By Dr. Frank Musmar, BESA April 8, 2020

Qom, Iran, Hazrat-e Masumeh, Holy Shrine, photo via Flickr CC

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Iran is struggling with a devastating coronavirus outbreak, a broken economy, and a severe shortage of medical equipment. Iran’s lack of transparency about its coronavirus outbreak has resulted in a catastrophic public health risk not only to the Iranian people but also to its neighbors. Tehran has confirmed more than 47,000 cases and more than 3,000 deaths, though public health experts estimate the real toll to be significantly higher.

Rather than take responsibility and do their best to provide for the health and wellbeing of their subjects, Iran’s leaders are wasting time and resources as the coronavirus crisis rages. In keeping with their longstanding policy of attempting to deflect blame by lashing out at foreign parties, the mullahs are trying to distract Iranians from their own failure to handle the crisis by spreading lies that the US engineered the virus. The Iranian media are intensifying the regime’s failures by promoting false cures, which has led hundreds of Iranians to blind and even kill themselves by consuming bootleg methanol. The regime also avoided taking steps to curb mass visits to imams’ tombs, a practice that exponentially spread the virus. Read more…

1. Dmitry Krass, Sydney Cooper Professor of Business Technology, Professor of Operations Management and Analytics, Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto; krass@rotman.utoronto.ca
March 20, 2020

What is the message? This article contributes to the debate on what forms of social distancing policies will be most effective in addressing the health and economic impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Strict social distancing measures, such as those being used in Italy, much of Europe, and North America, may lead to unfortunate trade offs in health and economic well-being, with excessive economic stresses leading the even larger damages to health. By contrast, milder social distancing policies, if combined with strong policies of testing, quarantine, adopting face masks, protecting high-risk groups, safety in public places, and economic recovery, may be more effective in supporting both health and economic welfare.

What is the evidence? Basic cost-benefit analyses, using assumptions based on the recent trends of the coronavirus pandemic. Timeline: Submitted: March 26, 2020 Cite as: Dmitry Krass, 2020. Why are We Emulating Italy Instead of South Korea? HealthManagement, Policy, and Innovation (HMPI.org), volume 5, Issue 1, special issue on COVID19, March 2020.
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By Victor Rosenthal  April 9,2020

It’s almost Pesach, when the thoughts of Jewish bloggers turn to plagues and freedom. Plagues we certainly have. In addition to the coronavirus, Africa (and possibly the Middle East) is about to experience one of the paradigmatic Biblical plagues, swarming locusts.

We have freedom, too. Leaving aside the corona-related restrictions – which are becoming significantly more severe in Israel around the holiday – Jews in Israel are among the most free peoples in the world. For example, academic freedom is almost unlimited, as illustrated by this article in the wonderful English Edition of Ha’aretz, in which seditious Ben Gurion University professor Neve Gordon argues that the coming impact of coronavirus in Gaza will be Israel’s fault. He’s right that there are few test kits and ventilators there, insufficient hospital beds, and countless other deficiencies that, if the virus spreads widely there, will prove deadly. But of course he’s wrong about whose fault it is.
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By BENNY AVNI, Special to the Sun | April 9, 2020

“If there was no United Nations we’d have to invent one” is an overused Turtle Bay cliche worth examining now, as the UN is MIA in the face of the worst global crisis since its founding 75 years ago.

As a pandemic threatens the globe with loss of life on a biblical scale and economic collapse, a behemoth that fancies itself as “the world body” is nowhere to be seen.

Start with the Secretary General, Antonio Guterres, who immediately sprang to “action,” vaingloriously calling for a global ceasefire to enable the world to focus on the pandemic. No major combatant heeded his call. So, next, he asked member states to fund a $2 billion UN-based initiative for a global humanitarian response. That fund is yet to materialize.

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By Jim Hoft, GATEWAY PUNDIT April 8, 2020 at 12:09pm

Dr. Fauci pushing a narrative

** On March 16th, British “experts” at Imperial College in Great Britain warned of 40,000,000 global coronavirus deaths if the West did not act and shut down society.

The prediction included  1 million to 2 million deaths in the US.

** On Sunday March 29th the “experts” reduced their estimates to 100,000 to 200,000 deaths in the United States.

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A new government was in hand: Likud had won on annexation, Blue and White on judicial reforms; but a last-minute outcry from the PM’s rightist flank forced a backtrack

By HAVIV RETTIG GUR, TOI  April7, 2020

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu stands at an overview overlooking the East Jerusalem neighborhood of Har Homa, where he announced a new neighborhood is to be built, February 20, 2020. (Debbie Hill/Pool via AP)/

Israel came within inches of a new government on Monday afternoon.

