Shabbat shalom!
Much of the nation is sweating under a heat dome that sits stubbornly over a wide swath of the country. Maybe the oppressive heat had something to do with the latest mass shooting in Arkansas, but probably not. We live in a country of gun culture gone wild. According to the Every Town for Gun Safety organization, hundreds of women are shot and killed by an intimate partner every year, and nearly 1 million women alive today have reported being shot or shot at by intimate partners. More than four times as many have been threatened with a gun by an intimate partner.
So, maybe the cool air conditioned climate of the Supreme Court chambers facilitated the dishonorable court’s latest wisdom in their decision allowing the removal of fire arms from nut jobs that intend on harming their spouses, but probably not. I am still stunned that the court would have to take on such an obvious case of common sense, but when it comes to gun laws in this country, there is no common sense. Of course Justice “Free Loading” Thomas was the sole dissenter, in a desperate effort to protect his most insipid and stupid originalist ruling in the 2022 New York State Rifle and Pistol Association v. Bruen case. And perhaps, as more learned court followers have opined, this decision as written by Chief Justice Roberts, might mark a turning point in the court’s rightward shift and the religious adherence to originalism of the conservatives. Or maybe not, but at least they got this one right.
Not much is going right in Israel these days. Nut-and-yahoo is escalating his war of words with the Biden administration over delays in weapons delivery. Really Bibi? If you have a supply chain issue, try calling customer service behind the scenes rather than publicly biting the hand that continues to feed you, you mendacious moron! He is obviously playing to his coalition partners, who have a vice grip on his proverbial political balls. Weirdly, it’s the current issue over conscription exceptions for the Haredim that will probably lead to a Likud defection and the end of his coalition. We can only pray. Israelis are starting to demonstrate once again in large numbers calling for an election, and the longer this war goes on (this is the longest since 1948 independence war) the more Israelis will be asked to extend their service duty or get called into the IDF Reserves. Many have now done multiple tours, and there is building resentment to the Haredim community’s exemption from military duties. With a new front developing in the north toward an all out war with Hezbollah, something is going to give, and soon. Stay tuned for more on this developing story in future posts.
Now, what about all those other Jewy bits of journalism? Here now is your weekly buffet of baffling, beguiling, and biased news for the Jews copied and pasted from the likes of The Forward, Kveller, Times of Israel, The Jewish Chronicle, JTA, Substack, and other reputable sources of all things Jewish-y.
- Latest from the war…
- Thousands of Israelis protested outside Netanyahu’s home in Caesarea — with smaller protests in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv — demanding that he set a date for new elections. Separately, hundreds of Haredi protesters blocked a highway near Tel Aviv in a demonstration against efforts to end the longstanding draft exemption for the ultra-Orthodox. And, the Israeli Medical Association is planning a demonstration Sunday to protest police violence against doctors helping those injured at escalating anti-government protests.
- Surveillance troops along the Israel-Gaza border noticed a “highly irregular” Hamas drill four days before Oct. 7, a Thursday Israeli TV broadcast reported, raising further questions about the Israel Defense Forces’ failure to anticipate the attack.
- The IDF clashed with Palestinians in the West Bank after a 78-year-old Israeli man was killed in a carjacking; a 15-year-old Palestinian boy was killed amid the search for the attackers.
- Armenia became the latest country to recognize a Palestinian state.
- Some U.S. officials believe the number of hostages still alive could be as low as 50, according to a report this morning in The Wall Street Journal. “That assessment, based in part on Israeli intelligence, would mean 66 of those still held hostage could be dead, 25 more than Israel has publicly acknowledged.”
- The IDF said that during an air force strike in Gaza it killed a Hamas commander who took part in the Oct. 7 attack.
- Emerson College in Boston blamed a drop in fall enrollment, in part, on pro-Palestinian campus protests. The school said it would likely have to lay off faculty as a result.
- The protests at the Brooklyn Museum and at the Nova music festival exhibit in Manhattan were linked to one pro-Palestinian activist group. The group has spent years building up its following in New York City.
