Displaying the most recent of 91924 posts written by

Ruth King

ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Yom Kippur guide for the perplexed, 2018 Ambassador (Ret.) Yoram Ettinger

By on September 17th, 2018

bit.ly/2MCHiLl
1. The Yom Kippur-matchmaking connection. According to Rabbi Simeon ben Gamliel, the 6th President of the Sanhedrin (the ancient Jewish Supreme Court of 71 Sages), during 50 CE – 70 CE, a direct descendant of King David and a great-grandson of Hillel the Elder: “Jews never had happier days than the 15th of the month of Av [the beginning of the grape harvest – Holiday of Love] and Yom Kippur [the end of the grape harvest]. On those days the daughters of Jerusalem would go out wearing white clothing… dance in the vineyards and say: ‘young man, lift up your eyes and see what you choose. Do not seek beauty… [since] it is a woman that is God fearing that should be praised.’”

Prof. Shalom Rosenberg, from the Hebrew University’s Department of Jewish Thought and Philosophy, suggests that the Yom Kippur-matchmaking connection attests to the centrality of marriage and family in Judaism. While Yom Kippur focuses the attention of Jews to core values, the marriage institution – which is increasingly threatened by modernity – focuses the attention of human beings to the core cell of the human society, the value-based family.

Yom Kippur aims at bringing one closest to God, while marriage aims at bringing man and woman closest to one another.

Yom Kippur aims at coalescing the entire Jewish public – not just observant Jews – around critical values. Hence the Hebrew word for “public” – צבור – which is an acronym for Righteous persons (צדיקים), Average persons (בינוניים) and Evil persons (ורשעים).

2. The Hebrew word Kippur, כיפור (atonement/repentance), is a derivative of the Biblical word Kaporetכפורת ,, the cover of the Holy Ark in the Sanctuary, and Kopher, כופר, the cover of Noah’s Ark and the Holy Altar in the Temple. Yom Kippur resembles a spiritual cover (dome), which separates between the holy and the mundane, between spiritualism and materialism. The Kippah, כיפה (skullcap, yarmulke’), which covers one’s head during prayers, reflects a spiritual dome. Yom Kippur is translated into “the day of Kippur.”

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

‘Terror Balloons’ From Hamas in Gaza Land in Children’s Play Area Before School Day

By on September 17th, 2018

https://www.algemeiner.com/2018/09/16/terror-balloons-from-hamas-

A children’s playground was cordoned off in Kiryat Gat on Friday morning, when police were alerted to a bunch of “terror balloons” launched from Gaza that landed in a residential play area before the start of the school day.

Sappers and security forces successfully removed the balloons, which were fitted with combustible thread that had failed to light. Incendiary balloons have become a common terror tool in Gaza, with cheaply made balloon and kite arson devices having ignited more than 8,000 acres of Israeli land since March.

It was the second incident on Friday alone, with another set of balloons connected to an explosive device being found in the Eshkol Regional Council near Gaza.

Also on Friday, Israel Defense Forces neutralized an explosive device planted next to the security fence border with Gaza, the second such device to have been discovered in the last two days. On Thursday, terrorists attempted to attack a group of IDF soldiers on the Gaza border with a pipe bomb. Troops responded with live fire against three Gazans seen creeping along the security fence.

No injuries or damage were reported in any of the incidents.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Sex, Politics, and Judith Butler at NYU by Edward Alexander

By on September 17th, 2018

A few days ago, I happened upon a letter of August 17 in the Chronicle of Higher Education calling upon Professor Judith Butler to step down as president-elect of the Modern Language Association. I was pleased to suppose that at least some professors of literature were expressing shock, outrage, and indignation at the news that a fanatical Israel-hater, Israel-boycotter, Israel-slanderer, and would-be destroyer would soon accede to the presidency of America’s largest professional organization of college teachers of literature and language. I had in fact expected that droves of MLA members, especially Jewish ones, would react by heading for the exits.

