'Like with al-Dura, IDF will be proved innocent'

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/327383

Dr. Yehuda David said, who uncovered the blood libel surrounding the alleged killing of Muhammad al-Dura by IDF troops, believes Israel must wage an explanatory and practical struggle to prove that its soldiers are not responsible for the death of Al Jazeera reporter Shireen Abu Aqleh, who was killed in a shootout between IDF forces and Arab terrorists in the Jenin area Wednesday morning.

"Obviously there is every chance of winning this battle," Dr. David tells Israel National News. "We need to go back to 2001 to the al-Dura affair. There was a video feature then that IDF soldiers allegedly killed a child who was hiding behind debris while his father protected him. As for the instructions to open fire, I have been in these battles many times as a military doctor. There is no such thing. An IDF soldier must obtain permission to open fire on such a target."

According to Dr. David, there has never been a direct shooting of a journalist by IDF soldiers, and it is unlikely that this changed today. "It is clear that the Palestinians are thirsty for Israeli blood and want to direct this plot again. This is a battle that should be conducted wisely and requires a joint investigation between the PA and Israel, to see what kind of bullet hit this poor journalist and then perform ballistic surgery."

OAN Clip Acknowledging 'No Widespread Voter Fraud' Viewed Over 300K Times

 https://www.newsweek.com/oan-one-america-news-no-election-fraud-georgia-lawsuit-settlement-viral-1705564

A settlement was reached in late April after two Georgia election workers filed a lawsuit against OAN. The election workers, Ruby Freeman and Wandrea "Shaye" Moss claimed the news channel falsely claimed they engaged in ballot fraud during the 2020 election.

More specifically, the mother and daughter pair sued the OAN Network, its owners and its chief White House correspondent for claiming that they introduced suitcases of illegal ballots and committed other acts of fraud to alter the outcome of the presidential election in Georgia.

The fight for truth over the killing of an Al Jazeera reporter in Jenin.

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/327380

The IDF and the Israeli Government, quickly recommended a dispassionate joint forensic investigation and pathology test on the deceased to ascertain how she was killed. The bullet would have been a critical piece of evidence, but the Palestinian Authority adamantly refused such an investigation while accusing Israel of killing her without any evidence to back up their accusation.

Robert Regan, GOP Candidate Who Told Women to 'Enjoy' Rape, Loses Race

 https://www.newsweek.com/robert-regan-gop-candidate-told-women-enjoy-rape-loses-race-michigan-1703331

A Republican candidate for the Michigan House of Representatives who made headlines in March for suggesting that women who are raped should "lie back and enjoy it" has lost his race in a surprise defeat.

Robert "RJ" Regan has lost his bid to represent Michigan's 74th district, according to unofficial results reported by The Detroit Free Press on Tuesday night and with all precincts reporting.

Democrat Carol Glanville had defeated Regan in the special election by more than 1,500 votes based on results as of 10.30 p.m. ET, winning 51 percent of the vote to Regan's 40 percent, while 7.9 percent support went to write-in candidates.

Florida’s examples of banned topics in math books derided as ‘political theater’

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2022/apr/22/florida-examples-prohibited-topics-math-textbooks

“Those examples were given with no context and were not even elementary-level material,” Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association that represents more than 150,000 educators, said. “So it seems like it’s more about smoke and mirrors of trying to accomplish a political agenda than really about what we are teaching our kids.”

“What educators and parents are concerned about is if we don’t have teachers in our classrooms, or bus drivers to get kids to school on time, then our kids aren’t learning math or any other subject,” Spar said.

“We’re expecting over 9,000 teacher vacancies by the end of the year, according to the state board that he appoints, and we have a massive bus driver, paraprofessional, cafeteria worker, custodian shortage in addition. We’ve heard the governor say or do nothing about it.

“These kinds of antics and political theater going on over these textbooks is exactly what’s driving people out of the profession.”

The Religious Right and the Abortion Myth

 https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/10/abortion-history-right-white-evangelical-1970s-00031480

The history of that movement, however, is more complicated. White evangelicals in the 1970s did not mobilize against Roe v. Wade, which they considered a Catholic issue. They organized instead to defend racial segregation in evangelical institutions, including Bob Jones University.

