ANTI-SEMITISM, WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

That was my Melbourne synagogue set aflame.“Just one arson attack,” some might say. “Not indicative of a broader trend.” But this would be a lie, a self-soothing fiction. Joshua Hoffman

Posted By on December 7th, 2024

Ihttps://www.futureofjewish.com/p/that-was-my-melbourne-synagogue-set?utm_campaign=email-half-post&r=126wpb&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

I saw the footage, and my stomach churned.

Mask-wearing arsonists set a synagogue ablaze in a predawn attack Friday in the Australian city of Melbourne, police said, sparking widespread condemnation.

The fire broke out at 4:10 a.m. local time in the Adass Israel Synagogue when some congregants were already present, police said, gutting much of the inside of the building in the southeast Melbourne suburb of Ripponlea.

The flames that consumed that synagogue were not just destroying bricks and mortar; they were attacking something far more sacred. That building was a beacon, a house of prayer, a place where my people have gathered to celebrate, to mourn, to stand before God in all our flawed humanity.

And now, it is charred rubble.

But the pain extends far beyond the local Jewish community in Melbourne. The attack feels personal — because it is personal. To strike at one synagogue is to strike at us all.

For Jews, community and continuity are lifeblood. The synagogue is not merely a physical structure; it is the embodiment of our collective spirit. It is where generations have come to hear the same ancient words read from the Torah, where the melodies of our ancestors find new life in each recitation of the Shema¹. When a synagogue is set aflame, it is not just a local tragedy. It is a desecration of the sacred, a violation that rips through time and across oceans.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Ben-Gvir’s call to curtail volume of Muslim call to prayer mimics Saudi Arabia’s by David Isaac

Posted By on December 7th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/ben-gvirs-call-to-curtail-volume-of-muslim-call-to-prayer-mimics-saudi-arabias/

While Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir has been accused of attempting to ignite a “religious war,” his push to limit the volume of Muslim calls to prayer follows similar efforts in several European countries and even in the cradle of Islam itself.

Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s announcement on Nov. 30 that he had instructed Israeli police to enforce noise ordinances on mosques by issuing fines and confiscating loudspeakers was met with outrage from Arab Knesset members, the Palestinian Authority and even Hamas.

The terrorist group urged Palestinians to “reject this criminal decision and take action to prevent the occupation authorities from tampering with our sacred sites and religious practices.

Arab-Israeli MKs Ahmed Tibi of the Hadash-Ta’al list and Mansour Abbas, leader of the Ra’am Party, accused Ben-Gvir of attempting to ignite a “religious war.” 

Early-morning Muslim calls to prayer are a simmering problem in Israel. Ma’ariv reported in February that since the outbreak of the Swords of Iron War, Israeli police have noted that most mosques’ calls to prayer have increased in volume “in a significant manner, which caused serious harm to residents.”

Two imams from the Great Omari Mosque of Lod were arrested on suspicion of increasing the decibel level of its public address system, the report said. They were released with a warning.

ANTI-SEMITISM, ISRAEL Comments turned off

Amnesty International’s antisemitic agenda Ruthie Blum

Posted By on December 7th, 2024

https://www.jns.org/amnesty-internationals-antisemitic-agenda/

Amnesty International released its latest broadside against Israel on Thursday, accusing the Jewish state of committing genocide in Gaza. The nearly 300-page report—“‘You Feel Like You Are Subhuman’: Israel’s Genocide Against Palestinians in Gaza”—is typically mendacious.

Laden with hyperbolic hostility and “proof” gleaned from bogus Hamas data, it portrays Israel’s defensive war against the Iran-backed terrorists as the deliberate attempt by a villainous regime in Jerusalem to annihilate a whole population of Palestinians.

Talk about the inversion of reality—par for the course with the “human-rights organization” that makes a mockery of its mandate. In truth, every accusation in this polemic masquerading as research could and should be directed at Hamas.

Indeed, every word of the diatribe-disguised-as-research could and should have been penned about Hamas. According to Amnesty’s summary of the document, “International jurisprudence recognizes that the perpetrator does not need to succeed in their attempts to destroy the protected group, either in whole or in part, for genocide to have been committed,” since “the commission of prohibited acts with the intent to destroy the group, as such, is sufficient.”

