Friday, February 17, 2017

A Jewish Reporter Got to Ask Trump a Question. It Didn’t Go Well.


Jake Turx is a newly minted White House correspondent for a publication that has never before had a seat in the White House press corps: Ami Magazine, an Orthodox Jewish weekly based in Brooklyn. He is a singular presence in the briefing room: a young Hasidic Jew with side curls tucked behind his ears and a skullcap embroidered with his Twitter handle.[...]

When President Trump called on him at a news conference on Thursday, saying he was looking for a “friendly reporter,” Mr. Turx was prepared. He had spent an hour crafting a question about a recent surge of anti-Semitism, with a preamble that he hoped would convey his supportive disposition toward Mr. Trump.

But the exchange did not go the way he expected. A few hours later, with the clip replaying on social media and Jewish groups issuing news releases, Mr. Turx, 30, was still reeling. He said in a telephone interview, “Regretfully, today was a day I wish we could have done over.”


His editor, Rabbi Yitzchok Frankfurter, watched aghast from the magazine’s offices as his young correspondent received a tongue-lashing from the president: “It was a very disheartening moment for us, to watch him being berated.”

The exchange began with Mr. Turx standing up from his third-row seat and gesturing slightly toward his fellow reporters:

“Despite what some of my colleagues may have been reporting, I haven’t seen anybody in my community accuse either yourself or anyone on your staff of being anti-Semitic. We understand that you have Jewish grandchildren. You are their zayde,” which is Yiddish for “grandfather” and often a word of great affection.

At that Mr. Trump nodded slightly, and said, “thank you.”

“However,” Mr. Turx continued, “what we are concerned about and what we haven’t really heard being addressed is an uptick in anti-Semitism and how the government is planning to take care of it. There’s been a report out that 48 bomb threats have been made against Jewish centers all across the country in the last couple of weeks. There are people committing anti-Semitic acts or threatening to——”

At that, Mr. Trump interrupted, saying it was “not a fair question.”

“Sit down,” the president commanded. “I understand the rest of your question.”

As Mr. Turx took his seat, Mr. Trump said, “So here’s the story, folks. No. 1, I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life. No. 2, racism, the least racist person.”

Mr. Turx tried to interject, realizing how the encounter had turned. He said he had wanted to clarify that he in no way meant to accuse Mr. Trump of anti-Semitism but instead intended to ask what his administration could do to stop the anti-Semitic incidents.

But Mr. Trump would not let him speak again, saying, “Quiet, quiet, quiet.” As Mr. Turx shook his head with an incredulous look on his face, Mr. Trump accused him of having lied that his question would be straight and simple.

Mr. Trump said, “I find it repulsive. I hate even the question because people that know me. …”

He went on to say that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, during his visit to the United States on Wednesday, had vouched for Mr. Trump as a good friend of Israel and the Jewish people and no anti-Semite.

Mr. Trump concluded that Mr. Turx should have relied on Mr. Netanyahu’s endorsement, “instead of having to get up and ask a very insulting question like that.”

“Just shows you about the press, but that’s the way the press is,” Mr. Trump said.[...]

The Anti-Defamation League issued a statement on Thursday that said, “It is mind-boggling why President Trump prefers to shout down a reporter or brush this off as a political distraction.”

David Harris, chief executive of the American Jewish Committee, said, “Respectfully, Mr. President, please use your bully pulpit not to bully reporters asking questions potentially affecting millions of fellow Americans, but rather to help solve a problem that, for many, is real and menacing.”

Surveys show that Mr. Trump was not the choice of the majority of American Jews, who tend to vote for Democrats and came out in force for Hillary Clinton. Many Jews have been critical of Mr. Trump for not more forcefully denouncing anti-Semites and racists like David Duke, a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan who endorsed Mr. Trump during the campaign. Many Jewish leaders are also wary of Stephen K. Bannon, Mr. Trump’s White House strategist, because of the close affinity between Breitbart News, which he once ran, and the white supremacists in the movement known as the alt-right.

But Mr. Trump was popular among many Orthodox Jews. They were reassured to see the Orthodox Jews in his family and attracted to his hawkish line on Israel, his support of vouchers for religious schools and his promise to ban Muslim immigrants from entering the country.[...]

Yisro; A Friend & The Mizbeach Have Something In Common by Rabbi Shlomo Pollak




The last Pasuk in Parshas Yisro instructs us לא תעלה במעלות על מזבחי - do not use steps to on the Mizbeach... Rashi explains that this is where we learn to construct a ramp (כבש) leading up to the top of the Mizbeach. The reason for this prohibition, Rashi explains from the "Mechilta" is, that the Torah does not want us to make large steps, as that would be disrespectful to the Mizbeach...
Is this commandment exclusive to the Mizbeach, and includes nothing else? Or is this actually inclusive, and we are expected to extrapolate from this Halacha, to other people??  

Rashi teaches us (with a קל וחומר) that our friends are included, and yet we know that there were steps leading up to the Menorah?? So which is it??...

For questions and comments, please email us at salmahshleima@gmail.com


==========================

Message To Jared Kushner From This Week's Medrash



Rashi quotes this Mechiltah at the end of this week's Parshah. However, Rashi doesn't bring down the words about bringing peace between two nations and two governments... which can be referring to Israel and America!!

Let's hope Jared, Netanyahu, and Mr. Freedman are Matzliach in restoring the bond between the American Government and the Israeli Government!!

Good Shabbos. 



Fact-checking President Trump’s news conference lies

NY Times

At one point, Mr. Trump searched for a new face among the veteran White House reporters who were challenging him and settled on a journalist wearing a skullcap whom he clearly did not recognize, hoping for the best.

“Are you a friendly reporter?’’ Mr. Trump said. The response of the reporter, Jake Turx of Ami magazine, a Jewish publication, could not be heard in the room.

The president’s anger then flared when Mr. Turx asked about a rise in anti-Semitic incidents around the country.

Telling Mr. Turx to sit down and accusing him of lying about asking a “very straight, simple question,” Mr. Trump rejected the charge that he is personally anti-Semitic — something the reporter had explicitly said he was not asserting.

