Under Biden Administration, Iran's Mullahs Enjoying Green Light to Go Nuclear

by Majid Rafizadeh

• The bleak reality is that time is rapidly running out for concerted action to stop Iran's march towards acquiring nuclear weapons capability. The Biden administration's response, however, has been marked by silence, massive funding of Iran and a conspicuous absence of intervention.
• [T]he prospect of the world's "leading sponsor of state terrorism" armed with nuclear weapons demands serious and immediate action.
• Iran now controls four countries in the region in addition to its own -- Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Yemen. With nuclear weapons, Iran will be able to "export the Revolution" with ease. It will not even have to use its nuclear arsenal; just the threat of a nuclear attack should be enough to deter push-back and secure capitulation. The regime is already establishing footholds in Latin America -- Venezuela, Cuba and Nicaragua -- from where it will be able to threaten "the Big Satan," the United States.
• It is essential to confront the nuclear threat from Iran with haste.

The bleak reality is that time is rapidly running out for concerted action to stop Iran's march towards acquiring nuclear weapons capability. The prospect of the world's "leading sponsor of state terrorism" armed with nuclear weapons demands serious and immediate action. (Image source: iStock)

The ascent of Iran's nuclear program under the watch of the Biden administration stands as a grim illustration of its failure and inadequacy. Iran's mullahs appear to have been tacitly handed an alarming green light to pursue their nuclear ambitions with impunity. The bleak reality is that time is rapidly running out for concerted action to stop Iran's march towards acquiring nuclear weapons capability. The Biden administration's response, however, has been marked by silence, massive funding of Iran and a conspicuous absence of intervention.

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Qatar and Its Al-Jazeera Network: 'Voice for Terrorists'

by Bassam Tawil

• The long-term agenda looks as if the US and Qatar intend to try to elbow Israel out of any say in what "humanitarian aid" is eventually be brought into Gaza
• The US seems to believe that Qatar is aligned with it; the US has its major Middle Eastern airbase there, without which Qatar would be a vulnerable target. However, the report reveals Qatar as aligned with countries such as Iran, Russia, and China, and groups such as Al Qaeda and the Taliban, which seek to replace the West. Qatar supported the Taliban until Afghan President Mohammad Ashraf Ghani fled in his plane. Then Qatar offered to mediate.
• It is the same act -- "first the arsonist then the firefighter" -- that Qatar is putting over on the Biden administration with Hamas. First, Qatar funds Hamas to the gills, hosts Hamas's billionaire leaders in its capital, Doha, and allows Deif to declare war on Qatar's megaphone, Al Jazeera. Then, the Qataris pretend to be impartial mediators, and the Biden administration pretends to buy their act.
• It is no secret that Qatar and its news organization Al-Jazeera have long been serving as champions, protectors and lifelines for Hamas and other terrorist groups, such as Al Qaeda affiliates and the Taliban.
• "There are many channels who are biased, but this is past bias. Now Al-Jazeera is a voice for terrorists." — Mohammed Fahmy, the former Cairo bureau chief of Al-Jazeera, reported by Eli Lake, aawsat.com, June 25, 2017.
• In light of the new damning evidence of Al-Jazeera's employing terrorists and its close connections to Hamas and other terrorist organizations, perhaps it is time for Israel and Western countries to learn from the Arabs, who understood many years ago that Qatar and its Al-Jazeera are not platforms for peace or news, but rather perpetuators of terrorism.

In light of the new damning evidence of Al-Jazeera's employing terrorists and its close connections to Hamas and other terrorist organizations, perhaps it is time for Israel and Western countries to learn from the Arabs, who understood many years ago that Qatar and its Al-Jazeera are not platforms for peace or news, but rather perpetuators of terrorism. Pictured: The headquarters of Al Jazeera in Doha, Qatar. (Photo by Karim Jaafar/AFP via Getty Images)

Qatar and its vast media network, Al Jazeera, have a long history, which, according to a report by the Middle East Research Institute (MEMRI), promote terrorism worldwide. The report notes:

"Al-Jazeera, therefore, should not be discussed as a means of telecommunications, but instead as an unyielding and forceful political tool of Qatari foreign policy under the guise of a mass media network."

It was this communications powerhouse, the report continues, that basically drove Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak from power and in 2012 replaced him with the Muslim Brotherhood's Mohamed Morsi, who was also driven from power a year later.

Al Jazeera was also the vehicle that provided a platform for Osama bin Laden among other terrorists, as well as allowing a pledge of allegiance, to ISIS leader's Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, to be broadcast live on air.

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Poll Shows U.S. Muslims Support Hamas

by Daniel Greenfield

After 9/11, elected officials told us that Islam had nothing to do with terrorism. And that accusing Muslims of supporting Islamic terrorism was a dangerous bigotry they dubbed “Islamophobia.”

In the decades since, the same speech has been delivered after every Islamic terror attack.

Now, as Muslims and leftists riot in support of Hamas, after Islamic groups and public figures from campus groups to the leader of the Council for American Islamic Relations (CAIR) celebrated the Oct 7 atrocities, we are not allowed to suggest they support terrorism.

Even as Dearborn, Michigan became the hub of a movement to save Hamas by pressuring Biden, led by figures who had praised Hamas, an op-ed by a MEMRI counterterrorism researcher in the Wall Street Journal that warned of the degree of support for terrorism in the Muslim area was denounced by everyone from Biden on down for its “Islamophobia.”

Muslims in America, we’re told, don’t support Hamas, they just oppose Israel. Is that true?

While there were polls which showed that the vast majority of Muslims in Israel (the so-called ‘Palestinians’) support Hamas, there hasn’t been a comprehensive poll of Muslims in America.




However a recent Pew survey on the war showed that half of Muslims in America (49%) believe Hamas has “valid” reasons for attacking Israel, while the majority (54%) also reject the idea that Israel has the right to defend itself against the Islamic terrorist organization

Unlike the vast majority of Americans from all ages and backgrounds, Muslims are the only group where less than half agree that the Oct 7 murders, rapes and kidnappings were wrong.

1 in 5 Muslims in America (21%) were willing to admit they supported the Oct 7 massacres. Nearly 1 in 3 claimed to be unsure whether burning Jewish families alive in their homes was wrong.


Only 5% of Muslims in America believe that Israel’s military campaign on Hamas is acceptable while 68% of Muslims believe that Israel’s attacks on the Islamic terrorists are not acceptable.

67% of Muslims in America have an unfavorable view of the “Israeli people” (not the Israeli government which an overwhelming 86% of them oppose.)

While only 8% of Americans have a favorable view of Hamas, 1 in 3 (37%) Muslims in America are willing to admit to a favorable view of a sanctioned terrorist organization. (There are multiple reasons why some Muslims might oppose Hamas while still hating Israel, including support for the Palestinian Authority, political opposition to the Muslim Brotherhood or resentment over Hamas siding with the Sunni rebels in Syria.)

60% of Muslims in the U.S. resent that America is “favoring” Israel.

These numbers are troubling because they pose a threat not only to Israel, but to America.

Support for Islamic terrorism in one part of the world can often translate to support for terrorism elsewhere. Including in America. Hamas is an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood which has built an extensive infrastructure in America. When the Brotherhood took power in Egypt, before being removed in a popular uprising with military backing, many Muslims here rallied to support it.

Muslim Brotherhood terrorist groups operate not only in Israel or the Middle East, but around the world. Al Qaeda was formed as part of a fusion with a Muslim Brotherhood splinter group. Osama bin Laden was one of a number of Al Qaeda leaders who had been in the Brotherhood.

And the Muslim Brotherhood is on every campus in America through its student groups, it has built up organizations that control mosques and represent Muslims on Capitol Hill. Some of those organizations also did everything possible to undermine America’s war on Al Qaeda.

Now some of them are cheering on the Houthi Jihadists as they battle the U.S. Navy to sink as many ships in the Red Sea as they can. Will they also cheer on attacks against America?

The Pew numbers show quite clearly that a surprising number of Muslims are willing to express support for Islamic terrorism. How many share their views but are more circumspect about telling them to a stranger on the phone? That is something we may only find out far too late.

While 1 in 3 Muslims will admit to supporting Hamas, 1 in 2 claim that Hamas has valid reasons for attacking Israel. And hardly any believe that the victims of Islamic terrorism have the right to fight back. That is the final number that truly matters. Some Muslims will claim to reject Islamic terror, but very few are willing to actually support non-Muslims who fight back against terrorism.

While the Pew poll offers plenty of bad news about Democrats and their support for terror, this is in part driven by the growing Islamic role in the party, the media and public life. That is the phenomenon reflected in the David Horowitz Freedom Center’s ‘Election Jihad’ report which showed that Islamic activists were gaining statewide offices around the country and using their positions to defend Islamic terrorists while opposing efforts to put a stop to their violence.

Muslims in America don’t represent a range of diversity, they are clear outliers when it comes to supporting Islamic terrorism even among those groups most prone to supporting terrorists.

