Bennett: Not every decision we make is perfect, Gilat knows how to run our family

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/318062

Bennett responded to the uproar on Wednesday and said his family "is subject to exactly the same rules that apply to all Israeli citizens. I understand the criticism, but since Friday we have learned more about the variant and in which countries it is spread, and the Coronavirus Cabinet has made decisions on which countries to travel and under what conditions."

Bennett also wrote on Facebook, "My family (without me, I am staying with you ...) was supposed to go on vacation during the Hanukkah holiday in a country that turned out to be red. The holiday was immediately canceled, and after the new rules became clear, they booked a holiday to a country to which it is permitted to travel. Everyone goes out according to all the restrictions and of course will stay in isolation as required. The citizens of Israel are just as important to me as my children."

MK Yisrael Katz (Likud) criticized the Bennett’s family's trip on Wednesday and wrote that "after advising Israeli citizens not to fly abroad - Bennett's wife and children take off for a vacation abroad. This is how it is when political lies became the norm and personal example is trampled on. Such chutzpah."

After Bennett published his response to the criticism, Katz wrote, "Bennett's explanation for his family's trip abroad, contrary to the warnings he gave to the public, is worse than the act 

Wise men of Lalewood disagree with most rabbonim and doctors

 From current Binah Magazine

Inaccurate claims about 'rabbinical court' opposing Covid-19 vaccination spread online

 https://news.yahoo.com/inaccurate-claims-rabbinical-court-opposing-204803831.html

 Online articles and social media posts claim a "rabbinical court" that is part of Israel's legal system ruled against Covid-19 vaccination for young people and children in a binding decision for observant Jews. But leading rabbinical authorities in both Israel and the United States have endorsed vaccination, and experts say the ruling did not come from a widely recognized Jewish legal authority.

Rabbi Shlomo Alexander Pollak, one of the three signatories of the ruling, defended it and said the hearing included "many rabbis from diverse Jewish communities," and that "public notice was sent out" for any rabbinic authority to participate.

"Those in attendance agreed upon this ruling; however many did not sign due to interference with their political standpoint of their community," he said, adding that three signatories is the minimum to issue a ruling.

Agudath Israel Slams NYC COVID-19 Vaccine Mandate for Yeshiva, Non-Public School Employees

 https://www.jewishpress.com/news/us-news/ny/nyc-mandates-covid-19-vaccination-for-non-public-school-employees-in-yeshivas/2021/12/03/

Rabbi Chaim Dovid Zwiebel of Agudath Israel responded to the new mandate as Chairman of the Committee of New York City Religious and Independent School Officials, representing private schools all across New York City.

Zwiebel sent a sharply worded letter to NYC Health Commissioner Dave Chokshi over the just-announced mandate, writing that “government should be using its bully pulpit to persuade, not its regulatory arm to coerce.

 “The reality is that the small percentage of school employees who have chosen not to vaccinate have made a personal choice based on their individual circumstances and personal values.

“Surely at least some of them will continue to resist vaccination even if the city imposes a vaccination mandate – whereupon, pursuant to the terms of the mandate, they will be terminated from their jobs. As a result, the school will have to hire new qualified teachers and other staff to fill the newly created vacancies,” the letter continued.

“In an era when finding high quality teachers and staff is so difficult even at the beginning of the school year finding high quality replacement staff in the middle of the school year may be impossible. Some schools may even be forced to close because of the severe shortage of teachers.”

The Benefits of Vaccinating Kids against COVID Far Outweigh the Risks of Myocarditis

 https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-benefits-of-vaccinating-kids-against-covid-far-outweigh-the-risks-of-myocarditis1/

 Parents who are considering whether to vaccinate their child against COVID may have heard about the risk of a rare side effect called myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart tissue that has occurred in some teenagers and young adults who have received an mRNA vaccine. These parents may be wondering, “Is this something I should be worried about for my child?”

Here is what scientists know: Vaccine-related myocarditis is extremely rare; estimates vary, but the highest figures suggest there have been fewer than 200 cases per million fully vaccinated males ages 12–15, the youngest age group for which such data currently exist. Only about 30 cases per million have been reported in vaccinated females of that age. Pfizer, whose mRNA vaccine was recently authorized for use in five- to 11-year olds, says it did not observe any myocarditis cases in its clinical trial for the latter age group (it would be nearly impossible to design a trial large enough to detect such a rare effect). Scientists expect it to be even rarer in 5–11-year-old kids compared with teens, because myocarditis from any cause is less common in the younger age group. The vaccine dose authorized for that group is lower, as well.

Ilhan Omar airs death threat and presses Republicans on ‘anti-Muslim hatred’

 https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2021/dec/01/ilhan-omar-airs-death-threat-and-presses-republicans-on-anti-muslim-hatred

 Boebert initially took steps to ease the situation, apologising last week “to anyone in the Muslim community I offended”. But after declining to apologise directly to Omar during a tense phone call on Monday, which Omar abruptly ended, Boebert again went on the attack.

“Rejecting an apology and hanging up on someone is part of cancel culture 101 and a pillar of the Democrat party,” Boebert said in an Instagram video.

So far, McCarthy is taking her side. When asked on Tuesday what he would do if Democrats tried to censure Boebert, McCarthy said: “After she apologised personally and publicly? I’d vote against it.”