Washington Post


“I don’t think there’s ever been a president elected who in this short period of time has done what we’ve done.”
— President Trump, news conference, Feb. 16, 2016

We can’t quite fact check the statement above — it’s certainly open to debate what counts as achievements — but we can fact-check 15 dubious claims made by the president in his lengthy news conference. Some of these are from his greatest hits of falsehoods, which we have fact-checked many times before. The claims are addressed in the order in which Trump made them.

“A new Rasmussen poll just came out just a very short while ago, and it has our approval rating at 55 percent and going up.”

Trump has a tendency to focus only on polls that are good for him. Rasmussen has a right-leaning bias and earns a C+ grade from FiveThirtyEight.com. Other polls show Trump with significantly lower approval ratings, such as Gallup (40 percent) and Pew Research Center (39 percent).

“Trump’s overall job approval is much lower than those of prior presidents in their first weeks in office,” Pew said. “Nearly half (46%) strongly disapprove of his job performance, while 29% strongly approve.”

But Trump apparently dismisses such findings:

Follow
Donald J. Trump

Any negative polls are fake news, just like the CNN, ABC, NBC polls in the election. Sorry, people want border security and extreme vetting.

“Plants and factories are already starting to move back into the United States, and big league — Ford, General Motors, so many of them.”

Trump keeps giving himself credit for business decisions made before he became president. Ford’s decision has more to do with the company’s long-term goal — particularly its plans to invest in electric vehicles — than with the administration. Here’s what Ford chief executive Mark Fields said about the company’s decision to abandon plans to open a factory in Mexico: “The reason that we are not building the new plant, the primary reason, is just demand has gone down for small cars.”

“To be honest, I inherited a mess. It’s a mess. At home and abroad, a mess.”

Trump indicated he was backing up this statement by noting that “jobs are pouring out of the country…. The Middle East is a disaster. North Korea.”

The state of foreign policy is open to interpretation — Trump claimed he was developing “a plan for the defeat of ISIS,” the terrorist group in Iraq and Syria.

But the economy was in pretty good shape when Trump became president, especially compared to the economic crisis that Obama inherited in 2009. In January 2009, coinciding with the last labor report of the George W. Bush administration, nearly 800,000 jobs disappeared, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, compared to the nearly 230,000 jobs added in January 2017. (Trump has given himself credit for the January numbers, but the data was collected when Obama still held office.)

“We got 306 [electoral college votes] because people came out and voted like they’ve never seen before, so that’s the way it goes. I guess it was the biggest electoral college win since Ronald Reagan.”

This statement is wrong on several levels.

Trump ended up with 304 electoral votes, because two electors he earned voted for someone else.

Trump did get more raw votes than any other Republican candidate in history — but he also earned 2.9 million fewer votes than Hillary Clinton. Another 8 million people voted for third-party or write-in candidates. Moreover, turnout of the voting-age population (54.6 percent) was lower than in the elections of 2012, 2008 and 2004.

Finally, Trump was wrong on the size of his electoral college win. Of the nine presidential elections since 1984, Trump’s electoral college win ranks seventh. When a reporter pointed out his error, Trump first indicated that he was talking about Republican candidates. But George H.W. Bush received 426 electoral votes in 1988. Trump’s response: “I don’t know, I was given that information.”[...]

You [the media] have a lower approval rate than Congress. I think that’s right.”

Trump indicated that he wasn’t sure if this assertion is correct. It is not. The public’s trust in the media has certainly fallen over the years. But a 2016 Gallup poll shows that Congress is viewed positively by 9 percent of respondents, compared to 20 percent for newspapers and 21 percent for television.

That’s not a high confidence level — besides Congress, only “big business” ranks lower than the media — but it’s enough to make Trump’s claim incorrect.

“When WikiLeaks, which I had nothing to do with, comes out and happens to give, they’re not giving classified information.”

WikiLeaks actually released hundreds of thousands of classified State Department cables, in a significant blow to U.S. diplomacy.

“Nobody mentions that Hillary received the questions to the debates.”

Trump overstates the disclosure about Clinton reportedly getting a single debate question. During the Democratic primaries, a debate was held in Flint, Mich., to focus on the water crisis. Donna Brazile, then an analyst with CNN, sent an email to the Clinton campaign saying that a woman with a rash from lead poisoning was going to ask what Clinton as president could do the help the people of Flint.

There’s no indication Clinton was told this information, but in any case it’s a pretty obvious question for a debate being held in Flint. In her answer, Clinton committed to remove lead from water systems across the country within five years. Lee-Anne Waters, who asked the question, later said Clinton’s answer “made me vomit in my mouth” because that was too long to wait in Flint.

You know, they say I’m close to Russia. Hillary Clinton gave away 20 percent of the uranium in the United States. She’s close to Russia.”

Trump repeated this claim, worthy of Four Pinocchios, several times during the news conference.

An entire chapter is dedicated to this uranium deal in Peter Schweizer’s “Clinton Cash.” In the book, Schweizer reveals ties between the Clinton Foundation and investors who stood to gain from a deal that required State Department approval.

Trump’s claim suggests the State Department had sole approval authority, but the department is one of nine agencies in the Committee on Foreign Investments in the United States to vet and sign off on all U.S. transactions involving foreign governments. As we’ve noted before, there is no evidence Clinton herself got involved in the deal personally, and it is highly questionable that this deal even rose to the level of the secretary of state. The Nuclear Regulatory Commission also needed to approve, and did approve, the transfer.[...]

“Russia is a ruse. I have nothing to do with Russia. Haven’t made a phone call to Russia in years. Don’t speak to people from Russia.”

The Wall Street Journal reported during the campaign that before Trump gave a foreign-policy speech in April, he met with the Russian ambassador: “A few minutes before he made those remarks [calling for improved relations with Russia], Mr. Trump met at a VIP reception with Russia’s ambassador to the U.S., Sergey Ivanovich Kislyak. Mr. Trump warmly greeted Mr. Kislyak and three other foreign ambassadors who came to the reception.”