Starting at roughly 2:30 p.m., both Likud and Blue and White began to shift from the usual run of strident talking points about their unbending principles to assurances that a coalition agreement — and with it, Israel’s long-delayed 35th Government — would be signed and sealed by the end of the day.
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The Saudis are looking to placate Trump while Russia is seeking returns

By ALISON TAHMIZIAN MEUSE, ASIA TIMES APRIL 9, 2020

US President Donald Trump participates in a meeting with energy sector CEOs at the White House in Washington on April 3, 2020. Photo: AFP/Jim Watson

Saudi Arabia and Russia are expected to come up with an impressive, but inconsequential oil production cut proposal at an OPEC+ video conference on Thursday.

The headline number is expected to match the 10 million barrel per day (bpd) reduction thrown out last week by Donald Trump.

But the actual cuts are likely to be superficial, climbing down from the current hyper-production levels and in response to a global plummeting of demand amid the Covid-19 pandemic.
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Trombonist Micha David arranges a musical mashup with 19 fellow musicians

By JESSICA STEINBERG, TOI

The Israel Philharmonic joined the Passover video trend this year, creating a mashup of classic holiday tunes, performed by a cadre of musicians.
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By Jim Hoft, GATEWAY PUNDIT

What is going on?  After shutting down the government and killing the greatest economy in the world due to deathly estimates from specialists on the coronavirus, the data is showing that this may be one great big mistake or hoax. Read more…

Christopher Caldwell’s brilliant provocation

By Barton Swaim, COMMENTARY

The common interpretation of the 2016 election put forward by the American left over the last three years holds that Donald Trump won by arousing the country’s latent racism and driving bigots to the polls. He spoke of building a wall along our southern border to keep out Mexican criminals, and he didn’t straightforwardly disavow “birtherism”—the belief that Barack Obama was not born in the United States—until September 2016, thus signaling to racists across the Upper Midwest that he sympathized with their hatreds. One of this theory’s flaws, other than the supposition that millions of Americans are racists, is its reliance on the belief that Trump speaks in code. Its promoters frequently use the term “dog whistle.” But what would lead anybody to believe that Donald Trump is capable of rhetorical subtlety?

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“Peace was on his lips while war was in his heart.”

By Raymond Ibrahim, FPM

Raymond Ibrahim is a Shillman Fellow at the David Horowitz Freedom Center.

Yesterday in history, April 6, 1453, the Ottoman Turks began their fateful siege of Constantinople.

What prompted it?  After all, the Turks and Byzantines had preexisting peace treaties.  Did the Turks have a “grievance” against New Rome?

No, it was just a good old fashioned jihad, prompted by the same exact logic that had prompted countless jihads before it: convert to Islam, submit as a second-class dhimmi, or die.  And the jihadi to lead it was the supreme head of the Ottoman state, Sultan Mehmet, or Muhammad II (r. 1451-1481)—“the mortal enemy of the Christians,” to quote a contemporary prelate. (Note: “Mehmet” is an English transliteration of the Turkish pronunciation of “Muhammad.”)
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By Raymond Ibrahim, AMERICAN THINKER

Crises often have a way of revealing people’s true natures.  Here in America, for instance, doctors, nurses, and other health care professionals have stepped above and beyond the call of duty in response to the COVID-19 pandemic.  So too have charities, churches, and other religious organizations, many of which have volunteered their premises as coronavirus testing or medical centers, distributed food and medical supplies to the needy, etc.

Needless to say, none of them is discriminating based on race or religion; all are aiding anyone and everyone in need.

Then there’s the Muslim world.  There, COVID-19 is revealing the true nature of Islam.

Enter zakat, which is often — but erroneously — translated as “charity.”  As with virtually everything else Islamic, it too discriminates, sees only in dichotomies, namely “us” (Muslims) and “them” (infidels). Read more…

T. Belman. From the sixties onward, I was subscribed to Commentary Magazine and not only read every issue, cover to cover, but I saved them all and brought them to Israel when I made aliya.  One of the great intellectuals it introduced me to was Dr. Leon Kass.  If you are not familiar with his work, you are missing an intellectual treat.

TIKVAH

This month at Mosaic, we have published a magisterial essay on “the people-forming Passover” by my teacher, mentor, and friend: Dr. Leon Kass.

