It is time to tell Rich Uncle Joe and Chuck the Schumer to take their money and stuff it. They can go take weapons and stuff it. They just gave us the excuse to flatten Rafah.

By Rabbi Prof. Dov Fischer

Have you ever personally been in a position in which you always relied on someone else’s financial support so that you could realize your goals and dreams? Like a father or mother or rich uncle. Or, let’s say, like a miserable dictatorial tyrannical father-in-law? (Just saying . . .)

And did that support sometimes come with strings? Strings that not only tied your hands but curtailed your dreams? (Just saying . . .)

>Have you ever reached a moment in your life where you decided “Either I spend the rest of my life toeing to his every command, and later look back ruefully on my deathbed wishing I could go back in time and live the life I had wanted to live — or I tell him right now to stuff his money, and I will be liberated to return to living the life I was meant to live, to pursue my dreams? (Just saying . . . )
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By Andrea Widburg, AMERICAN THINKER    14 May 2024

In two separate appearances, Tom Cotton has delivered clear, insightful, and completely accurate statements about Israel’s right to defend herself and about Joe Biden’s disastrous policies vis-à-vis Israel and Hamas in the ongoing war between the two. If you’ve been struggling for a way to articulate your feelings about what Biden’s doing in the Middle East, Cotton has you covered.

One of the problems with intellectuals is that, if they lack a moral compass, they can delude themselves into believing that completely unethical things or people are, in fact, good ideas. This is how Peter Singer, the current Emeritus Ira W. DeCamp Professor of Bioethics at Princeton University, could be a vegetarian extremist in order to protect animals while simultaneously arguing that parents should have up to a month after a child is born to abort “defective” babies. Being credentialed doesn’t mean being either wise or good.

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By Seth Mandel, COMMENTARY    13 May 2024

The United Nations has announced that the Gaza casualty figures it has been using are bogus and it is adjusting its figures downward.

“The revisions are taken … you know, of course, in the fog of war, it’s difficult to come up with numbers,” UN spokesman Farhan Haq said at a press briefing in response to a question from JNS. “We get numbers from different sources on the ground, and then we try to cross check them. As we cross check them, we update the numbers, and we’ll continue to do that as that progresses.”

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Seeking the Breakup of Ukraine’s Army

By Stephen Bryen, WEAPONS AND STRATEGY    13 May 2024

Yuriy Halushkin

There is a large Russian operation going on in Ukraine focused on the Kharkov area.  At the same time, the Russians are also attacking elsewhere, primarily in Donbas but also in Zaphorize.  The threat in the north has compelled Ukraine to pull troops deployed elsewhere, including Chasiv Yar, to try and hold the line in the Kharkov area.

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“These are difficult times, but we have to hold our heads up high,” says Ezequiel Pachter, who immigrated to Israel from Argentina in 2022 with the aim of joining the IDF.

By Josh Hasten, JNS    14 May 2024

Israeli soldiers during Gaza ground operations, March 19, 2024. Credit: IDF.

On Yom Ha’atzmaut (Independence Day), Israelis celebrate the bravery and heroism of those who fought in the 1948 War of Independence to ensure the survival of the fledgling Jewish state.

In the wake of Hamas’s brutal Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel, the country now has many more heroes to celebrate. Included in that group are immigrant “lone soldiers” (soldiers without family in Israel) who were forced to fight for the country’s survival very nearly “fresh off the boat,” just as their predecessors did 76 years ago.

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The only genocide in the Israel-Palestinian war is the one Hamas and Iran seek to perpetrate against the Jews of Israel.

By Dennis Prager, AMERICAN GREATNESS    14 May 2024

In medieval Europe, Christians who hated Jews spread the lie that Jews kidnap Christian children, slaughter them, and use their blood to bake matzos for Passover. This lie became known as “the Blood Libel,” probably the greatest libel in history. Over the course of many centuries, Jews were tortured and murdered, often by being burned alive, because of the Blood Libel.

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By CDM staff, CREATIVE DESTRUCTION MEDIA  13 May 2024

The money supply (M2) has bounced to March 2023 levels and has been rising almost every month since October last year. Furthermore, US government deficit spending has more than offset the decline in the Federal Reserve balance sheet. While the Fed’s balance sheet has shrunk by $1.5 trillion from its peak, the US government deficit remains above $1.5 trillion per year.

