day…. This is a lasting ordinance for generations to come….”

2. Ten, which represents wholesomeness, has a special significance in Jewish history: God’s abbreviation is the 10th Hebrew letter (Yod – י); the 10 Commandments; the 10 Plagues of Egypt; Yom Kippur on the 10th day of Tishrei; the 10 spheres of the spiritual universe, which were highlighted during the Biblical Creation; 10 reasons for blowing the Shofar (ram’s horn) on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur; the 10% (tithe) Biblical gift to God; the 10th day of the Jewish month of Tevet commemorates the beginning of the 586-589 BCE siege of Jerusalem by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar; the 10 Martyrs (Jewish leaders), who were tortured/murdered by the Roman Empire; the 10 generations between Adam and Noah and between Noah and Abraham; the 10 divine tests experienced by Abraham; the 10-person-quorum (Minyan in Hebrew), which is required for a collective Jewish prayer service; the 10 sons of Haman and the 10 Nazi leaders, who were hung; etc.   

3. The astrological sign of the months of Tishrei is Libra (♎), which symbolizes the scales of justice, truth, optimism, humility and tolerance. Libra is ruled by the planet Venus (Noga – נגה in Hebrew – is the name of my oldest granddaughter), which represents divine light and compassion. 

4. The Hebrew word Kippur [כיפור] means atonement/repentance – a derivative of the Biblical word Kaporet [כפורת], which was the dome/cover of the Holy Ark in the Sanctuary, and the word Kopher [כופר], which was the cover/dome of Noah’s Ark and the Holy Altar in the Jerusalem Temple. 

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Trump Has a 21-Point Peace Plan for Gaza. Can It Work? International guarantees and humanitarian aid won’t matter if Hamas refuses to play by the rules. Michael Oren

By on September 28th, 2025

https://www.thefp.com/p/trump-has-a-21-point-peace-plan-for?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Donald Trump wants to end the war in Gaza. He wants peace between Israel and its neighbors, including Saudi Arabia. And he wants a Nobel Peace Prize.

Against that backdrop, the Americans have drawn up a 21-point plan for peace that is a masterwork of diplomacy. Purportedly adapted from a similar proposal from former British prime minister Tony Blair and finalized by Jared Kushner’s seasoned team at the State Department, the plan addresses all the outstanding issues—from the cessation of fighting and the release of the Israeli hostages to the demilitarization, deradicalization, and reconstruction of Gaza and, ultimately, negotiations on the creation of a Palestinian state. The plan stops treating Gaza as solely an Israeli problem and stresses the regional responsibility for its rehabilitation. It provides the perennially sought “diplomatic horizon” for the Palestinians and an unprecedented degree of security for Israelis. Under the plan, the devastating war in Gaza becomes the catalyst for peace throughout most of the Middle East.

Unless one identifies with Bezalel Smotrich and Itamar Ben-Gvir, radical right-wing ministers who want to evict the Palestinians from Gaza and resettle it with Israelis, and who oppose the slightest mention of Palestinian statehood, the 21-point plan is the optimal solution. But, as with so many previous peace initiatives, the elegance of the concept cannot conceal its flaws. These, as in the past, are liable to prove fatal.

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