“The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama about his Jewish upbringing picks up seven Oscar nods.

By Andrew Lapin, JTA

Steven Spielberg on the set of “The Fabelmans.”Merie Weismiller Wallace/Universal Pictures and Amblin Entertainment

“The Fabelmans,” Steven Spielberg’s autobiographical drama about his Jewish upbringing, had an expected strong haul of Oscar nominations, picking up seven nods Tuesday morning.

A remake of a movie once targeted by the Nazis, a blockbuster embroiled in a lawsuit with an Israeli family and a documentary by the program director of the San Francisco Jewish Film Festival also got recognized in a list jam-packed with Jewish characters, stories and artists.
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By Scott Ritter, Columnist, SPUTNIK INTERNATIONAL

Yesterday

All materials

The SS guards abandoned the guard posts surrounding Auschwitz during the night of 20-21 January 1945.<

At its height, in the summer of 1944, the Auschwitz complex, which comprised three basic camps — the main camp, Birkenau and Monowitz — and another 40 sub-camps, housed over 105,000 registered prisoners, mostly Jews, and around 30,000 unregistered Jewish inmates of so-called transit camps.

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Anarchy in the Palestinian territories poses a security problem for Israel, but as a temporary situation is not the worst-case scenario – and may have advantages.

By  Prof. Efraim Inbar

One of the challenges facing Israel’s new government is the potential for the collapse of the Palestinian Authority, bringing about a deterioration in the security situation.

PA leader Mahmoud Abbas seems unable to rule effectively, i.e., to maintain a modicum of law and order in the territories under his control. He lost Gaza to Hamas in 2007, and we now see the “Lebanonization” of the PA taking place in the West Bank: the emergence of a myriad of armed groups, with some displaying only limited loyalty to the PA, and others, especially the Islamists, trying to undermine the current regime.
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by Majid Rafizadeh, GATESTONE  •  January 28, 2023

• Iran’s mullahs have made significant advances by tripling their nuclear program’s capacity to enrich uranium to 60%, a short step away from the 90% purity required to build a nuclear weapon.
• Iran is selling Russia drones and other material; is Russia “paying” for them by helping the mullahs complete their nuclear weapons undertaking?
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Police kill the lone gunman, who fled scene of Shabbat eve attack in Neve Yaakov neighborhood, opened fire on officers; celebrations in West Bank, Gaza; IDF bolsters forces

By EMANUEL FABIAN , TOI     28 January 2023,

• • Security forces at the scene of a deadly terror shooting attack in Neve Yaakov, Jerusalem, January 27, 2023 (Olivier Fitoussi/Flash90)

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By MARK SLEBODA   27.1.23

The cries have risen up shrilly as one across Western MSM, commentariat, and governments.

Everything that the collective West has supplied to the Kiev regime in Ukraine – more than $120 billion taxpayer dollars’ worth of weapons, military aid and support in the last year alone – is NOT ENOUGH!!!

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by Micha Gefen, ISRAEL UNWIRED    January 23, 2023 

The World Economic Forum (WEF) has been pushing the reorganization of global society for a number of years. Their main tool to do this has been their “climate change” policy.

This is also why they keep on pushing sanctions on the Russian energy sector. By driving the prices pf oil and gas up and thus destroying the Western economy, the WEF believe they can actually force the transition away from fossil fuels. Obviously the direct out come of that is their control over our movements.

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Israel’s political upheaval reflects partisan tunnel vision on all sides

By Melanie Phillips

Benjamin Netanyahu informs Aryeh Deri he is firing him “with a heavy heart”.

So how’s Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu faring in his supposed programme to smash democracy at the behest of the religious extremists in his government?

Well, as Israel’s newly-minted dictator he’s not doing too well in that regard.

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By Shoshana Bryen, AM THINKER

The United States and Israel have had a close political and security relationship for decades, because — in the main — they see both democratic norms and the requirement for security as mutually reinforcing. Iran’s willingness to kill its own citizens in the streets and provide military support to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine have brought Washington closer to Jerusalem’s view of the most important and most imminent threat to stability in the region. But it isn’t a smooth transition, as American diplomats are still insisting on defining Israel’s politics in place of and in opposition to Israel’s voters.
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The Biden administration remains committed to a policy that will empower Iran militarily, economically and diplomatically against Israel and the Sunni Arabs.

By Caroline Glick, jns

(January 27, 2023 / JNS) The Iranian revolutionaries plod into the fifth month of their uprising against the regime with little tangible help from the outside world. To date, more than 500 Iranian revolutionaries have been killed by regime forces directed by the Revolutionary Guard Corps. More than 18,000 have been arrested.

