Saturday, August 1, 2026
Trump claims Israel ‘very happy’ about Hamas disarmament deal, as Netanyahu indicates otherwise
US President Donald Trump on Friday claimed that Israel is “very happy” about the disarmament deal his Board of Peace inked a day earlier with Hamas, even as Israel has objected to the proposal and Hamas has said the deal’s implementation must begin with Israel complying.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has yet to comment on the agreement, which would see the IDF pull back from its positions in Gaza as Hamas lays down its weapons and transfers control of Gaza to a technocratic body. But a pair of statements attributed to a “senior Israeli official” have asserted that Israel does not accept the proposal and will not carry out any withdrawals from territory in Gaza as it requires.
One statement, issued by Netanyahu’s office on Thursday, said Israel demanded “the full disarmament of Hamas, including removal of the weaponry from Gaza and the complete demilitarization of the Strip as a condition for any process” of withdrawal. The statement added that the agreement does not include “a sufficient response to those demands.”
Trump Unravels in Alarming Fashion After Reflecting Pool Humiliation
https://www.thedailybeast.com/trump-unravels-in-alarming-fashion-after-reflecting-pool-humiliation/
President Donald Trump has gone on a bizarre rant after his excuse for the green-slime disaster at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool took a turn for the worse in court.
The 80-year-old president continued to push his own version of events, taking to Truth Social to lash out at his own appointee, U.S. Attorney Jeanine Pirro, after she said Trump’s $16 million renovation failed not because of “vandals,” but due to a “flawed installation by the contractors.”
“I disagree 100% with Jeanine Pirro, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, on the Reflecting Pool,” Trump wrote on Saturday.
‘Platner on steroids’: Max Miller abuse claims have Republicans silently sweating
The surge of attention presents a dilemma for Republicans: speak out against their colleague who is running in a competitive race or face accusations of hypocrisy after hammering multiple similarly scandal-plagued Democrats — including Graham Platner, who recently ended his Maine Senate campaign, and Eric Swalwell, who resigned his House seat in April.
‘Bioweapons’ and cover-ups: The untruths behind RFK Jr.’s disease claims
Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has argued that Lyme disease was cooked up by the American military in a Long Island laboratory in the 1950s.
It’s a debunked conspiracy theory that Kennedy has repeated in campaign events and on his podcast in the months before being named by President-elect Donald Trump to oversee national health policy.
In his telling, the tick-borne illness, which can cause debilitating pain and facial paralysis if untreated, was created as a military bioweapon at the Department of Homeland Security’s Plum Island Animal Disease Center. The facility opened in 1954 and is situated across Long Island Sound from the area of Connecticut where Lyme was discovered in the 1970s.
“Clearly this disease was not created by even the most evil genius military biologists in 1954,” said Rick Ostfeld, a disease ecologist at the Cary Institute of Ecosystem Studies. “It is easy to refute with 100 percent certainty.”
DOJ will drop Reflecting Pool criminal case, citing ‘flawed installation’
The Department of Justice (DOJ) moved Friday to drop its criminal prosecution of a former Olympian charged with destroying the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool, saying the damage was instead the result of a “rushed and botched installation.”
Prosecutors said it’s now evident some of the damage was in areas unlikely to be the result of vandalism, and a National Park Service engineer had raised concerns about peeling days before Hearn’s arrest. Prosecutors insist they didn’t become aware of the broader issues until after Hearn was charged.
“Given all of this newly discovered information, it is difficult to attribute the widespread damage to the Reflecting Pool to vandalism, let alone to establish that fact beyond a reasonable doubt,” prosecutors wrote.
Friday, July 31, 2026
Republican Says Fauci Fifth Plea Shows Guilt—Here’s Each Time Trump Used It
Anthony Fauci repeatedly invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during Senate testimony Wednesday, prompting Senator Josh Hawley, a Missouri Republican, to suggest the move showed guilt.
While some Republicans criticized Fauci for invoking the Fifth Amendment, Trump has also relied on the constitutional protection. During a 2022 deposition in New York Attorney General Letitia James' civil fraud investigation, Trump invoked the Fifth Amendment hundreds of times.
Wednesday, July 29, 2026
Tosefta?
Wary of perception that Israel driving war, Trump and Netanyahu opt to avoid optics altogether
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu entered the White House for his Tuesday meeting with US President Donald Trump via a side entrance.
Trump didn’t greet him outside the West Wing as he had for many of their seven previous meetings in his second term, and reporters weren’t called into the Oval Office to hear the pair issue statements or answer questions.