Over 3 times as many Muslims, as Democrats, support the Hamas atrocities of Oct 7. Twice as many Muslims as black protestants, the other group least friendly to Jews, believe Hamas has valid reasons for fighting Israel. Over twice as many Muslims, as 18-24 year olds, the most pro-Hamas age demographic, support Hamas.

These views do not represent an American range, but a dangerous un-American one.

The support for Hamas and the opposition to Israel among Muslims in America is not a reflection of American politics, but of Islamic ones. This is also true of the anti-Israel campaign. The majority of Muslims don’t just oppose Israel, but the “Israeli people”. This is not a disagreement with a particular government, but a tribal hatred of an entire people.

And that is the same genocidal hatred that Hamas and other terrorist groups have mobilized.

American Jews are shocked at the level and depth of support for the murder of Jews, but over the past decades, they (like most Americans) failed to view immigration as an urgent threat. Now that there are multiple crises, from terrorist mobs in the streets to a mass invasion at the border, some people are waking up. And that wake up call needs to turn into action.

Israel has its war at its own borders and we have ours. America is a generation away from its own Oct 7. As in Europe, a new terrorist threat is rising in our own country, not from abroad, but from a generation of Muslims and converts who were born in this country.

The Pew poll shows once more how deep the support for Islamic terrorists is not just in abstractions like the “media” or the “college campus”, but among Islamic immigrants.

If Americans and, especially, Jews, do not come to terms with that, what follows will be worse.

Leadership Woes

by Rabbi Steven Pruzansky

(First published at Israelnationalnews.com)

The relentless effort to topple Binyamin Netanyahu is almost thirty years old and continues unabated. There are politicians who arouse opposition and others who arouse irrational hatred. Netanyahu is in the latter category, to which should be added Donald Trump, whose mere existence also makes people lose their minds and who, like Netanyahu, is the subject of withering but dubious legal assaults from his haters who control prosecutions (but not necessarily convictions).

Each time Netanyahu is elected there are immediate calls for “new elections, now,” public protests and demonstrations, amid demands for his resignation. To his detractors, elections have only one legitimate and acceptable outcome – Netanyahu’s defeat. It seems that 99.5% of the people screaming for his resignation now were screaming for his resignation on October 6. They assume that new elections will spell certain electoral defeat for Israel’s longest serving prime minister. They should learn a little history.

Golda Meir presided over an even worse military debacle fifty years ago when she failed to preempt the Egyptian and Syrian attack on Israel on Yom Kippur 1973. Nevertheless, Golda won re-election less than three months after the war’s outbreak. It is true that she lost seats, with her party garnering 51 mandates (down from 56 in the previous election); but it is also true that no single party since then has won 51 seats in the Knesset. She formed a government with 68 seats in the Knesset, what today would be construed as a landslide. She resigned in April 1974 after the Agranat Commission laid blame at the feet of senior military intelligence officials – but did not reprimand Meir or Defense Minister Moshe Dayan.

Other examples stand out as well. George W. Bush was president only nine months when Arab terrorists attacked the United States on September 11, 2001. Almost 3000 Americans were killed, thousands more in the wars the United States fought for the next 20 years in the Middle East. Only the shrillest Bush haters blamed him for the 9/11 attacks and America’s unpreparedness. The American people did not, and Bush handily won reelection three years later with a larger majority than he won in 2000.

Similarly, Japan launched “an unprovoked and dastardly attack” on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, less than a year after Franklin D. Roosevelt began his third term. The United States was completely unprepared for the attack – and for the war that followed. It took months to build up American manufacturing to provide the weapons of war. FDR, too, was not blamed, although he did immediately fire the commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet, Husband E. Kimmel, replacing him with Chester Nimitz who steered the US to victory over Japan. And almost exactly three years later, in November 1944, FDR was reelected to an unprecedented fourth term.

It is worth noting that the next scheduled parliamentary elections in Israel will not be held until October 2026 – i.e., exactly three years after Hamas’ brutal Shemini Atzeret invasion of Israel.

“Three years” seems like the magic number at which voters can evaluate the level of culpability of their leaders; most often they are not held liable for failures that occur on their watch, especially when they were not informed. We do not know, and will perhaps never know, the extent to which Israel’s intelligence agencies blundered in the months and years before October 7, what information they dismissed, what they reported, and what they concealed, and the extent to which the involvement of certain elements of the security services in anti-Netanyahu protests played a role. Of course, writ large, the Prime Minister is responsible for everything that happens on his watch (although it is understandable why in the era of the mindless sound bite and negative advertising, Netanyahu does not want to be recorded saying he is responsible). In any event, responsibility is different from culpability.

To be sure, there is a difference between parliamentary governments where snap elections can be called at any time and representative democracies like the United States where elections occur at fixed intervals. Yet, in principle, it should not matter. If an American president deemed himself (or others did) guilty of such malpractice that national security was endangered or the US was invaded, he could resign. That it hasn’t happened does not mean that it can’t or even shouldn’t happen. It does mean that the people are often able to ascertain who is and isn’t blameworthy in ways that confound the elites who consider themselves the intellectual superiors of the people. (Of course, Winston Churchill was driven from office just two months after winning World War II for the British people, so you never know.)

The point is that there is no natural way for a parliamentary government to fall which would necessitate new elections unless it disintegrated on its own, and the more unified a government, the less likely that is to happen. Netanyahu’s present government is cohesive although not rock-solid. There is a greater chance that some discontented Likud members would foment internal strife than that the Haredi parties would resign (say, over failure to pass a draft exemption bill) but anything is possible. The biggest variable will be the expected mass demonstrations in the streets by the same people who were demonstrating against Netanyahu before the war, and especially how the media will drive the narrative of a country in disarray, just like the media did before the war which greatly contributed to the timing of Hamas’ attack on Israel.

Personally, I cannot blame Netanyahu for Hamas’ invasion or the IDF’s initially tepid response because it is not known what he knew and when he knew it. His conduct of the war has been focused and determined, has inflicted massive harm on the enemy, and is poised to achieve the war aims, given enough time. He has been remarkably unwavering in resisting most aspects of American pressure, something that he has not always done. That being said, he should be held responsible for a series of mistakes both before and during the war. PM Netanyahu is responsible for the “quiet-for-quiet” policy which proved catastrophic to Israel’s security interests. He is responsible for providing food and fuel to our enemy and its hostile civilian population which has prolonged the war, after boasting immediately after the attack that not one drop of fuel or one morsel of food would enter Gaza until all the hostages are released. And if he caved to American pressure because of our need for the replenishment of armaments, then, yes, he too is responsible for not rescinding Ehud Barak's egregious decision to stop manufacturing light arms and producing missiles in Israel, which would have rendered Israel more immune to American pressure.

The Prime Minister also steadfastly insisted on distinguishing between Hamas and the civilians of Gaza, playing to a Western narrative that is a convenient fiction. Every poll indicates widespread support for Hamas among the Arabs of the land of Israel. That too was a grave error in the conduct of this war. The Shalit deal, forced on the government by mobs of protesters and their media inciters, was a monumental mistake that has led to the current imbroglio. Undoubtedly, all these decisions seemed reasonable, or at least plausible, at the time they were made, and it is impossible to foresee the consequences of choosing differently. Yet, we must, because these decisions were devastating to Israel’s security.

The continued tap-dancing around Rafiach is another blunder, as it would be extremely unlikely that the remaining four Hamas battalions are just sitting there waiting for our attack, as it is unlikely that the hostages are still there as well. For all we know, one out of every fifty tents in the Rafiach encampment contains a hostage, incarcerated by the same Gaza “civilians” for whom we must be show such great deference. After six months, we have no idea where they are and who is alive. These are all functions of leadership and in that Netanyahu must be perceived as lacking.

The problem is that you can’t beat something with nothing – and who in Israel’s political and military leadership is not guilty of the same mistakes, the same flawed conceptions? Gantz and Gallant, Eisenkot and Saar (who also unleashed on Israel the legal dictatorship of Gali Baharav-Miara, who should have been dismissed years ago), Lapid and Lieberman – who hasn’t proffered the same policies over the last twenty years? Who hasn’t suggested surrendering more of our land to the enemy or indulged the two-state illusion? Deri and Goldknopf – both of whom aspire only to leadership of their small segment of the population but not the nation as a whole? Who else will lead? That is Netanyahu’s greatest strength, despite his failings, and that has contributed in no small measure to his extraordinary political longevity.

Indeed, the two politicians who have been consistently correct in their statecraft have been Smotrich and Ben Gvir, now anathematized to Americans and much of the Israeli public for their resolute commitment to eternal values. They are not always right, but the more right they are, the more their enemies hate them. It was FDR who pleaded: “I ask you to judge me by the enemies I have made.” They, and Netanyahu, could assert the same sentiment.