Trump also is being misleading when he says has “nothing to do with Russia.” Trump repeatedly sought deals in Russia. In 1987, he went to Moscow to find a site for a luxury hotel; no deal emerged. In 1996, he sought to build a condominium complex in Russia; that also did not succeed. In 2005, Trump signed a one-year deal with a New York development company to explore a Trump Tower in Moscow, but the effort fizzled.

In a 2008 speech, Donald Trump Jr. made it clear that the Trumps want to do business in Russia, but were finding it difficult. “Russians make up a pretty disproportionate cross-section of a lot of our assets,” Trump’s son said at a real estate conference in 2008, according to an account posted on the website of eTurboNews, a trade publication. “We see a lot of money pouring in from Russia.”

Alan Garten, general counsel of the Trump Organization, told The Washington Post in May: “I have no doubt, as a company, I know we’ve looked at deals in Russia. And many of the former Russian republics.” [...]

Thursday, February 16, 2017

Police seek public's aid in case against child molester


The police in Bnei Brak asked the public for help in determining what other cases a suspect in the violent assault on a six-year-old child may have been involved in.

Last Sunday, a couple came to the Bnei Brak police station and complained to police that their 6-year-old daughter was attacked by a stranger who took her to an apartment in the area while she was on the way to her kindergarten. The police initially arrested a 45 year old haredi lawyer on suspicion of having committed the attack, but he was later cleared of any suspicion and released.

The police also arrested another man, a 22-year old relative of the child. The suspect confessed to the attack and to having committed similar attacks during the interrogation.

The suspect's remand was extended by five days following his confession to having committed other assaults against minors. In addition, the police are seeking the aid of anyone who has information about the suspect's earlier attacks.

"Anyone who has information is asked to contact any police station or call the police hotline 100 and telephone 03-6104444," the police said.




ממה לאחר ששוחרר עורך הדין, בית משפט האריך את מעצרו של ברוך גנץ, בן 22 מבני ברק שנעצר במקביל לשחרורו.

ביום ראשון השבוע, הגיעו זוג הורים לתחנת המשטרה בבני ברק והתלוננו בפני השוטרים כי בתם בת ה-6 הותקפה על ידי אדם זר שלקח אותה לדירה באיזור, בעת שהייתה בדרכה לגן. בעקבות כך, המשטרה ביצעה פעולות חקירה ועצרה עורך דין חרדי מירושלים, ובית המשפט האריך את מעצרו. לאחר שהוכיח כי באותה העת שהה בבית דין הרבני ברחובות, הוא נוקה מכל חשד ושוחרר ללא תנאים.

במקביל לשחרורו, נעצר אדם אחר, קרוב משפחתו, בחשד שהוא זה שביצע את המעשה החמור בילדה. החשוד, בן 22 תושב בני ברק. בחקירתו, קשר את עצמו למעשה וסיפר על מעשים נוספים. ל'בחדרי חרדים' נודע, כי בדירה נמצא כובע עליו היה רשום שמו של החשוד ובעקבות כך הוא נעצר.

"בשלב זה מסר החשוד בחקירה פתוחה שורה של אירועים בהם על פי החשד ביצע עבירות בקטינים" אמרה השופטת רונית פוזננסקי-כץ מבית משפט השלום בתל אביב, "הוא פירט בהרחבה בפני החוקרים שורה של מעשים ופגיעות בקטינות" הוסיפה. בסיום הדיון האריכה את מעצרו בחמישה ימים, עד ליום שני הבא.

פרקליטו עו"ד עומר בללי אומר בתגובה ל'בחדרי חרדים' "אנחנו עדים למקרה מהחמורים ביותר של פגיעה בזכויותיו של חשוד בגיל צעיר מאוד, נורמטיבי שאינו מבין את מהות ההליך". לדבריו "המשטרה פגעה באופן קשה בזכויות שלו ולטעמנו באופן ששומט את הקרקע תחת הדברים שהוא אמר בחקירה" בה הודה בשורה של מעשים חמורים, כאמור. "אני סבור שתוכן הדברים שמסר בחקירה אינו קביל בשל הפגיעה בזכויותיו ואלה דברים שיתבררו בהמשך, גם בית המשפט נתן את דעתו עליהם".

Court files indictment against haredi yeshiva dean


The Central District Attorney filed on Tuesday an indictment against a haredi yeshiva dean who is suspected of criminal acts against minors.

According to Kikar News, the dean in question is a resident of a central haredi city. He left Israel after rumors about his behavior began to spread, and returned six weeks ago.

He was not arrested upon his return to Israel, and planned to accept position in a different yeshiva. However, he was arrested two weeks after his arrival and has since been interrogated many times. Several victims have come forward to complain, and there are other testimonies against him as well.

The suspect is now under house arrest for 32 days, after two former students filed claims against him, saying he attacked them. [...]

Yitro 75 - Honoring Parents and Abuse by Allan Katz


The Fifth Commandment, honoring parents is claimed by the psychologist Alice Miller to be the cause of more suffering for children who are victims of parental ' abuse ' and exacerbate their emotional distress and disability. After reading Dr Sorotzkin's article ( a must read )  Honoring Parents who are abusive  , the problem is not with the Torah and the commandment to honor parents , but ignorance on the part of many about the parameters and ' gedarim ' of the Mitzvah and the psychological issues involved. Kids who are emotionally abused have a natural tendency to deny or minimize the harmful nature of the parental abuse and blame themselves for being bad kids. This causes a variety of emotional and behavior problems. There is an  unconscious  need to believe that everything that our parents did for us, was really for our own good and was done out of love. It is too threatening for many kids to even entertain the possibility that our parents weren't well-meaning or even competent. In order to show what was done to them was not that bad and out of love, they do the same things to their own children that their parents did to them. So obligating abused children to unconditionally honor abusive parents not only causes more damage but will serve to perpetuate abuse. Successful treatment and genuine reconciliation with parents means that care givers have to overcome the child's resistance to acknowledging the abusive nature of parent's behavior and the role of their parents in their difficulties. When the child is encouraged to externalize and direct their anger to the appropriate people they don't repress the anger which can cause excessive guilt feelings, self -punishment and other psychological symptoms. This allows parents to take responsibility for their actions, admit their wrong doing, do teshuvah and ask for forgiveness. Unfortunately, children are encouraged to forgive their parents even when their parents have not apologized and done teshuvah. They claim that blaming parents for ones' difficulties is not a good place to be and one has to move on and take responsibility for one's life. This view suppresses and perpetuates the negativity and gets in the way of true reconciliation.