(True, MLA has in the past elected some very unfit presidents. In the late sixties Louis Kampf (MIT) was the first to be elected to represent “leftist” professors. He would express, for teachers who never liked literature much in the first place, a rationale for their hostility: literary studies were both a result and an instrument of oppression. In later years, when “Palestine” became the leftists’ “revolution du jour,” Edward Said, a member of the PLO executive committee, was elected president. But Said was virtually a Zionist compared with the Jewish Butler; also, unlike her, he could write English prose. In 1997 Butler, a stupefyingly opaque writer, won the annual Bad Writing Contest conducted by the journal Philosophy and Literature.)

But I was wrong. The Chronicle letter calling for Butler to step down was written by an Illinois associate professor of “Israeli Literature and Culture” named Rachel Harris. Yet it expressed not the slightest concern about how an organization presided over by someone whose febrile imagination depicts Israel as the devil’s own experiment and aligns herself with Hamas might interfere with (or even impede) her own scholarly work and impose an MLA boycott of the country on whose existence Harris’ writing depends.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Mahmoud Abbas: Fresh American Blood on His Hands Abbas’s Responsibility for Murder by Bassam Tawil

By on September 17th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/13001/abbas-ari-fuld-murder

According to Palestinian terrorist groups, the terrorist, Khalil Jabarin, decided to murder a Jew in response to Israeli “crimes” against the Al-Aqsa Mosque in particular and Islamic holy sites in general. Needless to say, there is no Israeli plan to allow Jews to pray inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

The statements made by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad confirm that there is a direct link between Abbas’s false charge against Israel and the murder of the Israeli-American citizen.

Abbas’s latest fabrication is directly responsible for the murder of Ari Fuld, stabbed to death by a terrorist who actually believed Abbas’s lies about a purported Israeli scheme to split the Al-Aqsa Mosque between Muslims and Jews.In a speech before the PLO Executive Committee in Ramallah on September 15, Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas repeated the old libel that Israel was planning to establish special Jewish prayer zones inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Abbas claimed that Israel was seeking to copy the example of the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, where Jews and Muslims pray in different sections.

Abbas did not say what his lie was based on. He also did provide any evidence of Israel’s ostensible plot against the Al-Aqsa Mosque. He said, nevertheless, that the Palestinians, together with Jordan, were planning to bring this issue before the International Criminal Court and the International Court of Justice.

Abbas’s allegation was quickly picked up by several media outlets in the Arab world, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The headlines that appeared on websites affiliated with Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, the second largest terrorist group in the Gaza Strip, claimed that Israel is planning to permit Jews to pray inside the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

Continue reading →
EDUCATION Comments turned off

Study Warns Against Saying ‘Boys Will Be Boys’ By Toni Airaksinen (????!!!!)

By on September 17th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/study-warns-against-saying-boys-will-be-boys/

A new University of Michigan study urges preschool teachers to avoid saying “they’re just boys being boys” or to remind girls to have “good manners,” lest those teachers accidentally “contribute to gender inequality in early childhood.”

Heidi Gansen — who previously was awarded by the American Sociological Association for her research on “heteronormativity” in preschools — published her latest study in the new issue of the journal Sex Roles.

For her new study, “Push-Ups Versus Clean Up: Preschool Teachers Gendered Beliefs,” Gansen spent 400 hours in Michigan preschools from July 2015 to April 2016. During that time, UM awarded Gansen more than $23,000 in research grants, according to her CV.

Gansen begins by setting the stage: teachers have a strong influence on children.

Preschools are just one way “through which an unequal gender system is reproduced because interactions between teachers and students organize and define boys and girls differently,” explains Gansen, who taught at UM before she graduated this spring.

Gansen sought to answer two questions.

