Inflated haredi draft numbers: ‘The orders came from the top’

Kan Reshet Bet reported that the IDF had exaggerated the number of haredi draftees inducted into the army over the past few years in a bid to show the IDF was meeting its quotas for haredi enlistment.

Government votes to lower draft exemption age for haredi men to 21 – before rising to 23. ‘This is a historic moment,’ says PM Bennett.

ARUTZ SHEVA

Haredi man and soldier at the Kotel

The Israeli government voted Sunday to approve a plan to lower the draft exemption age for haredi men to 21 – before increasing it to 23.

The plan, drawn up by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, Defense Minister Benny Gantz, and Finance Minister Avidgor Liberman, temporarily reduces the age limit for drafting yeshiva students to 21.

Currently, yeshiva students must obtain an annual draft deferment, and risk immediate induction into the army if they leave their yeshiva in order to pursue a career.
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ARUTZ SHEVA

MK Nir Barkat (Likud) accused Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid of passing on to the Biden administration an agreement in principle to open a US Consulate in eastern Jerusalem, Israel Hayom reports.

In a letter sent to the two ahead of Bennett’s meeting with US President Joe Biden on Thursday, Barkat writes that he has already addressed the two several times on the matter, “but you did not make an effort, you or whoever is connected to the government, to release a clear statement on the matter, according to which you will oppose this process.” Barkat demands that Prime Minister Bennett and his colleague Lapid make it clear that they are rejecting the request to open the consulate.

The Prime Minister’s Office said: “This never happened.” The Lapid bureau also denied.

By Dr. James M. Dorsey, BESA     August 18, 2021

Chinese military on parade, screenshot from YouTube video

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: China may have no short-term interest in contributing to guaranteeing security in parts of a swath of land stretching from Central Asia to the East coast of Africa, but that does not prevent the People’s Republic from preparing for a time when it may wish to build on longstanding political and military relationships in various parts of the world to project power and maintain an economic advantage.

Determined to exploit the principle of allegedly win-win relationships that are underwritten by economics, trade, and investment as the solution to problems, China has so far delayed if not avoided bilateral or unilateral political and military engagement in conflicts beyond its borders.

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T. Belman. Left out of this analysis is Trump’s Historic Speech to Muslim World deliver in Riyadh on May 20/17. In it he announced “that the nations here today will be signing an agreement to prevent the financing of terrorism, called the Terrorist Financing Targeting Center – co-chaired by the United States and Saudi Arabia, and joined by every member of the Gulf Cooperation Council.” The goal, he said “is to meet history’s great test—to conquer extremism and vanquish the forces of terrorism.” As a result, many reforms have been inaugurated since then.

In fact, in 2014, Saudi Arabia declares Muslim Brotherhood ‘terrorist group’ So it comes as no surprise that Saudi Arabia is prosecuting Hamas which was created by the MB.

As Riyadh continues its attempts to show the US that it has throw off its problematic past as a supporter of terrorism, Hamas makes its position as an ally of Iran and its satellites – including the Taliban – increasingly clear.

By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM

Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, right, meets with Taliban leader Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar | Photo: Twitter

Not too many years ago, the idea of a Saudi court sending dozens of Hamas members who had been operating out of the kingdom to prison would have seemed almost inconceivable. But this week, what once appeared a near-impossibility came to pass. Saudi Arabia, which used to be an economic paradise for members of al-Qaida and Hamas, sentenced 64 Hamas operatives convicted of money laundering and smuggling money to Hamas’ armed wing in the Gaza Strip to prison. 

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‘This Is Manifestly Not Saigon’ – and Our Society of Lies

By Dennis Prager, FPM

I wrote about the moral, diplomatic, international and American tragedy of abandoning Afghanistan a few months ago, so here I will address only the comment by Secretary of State Antony Blinken on ABC’s This Week — and what it says about our country.

Commenting on the American helicopters picking up Americans from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Blinken said, “This is manifestly not Saigon.”

That statement sums up the state of the United States of America. We have become a Society of Lies. As I have known since I studied the Soviet Union and communism at the Russian Institute of Columbia University, truth has never been a left-wing value. There are honest and dishonest liberals; there are honest and dishonest conservatives. But truth is both a liberal value and a conservative value. It is not a left-wing value. People on the left are committed to saying whatever furthers their agenda, true or false.
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The likelihood that Hezbollah will start a major war against Israel has increased significantly.

By Caroline Glick, ISRAEL HAYOM Fri Aug 20, 2021

The likelihood that Hezbollah will start a major war against Israel increased significantly in the wake of its Aug. 6 missile attack.

Hezbollah attacked Israel with 20 missiles because the outcome of Hamas’s offensive against the Jewish state in May convinced Iran’s foreign legion in Lebanon that it would only gain from aggression.

Three months ago, Hamas opened an unprovoked missile assault against Israel and incited Israeli Muslims to launch pogroms against Israeli Jews in cities across the country.

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By VICTOR DAVIS HANSON, AM GREATNESS

Institutions are being absorbed not just by the woke apparat, but by an array of ideologies that seeks to destroy them.