In most cases of abuse, parents are doing the best they can in difficult circumstances and often the advice they are getting makes things much worse. But being in a position of weakness, they are often motivated by unacknowledged, unhealthy and subconscious emotional needs, especially to be in control in their mistreatment of their children. Disrespect is the weapon of the weak and it becomes hard for them to convince others that they are acting out of good intentions for the child's good. In a nutshell, children are not obligated to honor abusive parents because   a) they don't have to sacrifice their emotional well-being in order to do the mitzvah of honoring parents, b) one may be lenient in a mitzvah of Love your neighbor as yourself –ואהבת את רעך כמוך   if there is a benefit c) children can defend themselves against abuse or false accusations and admonish – tochacha parents who violate Halacha, d) the abusive parent is called a wicked person - רשע and there is no obligation to honor a parent who is a ra'sha.

    Today the problem with abusive parents is less about hitting and being physical but more about emotional abuse. This includes persistent criticism, sarcasm, hostility, shaming and blaming and conditional parenting. Conditional parenting is making the level of care, love and acceptance you show to a child dependent and contingent on his behaviors, actions and how well he does at school or on the sports field. It loves them for what they do and not for what they are. It is using love and acceptance to try and leverage good behavior and test scores. When a parent's love depends on what children do, children come to disown parts of them that aren't valued and eventually regard themselves as worthy only when they act or think in specific ways. When kids receive affection with strings attached they accept themselves only with strings attached while kids who accepted unconditionally feel better about themselves as good people. Most parents say that they love their kids unconditionally, but what is important is how kids experience our 'love' and the way we treat them. Do kids feel that when my dad disagrees with me , I know that he still loves me and even during the worst conflicts with my mom she maintained a sense of  loving connection with me. The problem is not only with bad advice from experts – Baumrind - says that kids must earn what they get including love and loving kids unconditionally will encourage a kid to be selfish and demanding. Love and acceptance is a tool to help you modify your child's behavior and gain control.

Instead of our need to control children and get them to honor us, we should be asking ' what do they need from us'? We need to address their physical, emotional needs and needs for love, respect and acceptance. The Chazon Ish said that what children need more than love is respect and unconditional acceptance. The Steipler, explained to his daughter who asked him why he did not wake her up in the night when he was not feeling well. He deprived her of the mitzvah of honoring parents. The Steipler answered that his commandment – mitzvah was not to impose himself on her, while her mitzvah was honoring parents. In another story a parent complained to the Steipler about his uncompliant son who was not listening to him. The Steipler answered that the father could lower the rope, not make demands on the child and be ' mochel - forgive  ' him. If the father made demands on his son that he knows that the son won't comply with , the father in a way is responsible for the child's behavior and he transgresses the law of ' lifnei ever lo ti'tein michshol '- do not put a stumbling block in front of the blind. Instead of control and obedience we can promote cooperation and relationship and build trust by meeting children's needs including love and unconditional acceptance.

 Parents complained to the therapist Barbara Colorosa about their teenage son. Until recently he was a good boy who always listened to us. Now he is with his friends and he is listening to them. The therapist replied that nothing has changed – before he was listening to you, now he is listening to his friends. The purpose of parenting and education is to raise children who listen to their inner voices and values and do what is right, do what reflects who they are and what they believe in.

Vancouver LGBT activists rally against Black Lives Matter plan to shun cops


Arguing that the “policing institution is an instrument of state violence and oppression,” Black Lives Matter has set out to make Vancouver the third Canadian city to exclude police from its annual pride parade.

In response, an ad-hoc coalition of some of the city’s most seasoned LGBT activists have begun organizing to stop them.

“Absolutely no banning of the police in Vancouver Pride,” said Metis trans activist Sandy-Leo Laframboise, a 46-year veteran of LGBT organizing.

“Banning the police from the pride parade will undermine our commitment to diversity and inclusion and all the work we’ve done,” said Sandy-Leo. “They want to remove an entity that we’ve been working with for over 40 years.”

Sandy-Leo is one of four who launched “Our Pride Includes Our Police,” a petition resisting a request by Black Lives Matter to remove uniformed police from the Vancouver Pride Parade.[...]

Earlier this month, Black Lives Matter organizers were successful in prompting police forces in both Toronto and Halifax to withdraw from their cities’ respective pride parades.

Gordon Hardy told Postmedia that Black Lives Matter can join the Vancouver parade and protest as much as they like.

“What we object to is that they come along and start telling the rest of us in the community who can and cannot be in the parade,” he said.

In a petition launched earlier this month, Black Lives Matter Vancouver called on the Vancouver Pride Society to end “any and all presence of uniformed police officers.”[...]

Life sentence is being asked once again for feminist, writer, sociologist, activist Pinar Selek who has been on trial, imprisoned, tortured and acquitted again and again, for the last 19 years

Received this letter from Mehmet Atak. 

Dear all,
 
I often sent you many e:mails about Asli Erdogan, during the five months that she was kept in prison unlawfully, whose books had been translated into 18 languages and who had received many internaional awards. In my e:mails, I mentioned about human rights and freedom of expression violations in Turkey, as well. Moreover, I sent you the translations of the reports of 17 criminal lawyers (judge, lawyer, academician) with different political views, who said that all phases of lawsuit and arrest were unlawful in accordance with the existing Turkish legal system after they had reviewed Asli’s court file.
 
