As officials denounce Nazi rallies in Orlando, DeSantis accuses political opponents of ‘smear’

 https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/crime/os-ne-orlando-nazis-demonstration-reaction-20220131-sog5iicbuvdfpim2apkt6q74ea-story.html

Neo-Nazi demonstrations in Orlando over the weekend drew bipartisan condemnations from state and local officials, but Gov. Ron DeSantis remained silent until Monday afternoon when he responded to a question about the rallies with a tirade against his political enemies.

“So what I’m going to say is these people, these Democrats who are trying to use this as some type of political issue to try to smear me as if I had something to with do that, we’re not playing their game,” the governor said during a press conference in Palm Beach.

He referred to the demonstrators, a group of about 20 shouting antisemitic slurs while waving Nazi flags near a UCF-area shopping plaza on Saturday and on an Interstate 4 overpass on Sunday, as “some jackasses doing this on the street” and said they’d be held accountable by law enforcement.

But he also accused Democrats who called for him to denounce the neo-Nazis — as fellow Republican office-holders including U.S. Sen. Rick Scott and state House Speaker Chris Sprowls had already done — of exploiting the demonstrations for political gain, while also touting his record of support for the Jewish community and Israel.

Despite all his manufactured anger, truth is, DeSantis failed to condemn Nazi demonstrators

 https://www.miamiherald.com/opinion/editorials/article257906108.html

Denounce the Nazi demonstrators in Orlando, Gov. Ron DeSantis. It’s that simple. Say they are abhorrent. Say they are despicable. Say they have no part in this society or this state. But no. Instead, our governor attacked Democrats during a press conference in Palm Beach County on Monday. Dragged in issues like immigration and inflation and crime. Accused unnamed people — Democrats, of course — of trying to “smear” him. Said he wouldn’t “play their game.”

DeSantis says people calling for him to condemn Nazis are trying to 'smear' him

 https://edition.cnn.com/2022/01/31/politics/ron-desantis-anti-semitic-protests/index.html

Condemnations poured in from across the political spectrum on social media. US Rep. Val Demings, a Democrat who represents Orlando, wrote that "America beat their disturbing ideology before and we'll do it again." Sen. Rick Scott, a Republican and former governor, wrote that the recent rise of antisemitism in America was "heartbreaking & disgusting."

"We must always condemn it & continue to stand strongly with our Jewish communities," Scott wrote.

DeSantis, though, had not made a public statement about the incidents until asked about them Monday afternoon at a news conference to address Everglades funding. DeSantis referred to the demonstrators as "some jackass doing this on the street."

Amnesty: Israel practices apartheid against Palestinians in West Bank, Gaza, Israel

 https://www.timesofisrael.com/amnesty-accuses-israel-of-apartheid-both-inside-country-and-in-west-bank-gaza/

Amnesty International said Tuesday that Israel has maintained “a system of oppression and domination” over the Palestinians going all the way back to its establishment in 1948, one that meets the international definition of apartheid.

The accusation was leveled against Israel both within its borders and in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. In a report unveiled in Jerusalem, the group did not directly compare Israel to apartheid South Africa, but said it was evaluating Israel’s policies based on international conventions.

Ahead of the report’s release, Israel called it “false, biased, and antisemitic” and accused the organization of endangering the safety of Jews around the world. The rights group released the document despite calls from Israel to not to do so.

Amnesty called on those actors to “use all political and diplomatic tools to ensure Israeli authorities implement the recommendations outlined in this report and review any cooperation and activities with Israel to ensure that these do not contribute to maintaining the system of apartheid.”

Amb. Herzog: Amnesty denies Israel's right to exist

 https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/321555

"Claiming that Israel has built and operated an apartheid system since its inception in 1948 essentially means that it was established on an immoral foundation and therefore has no right to exist. The report itself is blatantly ideologically motivated, biased and full of lies and inaccuracies. It totally distorts the true meaning of the phrase apartheid to suit its political purposes, and it also totally distorts the true nature of Israel.

Amnesty: We reject Israel's bare faced lie that we are antisemitic

 https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/antisemitism/article-695203

Israel and critics of the report have accused Amnesty of criminalizing the Jewish right to self-determination as an act of apartheid, while upholding the rights of Palestinians to an ethnic nationalist state.

Dinesh D'Souza, America's greatest conservative troll, explained

 https://www.vox.com/2014/10/8/6936717/dinesh-dsouza-explained

On May 31, President Donald Trump, one of America’s premiere conservative trolls, decided to pardon Dinesh D’Souza, a conservative writer and documentarian whose penchant for trolling and needling liberals, and embracing conspiracy theories in the process, rivals that of Trump himself.