The collective madness that ensued from the pandemic, the quarantine, the self-induced recession, the George Floyd killing and subsequent months of exempted riots, the election year, and the resurgence of variants of the Chinese-engineered coronavirus, all ignited the fuse of formerly inert socialist dynamite. And the ensuing explosion of revolutionary fervor in just a few months has made America almost unrecognizable.

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By Andrea Widburg, AM THINKER

It’s not clear yet how many people attended Trump’s rally in Cullman, Alabama, but it was a lot. AL.com wrote that authorities were expecting 40,000 to attend. However many tens of thousands ultimately attended the rally, Trump gave them a show. He raged against Biden’s Afghanistan fiasco and offered a vulgar, but accurate, quote for the ages about the wokeness that has swamped America.

The photos and videos of the crowd gathered in Alabama on pastureland are stunning:

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Larry David publicly snubbed former friend Alan Dershowitz because he represented Trump. But when politics becomes a religious culture war, it’s no laughing matter. Op-ed.

By Jonathan Tobin, INN

Two cranky old Jews symbolize everything that’s wrong with our political culture

Larry David publicly snubbed former friend Alan Dershowitz because he represented Trump. But when politics becomes a religious culture war, it’s no laughing matter.

(JNS) Apparently, two elderly, wealthy Jewish men aren’t speaking to each other anymore. Who cares? In theory, no one ought to. But when the pair in question are television comedy star Larry David and former Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz, and a chance meeting between them results in a public scene involving screaming occurs in a popular spot on Martha’s Vineyard, it’s exactly the sort of thing that does get treated as a very big deal indeed.

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Fatah movement led by Mahmoud Abbas stresses that the Temple Mount belongs only to Muslims.

By Dalit Halevi, INN

The Fatah movement, led by Mahmoud Abbas, stated once again that the city of Jerusalem and the holy sites of Islam and Christianity in it are a “red line” and that the Al-Aqsa Mosque (Temple Mount area) belongs only to Muslims who will not accept an order that would see its use split with Jews.

In a statement issued by the movement marking the 52nd anniversary of the burning of the Al-Aqsa Mosque by Denis Michael Rohan, a young Australian Christian to whom the statement referred as a “Zionist,” Fatah stressed that the Palestinians guarding the Al-Aqsa Mosque would thwart Israeli plans and Jerusalem would remain the eternal capital of the free and independent Palestinian state. Read more…

By Martin Walsh, CONERVTIVE BRIEF

Almost 15 million mail-in ballots went unaccounted for in the 2020 presidential election, according to a government accountability group that specialized in electoral integrity.

Public Interest Legal Foundation filed a research brief that alleges because of the coronavirus pandemic last year, various U.S. states “hastily pushed traditionally in-person voters to mail ballots while, at the same time, trying to learn how to even administer such a scenario.”
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The four Arab families living in Jewish-owned homes in Sheikh Jarrah/Shimon HaTzadik are part of a political game that has been moved to the courts for a decision. But the “property” dispute is really a war between two different narratives about Jerusalem.

By Nadav Shragai, ISRAEL HAYOM

Left-wing activists protest the Sheikh Jarrah evictions, June 11, 2021 | File photo: Oren Ben Hakoon

If the Palestinians living in the Jewish homes in the Shimon HaTzadik/Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem weren’t facing political pressure, at least some of them might be willing to accept the generous compensation package judges from the High Court of Justice presented to them last week.

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T. Belman.  Once again, I stress, Israel must publicly state that the lands in question, Area C, are Israel Sovereign territory and not Occupied Palestinian land. This can’t be repeated enough.

SOVEREIGNTY NEWSLETTER
A dangerous encounter

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett is leaving for a visit in the U.S., where it is expected that the policy matters of interest to the Biden administration will be raised. One of these matters is Biden’s desire to establish a consulate for the Palestinian Authority in Jerusalem.

For the administration, the motive is clear and simple. It is interested in promoting a Palestinian state with its capital in Jerusalem, so establishing a consulate would constitute a significant political anchor for additional steps whose purpose is to determine political facts on the ground in the heart of Israel’s capital.

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By Christopher Skeet, AM THINKER

There’s not much to say that hasn’t already been said regarding Biden’s unconditional surrender to the Taliban, and it’s only the first week.  Bookshelves will be filled with analyses of these events, and we won’t understand their full ramifications for decades.  My two cents, for what they’re worth, are that the left doesn’t consider the fall of Kabul and the betrayal of our allies to be a tragedy.  Rather, this is deliberate foreign policy strategy, and it’s right on track.

The pattern is clear for those who wish to see.  Simply put, the left thinks America is not only evil, but irredeemably so.

Hence, any policy, be it foreign or domestic, that weakens our nation-state should be pursued, the goal being that the nation-state will eventually corrode to the point of collapse.

They don’t care that the hollowed-out dystopia will be long past its desirability for subjugation, so long as they get to be in charge.  As Lord Varys said of Littlefinger, “He would see this country burn if he could be king of the ashes”.
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