The great conservative William F. Buckley once declaimed: “I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the telephone directory than by the Harvard University faculty.” On a similar note, there are moments when I think that I would rather be governed by 120 guys chosen randomly from Golani, or Givati, or Maglan, or Egoz, than the current 120 members of the Knesset. They would represent a very fair cross-section of society, hail from diverse backgrounds and profess different world views – and yet have learned to work together, constructively, productively, efficiently, harmoniously, and successfully, achieving the noblest and most meaningful goals amid sundry challenges and obstacles.

The good news is that the leadership crisis – not only in Israel but across the globe – is part of the Torah’s narrative of the end of days, when we realize that we look in vain to human beings whom we elect for our salvation. Rather, we look to Heaven, and pray for the arrival of His chosen one, the Moshiach, who will usher in an era of endless peace, uphold it through righteousness and justice (Yeshayahu 9:6), who will possess the spirit of wisdom and understanding, the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of Hashem (ibid 11:2).

Let us be worthy of that day and prepare for that era.

Igrot Hare’aya – Letters of Rav Kook: Good News about the Expansion of the Yishuv

#205

Date and Place: 17 Sivan 5669, Yafo

Recipient: Mr. Dov Lubman

Body: I want to express to your honor my deepest thanks for the enjoyment and happiness that you showered upon me by sending me the charter of the establishment of the organization, The Agricultural Assembly of the Moshavot of Judea.

I experienced many emotions of happiness, and hopes for a bright future were awoken in my heart, when I saw the serious guidelines that were set. They highlight nicely the plan of the organization and its robust spirit.

I view in what I have seen the “outstretched arm of Hashem” in a favorable manner for His nation and His lot, as I see in all of the steps [of development] of the honorable and holy Yishuv. It is the beginning of the reestablishment of our ruins and the return of a positive spirit for our captives, to return the days of old. My spirit is churning within me with the churnings of a warm and complete love. I want to hug with the arms of true friendship all of those who are gathering together with good counsel and bravery, to expand the boundaries of Israel and to elevate the stature of our Desired Land, along the lines of all the new elements of life that have begun to be revealed.

I wish that your dear organization will accept happily my feelings of blessing and prayers for your success. May your endeavors give very blessed fruit, for the benefit of our nation and our Land, for now and for generations to come.

“When the Wine Goes In, the Fragrance Comes Out”

by HaRav Dov Begon
Rosh HaYeshiva, Machon Meir

[Although we rejoiced in the simcha of Purim several days ago, we chose to present this article here for its interesting insights into the commandment to drink on Purim]

"A person is obligated to drink [Hebrew: lehitbasem] on Purim until he cannot tell the difference between 'Cursed be Haman' and 'Blessed be Mordechai'" (Megillah 7b; Orach Chaim 695:2). Seemingly we can ask: How can our sages require us to drink? Surely drunkenness causes great sin. Yet it is because the miracles performed for the Jewish People on Purim occurred by way of drinking parties. Vashti was removed from the throne by way of a drinking party, bringing in Esther. Likewise, Haman's downfall came about through a drinking party. Our sages therefore required us to drink enough that we should remember the great miracle by way of wine.

All the same, on Purim we are not commanded to get drunk, and subsequently, to allow our reveling to diminish our dignity to the point of rakish foolishness. Rather, we are commanded to drink only enough to achieve a pleasurable feeling of love for G-d and thankfulness for the miracles He performed for us. If, however, someone knows about himself that drinking will make him treat one of the mitzvoth lightly, such as ritual hand-washing or the blessing after the meal, or that it will make him skip mincha or ma'ariv, or behave frivolously, then better he should abstain. Let all one's deeds be for the sake of heaven. (Orach Chaim 695:2, Biur Halachah).

Seemingly we can ask, "Why do our sages use the Hebrew expression "lehitbasem" [literally to have a fragrance] for "to drink", rather than "lehishtaker", the normal expression for "to get drunk"? It is because, as our sages said, "When wine goes in, secrets come out." And what are the "secrets" that come out of a Jew who drinks wine on Purim? Only good words leave his lips, and, as our sages said, "'Good' can only mean Torah," or, "'Good' can only mean a righteous person."

The opposite occurred at the drinking feast of Achashverosh. There, the king's honorees, gathered together from amongst all the nations, sat and drank a king's share of wine, and their true faces were revealed, all lasciviousness and corruption, the opposite of the pleasant fragrance exuded by the Jewish People even when they drink wine.

Some forty-two years ago, on the 14th of Adar, the first day of Purim, our master Rav Tzvi Yehuda Kook was taken to the celestial sphere. All his life he engaged in disseminating the Torah lights of his father. Those lights have spread a good and pleasant fragrance to the entire House of Israel and to the entire world. Rav Tzvi Yehuda was privileged to be the great educator who actualized the potential of his father's blessed light and raised-up numerous disciples who follow in his light.

Rav Tzvi Yehuda would customarily explain our sages' words, "The sanctification of G-d's name is greater than the Profanation of G-d's name [me'chullul Hashem] as meaning, "The greatest sanctification of G-d's name is one that emerges from the profanation of G-d's name." When a believing person merits to ascend in Torah greatness, and in the fear and love of G-d, he merits to see with his spiritual sight how truly everything is for the best. Then, even what seems at the time like the profanation of G-d's name, darkness and evil, turns out to be part of G-d's kingdom.

And perhaps that is the spiritual level that the person drinking wine on Purim must reach, such that "he cannot distinguish between 'Cursed be Haman' and 'Blessed be Mordechai'." Both stand beneath the watchful gaze of G-d, and "everything G-d does He does for the good."

The entire House of Israel caught a glimpse of this when they saw the reaction of the rabbis of Yeshivat Mercaz Harav and its yeshiva high school, as well as the bereaving families of the pristine children murdered by Arabs seeking to steal our land (6 March 2008 || ל׳ באדר א׳ תשס״ח). All of them reacted out of faith and valor, out of an all-encompassing vision of the intricate and complex reality faced by our nation and our country at this hour (for example, see last week's newsletter for Parshat Vayikra). How fortunate we are to have been privileged to learn and to teach Rav Kook's lights. We hope that those lights will illuminate the entire House of Israel, and that Israel will bask in their pleasant fragrance. And may we be the living fulfillment of Shir HaShirim 8:14: " Make haste, my beloved! Be like a gazelle or a young hart upon the mountains of spices."

Besorot Tovot,
Looking forward to complete salvation,
With the Love of Am Yisrael and Eretz Yisrael,

Shabbat Shalom.

The Yishai Fleisher Israel Podcast: THE ETERNAL FLAME

SEASON 2024 EPISODE 13: Yishai Fleisher is at top of Hebron and prays for strength in this challenging period. Rabbi Shmuely Boteach joins Yishai to discuss his appearance on Piers Morgan's show and to understand Senator Chuck Schumer's and President Biden's motivations. Then, Yishai comments on CNN's interview with Minister Rabbi Amichai Eliyahu. Finally, Ben Bresky on the history of Shaarei Tzedek Hospital, and Table Torah about the Eternal Flame.

Yeshivat Machon Meir: The Purpose of the Todah Offering (video)

The Kohen Gadol and the Metzora

by Rav Binny Freeman

I noticed the jeep in the distance almost immediately; it was impossible to miss, raising a dust column you could see for miles. We were on maneuvers deep in the Negev desert, and there wasn’t anything else around but us, so we knew immediately the jeep had to be headed our way. Sure enough, twenty minutes later the jeep pulled up alongside our tank and a man with colonel’s oak-leaves on his shoulders got out and stretched. Our commander jumped down for a hurried conference, and we were only too happy for the brief respite; I was in the middle of tank commander’s course, one of the most depressing experiences I have ever had, and any break from the grind was always welcome.

A moment later our commander ordered the gunner off the tank and told us that this colonel was going to be joining us in the tank and that we did not need to know why or what it was about, but that for the purposes of our training and maneuvers, we should “just treat him like one of the guys”. Yeah, right; a full bird colonel, one of the guys? I don’t think so. You have to understand we were not even sergeants yet, so our commander, the first sergeant overseeing our training, was the final word, and his commander, a lieutenant, was to us like the prince whose word is law. And his commander, who was the company commander with the rank of captain, was like the King. And his commander, the battalion commander, with the rank of major, was like G-d. So what did that make a full colonel whose rank was equivalent to ‘G-d’s commander’s commander (or the equivalent of a full brigade commander), G-d’s mother?

We did our best to stay out of this colonel’s way, though when you are sharing a tank that is not very easy. He was not a big talker, and didn’t mix much with us enlisted men, which was fine with us. Needless to say, at the end of the day’s maneuvers, he didn’t sleep in the tank with us, which at least meant we had a little more room than normal. We ended up sharing our tank with him for the better part of three weeks, though, so I did become fairly adept at learning how to sidestep any issues that might have been challenging with such a high-ranking officer on board. One day, however, it all finally came to a head.