In  some of my e:mails, I wrote you that targeting Asli had been a warning for the other white collar citizens in Turkey. Asli is a woman, who graduated from most elite schools in Turkey like Robert College and Bogazici University, studied in “God particle” project at Cern, later when she began to write, whose books were printed in many countries and who received many international awards, and she has been targeted upon her not hesitating to oppose to authority about the rights of humans, animals and environment and discriminated groups, Kurdish people being in the first place, instead of locating at one of the highest levels of the social pyramid. “Look what happenned to Asli Erdogan; if you do not watch your steps and oppose, the same could happen to you easily” has been simply wanted to be told to the other white collar Turks.
 
A sociologist, a writer (P.E.N. member) and specially an anti-militarist and a peace activist Pinar Selek has reached to a climax in “being targeted”, who has been stood trial for the last 19 years as a legal scandal. What has been done to Pinar is almost the same with what has been done to American opponent actor Jean Seberg as told in the FBI reports published as a book by Romain Gary after her suicide.
 
As the exact opposite of Durkheim and Mauss way in sociology, Pinar is a sociologist human who does not see the humans in her researches as subjects of the research, but as humans; who does not close the street childs, immigrants, transvestites, women who were violently victimized and many others who were discriminated into her book after her research was completed; who set up workshops and walk with them as a human. She is a person who set up workshops with many discriminated people at feminist Amargi Cooperative and Journal which she had founded and help them to open new doors in their lives. Today there are journalists, writers, actors, etc. who had been from the lowest levels of the social pyramid and discriminated the most, came out from these workshops.
 
Pinar was arrested in 1998 for the first time with the accusation of making PKK propaganda while she was making researches for her sociology book published with the name of “Could Not Make Peace” on PKK and Kurd issues. Pinar was exposed to heavy torture like palestinian hanging, electroshock and electrifying her skull during interrogation and jail. (She has a report from Berlin Überleben Therapy Center for Torture Victims which confirms these tortures.)
 
Pinar was acquitted two times in 2002 and 2006.
 
Despite these acquittals, a case was opened again against Pinar in November 2010. This time Pinar was accused of bombing Misir Carsisi (small covered bazaar at Eminonu). Though not involved at the trial, various state institutions sent eight sacks of false evidence to the courst against Pinar, however, there was not even one rational evidence to tie Pinar to the explosion. During the session in November 2011, her acquittal was declared by the court. But, in January 2013, Supreme Court reversed the judgement of this court and requested heavy life sentence for Pinar again. At the end of new trial period, in December 2014, the court declared acquittal for Pinar, against whom there was not even one rational evidence (4th acquittal). 
 
Pinar was seen as a threat to be punished because “she saw the game and she said that she had seen the game” as R. D. Laig said as a black fish, instead of being a white girl having her place in the pyramid for the sake of the system.   
 
During the last days of 2010, I staged a play for Pinar with the name of “A Fairy Tale Spring (Pinar): Government Does Not Kill One by only Taking His/Her Life” which I had written by using Pinar’s fairy tales. I believe that the name of the play is enough to tell what has been done to Pinar by itself.
 
After her book “Could not Make Peace” had been published in 2004, Pinar published an important second sociological book about trans-individuals and LGBTI in 2008: “Masks, Cavalry, Nellies”. In 2011, Pinar published an important third sociological book about militarism, military service and consciencious objection: “Being Man by Crawling Along”. She received doctor’s degree in political sciences from Strasbourg University in 2014 with her thesis titled “Dissident Movements Interactions with Eachother in Turkey”.
 
Moreover, Pinar wrote two fairy tale books for children after 2010 with the names of “Green Girl” and “Water Drop” and in 2011 a novel named “a place where passengers frequently stop by”.
 
Chief Prosecutor of the Supreme Court demanded once again the reversal of the acquittal of Pinar Selek in January 2017 despite expert reports proved the explosion in Misir Carsisi had been due to gas tube not to bombing which Pinar had been irrelative and who was acquitted four times and was on exhile since 2009.
Pinar means “spring” in English. Despite to all she was exposed to, Pinar, kept smiling, writing and researching; she ran by opening water ditches for the discriminated people. In today’s circumstances this Spring will dry up the moment she returns to her body of water, her homeland. Please do whatever you can for this Spring not to dry up.
 
 You can learn more information from Ms Yasemin Oz who is a feminist lawyer land also the International Spokesperson of Justice for Pinar Selek Committe. (yaseminsevval@yahoo.com)
 
Or you can contact directly to Pınar (selekpinar@gmail.com)
 
Best regards,
 
 ps. In February 7, 2017, by way of statutory decree no. 686, 330 academicians, 115 of which are from Academicians Initiative for Peace, from Turkey’s long established universities were dismissed from profession.

A crush of crises all but buries the young Trump White House


Less than a month into his tenure, Donald Trump’s White House is beset by a crush of crises.

Divisions, dysfunction and high-profile exits have left the young administration nearly paralyzed and allies wondering how it will reboot. The bold policy moves that marked Trump’s first days in office have slowed to a crawl, a tacit admission that he and his team had not thoroughly prepared an agenda.

Nearly a week after the administration’s travel ban was struck down by a federal court, the White House is still struggling to regroup and outline its next move on that signature issue. It’s been six days since Trump — who promised unprecedented levels of immediate action — has announced a major new policy directive or legislative plan.

His team is riven by division and plagued by distractions. This week alone, controversy has forced out both his top national security aide and his pick for labor secretary.

“Another day in paradise,” Trump quipped Wednesday after his meeting with retailers was interrupted by reporters’ questions about links between his campaign staff and Russian officials.

Fellow Republicans have begun voicing their frustration and open anxiety that the Trump White House will derail their high hopes for legislative action.

Sen. John Thune of South Dakota demanded Wednesday that the White House “get past the launch stage.”

“There are things we want to get done here, and we want to have a clear-eyed focus on our agenda, and this constant disruption and drumbeat with these questions that keep being raised is a distraction,” said Thune.