Trumpworld adjusts to the growing influence of vaccine skeptics within its ranks

 https://www.politico.com/news/2022/01/31/vaccine-skeptics-gop-politics-trump-00003759

A few weeks ago, Donald Trump decried politicians who did not share their Covid-19 vaccine booster status as “gutless”—a seeming swipe at other Republicans with presidential ambitions, mainly Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, who were keeping mum on the matter.

Days later, Trump took the stage in Arizona and didn’t mention his vaccination status or encourage others to get it, as he had at past rallies. He has not talked about booster shots since.

The silence from the former president is not coincidental. Within Trump’s circles, there is a growing sense that encouraging vaccines too aggressively could carry political risks. Like much of the rest of the GOP, the current calculation has been to rail against vaccine mandates but keep quiet on the push for the vaccines themselves.

Children suffer from neurological effects of COVID, Israeli data shows

 https://www.ynetnews.com/health_science/article/rjixjlbcy

Several cases of children who suffered from seizures have also been identified, and it is still unclear how vast this phenomenon is and how many children suffer from it in Israel.

The Coronavirus National Information and Knowledge Center, an IDF taskforce charged with helping battle the pandemic, said that children who developed encephalitis during or after the disease suffer from symptoms such "as headaches, balance disorder, seizures, and confusion"
"In the United States and South Africa, seizures have been prevalent in children infected with Omicron, and they were described as unusual and unfamiliar."
A recent article in a leading pediatric neurology journal found that 44% of children hospitalized with COVID suffered from at least one neurological phenomenon, including headaches reported in some 20% children, blurred consciousness reported in 16% children, and seizures reported in 8%.

The Great Resignation is fueling a rabbinic hiring crisis that could leave synagogues without leaders

 https://forward.com/fast-forward/481766/the-great-resignation-is-fueling-rabbinic-hiring-crisis/?utm_source=Iterable&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=campaign_3619870

In early December, Judaism’s Conservative movement sent a disquieting message to dozens of synagogues looking for a new rabbi: Many of you won’t make a hire this year.

At least 80 Conservative synagogues anticipated rabbi vacancies — approximately one of every seven affiliated with the movement, the email said. At most, 50 to 60 rabbis would be looking for new jobs.

“We are not presenting this information to alarm, but rather to help you prepare for and navigate the challenges of this search season,” said the email, which was signed by the “career search team” of the Rabbinical Assembly, the Conservative movement’s rabbis association, and United Synagogue of Conservative Judaism, the group that represents its nearly 600 congregations.

‘Omicron the Pandemic Killer’ Idea Ignores Dangers of Long COVID

 https://www.infectioncontroltoday.com/view/-omicron-the-pandemic-killer-idea-ignores-dangers-of-long-covid

A preprint study by Oxford University investigators on the medRxiv website, compares brain scans for SARS-CoV-2 infections in 394 COVID-19 patients who tested positive for the infection against 388 patients in a control group. “We identified significant effects of COVID-19 in the brain with a loss of grey matter in the left parahippocampal gyrus, the left lateral orbitofrontal cortex and the left insula,” the study states. “When looking over the entire cortical surface, these results extended to the anterior cingulate cortex, supramarginal gyrus and temporal pole.”

Omicron amps up concerns about long COVID and its causes

 https://apnews.com/article/long-covid-omicron-research-45986f5b42e47e656d5b385bd51b2bb2

More than a year after a bout with COVID-19, Rebekah Hogan still suffers from severe brain fog, pain and fatigue that leave her unable to do her nursing job or handle household activities.

Long COVID has her questioning her worth as a wife and mother.

“Is this permanent? Is this the new norm?” said the 41-year-old Latham, New York, woman, whose three children and husband also have signs of the condition. “I want my life back.’’

More than a third of COVID-19 survivors by some estimates will develop such lingering problems. Now, with omicron sweeping across the globe, scientists are racing to pinpoint the cause of the bedeviling condition and find treatments before a potential explosion in long COVID cases.

COVID-19 vs. COVID-19 vaccine: Risk of neurological complications

 https://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/covid-19-vs-covid-19-vaccine-risk-of-neurological-complications

A recent study found that the risk of neurological complications was higher in people with a positive COVID-19 test than in those who had received COVID vaccines.

IDF draft bill for haredim passes in Knesset in second attempt

 https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/politics-and-diplomacy/article-695111

Prime Minister Naftali Bennett’s coalition succeeded in passing the first reading of the IDF draft bill for haredim (ultra-Orthodox) in a 51-48 vote on Monday night, two weeks after the coalition embarrassingly failed to pass it.

The bill sets out annual targets for the number of ultra-Orthodox men to be enlisted per year beginning in 2021, with very slowly increasing rates of enlistment for the annual cohort of ultra-Orthodox men turning 18.

Should enlistment targets not be met, the bill provides for a reduction in the state budget for yeshivas, money that is distributed to recognized yeshivas for the purposes of paying students a monthly stipend