So too, unfettered by restrictions on its nuclear activities enacted under the long-abandoned 2015 nuclear deal, the ayatollahs continue spinning their advanced centrifuges and stockpiling enriched uranium.
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More than 180,000 pounds of live munitions were fired, and thousands of military took part in the exercise

By Dion Nissenbaum, WSJ    26.1.23

U.S., Israel Hold Largest-Ever Joint Military DrillPlay video: U.S., Israel Hold Largest-Ever Joint Military Drill

T. Belman. Revivi reminds us why the Judiciary is held in such low esteem in Israel..

Chief Justice Hayut harshly criticized the proposed judicial reform, but she should have criticized the courts instead. Here is why.

By Oded Revivi, INN

Israel’s High Court’s Chief Justice delivered a speech recently in which she brought up important issues about the stability of the judiciary. She blamed the criticism leveled at the judiciary she heads on the lack of a large enough number of justices.

To my mind, what was lacking in the speech was some soul searching and perhaps even a plea for forgiveness.

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T. Belman. This is a defeatist assessment, not a sober one. Israel must not defer to American progressive Jews or the Democratic Party, nor to the present or future members of Abraham Accords. The benefits flowing from the AA are minuscule compared to annexing most of Area C.

As for the need to have the US on board should we attack Iran, then attack Iran now before we annex.

The new government will enact its domestic changes. Re sovereignty, it has more constraints and may change facts on the ground first.

By Rafael Castro, INN

The decisive victory of the conservative-religious bloc in the recent Knesset elections may have roused hopes in the nationalist camp that the current government cannot live up to. Paradoxically, the room for manoeuver of the current government is less constrained domestically than in the international arena.

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T. Belman. Israel’s priority should be fight the terrorists and to keep Area C.  Peace with Saudi Arabia can wait.

Saudi foreign ministry denounces Israeli “storming” of Jenin that led to “the fall of a number of victims”.

By Elad Benari, INN

Security forces operate in JeninIDF Spokesperson’s Unit

Saudi Arabia on Thursday blasted the Israeli counterterrorism operation in Jenin, during which several Islamic Jihad terrorists who were plotting attacks against Israelis were eliminated.

The Saudi foreign ministry said in a statement quoted by Reuters it denounced Israeli forces’ “storming of the city” that led to “the fall of a number of victims”.

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Straight talk with Col Douglas MacGregor

Tesla Fans

Israeli voters have consistently opted for the bloc of the religious–Right, contrary to the assumption that Israel’s current government is undermining democracy.

 By  Rabbi Dov Fischer, IH

It seems that every free and democratic vote that results in a victory for conservatives marks the “death of democracy.” If you Google “death of democracy in America,” you get 54,800,000 results. No social media “influencer” can match that. Among the first 10 results is Al Jazeera’s prediction of doom: “Unless that simple, yet hard realization is embraced by folks now, America’s dark days will only become dimmer.”

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12 billionaires with Jewish backgrounds appear on list of America’s ‘most generous givers’ who donated a collective $27 billion in 2022

By ASAF ELIA-SHALEV  Today, 5:51 am  

Dr. Priscilla Chan and Mark Zuckerberg seen at the 8th Annual Breakthrough Prize Ceremony at NASA Ames Research Center in Mountain View, California, November 3, 2019. (Peter Barreras/ Invision/ AP)

JTA — Jews made up nearly half of America’s biggest philanthropic donors last year, according to a calculation by Forbes of who gave the most money away in 2022.

In a year that saw their fortunes take a hit amid declines in the stock market, America’s 25 “most generous givers” donated a collective $27 billion, up from $20 billion in 2021, for a lifetime total of $196 billion, according to Forbes. They included 12 billionaires with Jewish backgrounds — a dramatic overrepresentation when compared to the proportion of Jews in the overall US population.

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T. Belman.  There are no “negative legal implications for Israel on the international stage.” and nothing wrong with  annexation, de facto or otherwise.

Chief military prosecutor, Defense Ministry legal adviser reportedly warn Netanyahu move could place Israel in legal peril on world stage

By TOI STAFF     Today, 7:48 am

Religious Zionism leader Bezalel Smotrich arrives for coalition talks with Likud chief Benjamin Netanyahu, in Jerusalem, November 6, 2022. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
Senior legal authorities within the defense establishment reportedly warned Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in a meeting this week against the transfer of civilian authorities in the West Bank under the Civil Administration to far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich, and argued that the move could have negative legal implications for Israel on the international stage.

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