The limited public nature of the meeting, confined to a handful of photographs initially released by Netanyahu’s office, appeared to advance a joint interest — that Israel not be seen as once again dragging the US into renewing the conflict against Iran.
Angels have Free Will?
Ohr Hachayim (Bereishis 19:20) We also have a principle (Baba Kama 60) that once permission has been granted to the destructive angel to execute G'd's judgment, it does not really matter whether the measure of guilt is full. However, the angel Gabriel was then in a position to exercise some discretion. Lot was aware of this and appealed to Gabriel's discretionary powers. Lot left Tzoar as soon as possible because he was afraid that the time limit for the angel's discretionary power would elapse.
Radak (Bereishis 19:21) When God sends an angel He gives them permission to add or subtract slightly from their mission as they understand it because they are intelligent beings
Rashi (Bereishis 19:22) FOR I CANNOT DO ANY THING—This admission of their powerlessness was the angels’ punishment for having said, “For we will destroy the city”, attributing the act to themselves; therefore the incident could not close until they were compelled to admit that the thing was not in their power
Netanyahu Finds Diminished Welcome From Trump as Iran War Drags On
President Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu met at the White House Tuesday, navigating a growing rift five months after the two launched a war on Iran that has proven far more complex than either imagined.
Tensions between the two had simmered for weeks. It was unclear until late last week that Trump would even entertain a meeting with Netanyahu. To secure an audience, the Trump administration pressed the Israeli leader to take steps to show he was serious about advancing U.S.-brokered peace talks in Lebanon and Gaza, according to officials and people familiar with the matter.
Tu B’Av, the Jewish Day of Love
https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/tu-bav/
Tu B’Av , the 15th Day of Av, is both an ancient and modern holiday. Originally a post-biblical day of joy, it served as a matchmaking day for unmarried women in the Second Temple period (before the fall of Jerusalem in 70 C.E.). Tu B’Av was almost unnoticed in the Jewish calendar for many centuries but it has been rejuvenated in recent decades, especially in the modern state of Israel. In its modern incarnation it is gradually becoming a Jewish Day of Love, slightly resembling Valentine’s Day in English-speaking countries.
There is no way to know exactly how early Tu B’Av began. The first mention of this date is in the Mishnah (compiled and edited in the end of the second century), where Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel is quoted saying:
There were no better (i.e. happier) days for the people of Israel than the Fifteenth of Av and Yom Kippur, since on these days the daughters of Israel/Jerusalem go out dressed in white and dance in the vineyards. What were they saying: Young man, consider whom you choose (to be your wife)? (Ta’anit, Chapter 4)
The Gemara attempts to find the origin of this date as a special joyous day, and offers several explanations. One of them is that on this day the Biblical “tribes of Israel were permitted to mingle with each other,” namely: to marry women from other tribes (Talmud, Ta’anit30b). This explanation is somewhat surprising, since nowhere in the Bible is there a prohibition on “intermarriage” among the 12 tribes of Israel. This Talmudic source probably is alluding to a story in the book of Judges (chapter 21): After a civil war between the tribe of Benjamin and other Israelite tribes, the tribes vowed not to intermarry with men of the tribe of Benjamin.
Deadliest year in decades as antisemitism becomes ‘new normal’ in West, Jewish watchdog finds
https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-903961
The year 2025 marked the deadliest year for antisemitic violence in the Jewish Diaspora since the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires, according to a new report by the J7 Large Communities’ Task Force Against Antisemitism.
The report, released on Wednesday, documented 20 lives lost to targeted antisemitic attacks across the globe in 2025. From the Hanukkah massacre at Bondi Beach in Sydney that left 15 dead to shootings at the Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, and two killed at the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, as well as one killed in Boulder, Colorado.
The J7 task force, which unites major Jewish organizations representing over 90% of the Jewish Diaspora outside Israel across Argentina, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, the UK, and the US, tracked over 23,000 antisemitic incidents in 2025 alone. While total incidents dipped slightly in a few nations compared to record highs in 2024, overall figures remain up 136%, and violent incidents up 97%, compared to the baseline year of 2022.
Words have lost their meaning in the Trump era, and Israel is now paying the price
https://www.ynetnews.com/opinions-analysis/article/hyro4wvhfx
After weeks of strikes, none of the war’s central objectives has been achieved, Iran has blocked the Strait of Hormuz and Washington is searching for a diplomatic success, yet Trump continues to speak as though the campaign ended in triumph
It is doubtful Trump understands that the entire Middle East, not only Israel, is at stake.
When it comes to words, Trump is indeed a superhero.