Sen. John McCain of Arizona blasted the White House’s approach to national security as “dysfunctional,” asking: “Who is in charge? I don’t know of anyone outside of the White House who knows.”

Such criticism from allies is rare during what is often viewed as a honeymoon period for a new president. But Trump, an outsider who campaigned almost as much against his party as for it, has only a tiny reservoir of good will to protect him. His administration has made uneven attempts to work closely with lawmakers and its own agencies.

Officials have begun trying to change some tactics, and some scenery, with the hope of steadying the ship. The White House announced Wednesday that Trump, who has often mentioned how much he loves adoring crowds and affirmation from his supporters, would hold a campaign-style rally in Florida on Saturday, the first of his term.

The event, according to White House press secretary Sean Spicer, was being “run by the campaign” and it is listed on Trump’s largely dormant 2016 campaign website. No other details were offered.

To be sure, pinballing from one crisis to the next is not unprecedented, particularly for a White House still finding its footing. But the disruptions that have swirled around Trump achieved hurricane force early and have not let up.

On Wednesday his choice for labor secretary, fast food CEO Andy Puzder, withdrew his nomination while the administration continued to navigate the fallout from the forced resignation of national security adviser Michael Flynn. Flynn was ousted on the grounds that he misled the vice president about his contacts with a Russian ambassador.

Flynn’s departure marked the return of an issue Trump is not likely to move past quickly. The president’s relationship with Moscow will continue to be scrutinized and investigated, sometimes apparently fueled by leaks from within his own administration.

Trump on Wednesday blasted what he called “illegal leaked” information.

Not just leaks, but also legal woes, have derailed Trump’s early efforts.

After the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals rejected his immigration ban last week, Trump emphatically tweeted “SEE YOU IN COURT!” and the administration vowed that it would re-appeal the block and either revise its original executive order or write a new one from scratch.

When the dust settled, a new statement was printed out and handed to journalists, stating, “to clarify,” that all options were on the table. But despite Trump’s vow to have a plan in place by Tuesday, one has not emerged.[...]

“He’s a one-man band for all practical purposes, it’s how he ran his business,” said Bill Daley, a former White House chief of staff under Obama. “When you try to take that and everything revolves around that and he is the beginning, middle and end of everything, that is a tough model. His campaign was the same way.”

Trump’s new administration has also been plagued by ethics brushfires that are taking up the time and energy of communications and legal staff members.

In one incident that sparked bipartisan condemnation and calls for ethics investigations, White House counselor Kellyanne Conway said on TV that people should “go buy Ivanka’s stuff” — an endorsement that came after the president disparaged Nordstrom for dropping his daughter’s fashion line. And congressional Republicans also are demanding to know more about the security measures in place at Mar-a-Lago, Trump’s weekend White House, where resort members photographed him during a dinnertime national security strategy session after North Korea launched a missile.

“When you are the White House, every day is a crisis. Crisis is routine,” said Ari Fleischer, who was President George W. Bush’s first press secretary. “But when they all come right on top of each other, particularly at the start of an administration, it starts to create the feeling that they don’t know how to run the place.”

Wednesday, February 15, 2017

HOW A PRO-PALESTINIAN AMERICAN REPORTER CHANGED HIS VIEWS ON ISRAEL AND THE CONFLICT

Jerusalem Post  BYHUNTER STUART

In the summer of 2015, just three days after I moved to Israel for a year-and-a-half stint freelance reporting in the region, I wrote down my feelings about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. A friend of mine in New York had mentioned that it would be interesting to see if living in Israel would change the way I felt. My friend probably suspected that things would look differently from the front-row seat, so to speak.

Boy was he right.

Before I moved to Jerusalem, I was very pro-Palestinian. Almost everyone I knew was. I grew up Protestant in a quaint, politically correct New England town; almost everyone around me was liberal. And being liberal in America comes with a pantheon of beliefs: You support pluralism, tolerance and diversity. You support gay rights, access to abortion and gun control.

The belief that Israel is unjustly bullying the Palestinians is an inextricable part of this pantheon. Most progressives in the US view Israel as an aggressor, oppressing the poor noble Arabs who are being so brutally denied their freedom.

“I believe Israel should relinquish control of all of the Gaza Strip and most of the West Bank,” I wrote on July 11, 2015, from a park near my new apartment in Jerusalem’s Baka neighborhood. “The occupation is an act of colonialism that only creates suffering, frustration and despair for millions of Palestinians.”

Perhaps predictably, this view didn’t play well among the people I met during my first few weeks in Jerusalem, which, even by Israeli standards, is a conservative city. My wife and I had moved to the Jewish side of town, more or less by chance ‒ the first Airbnb host who accepted our request to rent a room happened to be in the Nachlaot neighborhood where even the hipsters are religious. As a result, almost everyone we interacted with was Jewish Israeli and very supportive of Israel. I didn’t announce my pro-Palestinian views to them ‒ I was too afraid. But they must have sensed my antipathy (I later learned this is a sixth sense Israelis have).

During my first few weeks in Jerusalem, I found myself constantly getting into arguments about the conflict with my roommates and in social settings. Unlike waspy New England, Israel does not afford the privilege of politely avoiding unpleasant political conversations. Outside of the Tel Aviv bubble, the conflict is omnipresent; it affects almost every aspect of life. Avoiding it simply isn’t an option.

During one such argument, one of my roommates ‒ an easygoing American-Jewish guy in his mid-30s ‒ seemed to be suggesting that all Palestinians were terrorists. I became annoyed and told him it was wrong to call all Palestinians terrorists, that only a small minority supported terrorist attacks. My roommate promptly pulled out his laptop, called up a 2013 Pew Research poll and showed me the screen. I saw that Pew’s researchers had done a survey of thousands of people across the Muslim world, asking them if they supported suicide bombings against civilians in order to “defend Islam from its enemies.” The survey found that 62 percent of Palestinians believed such terrorist acts against civilians were justified in these circumstances. And not only that, the Palestinian territories were the only place in the Muslim world where a majority of citizens supported terrorism; everywhere else it was a minority ‒ from Lebanon and Egypt to Pakistan and Malaysia.