We were on a maneuver, and I was acting as tank commander. There are four crewmembers in a tank, a driver, gunner, loader, and commander, and to become a tank commander, we had to become accomplished in each position, so we would switch off, in order to become familiar with all the different tasks of a tank crew. Every maneuver had to be repeated four times, so that each of us could train as commanders, and this was my turn.

One of the rules which is taken very seriously in tanks, is what is called “gevulot gizrah’”, or the limited field of the firing range. You could only fire in a certain direction, and there were always markers to denote where the field of fire actually was. Not only was it forbidden to actually fire outside the permitted field of fire, it was even prohibited to allow your tank gun to stray out of this field once there was a shell in the breach for fear of accidental misfire.

This is an issue the army takes very seriously, given the fact that a shell fired in the wrong direction could easily land in a local town or village, so the punishment for even allowing the tank gun to stray outside the field of fire was the loss of the entire crew’s weekend pass.

Now this becomes a challenging affair because generally speaking, your job as a commander is to seek out the ‘enemy’ and bring the main 105mm cannon to bear on the target, at which point the gunner takes over to line up his sights and fire. And while you can see the entire horizon from atop the commander’s turret, the gunner looking through his magnified sights from inside the tank, can only see the limited field of vision that appears in his scope. So, if you haven’t managed to place the gun exactly on target, he will begin to sweep the main gun sideways in search of the target. And if he is moving the gun in the wrong direction, he may continue searching, not realizing that the gun is turning the wrong way. In fact, when he uses his controls to turn the gun sideways, the entire turret of the gun turns with him such that he is not aware that he is turning completely around, and along with him not only the main gun, but all the machine guns as well.

So on this particular day I was acting as tank commander, and this colonel was practicing his gunnery. And sure enough, he began to rotate the tank gun in search of target acquisition, and I could see the gun was heading outside the field of fire. Years later, especially once you are an officer commanding many tanks, the prospect of commanding one tank crew is a relatively simple thing. But when you are first learning to command a tank, it seems as though there is a tremendous amount to do. Remember that the tank is moving very fast, and you have to make sure the driver is headed in the right direction (the prospect of 52 tons of tank rolling off the side of a hill because you didn’t pay attention to where the driver, who can only see minimally through his scope, was going, is a frightening thought….), not to mention keeping the loader’s machine gun as well as your own facing in the right direction, ensuring the proper ammo is in the main gun, speaking on the tank radio with your platoon or company commander, making sure you are not falling behind or getting too far ahead of the other tanks, etc.. In fact, the way things work, you don’t even have a hand free to take the controls over from the gunner, because one hand is holding the radio switch, and the other is firing your machine gun. So the armored corps has developed a simple system to let the gunner know he has to release the gun controls and stop rotating: as his seat is forward of your legs, deep in the belly of the tank, you simply kick him in the helmet! And he gets the message.

But what do you do when the gunner is a full bird colonel? I screamed into the radio intercom, but to no avail; with all the noise of heavy machine gun fire and the tank engine, he just couldn’t hear me.

Finally, in desperation, I decided I wasn’t giving up my weekend pass for anyone, so I kicked him in the back of his helmet, and sure enough he immediately figured it out: I heard a grunt that sounded something like “ugh!” over the tank intercom, and he released the controls.

Later, when we all got out of the tank, I discovered he had a huge welt in the middle of his forehead; seems I kicked him so hard his head slammed into the gunner’s console…!

I was terrified that somehow I would pay a price for this over-reaction, but never heard another word about it.

And it was only months later that I discovered whom this fellow really was: his name is Shaul Mofaz, and I next ran into him as the base commander when I showed up for officer’s course…! He also happened to have been Yoni Netanyahu’s second in command on the famous Entebbe mission, where Israeli commandoes flew thousands of miles deep into the heart of Africa to rescue Jewish hostages from terrorist hijackers in Uganda, and he would eventually become the Israeli defense Minister.

During the course of the few months (in officer’s course) I served under his command that single moment remains with me as a model of what leadership can be. Here was a full colonel, basically kicked in the head by a private, who offered forth no more than a grunt. Not a curse, no formal reprimand or stockade time, not even so much as a dressing down. In that moment we were just two soldiers doing their job…

This week, we read the portion of Tsav, which includes the anointing of Aharon and his sons as Kohanim for the first time. To anoint them Hashem tells Moshe to:

“… take the blood from the slaughtered animal and place some of it in the middle part of Aharon’s right ear, upon the thumb of his right hand, and upon the big toe of his right foot” (Vayikra 8:23).

Some take this to mean that a leader has to learn how to listen, know what to do, and be able to choose a clear direction (path on which to walk…).

Interestingly, this very same procedure is applied to the purification of the Metzorah, the leper who according to tradition is being punished with a spiritual malady due to his transgressions including slander and evil speech.

How can the same process anointing Aharon the Kohein Gadol, a person supposedly on the highest level, be applied in exactly the same fashion, to the metzora who was obviously on a much lower spiritual level? Can it be that two people with two extremely different levels of holiness undergo the same procedure?

There is an interesting discussion in the Gemara of Berachot which may shed light on this anomaly.

Chazal (Berachot 2b) are discussing the exact point at which day becomes night. Clearly until the sun has set it is still day, and once the stars have come out it is night, the question is what the status of twilight is.

Rebbi Yossi is of the opinion that “Bein hashmashot ke’heref ayin”. The transition from day to night is the blink of an eye; it’s a split second; there is no middle ground; it is either day, or it is night.

And R Avraham Yitzchak HaKohein Kook in his Ein Ayah commentary explains what Rebbi Yossi is suggesting:

Imagine a person is trying to lose weight. The first thing he does is to weigh himself and imagine he discovers that he is 300 lbs., and realizes he needs to lose 100 lbs.!

So he decides he will start eating healthier and exercising. After three days of daily walks and lots of fruit and vegetables, he weighs himself and discovers he has lost a pound. To everyone else, suggests Rav Kook, nothing has changed yet; no-one can tell the difference between a 300 lb. fellow and one who weighs 299 lbs.

But he knows the entire world has changed, because has turned things around, and is heading in a completely different direction.

Obviously, the Kohein Gadol and the Metzorah are in two completely different spaces, but they share in common the fact that both are trying to grow, to elevate themselves spiritually, and in that moment they are viewed equally.

Perhaps the Torah is teaching us that when two people are trying to grow, Hashem does not see them as totally different. Just like that moment in the tank: such a high-ranking officer being kicked in the head by a simple private, might have been expected to curse, or at least glare at a simple soldier. But I concluded in that moment that he was making sure we knew we were both just soldiers doing our job.

It was a valuable lesson on what a Kohein, a leader, is really meant to be…

Shabbat Shalom from Jerusalem.

Feminist Silence: Hamas's Sexual Violence

by Nils A. Haug

• In November 2023, it was reported that the United Nations' Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and Girls, Reem Alsalem, notwithstanding overwhelming evidence to the contrary, claimed the evidence against Hamas "was 'not solid' enough to warrant a statement" -- to which London's Victims' Commissioner, Claire Waxman, replied: "How can we talk about eliminating violence against women and girls if we are tacitly saying its acceptable to rape Jewish ones?"
• Alsalem, from Jordan, claims the charges against Israeli forces are "reasonably credible," but refuses to divulge the source. In reality, no credible or proven instance of this behaviour by Israel's forces in Gaza since October 7 has been publicly recorded.
• "Organizations that fight for LGBT rights condemned the country that allows freedom, and marched for a terrorist organization that punishes gay people with death." — Jared Kushner, townhall.com, March 7, 2024.
• "Above all, we must at all times remember what intellectuals habitually forget: that people matter more than concepts and must come first. The worst of all despotisms is the heartless tyranny of ideas." — Paul Johnson, historian, thepublicdiscourse.com, January 23, 2023.
• Early women's liberation movements, forerunners to present feminist activism, were founded to proclaim women's rights to social equality. Radical feminism, as a narrow expression of the original movement, fails spectacularly in exemplifying society's moral and ethical precepts. Its advocates appear to prioritize narcissistic, egocentric identity ideologies over the sanctity, dignity, and ontological security of the individual woman.
• "We must always take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim. Silence encourages the tormentor, never the tormented." — Elie Wiesel, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, December 10, 1986.

For all advocates for women's welfare, especially in the area of sexual violence, the crucial concern at this time should be the terror perpetrated on defenceless females of all ages through acts of sexual depravity, torture, and death by Hamas in Israel on October 7. Pictured: A demonstration outside of United Nations headquarters in New York City on December 4, 2023, labeled "#MeToo unless you are a Jew," protesting the UN's silence about sexual violence perpetrated by Hamas terrorists against Israeli women and girls. (Photo by Charly Triballeau/AFP via Getty Images)

In November 2023, the UK Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy penned a poem, "We See You," celebrating the triumph of female soccer players. Success of women in traditional men's sports is certainly something to celebrate. Even so, a Poet Laureate's task is surely also to reflect deep contemporary issues affecting the nation. Duffy, a devoted feminist, gender activist, and supporter of the oppressed, has yet to address the most seminal issue of the moment for women's welfare: the horrific and systemic gender-based violence suffered by innocent Israeli girls and women, many raped to death, abused, tortured, massacred, with their sexual organs carved from their bodies by Hamas murderers on October 7, 2023. Perhaps she still might comment or pen an emotive poem, perhaps not.