To suggest otherwise is to perpetrate what I call the abortion myth, the fiction that the genesis of the Religious Right — the powerful evangelical political movement that has reshaped American politics over the past four decades — lay in opposition to abortion.

US Jewish community mobilizes to resettle Ukrainian refugees amid war

 https://www.israelhayom.com/2022/05/10/us-jewish-community-mobilizes-to-resettle-ukrainian-refugees-amid-war/

The administration of US President Joe Biden has launched a direct sponsorship program for Ukrainian refugees called Uniting for Ukraine, which will serve as a major piece of the president's pledge to accept up to 100,000 refugees in the United States. A new online portal started accepting applications, where individual Americans, as well as private and public organizations, can apply to financially sponsor a Ukrainian for travel from Europe.

Al-Jazeera journalist killed during IDF op. in Palestinian city of Jenin

 https://www.jpost.com/breaking-news/article-706387

IDF Spokesperson Brig.Gen. Ran Kohav later told Kan public broadcaster that he didn’t think Israeli forces killed her.

"I don't think we killed her. We offered the Palestinians to open a swift joint probe. If we indeed killed her, we'll take responsibility, but it doesn't seem to be the case,” Kohav said, adding that while the Palestinians “might have a good reason” not to cooperate on a joint investigation, “if they do, we’ll have better answers.”

Harvard faculty, alums denounce student newspaper for backing BDS

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/327326

The Harvard Crimson’s recent endorsement of the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement has attracted far more wide-ranging attention than a typical student paper’s editorial page, as faculty and alumni of the Ivy League institution have lined up to denounce the student paper’s op-ed and condemn the shift in Israel discussion on college campuses.

In an open letter, more than 100 Harvard faculty members objected to the paper endorsing an academic and financial boycott of the state of Israel, including the school’s former president Larry Summers; prominent psychologist and author Steven Pinker; endowed law professor Gabriella Blum; former Harvard Medical School dean Jeffrey Flier; and emeritus law professor and longtime pro-Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz.

“We believe that many well-meaning people with no hate in their hearts, including those at Harvard, gravitate to this movement believing that it offers a means for advancing Palestinian rights and peace in the Middle East,” the letter reads. “But the reality is that BDS merely coarsens the discourse on campus and contributes to antisemitism.”

Trump Jr. Defends Dad's Alleged Plan to Bomb Mexico: 'Is That a Bad Thing?'

https://www.newsweek.com/trump-jr-defends-dads-alleged-plan-bomb-mexico-that-bad-thing-1704485

Donald Trump Jr. is suggesting that his father's reported idea to launch missiles at Mexican drug labs wasn't such a bad idea.

Trump Jr. made the remarks on Twitter Friday following claims by former Defense Secretary Mark Esper that Trump brought up firing Patriot missiles into Mexico. Esper is the most recent Trump administration official to make headlines for claims about the former president's behavior. The tweet from Trump Jr. shows he continues to be one of his father's fiercest defenders.

"I'm still trying to figure out the recent media outrage about my father possibly wanting to target Mexican drug cartel manufacturing facilities in Mexico... Is that supposed to be a bad thing???" Trump Jr. wrote in a tweet.

Trump notches a loss in Nebraska as Herbster goes down in GOP gubernatorial primary: AP

 https://www.foxnews.com/politics/nebraska-trump-herbster-primary-governor-lindstrom

According to the latest vote count, Herbster, a multimillionaire agricultural executive and state Sen. Brett Lindstrom, who enjoyed the support of moderate Republicans and cross-over Democrats, were battling for second place.

It is the first time a candidate endorsed by the former president in the 2022 Republican Party primaries has lost.

Earlier Tuesday evening, Trump scored a victory when the AP projected Rep. Alex Mooney the winner over Rep. David McKinley in the GOP primary in West Virginia’s 2nd Congressional District.

Open Letter to Schlesinger twins

 Mazel Tov on your bar mitzva

Don't know if you realize its wider implication - in Jewish law that means it is now your responsibility to keep the religious and ethical principles of Judaism

One of the most important of these being to honor and respect both your father and mother

You are in a very difficult position in this area. Never the less you are still obligated

As a minimum you need to ensure that your mother is invited to the bar mitzva

As a psychologist I will simply note that if you can't deal properly with this issue  it is very unlikely you will have a good marriage or be a good parent. Not a threat or curse - just a dose of reality

Daniel Eidensohn PhD.