Continue reading →
NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Woodward: No Evidence of Trump-Russia Collusion By Rick Moran

By on September 17th, 2018

https://pjmedia.com/trending/woodward-no-evidence-of-trump-russia-collusion/

Bob Woodward, whose bestselling anti-Trump book Fear has got Washington tongues wagging, told talk show host Hugh Hewitt on Friday that despite looking “hard” for two years, he could find no evidence of collusion between Donald Trump and the Russians in the 2016 presidential election.

HH: So let’s set aside the Comey firing, which as a Constitutional law professor, no one will ever persuade me can be obstruction. And Rod Rosenstein has laid out reasons why even if those weren’t the president’s reasons. Set aside the Comey firing. Did you, Bob Woodward, hear anything in your research in your interviews that sounded like espionage or collusion?

BW: I did not, and of course, I looked for it, looked for it hard. And so you know, there we are. We’re going to see what Mueller has, and Dowd may be right. He has something that Dowd and the president don’t know about, a secret witness or somebody who has changed their testimony. As you know, that often happens, and that can break open or turn a case.

HH: But you’ve seen no collusion?

BW: I have not.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL Comments turned off

Israeli-American Fatally Stabbed in the West Bank Attack by a Palestinian teen comes amid rising tensions in the region By Felicia Schwartz

By on September 16th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israeli-american-fatally-stabbed-in-the-west-bank-1537114584?cx_testId=16&cx_testVariant=cx&cx_artPos=0&cx_tag=contextual&cx_navSource=newsReel#cxrecs_s

TEL AVIV—A Palestinian teenager on Sunday fatally stabbed a 45-year-old Israeli-American man in the West Bank, according to U.S. and Israeli officials.

The man, Ari Fuld, was a right-wing pro-Israel activist who had a following on social media. He was killed at a shopping mall near the Gush Etzion junction that has been the site of similar incidents in recent years. The junction and mall are frequented by both Israelis and Palestinians.

The Israeli military described the stabbing—the second such incident this summer—as an act of terror. No group claimed responsibility for the attack, and there were no signs that it was related to Mr. Fuld’s pro-Israel postings.

The attack comes amid heightened tensions between Israelis and Palestinians. Thousands of Palestinians in Gaza have been demonstrating at the border with Israel to call for the right to return each week, in protests that have often turned violent. Israeli forces have responded with live fire and have killed more than 150 Palestinians since March.

Mr. Fuld lived with his family in Efrat, a settlement in the West Bank, and was married with four children. He was also a reserve member of the Israeli military.

Videos of the scene circulated on social media show that Mr. Fuld chased and shot at his attacker before collapsing.

Continue reading →
ISRAEL, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Israel Strikes Iranian Arms Shipment at Damascus Airport Missiles latest in a string of attacks aimed at checking Iran in Syria By Sune Engel Rasmussen in Beirut

By on September 16th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/israel-strikes-iranian-arms-shipment-at-damascus-airport-1537092486

Israeli missiles are suspected to have struck an Iranian arms shipment at Damascus airport late Saturday, the latest in a string of attacks aimed at eroding Tehran’s military foothold in Syria.

The strikes play into a broader conflict unfolding in the Middle East. The fight against Islamic State militants, who have been driven from their strongholds in Syria and Iraq, has given way to a jostling for power among foreign and regional actors.

Israel has watched with concern as Iran has entrenched itself deeper in Syria on the back of its support for the regime of President Bashar al-Assad, which has reclaimed most of the territory once held by antigovernment rebels.

Over the past year, Israel has sharply increased airstrikes against Iranian assets in Syria, striking targets from its own border area to the far eastern part of the country to neighborhoods near the capital, Damascus.

Saturday’s strike seemingly targeted a warehouse and a recently arrived arms shipment from Iran to the Lebanese Hezbollah militia, according to the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, a U.K.-based monitoring group, which said the launched missiles were likely Israeli.