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Biden Administration's Terrorist Pier in Gaza: The Trojan Horse For Terrorists to Take Over the Region

by Bassam Tawil

• Placing Qatar -- rather than, say, the United Arab Emirates -- in charge of the Gaza pier entrenches a terrorist-sponsoring Trojan Horse at Hamas's beck and call. Qatar will use the pier to supply Hamas with more money and more powerful weapons. The port will also undoubtedly be used to smuggle Islamist jihadis from all around the world into the Gaza Strip to launch more massacres against Israelis.
• Qatar has a long history of supporting the Muslim Brotherhood and its Islamist offshoots, but also Osama bin Laden, Al Qaeda, the Taliban, Hezbollah and the Al Nusra Front.
• If Qatar really wants an end to the Israel-Hamas war, all it has to do is order its Hamas puppets immediately and unconditionally to release all the Israelis kidnapped by Hamas terrorists October 7 and held hostage in the Gaza Strip. Hamas leaders Ismail Haniyeh and Khaled Mashaal, who are based in Doha, would not be able to refuse. Qatar is their lifeline.
• The Qataris, however, are evidently in no rush to pressure Hamas: Qatar is clearly facing no pressure from the Biden administration. On the contrary, the Biden administration just agreed to extended Qatar's ability to host America's Al-Udeid Air Base, the headquarters of CENTCOM, for another ten years – for nothing in return.
• "Congress must weigh in and cancel the 10-year extension of the military base in Qatar... The U.S. should seize assets tied to individuals and entities in Qatar for supporting terrorist groups, especially those tied to Iran, a state sponsor of terrorism.... It's time to put Doha on notice that they are jeopardizing their relationship with the U.S. by providing material support to designated terrorist groups. Qatar is clearly acting like a state sponsor of terror and should not be allowed to use the U.S. banking system to bypass existing, though not enforced, sanctions on funding Iran and its terrorist proxies." — Former US intelligence officer Michael Pregent, The Hill, January 22, 2024.
• The US should definitely start withdrawing from Al-Udeid Air Base in Qatar.
• Thanks to the Biden administration -- which is also pressuring Israel not to eliminate the remaining Hamas terrorist battalions in the southern Gaza Strip city of Rafah -- Qatar and its Hamas pawns are having the last laugh. In light of the Biden administration's decision to turn itself into an ally of terrorists and their supporters, such as Hamas and Qatar – instead of strengthening US relations with Israel and its allies in the Gulf who are fighting terrorism -- it is a very long last laugh, indeed.

Placing Qatar -- rather than, say, the United Arab Emirates -- in charge of the Gaza pier entrenches a terrorist-sponsoring Trojan Horse at Hamas's beck and call. Qatar will use the pier to supply Hamas with more money and more powerful weapons. The port will also undoubtedly be used to smuggle Islamist jihadis from all around the world into the Gaza Strip to launch more massacres against Israelis. Pictured: Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal meets with Qatar's then Crown Prince (today's Emir) Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani at the Royal Palace in Amman, Jordan on January 29, 2012. (Photo by Khalil Mazraawi/AFP via Getty Images)

At the request of the Biden administration, Qatar has agreed to take charge of operating and financing a temporary pier in the Gaza Strip. Qatar agreed to run the port on condition that the construction work go to a company controlled and sponsored by Hamas, according to Israel's Channel 14.

The Biden administration's decision to involve Qatar, Hamas's major funder and ally, in the project is akin to putting the fox in charge of the chicken coop. This is a big, deliberate finger from the Biden administration not just in the in the eye of Israel but also in the eyes of America's allies in the Gulf who do not support terrorists, as well as for US national security.

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Israel losing land, sovereignty, identity to illegal Palestinian construction

by Cheryl K. Chumley

JUDEA — In land supposedly set aside by Oslo Accord agreement, by Israel and Palestinian Authority agreement, by international consensus, as a “No Construction” zone and that at one time was part of the Area C classification of property in Israel — meaning, controlled by the Jewish people, not Palestinians — stands a host of houses both finished and unfinished; a newly paved set of roads and a freshly laid brick block rotary, alongside which run water lines; and signposts with telephone numbers to call for those interested in building and locating to the area. What’s happening here?

The Judean Desert Nature Reserve is becoming a go-to home — illegally, according to international law — for Palestinians.

The Palestinian Authority, fueled by money from the United Nations, the European Union and yes, even America, has taken on the task of expanding Arabs’ footprint into Israeli lands by building homes on property that is supposed to be left au naturel. It’s a quiet way for Palestinians to stretch their presence into Israel — to settle and seize Israel’s lands — to ultimately squeeze Israel’s sovereignty. And all without firing a shot.

In 2023, Israel National News wrote: “Palestinian Authority constructing new illegal city which threatens Gush Etzion … in area marked as a nature reserve by treaty.”

That was then. It’s grown worse now. It’s grown worse since the Oct. 7 terror attacks against Israel.

Call it the story that media outside Israel rarely cover.

In a ride through the land with Regavim International Director Naomi Kahn as a host — Regavim being an organization dedicated to preserving the culture, history, land and sovereignty of Israel — the view is clear: The PA-pushed construction is not just continuing; it’s ratcheting. And sometimes, rather craftily.

According to Kahn, the curious bales of materials located at spots along the land are actually home-building supplies placed purposely by the Palestinian Authority, alongside P.A.-established water sources, to entice Bedouins who feed their flocks on the sprawling acreage to stay, to set up camp, to abandon their normal nomadic ways and to build more permanent homes.

Those homes become the public relations platform by which the Palestinian Authority can then call for international aid to make sure these people — these Bedouins and their children — are properly provided for; voila, make way for the water lines, the sewage, the roads, the infrastructure. Make way for the schools. Make way for the construction of whole Arab communities

Make way for more Palestinian chips into Israel’s land.

“These roads weren’t paved by Bedouins on donkeys with a spoon,” Kahn said, pointing to the freshly paved areas of the reserve.

No. They weren’t. But the fact that Israel’s own government is standing idly by as the forces who have hatred for the Jewish people go forth and build — go forth and multiply — on property that’s a) supposed to be kept as natural land and b) that’s under Israel control, is not only a source of frustration and fight for Kahn and her Regavim organization. It’s also a dangerous situation for all of Israel.

“That’s a good question,” Kahn said, when asked why Israel’s own government allows the construction without a fight.



“International pressure,” she added, in reference to the hostile atmosphere Israel faces from the United Nations, the European Union, from other governments — and she didn’t say, but the Biden administration certainly fits into this chamber of anti-Israel sentiment. Team Biden’s latest move was to abstain from voting for a U.N. resolution that called for an immediate Israeli military cease-fire against Hamas, ostensibly in exchange for the terror group’s release of hostages. Israelis largely see this no-vote as a go-ahead for Hamas. So, too, others around the world.

“The US just stood up to Israel at the United Nations,” The Guardian crowed in one headline, in the hours after the vote.

When America fails to stand strong as Israel’s ally, Israel’s enemies take notice — and act.

The building on the supposed “no-building-allowed” land of Judea is a perfect example of how Israel’s enemies are experts at exploiting political realities.

Fact is, it’s hard to see a way for Israel to reclaim the nature reserve property where homes now stand — where bulldozers now raze to build more homes — where roads and water lines and infrastructure are being built. It’s difficult to see how even changing political heads might clear the land of homes and return the property to its agreed-upon blank-slate state. It’s tough to see how Israel might turn back the clocks of development and infrastructure placement and community-building and recapture the Jewish ancestry and history and claim of ownership to the land.

And that’s exactly what Israel’s enemies want.

• Cheryl Chumley can be reached at cchumley@washingtontimes.com or on Twitter, @ckchumley. Listen to her podcast “Bold and Blunt” by clicking HERE. And never miss her column; subscribe to her newsletter and podcast by clicking HERE. Her latest book, “Lockdown: The Socialist Plan To Take Away Your Freedom,” is available by clicking HERE or clicking HERE or CLICKING HERE.

Rabbi Ari Kahn on Parashat Tzav: Holy Vessels (video)

Rav Kook's Ein Ayah: Why to Learn Torah

(condensed from Ein Ayah, Berachot 6:37)

Gemara: We read the pasuk with the double language of “shamoah tishma” (Shemot 15:26) as follows: If you listen to the old, you will listen to the new, and if your heart turns away, you will subsequently not listen.

Ein Ayah: It is possible to have a love of Torah knowledge in two ways. One is based on valuing the Torah and the shleimut (completeness) it brings. The second is that some people naturally love knowledge, in general.

