Thursday, September 5, 2019
The wild corruption of Trump’s golf courses deserves more scrutiny
President Donald Trump canceled a planned state visit to Poland on Thursday, saying his presence was needed in the United States to deal with Hurricane Dorian. But he actually went golfing. This was an unfortunate choice, more as a superfluous diplomatic insult than as a situation where the president’s input was substantively needed. To the extent that he did anything at all related to the hurricane he mostly contributed confusion by saying, falsely, that Alabama was in the path of the storm.
Though all recent presidents have had a somewhat inexplicable love of golf, when Trump goes golfing it’s different from normal presidential golfing because he golfs at luxury golf clubs that he owns.
This means that when the White House senior staff and the Secret Service do things like rent golf carts to ensure that the president remains safe and well-briefed while on the links, it’s not just an expenditure of public funds but an expenditure that directly lines Trump’s pockets. This just about the most straightforward example of political corruption that one can imagine. (When it turned out that Baltimore Mayor Catherine Pugh was making companies that contracted with the city buy copies of her book, she was drummed out of office almost immediately.)
But in the United States of Trump, it wasn’t even the most egregious golf-related act to stem from the ill-fated trip to Poland. Yet nobody in any position of influence in politics seems to be trying to do anything about it.
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Violating the Vineyard" Update:
Wed., 4 Ellul, '79
By Binyomin Feinberg,
Contributor to The Jewish Press*
* Views and perspectives herein do not necessarily reflect those of the ownership or management of The Jewish Press.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
For Giyus Banos updates throughout the week, visit:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
*****************************
As of now, Avigail L. H. risks arrest by Israeli military police for her courageous refusal to comply with anti-Torah Israeli draft orders - while her mother battles both cancer and the IDF simultaneously.
*****************************
A 17 y/o Chabad girl in Israel, Avigail L. H., is under immediate threat of arrest, despite being under 18, because of her refusal to comply with Israeli military draft orders. Her mother, Mrs. Ruth E. H., a baalas teshuva, and a former Israeli Air Force captain, who has been battling cancer for seven years, is simultaneously battling the government's bizarre insistence on harassing her only daughter.
Avigail submitted her religious certification properly and on time. But, in February, just after she turned 17, her mother had a shocking conversation with a Jerusalem Draft Office official, Keren L. (now a Colonel). In that
conversation, according to Mrs. H., Officer L. refused to accept that Avigail is Chareidi, and therefore legally entitled to a religious exemption." I will decide" that question she said, adding that "I will profane (or "violate") The Vineyard ("Achalail et HaKerem"), and I will start with your daughter."*
Since then, the family has been enduring incessant harassment by the IDF draft office. Now Avigail has been threatened with arrest.
It is Keren's antireligious agenda of "profaning the Vineyard" that is what appears to be behind the bizarre vendetta against this indisputably Chareidi teenage girl.
As the legal process proceeds, this needless battle takes a serious toll on the health of the severely ill mother. It's literally a situation of pickuach nefesh. B"H, an especially suitable attorney has been retained for this case.
Donations for attorney fees are needed. Donations may be made to "Shomrei Torah," 646-585-3044. Specifically designate funds for the case of Avigail Leah H..
####
Elul! Holiness and Yet Strife in Israel Rav Dovid Eidensohn
I am a deeply religious Jew as is my family, most of whom live in Israel. But I am told and have noticed myself, that although the Orthodox Torah community has many children and are eventually to become the majority of Israeli Jews, at this time the very strong religious suffer from some secular Israelis. Why?
It all began in the beginning of the twentieth century in 1917. Then, the British who were not winning the First World War, had a Jewish scientist Chaim Weizman who invented a new kind of bomb. The British used it and won the First World War.
Eventually the British army conquered and even entered Israel. I saw the pictures of that time. The General of the British army and Chaim Weizman stood at the side welcoming the marching British troops into Jerusalem. Next to them, slightly lower than these two, were the rabbi of Jerusalem Rabbi Yosef Shalom Sonnenfeld and another rabbi.
These years of the First World War saw entire countries in mortal combat. People suffered and the Jews surely suffered. As time went on, although originally the British backed Jews because of Chaim Weizman and his bomb, eventually, many Arabs openly hated Jews in Israel and plotted to kill them. The new British government now turned against the Jews. It began to forbid Jewish men to enter Israel. Finally, in 1948, after six million Jews had been murdered by the Germans, the nations of the world allowed Jews to have a tiny part of Israel for their new country.
The Israeli government has various small groups who vote for them. The election in Israel of a new government takes in consideration that the chamber of the government accepts 120 seats. But the large group of voters does not even have forty seats. So groups merge.