I didn’t let my roommate win the argument early morning hours. But the statistic stuck with me.

Less than a month later, in October 2015, a wave of Palestinian terrorist attacks against Jewish-Israelis began. Nearly every day, an angry, young Muslim Palestinian was stabbing or trying to run over someone with his car. A lot of the violence was happening in Jerusalem, some of it just steps from where my wife and I had moved into an apartment of our own, and lived and worked and went grocery shopping.

At first, I’ll admit, I didn’t feel a lot of sympathy for Israelis. Actually, I felt hostility. I felt that they were the cause of the violence. I wanted to shake them and say, “Stop occupying the West Bank, stop blockading Gaza, and Palestinians will stop killing you!” It seemed so obvious to me; how could they not realize that all this violence was a natural, if unpleasant, reaction to their government’s actions?

IT WASN’T until the violence became personal that I began to see the Israeli side with greater clarity. As the “Stabbing Intifada” (as it later became known) kicked into full gear, I traveled to the impoverished East Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan for a story I was writing.

As soon as I arrived, a Palestinian kid who was perhaps 13 years old pointed at me and shouted “Yehud!” which means “Jew” in Arabic. Immediately, a large group of his friends who’d been hanging out nearby were running toward me with a terrifying sparkle in their eyes. “Yehud! Yehud!” they shouted. I felt my heart start to pound. I shouted at them in Arabic “Ana mish yehud! Ana mish yehud!” (“I’m not Jewish, I’m not Jewish!”) over and over. I told them, also in Arabic, that I was an American journalist who “loved Palestine.” They calmed down after that, but the look in their eyes when they first saw me is something I’ll never forget. Later, at a house party in Amman, I met a Palestinian guy who’d grown up in Silwan. “If you were Jewish, they probably would have killed you,” he said.

I made it back from Silwan that day in one piece; others weren’t so lucky. In Jerusalem, and across Israel, the attacks against Jewish Israelis continued. My attitude began to shift, probably because the violence was, for the first time, affecting me directly.

I found myself worrying that my wife might be stabbed while she was on her way home from work. Every time my phone lit up with news of another attack, if I wasn’t in the same room with her, I immediately sent her a text to see if she was OK. [...]   

Being personally affected by the conflict caused me to question how forgiving I’d been of Palestinian violence previously. Liberals, human-rights groups and most of the media, though, continued to blame Israel for being attacked. Ban Ki-moon, for example, who at the time was the head of the United Nations, said in January 2016 ‒ as the streets of my neighborhood were stained with the blood of innocent Israeli civilians ‒ that it was “human nature to react to occupation.” In fact, there is no justification for killing someone, no matter what the political situation may or may not be, and Ban’s statement rankled me.

SIMILARLY, THE way that international NGOs, European leaders and others criticized Israel for its “shoot to kill” policy during this wave of terrorist attacks began to annoy me more and more.

In almost any nation, when the police confront a terrorist in the act of killing people, they shoot him dead and human-rights groups don’t make a peep. This happens in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Bangladesh; it happens in Germany and England and France and Spain, and it sure as hell happens in the US (see San Bernardino and the Orlando nightclub massacre, the Boston Marathon bombings and others). Did Amnesty International condemn Barack Obama or Abdel Fattah al-Sisi or Angela Merkel or François Hollande when their police forces killed a terrorist? Nope. But they made a point of condemning Israel.

What’s more, I started to notice that the media were unusually fixated on highlighting the moral shortcomings of Israel, even as other countries acted in infinitely more abominable ways. If Israel threatened to relocate a collection of Palestinian agricultural tents, as they did in the West Bank village of Sussiya in the summer of 2015, for example, the story made international headlines for weeks. The liberal outrage was endless. Yet, when Egypt’s president used bulldozers and dynamite to demolish an entire neighborhood in the Sinai Peninsula in the name of national security, people scarcely noticed.

Where do these double standards come from?

I’ve come to believe it’s because the Israeli-Palestinian conflict appeals to the appetites of progressive people in Europe, the US and elsewhere. They see it as a white, first world people beating on a poor, third world one. It’s easier for them to become outraged watching two radically different civilizations collide than it is watching Alawite Muslims kill Sunni Muslims in Syria, for example, because to a Western observer the difference between Alawite and Sunni is too subtle to fit into a compelling narrative that can be easily summarized on Facebook.

Unfortunately for Israel, videos on social media that show US-funded Jewish soldiers shooting tear gas at rioting Arab Muslims is Hollywood-level entertainment and fits perfectly with the liberal narrative that Muslims are oppressed and Jewish Israel is a bully.

I admire the liberal desire to support the underdog. They want to be on the right side of history, and their intentions are good. The problem is that their beliefs often don’t square with reality.[...]

THERE’S AN old saying that goes, “If you want to change someone’s mind, first make them your friend.” The friends I made in Israel forever changed my mind about the country and about the Jewish need for a homeland. But I also spent a lot of time traveling in the Palestinian territories getting to know Palestinians. I spent close to six weeks visiting Nablus and Ramallah and Hebron, and even the Gaza Strip. I met some incredible people in these places; I saw generosity and hospitality unlike anywhere else I’ve ever traveled to. I’ll be friends with some of them for the rest of my life. But almost without fail, their views of the conflict and of Israel and of Jewish people in general was extremely disappointing.

First of all, even the kindest, most educated, upper-class Palestinians reject 100 percent of Israel ‒ not just the occupation of East Jerusalem and the West Bank. They simply will not be content with a two-state solution ‒ what they want is to return to their ancestral homes in Ramle and Jaffa and Haifa and other places in 1948 Israel, within the Green Line. And they want the Israelis who live there now to leave. They almost never speak of coexistence; they speak of expulsion, of taking back “their” land.

To me, however morally complicated the creation of Israel may have been, however many innocent Palestinians were killed and displaced from their homes in 1948 and again in 1967, Israel is now a fact, accepted by almost every government in the world (including many in the Middle East). But the ongoing desire of Palestinians to wipe Israel off the map is unproductive and backward- looking and the West must be very careful not to encourage it.