There is a special condition regarding Torah that one must have a special love for it based on its holy value. That is why we expect one to love even the ideas he already heard and treat them as if they were new. Only if he accomplishes that will Hashem bless him with the gift of fully understanding new information as one who learns Torah with noble intentions. This is the gemara’s intention: by hearing the old, out of love of Torah, he will hear the new.

In contrast if one turns away from Torah that is not new, he lacks true love and has only coarse love of knowledge in general, and he will not understand. This is because the Torah will not shine its countenance on him, and he will not be able to properly accept it. Ultimately, he will not even enjoy learning Torah intellectually, for “Hashem wants those who fear Him” (Tehillim 147:11).

Rai'ach Nichoach - A Pleasing Fragrance

by HaRav Mordechai Greenberg
Nasi HaYeshiva, Kerem B'Yavneh

Despite the fact that the true meaning of sacrifices transcends our understanding, the Rishonim attempted to bring the matter within our grasp. The Rambam (Moreh Nevuchim 3:46) writes that since the Egyptians worshipped the constellation Aries (a lamb) they prohibited the slaughter of animals, as Yosef said, "All shepherds are abhorrent to the Egyptians." (Bereisheet 46:34) Hence, the Torah obligated us to slaughter animals and to offer them as sacrifices, in order to transform what the Egyptians considered the peak of disobedience into a manner of service to G-d.

The Ramban, however, sharply criticizes the Rambam, and accuses him of explaining the commandments as if they were intended just to discredit wicked and foolish idol-worshippers. The Torah, however, refers to the daily sacrifice as, "a pleasing fragrance to G-d" (Vayikra 6:14), which implies that sacrifices have an inherent value, and are not merely a protest against the erroneous beliefs of the nations. He therefore explains that the concept of a sacrifice is that a person who sins with his body and spirit, should imagine that all that is done to sacrifice deserves to be done to him, body in lieu of body and spirit in lieu of spirit.

The Ritva defends the Rambam, and writes that the Ramban ignored the Rambam's own words (Moreh 3:32) that sacrifices were not intended merely to discredit the belief of the Egyptians, but rather to wean Israel from idolatry and to guide them towards the service of G-d. A person has a natural longing for closeness to G-d, which was commonly expressed in those times through sacrificial offerings in a Temple building by a priestly clan. If Israel were to be told to abolish these practices completely, it would be like telling someone in our times, "Do not pray, and worship G-d through meditation alone!" Such a command would negate the nature of man, who cannot change his accustomed practice abruptly. Therefore G-d left them to follow this manner of worship, but directed only toward Him, as it says, "Let [Israel] bring their [sacrifices] before the L-rd ... to the entrance of the Ohel Moed ... and they will no longer offer their sacrifices to the demons that they stray after." (Vayikra 17:5-7)

These explanations offered by the Rambam and Ramban, however, are not intended to be the exclusive reasons. The Ramban explicitly concludes by saying that although this is an attractive, aggadic, explanation, there is a "sod" (hidden meaning) regarding sacrifices in the kabbalistic teachings. Likewise, it is possible that Rambam offered his reason only as a plausible rationale to the perplexed, as his habit in the entire work of Moreh Nevuchim. However, even he concurs with the Ramban that the matter of sacrifices is rooted in the hidden realm. In his halachic work, at the end of Hil. Me`ila (8:8), he writes:
A person should delve into the laws of the holy Torah, and to understand them to best of his ability. Nevertheless, he should not belittle something for which he cannot find an explanation and does not know a purpose ... Regarding "chukim" (statutes), which are commandments whose reason is not known, the Sages commented, "I established statutes for you, and you have no right to question them." The entire matter of sacrifices is included in the category of "chukim," yet the Sages said that the world endures on behalf of them.

It is possible that the "sod" that the Ramban mentions, and the "chok" that the Rambam speaks of, are both rooted in that "sod" that the Rambam hints to in Parshat Tetzaveh. On the verse, "I took [Israel] out of the land of Egypt to dwell amongst them" (Shemot 29:46), the Ramban comments that there is a great "sod" in this. The goal of the exodus from Egypt, to have G-d dwell in Israel, is not for their benefit alone, but also for the purpose of the Divine. Namely, G-d linked the entire creation and its continuation with the sacrificial worship of Israel. Thus, Midrash Tanchuma (Tetzaveh:2) states that although G-d sustains the entire world, he commands his children, "Be careful to offer Me My sacrificial food ... in its proper time." (Bamidbar 28:2) This is perhaps also the Rambam's intention in his conclusion to Hil. Me`ila, "The Sages said that the world endures on behalf of sacrifices."

Some explain in this same vein Rashi's comment on the verse, "a pleasing fragrance" - satisfaction before Me, that I SAID and My WILL was fulfilled. (Shemot 29:18) The world was initially created with ten statements, and after having created the world through speech, G-d's will continues to be fulfilled by Israel through their worship. Perhaps this dispute between the Rambam and the Ramban is connected to the dispute between the Sforno and the Ramban regarding the Mishkan. The Sforno views the Mishkan as a remedy for the sin of the golden calf, whereas the Ramban considers it the culmination and peak of the redemption! The Ramban therefore views the issue of sacrifices as something independent and ideal, with no connection to idolatry. The Rambam, however, may share the opinion of the Sforno that the entire notion of sacrifices comes as a response to the sin of the golden calf, and he therefore links it to the sin of idolatry.

The US abstention at the UN Security Council – acumen

by Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

*The March 25, 2024 UN Security Council resolution 2728 came in the aftermath of the murder – by Hamas - of 1,300 Israelis on October 7, which is equal to 40,000 Americans murdered on a single day!

*A US abstention facilitated the passage of resolution 2728, which aims to snatch Hamas Palestinian terrorists from the jaws of obliteration, while establishing a Palestinian state. Therefore, it was enthusiastically welcome by Iran’s Ayatollahs, Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

*The US abstention reflects the dominance of the cosmopolitan worldview of the State Department in the shaping of US foreign policy and national security policy, subordinating unilateral US national security action to multilateral cooperation with the inherently anti-US UN and the vacillating and terrorist-appeasing Europe.

*The State Department worldview ignores Hamas’ role as the core cause of the current war, an inspiration for Iran, al-Qaeda and ISIS-supported Islamic terrorists, who are planning Hamas-like terror assaults against all Arab regimes, the West, and especially the US, increasingly from Central America.

*The military and political survival of Hamas – compliment of resolution 2728 - would be, rightly, interpreted in the Middle East as a major victory for Islamic terrorism, and a severe blow to Israel’s posture of deterrence, which would yield an Iran-led terrorist tsunami against Israel and all pro-US Arab countries (e.g., a repeat of the October 7 horrific terrorism, Hezbollah, Intifada’ # 3 in Judea and Samaria which could reach Tel Aviv, radical Israeli Arabs, and a domestic upheaval in Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Bahrain and Morocco). Moreover, an erosion of Israel’s posture of deterrence would injure the peace process with Saudi Arabia, which has been induced by Israel’s viable posture of deterrence in the face of the mutual threats of Iran and the Moslem Brotherhood.

*According to Blinken, a key component of Security Council resolution 2728 – in addition to “a ceasefire, hostage release and increased humanitarian aid” - is the establishment of “a clear pathway toward a Palestinian state with security guarantees for Israel... long-term peace and security....”

*However, Blinken’s scenario of a peacefully-coexisting Palestinian state is based on moderate Palestinian diplomatic and media talk and speculative future Palestinian behavior. But, Middle East reality documents a rogue Palestinian walk (especially vs. Arab countries), which stipulates that the proposed Palestinian state would add fuel, not water, to the Middle East fire. It would undermine the interests of the US and all its Arab allies, while advancing the interests of all US’ rivals and enemies.

*Contrary to Blinken’s eagerness to establish a Palestinian state, all pro-US Arab countries’ walk reflects their view of the Palestinians as a role model of intra-Arab subversion, terrorism and treachery.

*Blinken’s addiction to the proposed Palestinian state as a venue to peaceful coexistence overlooks the volcanic ramifications of a Palestinian state contiguous to Jordan’s explosive domestic scene: a stormy relations – including a civil war - between the pro-US Hashemite regime and the Palestinian majority; a deeply entrenched Moslem Brotherhood; 2 million Syrian refugees in northern Jordan; intensified Iranian subversion through Iraq and Syria; and deeply fragmented Bedouin community. Thus, a Palestinian state west of the Jordan River would doom the pro-US Hashemite regime east of the River, transforming Jordan into an arena of rival terrorist organizations, posing a lethal threat to all pro-US oil-producing Arab regimes in the Arabian Peninsula, jeopardizing the exportation of Persian Gulf oil and global trade, rendering a bonanza to Iran’s Ayatollahs, the Moslem Brotherhood, Russia, China and North Korea, and dealing a blow to the US economy, national and homeland security.

