korach and meraglim

כתיב בפרשת ציצית לתקן חטא מרגלים , ולא תתורו פי׳ רש״י לבא ועינא ב׳ מרגלים, והי׳ חטא, שהגם שעשרה נשיאים עיני העדה אמרו כן, הי׳ ראוי לבני ישרא ל שלא לתור אחריהם, והוא ללמד לכללו ת ישראל, שהגם שיהי׳ נביאי שקר או מנהיגי ם כירבעם ושאר גדולים, ויראו שנוטים מדר ך השי״ת לפי פשוט, לא ישמעו להם כלל , ואפשר יהי׳ עוד נסיונות כאלו קודם הגאולה ,

I just received the following email

Attached please see the Chidushei Harim in this weeks parsha asks and answers a very fundamental question.  What was the sin of klal yisroel with the Meraglim that they deserved to die in the Midbar? Afterall the Meraglim were the "Gedolei Yisroel" The Einei Hoeda and therefore were justified to listen to them as they were the leaders of klal yisroel?  His answer is paramount and fundamental to all of us. We must remember that even our leaders, when they speak against a simple and obvious Torah law, we must not obey them but treat them as neviei Hasheker. After hashem proclaimed Eretz Yisroel as a superb land, they had no business speaking against the land and its like speaking against the Torah!! Klal Yisoel had no business believing them or listening to them!!! The last part of the CHIDUSHEI HARIM is even more frightening as he states that "In the end of the days" we  "will have similar Nisyonos, meaning that our leaders will also say things against the Torah and we will be tested if we remain silent and agree with them, or do we protest. We must diffrentiate between the phony rabbis and the ones that speak the truth!!!

Why 2020 Democrats Aren't Highlighting the Rape Allegation Against Trump

https://time.com/5613446/trump-rape-democrats-2020/

It’s been three days days since the writer E. Jean Carroll accused President Donald Trump of rape, but the allegation has caused barely a ripple in the 2020 campaign.

The nearly two dozen Democrats vying to unseat Trump have issued statementsexpressing the usual sentiments: shock, disgust, calls for investigations. Senator Elizabeth Warren may have captured the reaction best: “We know Donald Trump’s character. And it’s revealed every single day,” she told reporters last week. “There aren’t any real surprises. Just the details.”

In a cover story in New York Magazine, the longtime advice columnist wrote that she remembered Trump “forcing his fingers around my private area,” and recalled that he thrust “his penis halfway — or completely, I’m not certain — inside me.” She told two friends about the incident immediately afterwards, and both confirmed the incident to New York, although TIME could not independently confirm the allegations.

Trump has repeatedly denied the charges. He said in a statement that he “never met” Carroll, even though the author published a picture of them together at a party. On Monday, Trump again denied the allegation in an interview with The Hill. “I’ll say it with great respect: Number one, she’s not my type,” he said. “Number two, it never happened. It never happened, OK?

FEWER MILLENNIALS ACCEPTING OF LGBTQ PEOPLE, STUDY FINDS

newsweek

Young people are often assumed to be progressive, especially when it comes to gay rights. But a new study reveals that acceptance of the LGBTQ community by adults 18 to 34 is falling.

A new Harris Poll commissioned by GLAAD found that 36 percent of respondents in that demographic reported they'd be "very" or "somewhat" uncomfortable learning a family member was LGBTQ. That's up from 29 percent who said the same in 2018.

According to the 2019 Accelerating Acceptance Index, 39 percent would be unsettled by their child learning about LGBTQ history in school, compared to just 30 percent in 2018. And finding out their doctor was LGBTQ made a third (34 percent) uncomfortable—an uptick from 27 percent last year.

A lesson for New York from the Jussie Smollett case

https://nypost.com/2019/06/24/a-lesson-for-new-york-from-the-jussie-smollett-case/

In a huge slap at Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx, an Illinois judge has ordered a special prosecutor to take up the Jussie Smollett case, thanks to the “unprecedented irregularities” in her office’s handling of the prosecution.

After word broke that Foxx had texted members of Smollett’s family, promising help, she announced she was recusing herself from the case. But it later turned out she’d only “informally” recused, leaving decisions to people she still supervised.

The office then dismissed 16 felony counts against Smollett for faking a hate crime. Chicago police devoted thousands of man-hours to the investigation, only to develop considerable evidence that Smollett had paid two acquaintances to stage an attack in hopes it would help the actor get a pay raise.

Her phony recusal “deviated from the statutory mandate requiring the appointment of a special prosecutor in cases where the state’s attorney is recused,” Judge Michael Toomin ruled.

So Smollett may not walk off scot-free, after all: The special prosecutor can refile charges and go to trial.