According to a news report by the Israeli Hadashot TV Sunday morning, the strike also hit an Iranian cargo plane loaded with weapons, which had recently landed at Damascus International Airport from Tehran.

The state-run Syrian Arab News Agency reported that the country’s air defenses repelled some of the incoming missiles, which it said were fired from Israel.

People in Damascus posted footage on social media showing explosions that they described as the airport being hit. The were no immediate reports of casualties.

Continue reading →
FOREIGN POLICY Comments turned off

John Kerry, Meet George Logan Is it a crime to meet with Iranian officials? It may well be. Seth Lipsky

By on September 16th, 2018

https://www.wsj.com/articles/john-kerry-meet-george-logan-1537129799

George Logan, call your office. That’s my reaction to news that former Secretary of State John Kerry has, by his own account, been meeting privately with Iranian officials to try to save the nuclear deal.

Logan was the Pennsylvania politician whose unauthorized efforts to end the Quasi-War between France and America led to the Logan Act of 1799, which outlaws freelance diplomacy.

The New York Post has called Mr. Kerry’s conniving a “textbook violation” of the law. President Trump, after all, has pulled out of the nuclear accord and decided on a different course. Iran’s leaders, at least for the moment, are hanging onto the deal. Why not? It has brought billions to their coffers as they expand their military campaigns in the Mideast.

Last week the New York Times quoted “experts” as suggesting that the ayatollahs are “gambling” that Mr. Trump will be “crippled” in the midterm elections or swept out of office in 2020.

So have the Democrats been colluding with them? Or, as radio host Hugh Hewitt asked Mr. Kerry last week, has the former secretary of state been “trying to coach” Iran’s foreign minister, Javad Zarif?

“That’s not how it works,” Mr. Kerry said. “What I have done is tried to elicit from him what Iran might be willing to do in order to change the dynamic in the Middle East.” He insisted he’d been “very blunt.” Mr. Kerry also told Mr. Hewitt that the administration appears “hell-bent-for-leather determined to pursue a regime change strategy” in Iran. “I would simply caution that the United States historically has not had a great record in regime change,” Mr. Kerry said. He added that it makes it “very difficult, if not impossible” for Iran to negotiate.

Continue reading →
ANTI-SEMITISM Comments turned off

Why Can’t I Criticize My Religion? by Majid Rafizadeh

By on September 16th, 2018

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/12944/islam-criticism

On the surface, for those who wanted to reform Islam, the only place to do so appeared to be the West. We all assumed that here in the West, it would be safe to question and criticize. Instead, so many institutions utilize a far more subtle method of silencing criticism.
The more you conceal or disregard constructive criticism of Islam, the harder you are making it for reforms to occur in the religion and the easier you are making it for Muslim radicals to prevail.
The reason I criticize the radical elements of my religion is not because I have hatred in my heart, but because I desire to protect those who have been abused and abandoned by their leaders.

When I received a letter from a Shiite religious preacher from the United Kingdom, it did not surprise me. I receive many similar letters from extremist Muslims all over the world, as well as Western liberals, socialists, and others. Each time, opening these letters, I prepare for criticism of my careful scrutiny of my religion. As expected, the letter began with a familiar suggestion: “Stop criticizing your own religion.”

The letter went on to support this instruction with promises of the media and Western progressives favoring me and becoming far more supportive of me, if I were to align my views with their preferred talking points:

“If you stop criticizing Islam, the West will certainly be more welcoming of you, and you will receive more offers and opportunities to further your career.”

What is it that I say that rankles the left so much? I refuse to be apologetic for radical Islam in the West. I refuse to gloss over the darkest consequences to which rampant extremism has led. I do not waffle beneath the idea of multiculturalism or tolerance; some things are not meant to be tolerated. The message of the apologists is clear: Get in line. Send out the same messages that others are: about all aspects of Islam being a loving and benevolent religion. Focus on this and sweep the crimes against humanity under the carpet.

I truly wish I could.

Continue reading →