*Secretary Blinken, who is a role model of the State Department worldview, assumes that terrorism should be confronted diplomatically, not militarily, since it is supposedly driven by despair and not by a fanatic ideology. Notwithstanding the 1,400-year-old violently unpredictable, shifty and anti “infidel” Middle East reality (which has yet to experience intra-Moslem peaceful coexistence, and irrespective of the rogue, anti-US track record of the Ayatollahs’ and Palestinian terrorism, Blinken is convinced that dramatic diplomatic and financial gestures (“money talks”) could induce terror regimes to abandon their ideology, accept peaceful-coexistence and good-faith negotiation.

*Secretary Blinken attempts – once again – to appease rogue Middle Eastern entities, by ignoring Middle East precedents, which have documented that terrorists bite the hand that feeds them, as demonstrated by Iran’s Ayatollahs, Afghanistan’s Mujahideen, Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, Libya’s Islamic terrorists, Palestinian terrorism, etc.

*In defiance of Middle East reality and the Moslem Brotherhood charter and track record since 1928, the State Department refuses to recognize its terroristic nature. Thus, Hamas is a branch of the Moslem Brotherhood, whose vision is to topple all national Moslem regimes, establish a universal Islamic society, with Islam as the only divinely-ordained legitimate religion, and to bring the “infidel” West to submission. Hamas is also a proxy of Iran’s Ayatollahs, whose 1,400-year-old vision mandates the destruction of “the Great American Satan.” Also, the Moslem Brotherhood and Iran’s Ayatollahs have their machetes at the throat of every pro-US Arab regime.

The bottom line
*Will the State Department’s conventional wisdom keep ignoring – or recognize - the march of facts, which has exposed the costly detachment of Foggy Bottom from Middle East reality?

*Will the State Department persists in preferring the multilateral cooperation with the UN and Europe over an independent, unilateral US national security action?

*“Those who experience wake up calls usually discover, in hindsight, that they had received plenty of warning before the poop hit the propeller, but they chose to disregard it…. Whether a wake-up call becomes a boon, or a bane, depends on what you’re willing to learn from it, and whether you’re willing to be moved by experience.” (Greg Levoy, a psychologist and an author).

How can eternal Mitzvos ever not exist?

by Rabbi Pinchas Winston

Friday Night
THIS SHABBOS IS also Parashas Parah. As we learn in Parashas Naso, a person who has become defiled by contact with the dead (no, not through a séance) is ineligible to eat from the Korban Pesach. By being sprinkled with the water of the Parah Adumah (Red Heifer) was the process a person underwent to become ritually pure again. Hence, we recall that halachah in advance of Pesach.

The Parah Adumah is the quintessential chok—statute. This means there is something about the mitzvah that defies human logic, but apparently not why a red heifer is the animal of choice, as Rashi explains:

A red cow: This can be compared to the son of a maidservant who dirtied the king’s palace. They said, “Let his mother come and clean up the mess.” Similarly, let the cow come and atone for the calf. (Rashi, Bamidbar 19:22)

Thus, the red heifer is the Divine response to the golden calf. Had they not built and worshipped the calf, the Jewish people would have remained immortal. The calf caused death and the impurity that results, so its “mother” has to clean up the “mess.”

It’s a nice explanation. It’s also problematic. It sounds as if the mitzvah of Parah Adumah would not have existed had the Jewish people not sinned with the golden calf. But that is not the case since every mitzvah is eternal by definition, which means there always had to be such a mitzvah. How does this work with Rashi’s explanation?

The Leshem, when talking about the eternity of mitzvos, deals with a similar question. According to the Gemora, mitzvos will be battel—nullified—in Yemos HaMoshiach, the Messianic Era (Shabbos 151b). But how can eternal mitzvos ever not exist?

What the Gemora means, the Leshem explains, is not that the act of a mitzvah will no longer be performed. Rather, a mitzvah won’t seem then like a mitzvah seems now, like a yoke and an obligation. With the yetzer hara gone completely (Succah 52a), a mitzvah will become second nature (Drushei Olam HaTohu, Chelek 2, Drush 4, Anaf 12, Siman 12).

The yetzer hara is basically bodily instinct, and mitzvos tend to go against it. This is how mitzvos help to spiritually refine a person. It’s the Torah’s way of taking a person’s life’s steering wheel out of the hands of the body and giving it to the soul, so they can become a Tzelem Elokim and live in the “image of God.”

But the opportunity to achieve such refinement through our free will choices will end with the death of the yetzer hara and bodily instinct. At least the kind of instinct that tends to make personal comfort a priority over spiritual growth.

Shabbos Day
RASHI ALLUDES TO this same idea at the beginning of this week’s parsha, on the verse:

Command—Tzav—Aharon and his sons, saying, “This is the law of the burnt offering…” (Vayikra 6:2)

Rashi comments:

The Torah especially needs to urge [people to fulfill mitzvos] where monetary loss is involved. (Rashi)

The fact that money is involved in a mitzvah instigates the yetzer hara of a person. The yetzer hara will spend all kinds of money on things that give the body instant gratification. But why spend money on a mitzvah, for which the reward won’t follow until the World to Come? Not an easy sell to the yetzer hara.

That creates bodily resistance. It can be subtle, so subtle that even the person themself doesn’t realize they are being affected and held back. But on some level, a little less of the person is used for the mitzvah than is ideal.

Even for someone like Moshe Rabbeinu. There is a Shalsheles cantillation note above the word for, “and he slaughtered it” (Vayikra 8:23) towards the end of this week’s parsha. In the three other places it occurs in the Torah, it hints to some kind of hesitation in the heart, something not recognized on the outside of the person.

Like Lot not wanting to leave Sdom with the angel despite its impending destruction.

Like Yosef not wanting to run from the wife of Potiphar despite the sin involved.

But what reason did Moshe have at the inauguration of Aharon and his sons into the Temple service, to hesitate?

Because he had known, ever since Parashas Tetzaveh, that great people were destined to die on that day to sanctify the Name of God. He had assumed, until next week’s parsha, that that was supposed to have been himself and Aharon. Could that not have easily been somewhat of a distraction during the mitzvah, a subtle one that we could only know about because of the Shalsheles?

As the Leshem explains, we learn Torah and perform mitzvos primarily to spiritually refine our bodies while rectifying our souls. This means training the body to stop resisting both, like teaching a child to grow up and do the more responsible thing for their own good and development. That takes will, lots of will.

But it won’t any longer the moment God dispenses with the Sitra Achra and yetzer hara in Yemos HaMoshiach. Then the body will be happy to do any mitzvah. It will no longer have to be commanded.

Shalosh Seudot
THIS RAISES A question: If the Parah Adumah was always meant to be a mitzvah, was the golden calf destined to occur? This could suggest, yes:

Go and see how The Holy One, Blessed is He, when He created the world created the Angel of Death on the first day as well…Man was created on the sixth day, and yet death was blamed on him. What is this like? A man who decides that he wants to divorce his wife and writes her a document of divorce. He then goes home with it and looks for a pretext to give it to her.

“Prepare me a drink,” he tells her.

She does, and taking it from her he says, “Here is your divorce.”

She asks him, “Why?”

He tells her, “Leave my house! You made me a warm drink!” to which she replies, “Were you able to know that I would prepare you a warm drink in advance that you wrote a divorce document and came home with it?”

Similarly, Adam told The Holy One, Blessed is He, “Master of the Universe, the Torah was with You for 2,000 years before You created the world…yet it says, ’This is the law when a man will die in a tent’ (Bamidbar 19:14). If You had not planned death for Your creations, would You have written this? Rather, You just want to blame death on me!” (Tanchuma, Vayaishev 4)

In other words, the Midrash says, as much as Adam HaRishon seemed to have the choice to avoid sin and death, he didn’t. He was destined to eat from the Aitz HaDa’as and to bring death into the world.

Not only this, but the Midrash continues:

It was similar concerning [the sale of] Yosef…Rav Yudan said, “The Holy One, Blessed is He, wanted to carry out the decree of, ‘Know that you shall surely be (strangers)’ (Bereishis 15:13), and set it up that Ya’akov would love Yosef [more] so the brothers would hate him and sell him to Arabs, and they would all [eventually] go down to Egypt…” (Tanchuma, Vayaishev 4)

On one hand, this information is a relief. It takes away the need to find a good explanation for, how such great people could commit such not-so-great acts. On the other hand, it is disturbing because it implies that we can be railroaded by Divine Providence down the wrong path…against our will.

One could argue that perhaps this idea only applies to specific events with great impact on Jewish history. Or, perhaps it is a deeper insight into free will itself, and how we’re meant to use it.
Melave Malkah

ONE THING IS for certain, we have free will. God told us so, and tradition teaches that we will be judged for our choices. You can question what free will is, or wonder if we have any. But when it comes to life, it would be wise to assume you have it and use it responsibly.