Take the Palestinians’ ‘No’ for an Answer

https://www.wsj.com/articles/take-the-palestinians-no-for-an-answer-11561316980

This week’s U.S.-led Peace to Prosperity conference in Bahrain on the Palestinian economy will likely be attended by seven Arab states—a clear rebuke to foreign-policy experts who said that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the Golan Heights as Israeli territory would alienate the Arab world. Sunni Arab states are lending legitimacy to the Trump administration’s plan, making it all the more notable that the Palestinian Authority itself refuses to participate.

The conference’s only agenda is improving the Palestinian economy. It isn’t tied to any diplomatic package, and the plan’s 40-page overview contains nothing at odds with the Palestinian’s purported diplomatic goals. Some aspects are even politically uncomfortable for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Given all that, the Palestinian Authority’s unwillingness to discuss economic opportunities for its own people, even with the Arab states, shows how far it is from discussing the concessions necessary for a diplomatic settlement. Instead it seeks to deepen Palestinian misfortune and use it as a cudgel against Israel in the theater of international opinion.

Why You Shouldn’t Love Your Kids More Than Your Partner

https://time.com/5586397/loving-your-spouse/

Parents’ love for their children can make them do peculiar things. Like staying up until 1 a.m. gluing glitter on a second-grade class project. Or driving 40 miles to deliver a single soccer cleat. Or, perhaps, bribing their teenagers’ way into a fancy college. But one of the weirdest things parents do is love their children more than their partners.

Before you call child services, let me be clear: Of course you have to love your kids. Of course you have to put their needs first. But doing so is also a no-brainer. Children, with their urgent and often tricky-to-ascertain needs, easily attract devotion. Spouses don’t need to be fed and dressed or have their tears dried and are nowhere near as cute. Loving your kids is like going to school–you don’t really have a choice. Loving your spouse is like going to college–it’s up to you to show up and participate

Jared Kushner’s Palestinian peace plan reads like a real estate developer’s brochure

https://qz.com/1650724/kushners-palestinian-peace-plan-resembles-real-estate-brochure/

The plan is premised on three tenets: “Unleashing economic potential, empowering the Palestinian people, and enhancing Palestinian governance.” It’s replete with buzzwords, charts, and tables. It promises investments in private enterprise, education, health care, and government in the Gaza Strip and West Bank. It features images of happy Palestinians, with minimal mention of Israel and no discussion of the state of Palestine.

Shockingly, it contains no political solution to the problem Kushner was tasked with solving. It doesn’t address the famously difficult questions that have doomed other peace proposals, like the status of the city of Jerusalem or Palestinians’ right of return. There’s no talk of what might be done with Israeli settlements in occupied territories, nor any discussion of borders at all. What it offers is a carrot and a warning:

Donald Trump, again, falsely says Obama had family separation policy

https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2019/jun/21/donald-trump/donald-trump-again-falsely-says-obama-had-family-s/

Our ruling

Trump said, "When I became president, President Obama had a separation policy. I didn’t have it. He had it."

The Obama administration did not have a policy to separate families arriving illegally at the border. Family separations rarely happened under the Obama administration, which sought to keep families together in detention. Then, based on a court decision, it released families together out of detention.

Separations under Trump happened systematically as a result of his administration’s policy to prosecute all adults crossing the border illegally. After mounting public pressure and criticism, Trump signed an executive order to stop separating families. Around 2,800 children have been reunited with their families because a court ordered the Trump administration to do so.

Trump repeatedly attempts to change the narrative about family separations, but the facts remain the same. Obama did not pass down to Trump a policy to separate families.

Trump’s claim is inaccurate. We rate it False.

CHIMEN ABRAMSKY’S HOUSE OF TWENTY THOUSAND BOOKS

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/books/189017/chimen-abramsky

The narrative of the heretical son and the pious father engaged in a titanic patricidal clash on behalf of tradition and modernity is a stock cliché of Jewish storytelling. Yet the case of the Abramskys, the gap between the arch-conservative rabbi father and the eminent radical son was clearly in a league of its own. Chimen’s father Yehezkel Abramsky was a savant of Torah scholarship in his native Belarus. The scion of a grand rabbinical line, he was possessed of a photographic memory, incredible powers of memorization (which he bequeathed to his bibliographer son) and a genius for biblical exegesis. Groomed from childhood for a major career in the Litvak Orthodox world, he became a rabbi at the age of 17. Yehezkel, was also actively outspoken in his anti-Communism. For this crime he was prevented by the Soviet authorities from taking up a rabbinic post offered to him in late-1920s Palestine. Assuming the editorship of an anti-Communist journal got him arrested and sentenced to five years in a Siberian labor camp.

Trump: I didn't call Iran strike back, I just stopped it for now

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/264952

On Thursday night, it was revealed that Trump had approved military strikes against Iran in retaliation for downing an American surveillance drone, but pulled back from launching them.