Uh, yes. Hamas failed to achieve its genocidal goal prior to, during and since Oct. 7, 2023. But the will was and still is there.
There’s antisemitic irony for you. According to Amnesty’s own definition, both the acts committed and the intent behind them meet the criteria for genocide.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Make Persia Great Again by Majid Rafizadeh

Posted By on December 7th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21180/make-persia-great-again

Unlike Iran’s regime, the country’s people are overwhelmingly pro-American and pro-Jewish — sentiments rooted in a historical alliance that made Iran the closest ally of both Israel and the United States before the mullahs came to power. The regime’s anti-American and antisemitic stance is an affront to the true nature of its citizens, who yearn for peace and global partnership.

Without the oppressive ruling mullahs, Iran could once again be a force for good, both domestically and globally. Freed from their brutal rulers, the Iranian people could channel their immense talent and potential into rebuilding their nation as a thriving hub of innovation, culture and prosperity. This revival would not only uplift Iran but also finally bring peace and stability to the Middle East and beyond, setting an example of what a liberated, flourishing nation can achieve.

Finally, there should be no negotiations, deals or trades with the regime. Such engagements only empower and legitimize the mullahs while undermining the people’s struggle for freedom.

The time has come to support the cause of the Iranian people and ensure that this great nation, with its rich history and boundless potential, rises once more – without mullahs.

Historically known as Persia, Iran stands as one of the most illustrious civilizations in human history. For centuries, it was a beacon of cultural, scientific and political advancements, earning respect and admiration across the globe. This legacy of greatness persisted until 1979, when a group of Islamic fundamentalists, obsessed with religion, hijacked a revolution that drastically altered the nation’s trajectory.

The mullahs seized control, installing a theocratic Islamist regime that has since ruled with an iron fist — arguably one of history’s most brutal and oppressive reigns. The proud heritage of a nation that once symbolized enlightenment and progress has been overshadowed by a reign marked by suppression, regression and fear.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

America’s Future Depends on Trump’s Promise to Punish Woke Universities by Jonathan S. Tobin

Posted By on December 6th, 2024

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/21179/trump-punish-woke-universities

A leftist-dominated educational establishment and its media enablers fear that Donald Trump will make good on his vow to defund educational institutions that embrace DEI and tolerate antisemitism.

That is why Trump’s scorched-earth approach is so necessary, even as it is being denounced by the same people who are responsible for creating or perpetuating the current mess as too extreme or even needed at all.

More to the point, it will mean that policing antisemitism on campus will be shifted away from the ineffectual Title VI complaints overseen federal education bureaucrats, to a campaign of lawsuits conducted not just by groups like the Deborah Project (valuable though they may be) but by the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice, with all of the vast resources at its command. In this manner, a message can be sent that will likely motivate the vast majority of college administrations to discard DEI and the tolerance of hate for Jews that accompanies it.

Instead of expressing horror at his determination to enact real change, fair-minded Americans of all faiths and in both major political parties should be rooting for him to keep his word and to do everything he promised to punish colleges and universities, in addition to any other entity that promotes the sort of woke hate that has made life for Jewish students and anyone else who dissents against the new secular orthodoxy so difficult.

A leftist-dominated educational establishment and its media enablers fear that Donald Trump will make good on his vow to defund educational institutions that embrace DEI and tolerate antisemitism.

Occidental College seemingly waved the white flag last week in its efforts to defend itself against charges of tolerating antisemitism on its Los Angeles campus. The school agreed to a “sweeping settlement” with the Anti-Defamation League and the Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law that acknowledged the ongoing hardships, harassment and discrimination faced by Jewish students since the Hamas-led massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023. Occidental’s apathy to all this, which was little different from what has been happening at dozens if not hundreds of other American institutions of higher learning, violated its obligations to prohibit such discrimination under Title VI of the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

EDUCATION Comments turned off

University of Michigan Nixes Diversity Statements in Faculty Hiring, Promotion By David Zimmermann

Posted By on December 6th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/news/university-of-michigan-nixes-diversity-statements-in-faculty-hiring-promotion/

The University of Michigan will no longer use diversity statements in faculty hiring, promotion, and tenure, joining a number of elite universities that are moving away from progressive identity politics in an effort to expand diversity of thought and free expression on campus.

Provost Laurie McCauley announced the decision Thursday after an eight-member faculty working group recommended the university abolish diversity statements. While there was no institutional requirement for such statements, UM did implement the practice in its hiring decisions.

“Diversity, equity and inclusion are three of our core values at the university. Our collective efforts in this area have produced important strides in opening opportunities for all people,” McCauley said in the University Record, an internal faculty publication. “As we pursue this challenging and complex work, we will continuously refine our approach.”

In June, the provost charged the faculty working group with examining the university’s use of diversity statements. The group published its report on October 31 after reviewing literature on the topic and considering DEI policies at other universities and colleges.