Israel’s health minister wants to make it easier to get abortions

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/israels-health-minister-wants-to-make-it-easier-to-get-abortions-687730

As the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in Washington on the most significant abortion case to reach the court in decades, Israel’s health minister laid out his plans to simplify what he called Israel’s “chauvinistic” abortion process on Wednesday.

“It should be a given — the rights to a woman’s body are the woman’s alone,” Nitzan Horowitz told the Israeli news site Ynet. “Any decision or medical procedure such as the choice of whether to perform an abortion must be in the hands of the woman. We have no moral right to decide for her how to deal with an unwanted pregnancy.”

Horowitz, head of the left-wing Meretz Party, wants to allow women to terminate a pregnancy within its first 12 weeks without approval by a committee, which is currently a requirement for all abortions in Israel.

No get divorce

 

Tel Aviv city councilmember, a former deputy mayor, named as sex abuse suspect

https://www.timesofisrael.com/tel-aviv-city-councilmember-a-former-deputy-mayor-named-as-sex-abuse-suspect/ 

 Arnon Giladi, a former deputy mayor of Tel Aviv who is still a member of the city council, was named Wednesday as the suspect in a case in which a man is claiming the councilmember paid to have sex with him ten years ago, when the accuser was just 15, and tried to pressure him into similar sexual encounters years later.

The Tel Aviv Magistrate’s Court released Giladi from custody Wednesday, prohibiting him from leaving the country or making contact with his accuser for 60 days.

Giladi, who is a member of the city council for the Likud party, has denied the accusations, which were revealed in a series of Hebrew media reports over the past two weeks.

'Good news for dozens of agunot around the world'

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/317923

The Israeli Knesset yesterday passed the Foreign Agunot Law.

The initiator of the law, Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, president of the Conference of European Rabbis and rabbi of Moscow, expressed his appreciation, saying: "Today brings good tidings for dozens of agunot around the world who until now have not been able to force their husbands to litigate before a court in Israel, or alternately to uphold the rulings of those courts abroad. There is a special symbolic significance in the fact that this event takes place on Hanukkah, and brings light and hope to the lives of the agunot in the Diaspora”.

"There is great joy in the fact that all the parties represented in the Knesset, from the haredi United Torah Judaism to the leftist secular Meretz party, supported this important law."

"Today, the people of Zion have shown their unity with Diaspora Jewry."

"The acute significance of the new law lies in the fact that from the point of view of civil law in the Diaspora, it is enough for a husband to provide his wife with a civil divorce to be considered to be divorced, even if the couple was married according to Halakha. As a result, hundreds of recalcitrant husbands, who went on to have new families kept their wives unable to get remarried. This extraordinary law gives Israeli rabbinical courts the jurisdiction to impose sanctions against such husbands, even though they are neither citizens nor residents."

In Call for Accountability, Omar Says Boebert Waged 'Attack on Millions of American Muslims'

 https://www.newsweek.com/call-accountability-omar-says-boebert-waged-attack-millions-american-muslims-1654679

 "When a sitting member of Congress calls a colleague a 'member of the Jihad Squad' and falsifies a story to suggest that I will blow up the Capitol, it is not just an attack on me, but on millions of American Muslims across this country," Omar said at the conference.

CNN suspends Chris Cuomo indefinitely

 https://edition.cnn.com/2021/11/30/media/chris-cuomo-suspended/index.html

 "The New York Attorney General's office released transcripts and exhibits Monday that shed new light on Chris Cuomo's involvement in his brother's defense," a CNN spokesperson said Tuesday evening. "The documents, which we were not privy to before their public release, raise serious questions."

"When Chris admitted to us that he had offered advice to his brother's staff, he broke our rules and we acknowledged that publicly," the spokesperson continued. "But we also appreciated the unique position he was in and understood his need to put family first and job second."

"However, these documents point to a greater level of involvement in his brother's efforts than we previously knew," the spokesperson added. "As a result, we have suspended Chris indefinitely, pending further evaluation."

Supreme Court Set to Hear Arguments in the Mississippi Case Seeking to Overturn Roe v. Wade

 https://time.com/6122144/supreme-court-roe-v-wade-mississippi-abortion/

On Wednesday, the Supreme Court will consider the question of whether all bans on abortion before viability are unconstitutional. Mississippi has also asked the Court directly to overturn Roe, as well as Planned Parenthood v. Casey, a 1992 decision that reaffirmed abortion rights. In the state’s brief, filed over the summer, Mississippi’s Republican attorney general, Lynn Fitch, argued that both precedents are “unprincipled decisions” without basis in the Constitution and that states should be allowed to prohibit abortion if the laws support legitimate government interests.

Fox host Lara Logan compares Fauci to Nazi death camp doctor Mengele

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/fox-host-lara-logan-compares-fauci-to-nazi-death-camp-doctor-mengele/

 Fox Nation host Lara Logan compared Anthony Fauci, the top official handling the United States coronavirus response, to Josef Mengele, the Nazi doctor who conducted experiments on inmates at the Auschwitz death camp.

Logan was speaking on “Fox News Primetime” on Monday about the prospect of new restrictive measures in the wake of the international concern over a new coronavirus variant, dubbed Omicron.

“This is what people say to me, that he doesn’t represent science to them,” Logan said of Fauci, US President Joe Biden’s chief medical adviser, who has become a lightning rod for conservative ire because he has favored restrictions to contain the virus. “He represents Joseph Mengele, the Nazi doctor who did experiments on Jews during the Second World War and in the concentration camps. And I am talking about people all across the world are saying this.”