Tamar Epstein's Heter: Newsflash - Rav Nota Greenblatt just acknowledged that he will retract his heter if the reports he based himself on are refuted!

After weeks of turmoil and worldwide outrage - a new development. Rav Nota Greenblatt has acknowledged that he relied totally on the contents of the reports he got when he issued the heter. Therefore if these reports are withdrawn or refuted the heter has no validity and he will retract it.

He has been saying this all along both in his letters and telephone conversations. I had originally thought that he was being inconsistent regarding his taking responsibility for the psak. But he is saying that his role in this is no different than if someone said his doctor said a condition was pikuach nefesh for Shabbos or that someone can't fast on Yom Kippur. He has always stated that he has no knowledge of Aharon or Tamar or any facts of the case. He is reacting totally to the fact that an expert in mental health has said that he certifies that Aharon is incapable of being a husband because of mental health issues. Thus he simply took the conclusion of the doctor and stated that it was consistent with Rav Moshe Feinstein's view of kiddushei ta'us.

Therefore instead of relying on the Daas Torah of Rav Shmuel as I had mistakenly thought he is doing something worse. He is relying absolutely on the doctor's conclusions - not the doctor's diagnosis or knowledge of the facts. Rav Shmuel and R Shalom's role was simply to indicate that the doctor was reliable and what the doctor said. Thus whether the doctor was biased because he heard only Tamar's version was not relevant to Rav Greenblatt. The doctor said it and his believability came partially because of Rav Shmuel's endorsement but mainly because of the assumption that a professional would not state something that could readily be shown to be false because it would ruin his career.
 
His problem then is that he did not know about  the very subjective nature of psychological diagnoses and that if he had taken the trouble of finding out who Aharon was and what Tamar had said in beis din and the courts - he would not have automatically believed that the data supported the conclusion that the therapist wrote - as Rav Feldman clearly shows in his letter.


In sum, this information is not new but is a new understanding of what Rav Greenblatt has been saying all along. Thus instead of trying to convince Rav Greenblatt that the doctors conclusions were not supported by the data or that the doctor could not have known this since he never spoke with Aharon - there is a simpler solution. Either get the doctor to retract his report or get another doctor who refutes it.

Rabbi Dovid Greenblatt - Hesped for his father R Nota

Transcription of the words of Rabbi Dovid Greenblatt by Rabbi Spira

http://daattorah.blogspot.com/2021/05/daas-torah-and-legacy-of-rabbi-joshua-h.html

 My father was matir a woman a year or two ago. He was only matir two women in 60 years. The rest of them, for the other thirty thousand, he travelled on buses and planes, and spent the night, and went to South America, all on his own cheshbon, everything, for thirty thousand. But there were two women he was matir. The last time he was matir a woman, he got tremendous flack. Big Jews criticized him. What happens to us when we get criticized? What happens to a person who’s not a gadol? ‘Ah, you’re criticizing me. You don’t know me. You don’t know why I did it. You should have called me. Do you know who I am? You didn’t let me explain it to you.’ We’re all… We’re all defending… We’re all defending our negi’os. It makes us defend ourselves. ‘What an insult to me.’ But my father said to me, literally in my ear, he said ‘Dovid,’ he said, ‘you understand the problem.’ He said: ‘Now, if a woman needs a heter, a Rav is not going to give her a heter no matter what, because he’s not going to want to take the flack. We’ve now made it hard for a woman who deserves a heter to get a heter.’ He didn’t think one second about himself. This was only about what is this going to do to nebach to the woman that deserves a heter and has a gadol who’s going to say ‘I don’t want to end up with that flack.’ I think it’s a small story but I think it’s the difference between gadlus and… and… and… and… and… and being one of… and being me… being the rest of us. 

The bottom line is that he erred in not retracting the mistaken heter. Contrary to what is claimed above greatness is not stubbornly hanging on to a widely criticized mistake but rather acknowledging the obvious truth and trying to correct the damage. The damage was not caused by the widespread outrage to the mistaken heter but by the heter itself!