On Friday, the president tweeted that he was "cocked and loaded" to strike several targets in Iran but deemed the loss of life would be disproportionate to the downing of an unmanned US drone.

Earlier on Saturday, Trump announced that he would impose new sanctions on Iran on Monday.

White House Unveils $50 Billion Economic Plan for Palestine Amid Doubts

https://time.com/5612756/white-house-50-billion-palestinian-plan/

Palestinian leaders, angered by what they and their supporters see as blatant U.S. bias toward Israel, want nothing to do with the workshop and will not participate. The Palestinians have called for mass demonstrations against the conference on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.

“The plan cannot pass because it ends the Palestinian cause,” Abbas said on Saturday. “We are not going to attend this workshop, the reason is that the economic situation should not be discussed before a political situation, so long as there is no political situation, we do not deal with any economic situation.”

Abbas spokesman Nabil Abu Rdeneh said a “political horizon” is essential for any Palestinian cooperation. “Our cause is a political one and should be dealt with as such. It is a strategic mistake and the American administration is committing daily mistakes against the Palestinian people. Without Palestinian approval, there is no value to any meeting, and without a political horizon, no one will deal with any effort. This conference was born dead just like the deal of the century.”

In Gaza, the rival Hamas militant group has also condemned the conference. “In one voice, we say no to the Manama workshop and the deal of the century,” Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh said. He appealed to Bahrain’s king to “take a brave, strong, authentic Arab decision not to host this workshop” and called on Arab countries to cancel their planned participation.

Complicating the Bahrain meeting is the fact that it coincides with a pledging conference in New York for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees, a 70-year-old institution that the Trump administration has defunded and wants to eliminate entirely. The U.N. Relief and Works Agency, or UNRWA, already provides health, education and other services to millions of Palestinians.

Its supporters suspect the administration purposely scheduled the Bahrain conference to conflict with its event, noting that Kushner’s peace plan partner Jason Greenblatt has publicly called for UNRWA’s dissolution. Greenblatt argued last month that the agency perpetuates Palestinian victimhood, abets anti-Israel sentiment and is an inefficient drain on funds that could be better directed.

Regardless of American intent, the dueling meetings are likely to leave donors, particularly European nations, in an awkward position: torn between supporting an established international organization or a mystery concept being put together by a U.S. administration that has in two years reversed a half-century of American Middle East policy.

Since Trump took office, he has recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, moving the U.S. embassy there from Tel Aviv, downgraded the consulate devoted to Palestinian issues, shut down the Palestinian office in Washington and slashed hundreds of millions of dollars in assistance to the West Bank and Gaza.

Such steps have made Kushner’s prospects for success in Bahrain even slimmer, according to experts.

Two Fox News hosts question Trump's comments about Iran: 'This just doesn't add up'

https://edition.cnn.com/2019/06/22/media/fox-iran-chris-wallace-shep-smith/index.html

Trump has a cozy relationship with Fox News. He's hired a number of former employees from the network to posts within his administration.

The president also reportedly corresponds directly with Fox News hosts like Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, conservative firebrands who currently host evening programs that routinely praise the president.

Smith, who hosts daytime news coverage, and Wallace, the anchor of Fox News Sunday, have stood apart from Fox's opinion-oriented colleagues. Smith and Wallace have previously questioned or criticized actions by Trump or his administration.

A heinous rape case stuns the nation, but a hasty indictment is no shock to some

https://www.timesofisrael.com/a-heinous-rape-case-stuns-the-nation-but-a-hasty-indictment-is-no-shock-to-some/

Apathy for the devil

For Jewish Community Watch, an NGO that works to combat child sexual abuse, the ongoing rape investigation has been a point of particular frustration.

While she faulted police for bungling the probe, JCW director Shana Aaronson reserved much of her criticism for the broader Israeli public and their representatives, accusing them of only paying attention to violence against women when there is a possible nationalistic aspect.

“The reality is that no one would ever have heard or cared about this case [if the suspect had been Jewish] and it’s a very sick indictment of the community and the politicians in this country that they only care about child rape when the rapist is an Arab,” she said, clarifying that she did not intend to downplay the severity of the alleged case at hand.

How Donald Trump created one hell of a mess with Iran

.cnn

Trump seemed to take particular pleasure in killing deals negotiated by President Barack Obama's administration -- whether it was the Iran nuclear agreement, the Paris climate accord or the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade deal that was designed to contain China -- even if he didn't propose viable alternatives in their place.

After pulling out of the Iran deal, the Trump administration imposed tough new sanctions on Iran, while the Europeans stuck to the deal.

Trump's Iran strategy didn't seem like much of an alternative plan -- beyond trying to destroy the Iranian economy in order to foment protests against the regime, potentially leading to regime change, long a goal of Bolton's.