- Gaza famine myth – Another myth buster essay worthy of your time, this one from Melanie Phillips on Substack. In May, Director of the World Food Programme Cindy McCain said that parts of Gaza were experiencing a “full-blown famine”, and the prosecutor of the International Criminal Court sought arrest warrants for Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Yoav Gallant on the grounds that Israel was “causing starvation as a method of war including the denial of humanitarian relief supplies [and] deliberately targeting civilians in conflict”. The world has brushed aside Israel’s repeated protests that there has been no shortage of food trucks arriving with aid for Gaza and that the problem lay instead with distribution because Hamas was stealing the supplies. Turns out the claims of a famine were all bullshit. The Famine Review Committee (FRC) conducts investigations into world hunger on behalf of a partnership formed between governments, international organisations and NGOs. In March, the committee reported that “famine is now projected and imminent” in northern Gaza and was expected to take hold before the end of May. Preventing such a famine, it stated, required “an immediate political decision for a ceasefire together with a significant and immediate increase in humanitarian and commercial access to the entire population of Gaza”. In April, the Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET), a food security monitoring initiative founded in 1985 by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID), went even further by stating there was “reasonable evidence” that, since April, northern Gaza had been experiencing a famine and this would persist at least until the end of July.But on June 4, the Famine Review Committee published a report in which it rejected the FEWS NET analysis as not “plausible” and said it could not endorse its famine projection. The committee said there was a lack of reliable evidence about the number of trucks entering Gaza and the level of humanitarian assistance that was arriving and being distributed around its various areas.
- Please, enough with the Nakba victimization card – A fantastic essay by Paul Finlayson of Freedom to Offend on the roots of Palestinian victimhood. “The Nakba” is the Arabic name for the displacement or voluntary departure of approximately 750,000 Arabs during the first Arab-Israeli war in 1948. Finlayson argues that “The Nakba, or “the Catastrophe” in English, uses the definite article “the” in its description to heighten its sense of loss and humiliation; this 76-year-old Palestinian grievance is still as bitter as wormwood and sharp as a two-edged sword.¹” As far as displacements go, The Nakba is not at the top of the heap, and many other countries that have had major displacements have gone on to assimilate and/or prosper elsewhere. This is an interesting historical analysis worthy of 7 minutes of your reading time.
- To save Israel, cut Netanyahu a plea deal. Yes, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s three separate trials — on charges of bribery, corruption and breach of public trust — “have nothing to do with the war,” Forward columnist Jay Michaelson writes. “On the other hand, they are determining the course of the war,” as many believe Netanyahu’s determination to maintain his hold on power is tied to a wish to avoid legal consequences. “Netanyahu not only appears to be guilty of these crimes of moral turpitude, but the Israeli press has meticulously described his outrageous abuses of power,” Michaelson writes. “But compare the injustice of letting Bibi get away with all of this to the consequences of his staying in office, reliant on a far-right coalition.” Read his essay ➤
- 🎒 Louisiana’s governor signed a law requiring the Ten Commandments to be displayed in public school classrooms, making it the only state with such a law. Critics are already mounting a challenge calling it unconstitutional. (AP) This inspired the latest from Andy Borowitz: Louisiana Orders Classrooms To Display All Ten Commandments That Trump Has Broken – Governor Jeff Landry said the poster would enable students “to keep track of how many Commandments they have broken so they can better follow Trump’s example.”“At the end of each year, teachers will issue a report card indicating which Commandments the students have broken and which they have not,” the governor said. “If they have not broken all ten, they will be required to repeat the grade.”
- ‘Best friends I ever had’: Willie Mays’ treasured bond with a Jewish familyWillie Mays, considered the greatest all-around baseball player in history, died Tuesday at 93. Forward sports reporter, Louis Keene, tracked down the Jewish family who considered Mays a member of the mishpacha.Batter up: Mays was in the prime of his career in 1963, but his finances were a mess. The Giants’ star outfielder had plunged into debt amid divorce proceedings. Even with more than half of his career home runs under his belt, he was staring down bankruptcy. Then he met Jacob Shemano.Home run: Shemano, a banker and financial adviser, offered to help on one condition: He wouldn’t take a dime for his work. What began with Shemano rescuing Mays from bankruptcy evolved into a close friendship that spanned generations, and made Mays an honorary member of the San Francisco Jewish community. He appeared at events so often that Mays was eventually invited into the local Concordia-Argonaut Club — a Jewish social club — as the first Black member.
To wrap up the week, here is a Youtube video produced by an acquaintance of mine, Mark Oppenheimer, who is currently working on the official biography of Judy Blume. This is an interesting 14 minute video exploring how Jewish music found its way into the soccer stadiums of England’s premier league with Dr. Dan Friedman and Jeremy Sassoon. From catchy chants to soccer stadium anthems, Jewish musicians, and songwriters such as Richard Rogers and Neil Diamond have become integral to English football and its fans!
That should do it for the week. Let’s be careful and cool out there!
Brad out
Jew News Review 