1
The group that can assemble 61 seats is appointed by the President of Israel to form a government. In the past five elections the Premier of Israel off and on has been Benyamin Netanyohu. Although not personally religious, his Likud Party is basically religious, and his style of assuming the Premiership has been to join his Likud to other parties usually of Orthodox Jews.
The previous effort of Netanyohu to remain Premier of Israel foundered when an opponent refused to join his party unless religious Jews served in the military. This caused the government to fail to find a single party that could produce the next Premier. So a new election was scheduled for a few weeks in September 17.
Another issue dividing the religious and secular is the extreme ruling of the great rabbis of the world that Jewish women may not serve not only in the Israeli army, but in any capacity at all decreed by the government. A Jewish woman is only allowed to be guided by her father and her husband, not the government, even if it requires them to pray every day.
These and similar issues have caused problems for years, although the Orthodox are rapidly becoming the major force in the Jewish community, and although the Arabs who are also represented in the Israeli government hate Jews and regularly some Arabs murder Jews.
Arabs who murder Jews are allowed to vote for Israeli governments. But some secular people maintain that Arabs may vote but religious people who oppose Arabs murdering Jews may not.
There are three things dividing the religious and irreligious. The religious believe in the Torah of HaShem. The secular do not in general accept the Torah. But some hate religious people. and some do not. We know that Moshiach is on the way, we hope soon!
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
חב"ד | שאלות לרב | בגד - ימין על שמאל
בגד - ימין על שמאל
נושא: מנהגים
הרב המשיב: הרב יוסף ש. גינזבורג
תאריך: י' בסיון התשס"ה (17/06/05)
השאלה:
עד כמה חשוב להקפיד שצידו הימני של הבגד יהיה רכוס על צד שמאל ולא להפך?
תשובת הרב:
מנהג ישראל להקפיד על כך בבגדים העליונים (חליפה וכדומה), ומשמעות הדבר - שה'שמאל' (המייצג את ה'דין') בטל ל'ימין' (המייצגת את ה'חסד'). בתצלומים מלפני כמה דורות, ובפרט של גדולי ישראל מחוגים מגוונים, גם שאינם-חסידים, רואים שכך היה מקובל בעבר בקהילות ישראל.
Chareidim Don’t Work and Won’t Go into the Army
https://www.jewishpress.com/blogs/muqata/chareidim-dont-work-and-wont-go-into-the-army/2019/08/07/
Avigdor Liberman is putting in overtime to convince Israeli voters that this election is about Religion, State and Chareidim (the Ultra-Orthodox)- when it is only about dethroning Netanyahu, distancing Liberman’s former close partners – the Chareidim, from the government, and if his latest faux pas is any indication, to maneuver his way into the premiership.
We’ve all heard claims how Chareidim don’t work, that Chareidim don’t go to the army, that Chareidim don’t carry their share of the national burden. Liberman’s supporters are saying Liberman is raising this anti-Chareidi / anti-religious flag for their own good and ours.
The tone, the rhetoric, the Sinat Chinam is horrifying – and far too many people accept these statements/assumptions as fact.
The case for making Donald Trump America's first king
https://www.vox.com/2016/7/20/12235572/donald-trump-king-america
Evidently, Trump is interested in the prestige and public attention that comes with the presidency. But he doesn’t want to spend a lot of time worrying about niggling policy issues like Brexit or corporate tax reform.
While the idea of a president with no power sounds crazy to American ears, it’s actually how a lot of advanced democracies work around the world. Many countries have a ceremonial figurehead — either an elected president or a hereditary monarch — who represents the nation at state dinners and ribbon-cutting ceremonies. And they also have a head of government, usually the prime minister, who makes all the important policy decisions.
In the United States, we’ve combined these roles into a single person, and it hasn’t been working very well. It’s made the presidency an impossibly demanding job, while giving our head of government a degree of prestige that makes it harder to hold him accountable for his policy mistakes.
So here’s a modest proposal: Let’s make Donald Trump king of the United States. This seems to be the job he actually wants. And replacing America’s powerful elected president with a powerless hereditary monarchy would improve the American political system.
CONGRATULATE COM. FOR EJECTING SEXUAL ABUSE RABBIS - SAFED CHIEF RABBBI
https://www.jpost.com/Israel-News/Congratulate-community-for-ejecting-sexual-abuse-rabbis-Safed-chief-rabbi-600442
Chief Rabbi of Safed Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu said on Monday that the religious-Zionist community should be congratulated for ejecting rabbis from its midst who have committed sexual abuse or harassment.
Eliyahu was speaking in reference to at least three incidents in recent years in which prominent religious-Zionistrabbis have either been criminally convicted of sexual assault or accused of sexual impropriety.