Something else we can be certain about is that though we have free will, we do not have absolute free will. Many choices are made for us by life itself, imposed upon us since so many things are out of our control. But then again, does that take away anything from the choice I made, as long as I believed at the time my choice could make a difference?

Let’s face it, history is not random. God made it with a specific purpose in mind, and with a master plan to be fulfilled. He knows the future and doesn’t make mistakes, so whatever He had in mind was as good as done once He started to think about it. This is true right down to every person who will ever exist and every decision they will ever make.

At the end of the day, though a person makes all kinds of plans, there is a good chance that they will not turn out as anticipated. We don’t know the future, which allows us to live with the perception that our decisions can make a difference and direct the course of history. It’s all we need to be able to make choices for which we will be held accountable.

This does not completely solve the mystery of free will, but who says we can at this time, or that we should? The Parah Adumah is a mitzvah with a message, and it reads: Some things you can understand while others you cannot. Understand what you can, but don’t get bogged down and distracted by what you can’t. Recognize the free will opportunity of every moment, and utilize it meaningfully. It will save you in this world and reward you in the next one.

For essays on the current situation, go to www.shaarnunproductions.org.

Good Shabbos,
Pinchas Winston.

2024 artificially inflated Palestinian demography

by Ambassador (ret.) Yoram Ettinger

Palestinian demographic numbers are highly-inflated, as documented by a study, which has audited the Palestinian data since 2004. For example:

*500,000 Arabs, who have been away for over a year, are included in the census, contrary to international regulations. 325,000 were included in the 1997 census, according to the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics, and 400,000 in 2005, according to the Palestinian Election Commission. The number grows steadily due to births.

*350,000 East Jerusalem Arabs are doubly-counted – by Israel and by the Palestinian Authority. The number grows steadily due to births.

*Over 150,000 Arabs, who married Israeli Arabs are similarly doubly counted. The number expands steadily due to births.

*A 413,000 net-emigration (since the 1997 first Palestinian census) is ignored by the Palestinian census, overlooking the annual net-emigration since 1950. A 23,445 net-emigration in 2022 and a 20,000 annual average in recent years have been documented by Israel's Population and Migration Authority in all international passages.

*A 32% artificial inflation of Palestinian births was documented by the World Bank (page 8, item 6) in a 2006 audit.

*The Judea & Samaria Arab fertility rate has been westernized: from 9 births per woman in the 1960s to 2.9 births in 2022 (In Jordan - similar to Judea & Samaria), reflecting the sweeping urbanization, a growing female enrollment in higher education, rising marriage age and the rising use of contraceptives.

*The number of deaths is under-reported for political and financial reasons.

*The aforementioned artificial inflation of 1.7 million documents a population of 1.55 million Arabs in Judea and Samaria, not the official 3.25 million.

In 2024: a 69% Jewish majority in the combined area of Judea, Samaria and pre-1967 Israel, benefitting from a tailwind of fertility and net-immigration, while Arab demography is westernized. In 1947 and 1897: a 39% and 9% Jewish minority.

No Arab demographic time bomb; but, a Jewish demographic momentum. More data in these articles and this short video.

How Israel Lost the Information War

by Victor Rosenthal

Yesterday I was listening to a news program on the radio while preparing dinner. The host asked his subject – I don’t recall who it was, probably an opposition member of the Knesset – this question: how can it be that world opinion has become solidly anti-Israel only a few months after the worst pogrom since the Holocaust, in which more than a thousand Jews were murdered in the most brutal fashion imaginable, in which hundreds of women were raped and children tortured to death? The predictable and stupidly self-serving political answer was that it was the fault of the Netanyahu government, which had “mismanaged” the war. But what is the correct answer?

The real reason is that Israel, while successful in the “kinetic” aspects of the campaign against Hamas, has been overwhelmingly defeated in the less visible theater of information warfare.

The roots of this defeat go back decades. There was as yet no “mismanagement” on the day after the Hamas invasion, when there was an outburst of anti-Israel demonstrations and attacks on Jews around the world while the rampage was still continuing in parts of southern Israel. The ground was prepared as far back as the 1970s, when a wave of Arab petrodollars, guided by the Soviet KGB, flowed into a massive project of psychological and diplomatic warfare against the Jewish state. It wasn’t so difficult for them – the built-in antisemitism of the West, temporarily suppressed after the Holocaust, found a new outlet. It was easy, too, to nurture antisemitic elements in the Muslim world. In the West, the educational systems were infiltrated and subverted, starting with the “best” universities and continuing down to textbooks and curricula for elementary schools. A reality-inverting identification was made between Zionism and Western colonialism and racism, benefiting from both the anger of the formerly colonized and the guilt of the colonizers.

Funds for anti-Israel initiatives also came from the network of charities associated with George Soros, starting around the beginning of the 1990s. This money nourished many of the NGOs and human rights groups that became centers of anti-Israel propaganda, and continues to support them.1

In the diplomatic realm, the invention of the Palestinian Refugee after Israel’s War of Independence (a war of national liberation in which the formerly colonized Jews fought Arab proxies of the British Empire!), provided Hamas with the troops it needed, fed and educated to the point of fanatic hatred with Western money. Hamas combined the multi-faceted indoctrination against Jews and Israel, pioneered by the PLO after Oslo, with religious jihad. Both the West and the Muslim world were primed and ready to blame Israel for the murder, rape, and pillage of her people. And the great-power rivals of the US, Russia and China, were only too happy to join in the take-down of what they see (correctly?) as an American satellite, an outpost of the US in an important zone of contention.

Given the fertile soil, the propaganda offensive of Hamas and its supporters when Israel counterattacked blossomed into a worldwide flourishing of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish expression. The Palestinians, who have developed the technique of exploiting their supposed victimhood, sometimes by exaggeration, sometimes by invention (as in the alleged shooting of the boy Mohammad al Dura in 2000, probably the most blatant yet effective “Pallywood” production ever), and sometimes by deliberately putting their people in harm’s way, pulled out all the stops. Soon the horrors of October 7th were drowned out by the suffering of the Gazans affected by the war that their leaders had started. Western media and humanitarian organizations slavishly repeated Hamas propaganda about civilian casualties with proforma disclosures that their only source was Hamas.

Mismanagement on the part of Israel also goes back decades. It includes overdependence on the US and consequent weakness in the face of pressure from unfriendly administrations, inability to overcome wish-fulfillment illusions about Palestinian motives and plans, weakness in the face of domestic pressure (for example, the release of more than a thousand imprisoned terrorists in return for one kidnapped soldier), and the tendency to prioritize internal political issues over serious external threats. A very serious failure has been our sporadic, inconsistent, and poorly funded actions in the information arena, while our enemies have implemented a long-term, carefully planned and meticulously executed campaign.

Al Jazeera, began broadcasting in Arabic by satellite in 1996, and since then has added multiple languages, including English. Based in Qatar and very influential in the Arab world, it has been in the forefront of anti-Israel propaganda ever since. In wartime, it specializes in inflammatory stories and photos of “atrocities” allegedly committed by the IDF (pictures from Syria and natural disasters are sometimes used). Left-leaning Western media, like the British Guardian newspaper have always followed an anti-Israel line; and the BBC is far from impartial. More recently, mainstream media in the US like the NY Times and Washington Post newspapers, the NPR radio network, CNN, and others – staffed by the products of “good” universities – have become more than merely biased: at their worst (which is often), they are mouthpieces for Hamas. Pro-Israel media in the West are rare and marginal. Some of Israel’s own media – in particular the English edition of Ha’aretz, which is widely read throughout the world – is only slightly less toxic than Al Jazeera. Israel is overwhelmed on social media as well, in part by botnets, but also by individuals and anti-Israel NGOs which dedicate staff to this function.

The combination of governments, international institutions, NGOs, media, academic institutions, and the arts all promulgating the carefully nurtured myths of Palestinian victimization and Israeli malevolence have overpowered Israel’s woefully inadequate attempts at a response.

In short, Israel has been and continues to be outgunned in the realm of information warfare. There have been sporadic attempts to improve the situation, but the funds for such a massive undertaking have never been available, nor would there likely be agreement on precisely what the message should be and how it should be presented. And we don’t have decades to lay the groundwork and gradually uproot the deep-seated antisemitism and hatred of the state of the Jews that has developed over time, even if we knew how to do it.

The best strategy in the face of this defeat therefore will be to depend on the human tendency to cheer for the winner: to be the “strong horse” that everyone bets on. Israel will need to defeat its enemies on the physical plane, to humiliate them and strike fear into the ones that are left. Rather than a picture of “responsible citizenship” that the world has been conditioned to disbelieve, our image should be that of a violent and dangerous player. In an environment where we can’t create warmth, we should at least inspire trepidation.
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1 Alexander H. Joffe, “Bad Investment: The Philanthropy of George Soros and the Arab-Israeli Conflict, How Soros-funded Groups Increase Tensions in a Troubled Region: May 2013
https://www.ngo-monitor.org/soros.pdf