Read Now: Leon Kass | The People-Forming Passover
Mosaic, April 2020<
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The essay is the second down-payment from his forthcoming book (I’ve read the whole manuscript; it’s remarkable) called Founding God’s Nation: Reading Exodus, to be published by Yale University Press in January 2021. In our excerpted Mosaic essay, Kass focuses on the events of the night before and the morning of the Israelites’ departure from Egypt—the events rehearsed each year at the Passover table—and on their significance in the formation of the Jewish people and nation. Read it here.

Since Kass’s Exodus book won’t be out for a little while, this gives you plenty of time to prepare by ordering and reading his life-changing commentary on Genesis—The Beginning of Wisdom. It is my official recommendation in a new symposium, just published this week, in the Spring 2020 issue Jewish Review of Books. We ask some of the leading thinkers in the Jewish world to highlight the best Jewish books of the last decade (or any modern decade). I owe a great debt to Dr. Kass, as I explain in my short JRB piece:
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Even amidst the fight to overcome COVID-19, we will never lose sight of our moral compass.

By Ayelet Shaked, JPOST APRIL 7, 2020

Ayelet Shaked (photo credit: MARC ISRAEL SELLEM)

True leadership requires steering the ship of state through storms and waves without losing sight of its course and final destination. We must all cooperate to overcome the economic and public health storm created by COVID-19. But we must not do so by giving up on our core values and goals.

Today we have a historic opportunity to advance two strategic goals that will shape Israel’s future. The first is the opportunity to extend Israeli sovereignty over the Jordan Valley and the Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. This is the next critical step in the evolution of the State of Israel.

The current US administration supports such a move. No one knows what the political situation in America will be four months from now. If we fail to act swiftly, this window of opportunity may close.
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New poll gives right-wing bloc 64 seats, Labor disappears from the political map.

Arutz Sheva Staff , 08/04/20

MK Gantz and PM Netanyahu

A new poll published in Ma’ariv and conducted by the Smith Institute showed that if elections were held today, the Likud, led by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, would receive 42 Knesset seats, and Blue and White, led by MK Benny Gantz, would receive 18 Knesset seats.

The Joint Arab List would become the second-largest party, with 16 Knesset seats.

Running together, the Yesh Atid and Telem parties, led by MKs Yair Lapid and Moshe Ya’alon, would receive nine Knesset seats.
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The national-religious party lambasts Likud’s alleged intention to concede the Justice portfolio and control of the Judicial Selection Committee to Blue and White. “This is a total concession of the entire judicial system in exchange for a future promise of sovereignty,” Yamina official says.

By Yehuda Shlezinger, ISRAEL HAYOM

Yamina leader Defense Minister Naftali Bennett | File photo: Oren Ben Hakoon

The right-wing Yamina faction on Monday harshly criticized the Likud’s alleged intention to concede the Justice Ministry portfolio and control of the Judicial Selection Committee to the Blue and White party, within the framework of coalition negotiations to establish a national emergency government.

“According to the reports, under the emerging agreement [Prime Minister] Benjamin Netanyahu has completely caved to Blue and Whit on the judicial matter,” said one official with Yamina, an alliance of the Habayit Hayehudi, National Union and New Right parties. 

Former Chief Justice “Aharon Barak and his judiciary revolution have returned to the stage and will continue appointing their proteges to the Supreme Court,” the official added. “This will be a tragedy for generations to come and we are calling on Netanyahu to come to his senses and uphold the right-wing camp’s red lines.” Read more…

As Blue and White leader reportedly acquiesces to annexing West Bank to form unity government, American Jewish signatories warn move would dramatically weaken pro-Israel advocacy

By Eric Cortellessa, TOI  6 April 2020, 10:41 pm

Benny Gantz (L) and Gabi Ashkenazi at a Blue and White campaign event in Kfar Saba on February 12, 2020. (Gili Yaari/ Flash90)

WASHINGTON — Nearly 140 US Jewish leaders unveiled an open letter Monday to Blue and White party leader Benny Gantz and his deputy, MK Gabi Ashkenazi, urging them to “remain steadfast” in their opposition to West Bank annexation under a unity government.

The missive warns against allowing the coronavirus pandemic to enable Israel to annex West Bank settlements, at a time when the country needs to unify in the face of a public health emergency.

“In the midst of this unprecedented health and financial crisis for Israel, we respectfully urge you not to use the need for unity in the face of emergency to create a different crisis for Israel by moving forward on unilateral annexation,” the American Jewish leaders write.

The letter was orchestrated by the Israel Policy Forum, a New York-based nonprofit that advocates for a two-state solution.
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