The group also conducted a survey of nearly 2,000 faculty, most of whom believe diversity statements “put pressure on faculty to express specific positions on moral, political or social issues,” per the University Record. Furthermore, a slight majority of respondents said soliciting diversity statements for hiring purposes does not demonstrate an institutional commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Democrats Can Thank Themselves for the ‘Preemptive Pardon’ Histrionics Andrew McCarthy

Posted By on December 6th, 2024

https://www.nationalreview.com/2024/12/democrats-can-thank-themselves-for-the-preemptive-pardon-histrionics/

It’s not Kash Patel’s schtick that puts them in jeopardy. It’s that they took their shot at Trump, missed, and now have to worry about the oldest rule in politics.

President Biden is enmeshed in a pardon scandal of his own making. So what are Democrats and their media allies doing? What they always do: They’re blaming Trump.

At Politico on Wednesday, Jonathan Martin reported that the Biden-Harris White House is spun up over President-elect Trump’s nomination of Kash Patel to replace Chris Wray as FBI director. “Patel,” Martin stresses, “has publicly vowed to pursue Trump’s critics.” Against the backdrop of Trump’s fiery campaign riffs against his nemeses — the House January 6 Committee, Democratic prosecutors, et al. — we are supposed to believe it’s the Patel nomination that triggered President Biden to grant his son a pardon with a breathtaking eleven-year immunity bath. Moreover, the Patel pick apparently has the president and his advisers “carefully weighing the extraordinary step of handing out blanket pardons” to Trump’s enemies — even though they’ve “committed no crimes.”

Just two weeks ago, I observed that the eleven-week interregnum between the November election and Inauguration Day on January 20 was the season for histrionics. If you’re already exhausted, there are still more than five weeks to go. If you’re like me, you’re more bent out of shape by the “golden at-bat” proposal, the latest evidence that MLB’s anarchist commissioner Rob Manfred is bent on destroying the national pastime. The proposal is so ludicrous that even my pal, the closet baseball progressive Rich Lowry, is outraged!

Remember, I’ve argued that Trump must end lawfare — and have thus endeared myself to the MAGA warriors, . . . just as I’ve endeared myself over the past four years to apologists for progressive Democratic prosecutors and congressional Trump obsessives, who exploited the public’s investigative authorities (to say nothing of the mountain of taxpayer dollars) to pursue their partisan vendettas. I am also on record — and will be again come Saturday — urging that the president’s unilateral pardon power is an anachronism that ought to be repealed by a constitutional amendment. So, please, don’t take me to be urging either more lawfare or more pardons.

ISRAEL Comments turned off

The genocide lie Accusing Israel of carrying out a new Holocaust is factually wrong and morally repulsive. Brendan O’Neill

Posted By on December 6th, 2024

https://www.spiked-online.com/2024/12/05/the-genocide-lie/

It’s official: loathing Israel has become the ultimate luxury belief. You can’t swing a Daunt Books tote bag in polite society without hitting an Israel hater. This week we’ve seen artist Jasleen Kaur use her Turner Prize victory speech to damn Israel’s ‘genocide of the Palestinian people’ as the assembled dignitaries in the hallowed halls of the Tate rattled their jewellery in agreement. We watched as Juliet Stevenson, the luvvie’s luvvie, titillated a gathering of affluent socialists with her mellifluous censure of Israel for its ‘massacre of the Palestinian people’. She was wearing a keffiyeh. Of course she was. The radical middle class rarely leaves the house without first pulling on that sartorial signifier of virtue.

And now, to top it off, the cunning stunts of Led By Donkeys have got hearts racing in posh coffee houses everywhere by accusing Israel of genocide. Yesterday, the beardy bros of this most grating of campaign groups took a break from berating the oiks for voting Brexit to berate Israel for fighting back against the army of anti-Semites that attacked it on 7 October. They rolled out a giant banner in Parliament Square saying: ‘YES IT’S A GENOCIDE.’ If I had their time, money and insatiable urge to make a media spectacle of my moral rectitude, I’d roll out a banner saying: ‘No it isn’t, you twats.’

Nothing better confirms that Israel-bashing has become a status-conferring belief among the upper middle classes than its showy embrace by Led By Donkeys. For this outfit, founded by four craft-beer tossers in Stoke Newington, is the very physical embodiment of the depressive doctrines of the metropolitan elite. They’ve spent years bewailing Brexit and slamming the Tories and deriding the idiot ‘gammon’ who vote for such things. They call themselves a ‘guerilla operation’ but really they’re the activist wing of a bewildered establishment that can’t believe the great unwashed keep defying its moral instructions. And now they’ve added Israelophobia to their charter of correct-think.

WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Niall Ferguson: The Rot In Britain—and the Remedy Lately it seems that mine is a country with a death wish. Can we avoid national suicide? By Niall Ferguson

Posted By on December 6th, 2024

https://www.thefp.com/p/niall-ferguson-the-rot-in-britain?utm_campaign=email-post&r=8t06w&utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

Something is rotten in the state of Britain. It was epitomized by a recent event at the Oxford Union, the 201-year-old debating society that is such a distinctive and admirable part of Oxford life. It was at the Union that, 40 years ago, I spoke as freely (and indeed as irresponsibly) as I ever have, discovering in the process that I was not cut out for politics. It was there that I saw great debaters of the past, present, and future.

But I never saw anything like the events of November 28.

The motion for debate was in itself a provocation: “This House Believes Israel Is an Apartheid State Responsible for Genocide.” But what was truly shocking was the conduct of the president of the Union, an Egyptian student named Ebrahim Osman-Mowafy, who appears to have abused his position by openly siding with those proposing the motion and treating the opposing speakers with contempt.

According to the broadcaster, Jonathan Sacerdoti, who was arguing for Israel’s side, Osman-Mowafy canceled the traditional pre-debate group photographs, but posed alone for private photos with the anti-Israel team. During the debate, the pro-Israel speakers were repeatedly heckled by the crowd. At one point, a young woman stood up and screamed at Sacerdoti: “Liar! Fuck you, the genocidal motherfucker!”

Mosab Hassan Yousef, the son of a senior Hamas leader who defected to Israel, who was arguing alongside Sacerdoti, was met with jeering derision and cries of “traitor” and “prostitute” (in Arabic). Yousef asked the audience to indicate by a show of hands how many of them would have reported prior knowledge of the October 7, 2023, atrocities to Israel. Not even a quarter of the crowd raised their hands.

For the other side, Miko Peled, an Israeli general’s son turned radical anti-Zionist, described the murders, rapes, and kidnappings of October 7 as “acts of heroism.” The Palestinian poet Mohammed El-Kurd, who has equated Zionism with genocide, began his speech by announcing that there was “no room for debate” and ended it by walking out of the chamber. The motion passed by 278 in favor to 59 against.

Reading reports of this shameful fiasco at my alma mater, I found myself wondering: Where are the Thought Police when you really need them? After all, the Oxford Union’s latest debate sounded a lot like one of those “noncrime hate incidents” that currently consume so much of the British police’s time.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Can Elon and Vivek Lead Us to a More Efficient Government? Not with Congress unwilling to give up money and power. By Richard Truesdell and Keith Lehmann

Posted By on December 6th, 2024

https://amgreatness.com/2024/12/06/can-elon-and-vivek-lead-us-to-a-more-efficient-government/

Once Donald Trump is inaugurated as our 47th U.S. president, Tesla, SpaceX, and X/Twitter CEO Elon Musk will likely head a Department of Government Efficiency commission (DOGE). Teaming up with tech billionaire Vivek Ramaswamy, this dynamic duo will focus on “drastic reforms” targeting “the entire federal government.”

Already there is talk that Musk and Ramaswamy have identified work-at-home policies for federal workers in an effort to trim $2 billion of bloat from the budget. One area they are targeting is waste at the Veterans Administration.

You might not support the movement to “transition” our country to electric vehicles. But you must be impressed with the sheer determination and sense of urgency Elon Musk applied to his vision of building EVs to scale as he did with Tesla. Similarly, Musk brought the U.S. space program back into existence with similar single-mindedness, having achieved 100 successful year-to-date space missions in 2024 with more to come.

A core aspect of his approach to development and production was found in his recent biography, a five-step process that he refers to as “the algorithm.”

Question every requirement. Never accept a requirement that came from a department or committee.

Delete any process you can. You may have to add them back later. In fact, if you do not end up adding back 10 percent of them, you didn’t delete enough.

Simplify and optimize. This should come right after Step 2. Do not simplify and optimize a process that should not exist.

Accelerate cycle time. Every procedure can be sped up.

Automate. This comes last. Do not automate until all requirements have been questioned, processes have been deleted, everything has been simplified, and procedures have been sped up.

Imagine if these five steps were applied to reforming the U.S. government. It would probably look a lot like what Musk achieved with X/Twitter. Less than two years after Musk acquired the company, it operates today with 80 percent fewer employees and is much more productive, accurate, timely, and ideologically balanced.