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Peloni:  This is an important analysis which describes a major strategic failing adopted by the IDF as it pursued what the authors describe as “the ‘small and smart’ force reliant on precision airpower, special forces, and technology-centric intelligence”.  The consequence to this is that “Israel does not have the right force structure, defense technological industrial base, or alliances to ensure a longer-term victory”.

Israel must abandon the failed idea that technological wizardry will guarantee its security

by Michael Doran & Can Kasapo?lu | Tablet | May 13, 2024

“Infantry soldiers from the Givati brigade are put through their paces with new, high-tech weapons and computers at the army’s urban warfare training base,” in this IDF photo from 2005.   Yael Bar Hillal/IDF via Getty Images

On April 29, 1956, two assassins, an Egyptian and a Palestinian, ambushed Ro’i Rothberg, the security officer of kibbutz Nahal Oz. Luring him into the fields, they shot him off his horse, beat him, and shot him again, ending his life. They then dragged his lifeless body as a gruesome trophy back to Gaza, where it was desecrated. Unlike Iran and its proxies today, however, Gamal Abdel Nasser, who ruled Gaza at the time, did not ransom Israeli corpses. The day after Rothberg’s murder, the Egyptian authorities transferred his mutilated remains to United Nations mediators who, in turn, passed them back to Israel for burial.

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Peloni:  There is a basic premise in any data collection scenario which should always be noted: Garbage in leads to garbage out.  If you can’t trust the source of the data, there is really very little to talk about and little need to explain why you shouldn’t be talking about it.

The UN  also highlighted that the plurality of identified fatalities were men (40%), while children were (32%) and women (20%).

By YUVAL BARNEA | JPOST | MAY 11, 2024

THE UNITED NATIONS headquarters building in New York City, and the UN logo: Today’s UN needs to be reimagined and reformed to address the limited problems it can effectively handle, says the writer.  (photo credit: CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS)

The United Nations seemingly halved the estimated number of women and children killed in Gaza, according to UN data published on May 6 and 8.

The UN published the number of fatalities reported by the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health. The Government Media Office in Gaza and Israeli authorities provided a disclaimer below the data: “The UN has so far not been able to produce independent, comprehensive, and verified casualty figures.”

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PM Netanyahu | I24 English | May 13, 2024

Peloni:   “The case for an exodus from the corrupt quads of Columbia and Harvard seems both urgent and clear. The question is: an Exodus to where and for what purpose? To save ourselves as Jews or to help save America from those who seek to destroy us?”  It is a fascinating, thoughtful, and challenging discussion in which Cohen ultimately challenges American Jewry to “focus not simply on our safety in America but our responsibility for America.”  Full text can be found on Mosaic, here.

Eric Cohen | Tikvah | May 13, 2024

Tikvah’s CEO Eric Cohen delivers a special video address on a Jewish answer to the university crisis. The long-brewing crisis on our university campuses has reached a tipping point. The anti-Israel encampments that recently took over Columbia, Yale, UCLA, and dozens of schools across America—chanting pro-Hamas slogans, harassing Jewish students, vandalizing and trespassing—force us to confront the moral confusion that plagues so much of higher education. This assault on Jews and Israel is also an assault on America and the West. How should American Jews respond? Can our most prestigious universities be saved, or is it time to build new centers of learning that advance our noblest Jewish and American values? Are these storied institutions of higher learning worthy of our children, our creativity, and our support, or is it time for an exodus?

By Caroline Glick, JNS    13 May 2024

This Yom HaZikaron, author and journalist Caroline Glick spoke with bereaved mother Sarah Schwartz on what it feels like to have lost her son on Oct. 7th. Her son, Segev Schwartz, died fighting Hamas in Kibbutz Sufa. Sarah is active in pushing the Israeli government to finish Hamas in Gaza and to not listen to an outside world that doesn’t understand the Middle East and the war Israel faces. The family is running several campaigns to support bereaved families and in memory of their son.

E. Rowell:  Is Trump’s election team consulting with Omega4America or going with yesterday’s technology and “Election Integrity Teams”?  Remember in 2020 when Harmeet Dhillon of the RNC said on national TV, “We’ve got teams of lawyers ready to go to prevent election fraud”?

“Best campaign ever” – until it counts

By OMEGA4AMERICA    13 May 2024

80,000 people flock to hear Trump in New Jersey.

Virginia and New Jersey now in play.

