Weighing Lives: Israel’s Prisoner-Exchange Policy and the Right to Life

 https://scholarship.law.umn.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1308&context=mjil

Abstract

The state of Israel has engaged in many prisoner-exchange deals involving large numbers of released prisoners in exchange for only a few Israeli captives. The Jibril Agreement and the Shalit prisoner exchange has set the price tag of one Israeli captive to the equivalent of several hundreds of prisoners.

Israel’s prisoner-exchange policy is suggested to contribute to a cycle whereby more lives are lost, which raises many important questions with regard to the right to life. Such a high price tag on Israeli life encourages more kidnappings, which results in further prisoner exchanges—and so forth. It is also claimed that released prisoners sometimes resume their involvement in terrorism, which causes a further loss of lives. This study aims to understand the motivations of Israel to engage in such unbalanced prisoner exchanges, to analyze Israel’s prisoner-exchange policy with reference to various aspects of the right to life, and finally, to offer guidelines and improvements to the current policy to better address the right to life principles. 

Is Shidduch crisis the result of abuse?

 Received an urgent call from America yesterday regarding an unmarried male of 39

The family discovered that their son's high school class has many unmarried older singles and people who have dropped religious observance

Question is 1) Could this be the result of sexual abuse? - the answer is clearly yes

Question 2) is could the trauma remain even decades later? the answer is yes?

Question 3) teachers and rabbis and therapists were consulted and they claim it is just a case of commitment anxiety? The answer is in most cases these people have no competence in dealing with abuse or commitment anxiety

Suggested solution - consult a therapist with solid track record of dealing with sexual abuse cases.

A public relations disaster

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/379085

Ynet journalist Ran Boker wrote, "I'm really having a hard time recovering from this propaganda disaster. There are thousands of changes every reality show contestant goes through. People get a briefing before interviews. So a hostage who was held captive during a war?! Where is the person who is responsible for the propaganda? Terrible."

Then he showed headlines on the foreign channels that mainly cite the conditions in which Lifshitz was held. "Look at the headline of Sky News! It's unbelievable how Hamas schools us even in propaganda. Don't make live hostage statements. Don't hold press conferences. Only release recorded statements. They were held captive by a murderous terrorist organization. Where is the IDF spokesman? What is this crazy propaganda attack? This is delusional."

He made another claim. "The husband of the freed captive Yocheved Lifshitz is still in captivity - what can she say? We can only imagine what Hamas asked her to say and how they threatened her."

An Insane Number of Gen Zers Support Hamas's Slaughter of Innocent Israelis

 https://www.newsweek.com/insane-number-gen-zers-support-hamass-slaughter-innocent-israelis-opinion-1837422

Overall, Americans overwhelmingly support Israel over Hamas. A whopping 84 percent of respondents told pollsters they favored Israel, while just 16 percent favored Hamas. Among older Americans over 65, an astounding 95 percent supported Israel, and just 5 percent said their sympathies lie with Hamas. But among young people age 18 to 24, things looked quite differently.

Just 52 percent of this group said they supported Israel, while 48 percent said they supported Hamas. Yes, that's right: Nearly half of young respondents said they side with the terrorist group that just earlier this month purposefully targeted and slaughtered innocent civilians, including women, children, and infants, in a chilling and sadistic manner.

613 commandments

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/613_commandments

Nahmanides held that this particular counting was a matter of rabbinic controversy, and that rabbinic opinion on this is not unanimous. Nonetheless, he concedes that "this total has proliferated throughout the aggadic literature... we ought to say that it was a tradition from Moses at Mount Sinai".[10]

America's Hard Left Is Tearing Itself Apart

 https://www.newsweek.com/america-hard-left-tearing-itself-apart-1836810

Different views on the left about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict are not new, says Paul Quirk, a political science professor at the University of British Columbia in Canada.

"There has long been a spectrum of left-of-center opinion in the U.S. on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict—from full endorsement of hardline Palestinians' demands and approval of their conduct, including terrorist attacks, to more restrained criticism of Israeli governments, alleging intransigence in negotiations, disproportionate violence, and indifference to the suffering of innocent Palestinians" Quirk told Newsweek.

A ‘Holocaust’ in Kfar Aza

Israel Bitton in Kfar Azza from Hamodia News on Vimeo.

Gaza hospital blast caused by militants’ rocket, UK agencies believe

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/oct/23/gaza-hospital-blast-caused-by-militants-rocket-uk-intelligence-sunak-israel-palestine 

UK intelligence services have concluded that the deadly blast at al-Ahli Arab hospital in Gaza was caused by a rocket fired by a Palestinian militant group rather than by an Israeli airstrike, Rishi Sunak has told MPs.

NY Times admits its coverage of Gaza hospital blast relied too heavily on Hamas claims

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/ny-times-admits-its-coverage-of-gaza-hospital-blast-relied-too-heavily-on-hamas-claims/

The initial reports “relied too heavily on claims by Hamas, and did not make clear that those claims could not immediately be verified,” it said. “The report left readers with an incorrect impression about what was known and how credible the account was.”

Are comments being blocked?

 I was just told by a reader that he was blocked from making a comment to a recent post. Has anyone else been blocked?

Intel, defense officials tell senators that Israel did not strike hospital

 https://thehill.com/homenews/senate/4263749-intel-senators-israel-did-not-strike-hospital/

U.S. intelligence and defense officials told senators at a classified briefing Wednesday that Israel is not responsible for a blast that reportedly killed hundreds of people at a hospital in Gaza, contradicting earlier media reports and claims from Hamas that an Israeli airstrike caused the carnage. 

Avril Haines, the director of national intelligence, also told senators that there is no direct evidence that Iran ordered or had foreknowledge of the attack by Hamas militants that killed more than 1,000 Israeli civilians living near the border with the Gaza Strip, lawmakers say.  

Why U.S. Intel Says Israel Did Not Attack Gaza Hospital

 https://www.newsweek.com/why-us-intel-says-israel-did-not-attack-gaza-hospital-1835897

"Israel did not target the hospital, that we know" a senior Defense Intelligence Agency officer told Newsweek. "Imagery and signals [intercepts] additionally show that a rocket fired from inside Gaza landed near the hospital, not on it."

"We don't know how many people died, nor does Israel. Not yet," says a U.S. Air Force officer working on the subject. "But the intelligence, ours and Israel's, suggests a few dozen at most. I'm not saying this isn't a tragedy," the officer says, "but this is just another case of massive exaggeration and blatant lying on the part of Hamas. Palestinians are the responsible party, not Israel."

Devastating Gaza Hospital Blast—What We Know

 https://www.newsweek.com/devastating-gaza-hospital-blastwhat-we-know-1835576

Later, in a virtual briefing with reporters, Hagari went into further detail on the IDF's investigation, saying it constituted a review of Israeli air, land and sea attacks on Gaza, as well as rocket-detecting radars, which he said detected a barrage of rockets going toward Al-Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital. Hagari said that there were no such Israeli attacks that occurred "next to the hospital" at this time, nor did the damage "fit any ammunition with the air force."

IDF tells world: This is how Islamic Jihad destroyed the Gaza hospital

 https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/article-768942

IDF Spokesperson Brig. Gen. Daniel Hagari on Wednesday laid out the IDF's full comprehensive intelligence case to prove that an Islamic Jihad failed rocket caused the damage Tuesday night to a Gaza hospital, leading to a still-unclear, but large, number of Palestinian civilian deaths.

The chief spokesman presented actual audio recordings in which Islamic Jihad members say out loud that they are responsible for the explosion.