Monday, September 2, 2019
Does anyone understand the 2020 race? This scholar nailed the blue wave — here's her forecast
https://www.salon.com/2019/08/17/this-political-scientist-completely-nailed-the-2018-blue-wave-heres-her-2020-forecast/
My model for 2020 starts off with Democrats at 278 Electoral College votes, and that's a problem for Trump, because of course you need 270 to win. It does that because of my model's prediction, based on turnout and predicted vote share, that Pennsylvania and Michigan will slip back to the Democrats. I'm uncertain about Ohio, but even if Trump wins Ohio, he can't win the other three Midwestern states. Then as you point out I have four tossup states: Arizona, North Carolina, Florida and Iowa. Even if he wins all four of them, the Democrats have already won the election — and the idea that he would win all four is pretty unlikely.
Sunday, September 1, 2019
The Three Oaths dilemma dividing Jewish Zionists from anti-Zionists
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/22302
The Talmud cites three oaths which G-d administered: “One oath was that Israel would not make Aliyah 'as a wall'; and one oath was that G-d adjured Israel not to rebel against the nations; and one oath was that G-d adjured the nations not to persecute Israel too much” (Ketuvot 111a).
Of these three oaths, therefore, two apply to Israel and one to the other nations.
These Three Oaths are the basis for the ostensibly religious Jewish opposition to Zionism: the very essence of Zionism was that Jews from the world over return to Israel, ascending to the Land of Israel “as a wall”, together, united, using military force when necessary.
This compels the question: Does Zionism indeed violate G-d’s will? Do these Three Oaths constitute halakhah (Jewish religious law) in practice?
By Republican Standards, Almost Nothing Is Racist
When Democrats are accused of anti-Semitism, Republicans understand that coded language can be hurtful. But Trump’s racist comments get a pass.
Most of the time, conservatives and Republicans want the bar for what constitutes bigotry to be set extremely high. When President Donald Trump tweeted last weekend that four nonwhite Democrats in Congress should “go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came,” he offered a textbook example of racism. Trump’s own Equal Employment Opportunity Commission uses the phrase Go back to where you came from as one of its examples of discrimination based on national origin. Yet Trump insisted that “those Tweets were NOT Racist”—even as he doubled down on them by launching an attack on Representative Ilhan Omar that prompted rally-goers in North Carolina on Wednesday night to chant “Send her back!”
At the same time that Trump was denying charges of bigotry, however, he was also leveling them. At the North Carolina rally, he accused Omar of “vicious anti-Semitic” remarks—a reference to her tweet that the American Israel Public Affairs Committee’s influence in Washington is “all about the Benjamins” and her allegation that pro-Israel groups “push for allegiance to a foreign country.” Those comments—which evoked hoary stereotypes of Jews as money-driven and disloyal—elicited criticism even from Democrats, and Omar apologized for the first. But however damning one considers her statements, it’s utterly illogical to claim that they constitute bigotry while Trump’s far more direct attack does not. Yet this is exactly what Trump and other prominent Republicans are doing.
MORE BY PETER BEINART
Children holding Greenland's national flag
Greenland’s Wishes Don’t Matter to Trump
PETER BEINART
Donald Trump gives a speech in front of the Washington Monument.
Disloyal to What?
PETER BEINART
Joe Biden in Des Moines, Iowa
Only Biden Can Challenge Trump on Trade
PETER BEINART
A view across the border into Ciudad Juarez, Mexico
White Nationalists Discover the Environment
PETER BEINART
When Democrats are accused of prejudice against Jews, Republicans can find it easy to discern ugly coded language. But when Trump and others in his party are accused of hostility to black people, Muslims, and Latinos, prominent conservatives set the standard for what constitutes bigotry so high that it’s almost impossible to meet.
The Republican Party has its own Israel problem
https://www.jta.org/2019/03/20/opinion/the-republican-party-has-an-israel-problem
But Republicans, who often point to declining support for Israel among Democrats, should also be paying attention to similar trends in their own party.
The largest recorded drop this year is the percentage of Republicans – not Democrats – who sympathize more with Israel than with the Palestinians. Republican sympathies for Israel fell 11 percentage points this year, to 76 percent from 87 percent, a slightly lower level of sympathy than Gallup has recorded in the last decade.
Support for Israel among Republicans certainly remains robust, with 43 percent of Republicans reporting a “very favorable” view of the country. But there are signs that this support should not be taken for granted. A significant minority of Republicans, for a variety of reasons, are eschewing America’s traditional alliance with Israel and are skeptical of President Donald Trump’s ability to handle the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)