Trump is leading in every swing state – some by 11 points.

“The best campaign ever” is about to crush a dementia-riddled old man, who cannot speak, cannot campaign and cannot walk down a set of stairs.

It’s sunrise in America!

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Daniel Greenfield’s first book reveals we have fought today’s political battles before – and won.

By Mark Tapson, FRONT PAGE    13 May 2024

Our particularly American addiction to the now, the new, and the what’s next means we tend to perceive our political conflicts through the lens of “breaking news,” or at most, the weekly news cycle. It doesn’t help that more and more of us, especially young people, get our news from the ever-advancing timelines of social media, which draw us constantly forward moment by moment, denying us the time to reflect upon events in a broader historical context.

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Taxpayers, politicians, and employers are realizing that campus leftism has gone too far. The question is whether it’s too late to stop 

By Richard Hanania, TABLET MAGAZINE    9 May 2024

Police officers arrest a demonstrator during a protest against the war in Gaza at Emory University on April 25, 2024/ELIJAH NOUVELAGE/AFP VIA GETTY IMAGES

In 2019, Ron DeSantis appointed Brian Lamb, a former point guard at the University of South Florida, to the 17-member board of regents for the state university system. The Florida governor, when he made the pick, was clearly thinking more about his athletic accomplishments than his ideological principles, as Lamb soon afterward became head of diversity and inclusion at JPMorgan Chase. It therefore probably shouldn’t have been surprising when, after the death of George Floyd, Lamb sent a memo to all presidents of public colleges in Florida demanding they “prioritize and support diversity, racial and gender equity, and inclusion” and telling them that they would be held “accountable for policies, programs, and actions” in this area.

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E. Rowell:  Victor Davis Hanson’s title alludes to the short story by Edgar Allen Poe, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” in which a mysterious secret afflicts a house and eats away at its owner.  The mysterious secret remains hidden, but the symbol of that secret comes to light and destroys the family for good.*

What will be the endgame of all these attacks on the American legal system and the warping of it for blatant political purposes?

By Victor Davis Hanson, AMERICAN GREATNESS   13 May 2024

None of the five civil and criminal cases currently lodged against former President Donald Trump have ever had merit. They were all predicated on using the law to injure his re-election candidacy—given a widespread derangement syndrome among the left and a fear they cannot entrust a Trump/Biden election to the people.

These criminal and civil trials are merely the continuation of extra-legal efforts of the last eight years to destroy a presidential candidate in lieu of opposing him in transparent elections.

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As they say in Israel: Yom HaZikaron reminds us about the cost of having a state, and Yom HaShoah about the cost of not.

By Joshua Hoffman, FUTURE OF JEWISH    13 May 2024

A grave at Mount Herzl, Israel’s national cemetery in Jerusalem (photo: Levi Meir Clancy)

Today is Memorial Day in Israel, one of the only countries that has two official memorial days.

Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Day) is observed on the 27th of the Hebrew month Nisan (in April or May) and Yom HaZikaron (Memorial Day) is a day for the fallen soldiers of Israeli wars and victims of terrorism, observed the day before Independence Day (tomorrow).

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The 76th Independence Day will be a true test of Israel’s independence.

by Daniel Greenfield | FrontPage | May 13, 2024

This week, Israel will mark its 76th Independence Day. Usually a day filled with parades and fireworks, the Israeli people will instead buckle down to the grim business of being at war.

Too much of the population is either deployed in the field or may soon be, displaced from their homes near the Gaza border or aware that at any moment rocket alerts could sound for incoming missiles from Gaza, Lebanon, Yemen or Iran. This year, Yom HaZikaron, Memorial Day annually observed for the fallen, will overshadow Yom Ha’atzmaut or Independence Day.

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Elections have consequences.

J.E. Dyer, The OPTIMISTIC CONSERVATIVE May 9, 2024

The short summary of where Israel’s war in Gaza stands this week is that Israel has seized the Gaza side of the Rafah crossing and begun warnings and evacuation of Rafah, followed by bombing, in preparation for the final push to remove Hamas from Gaza.  The Biden administration is attempting to impede this operation by touting a supposed ceasefire/hostages agreement with Hamas, warning Israel not to go into Rafah, and withholding a previously-approved and scheduled delivery of munitions to Israel in order to extort Israel’s policy compliance on the Rafah campaign matter.

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