The other thing is that a large percentage of Palestinians, even among the educated upper class, believe that most Islamic terrorism is actually engineered by Western governments to make Muslims look bad. I know this sounds absurd. It’s a conspiracy theory that’s comical until you hear it repeated again and again as I did. I can hardly count how many Palestinians told me the stabbing attacks in Israel in 2015 and 2016 were fake or that the CIA had created ISIS.[...]

USUALLY WHEN I travel, I try to listen to people without imposing my own opinion. To me that’s what traveling is all about ‒ keeping your mouth shut and learning other perspectives. But after 3-4 weeks of traveling in Palestine, I grew tired of these conspiracy theories.

“Arabs need to take responsibility for certain things,” I finally shouted at a friend I’d made in Nablus the third or fourth time he tried to deflect blame from Muslims for Islamic terrorism. “Not everything is America’s fault.” My friend seemed surprised by my vehemence and let the subject drop ‒ obviously I’d reached my saturation point with this nonsense.

I know a lot of Jewish-Israelis who are willing to share the land with Muslim Palestinians, but for some reason finding a Palestinian who feels the same way was near impossible. Countless Palestinians told me they didn’t have a problem with Jewish people, only with Zionists. They seemed to forget that Jews have been living in Israel for thousands of years, along with Muslims, Christians, Druse, atheists, agnostics and others, more often than not, in harmony. Instead, the vast majority believe that Jews only arrived in Israel in the 20th century and, therefore, don’t belong here.[...]

I’m back in the US now, living on the north side of Chicago in a liberal enclave where most people ‒ including Jews ‒ tend to support the Palestinians’ bid for statehood, which is gaining steam every year in international forums such as the UN.

Personally, I’m no longer convinced it’s such a good idea. If the Palestinians are given their own state in the West Bank, who’s to say they wouldn’t elect Hamas, an Islamist group committed to Israel’s destruction? That’s exactly what happened in Gaza in democratic elections in 2006. Fortunately, Gaza is somewhat isolated, and its geographic isolation ‒ plus the Israeli and Egyptian-imposed blockade ‒ limit the damage the group can do. But having them in control of the West Bank and half of Jerusalem is something Israel obviously doesn’t want. It would be suicide. And no country can be expected to consent to its own destruction.

So, now, I don’t know what to think. I’m squarely in the center of one of the most polarized issues in the world. I guess, at least, I can say that, no matter how socially unacceptable it was, I was willing to change my mind.

If only more people would do the same.

Psychiatrists Debate Weighing in on Trump's Mental Health


In recent months a growing number of mental health experts and members of the media have offered opinions on Pres. Donald Trump’s psychiatric fitness. On Tuesday 37 U.S. psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers signed a letter to the editor of The New York Times warning about Trump’s mental health. Its signatories state—despite a self-imposed ethics rule forbidding psychiatrists from offering professional opinions about public figures they have not personally evaluated—they “believe that the grave emotional instability indicated by Mr. Trump’s speech and actions makes him incapable of serving safely as president.” A number of petitions, including a Change.org petition started by psychologist John Gartner that has garnered more than 20,000 signatures, have called for the chief executive to be removed from office on the grounds he is mentally ill and unfit to perform the duties of president.

In response to these efforts, Allen Frances, an emeritus psychiatrist at Duke University School of Medicine who helped write the standard manual on psychiatric disorders, wrote a separate letter to the Times denouncing attempts to diagnose the president as mentally ill. He explains that Trump lacks the “distress and impairment required to diagnose a mental illness,” adding that bad behavior and mental illness are not synonymous. “Psychiatric name-calling is a misguided way of countering Mr. Trump’s attack on democracy,” Frances wrote. Nevertheless, “he can, and should, be appropriately denounced for his ignorance, incompetence, impulsivity and pursuit of dictatorial powers.”

Historically, psychiatrists have adhered to an ethics dictum known as the Goldwater rule, which appeared in the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association’s code of ethics in 1973. It evolved out of an incident involving presidential candidate Barry Goldwater: In 1964 Fact magazine polled 12,356 psychiatrists on Goldwater’s mental fitness to be president and published an article stating that 1,189 of the 2,417 who responded deemed him psychologically unfit for the job. (Goldwater later won a libel suit against the magazine.)

The 37 mental health professionals writing in the Times, however, felt compelled to speak out: “We fear that too much is at stake to be silent any longer.” Susan Radant, a psychoanalyst and clinical psychologist and director of the Seattle Psychoanalytic Society and Institute, says she was motivated to sign by her worries about Trump’s competence, including his emotional stability, integrity and honesty. “I am hoping this letter will inspire both citizens and, particularly, the Congress to do their jobs,” she wrote in an e-mail, “and step in before our country and the world are permanently damaged.”

Radant thinks it is time to get rid of the Goldwater rule. She says mental health professionals are well qualified to offer certain diagnoses from a distance, pointing out the press, sans training, freely makes such assessments.

Fellow signatory Alexandra Rolde, a psychiatrist affiliated with Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center and Newton–Wellesley Hospital, both in Massachusetts, emphasizes the letter does not attempt to diagnose Trump but rather highlights personality traits she and her colleagues find concerning. She does not believe any mental health professional should make a diagnosis without seeing a patient, but thinks it can still be appropriate to comment on how a person’s mental health may affect other people and his or her ability to perform. [...]

Rav Gestetner: ORA - the real creators of Agunas

The Real Creators Of "Agunas" Are The Notorious Hoodlums Of ORA (English Translation)

In regards to the dismal Kin-Ralbag affair, in which rabbis put out 'seruvs' against the husband, Mr. Yisroel Meir Kin(preventing him from entering shuls), even though he did everything according to bais din, and his name was vilified all over the world on the internet, mainly by the notorious gang of evildoers known as ORA, all of this having encouraged his wife Chaya Lonna not to agree to come to bais din according to the inherent halachic framework.

And that is what caused the husband (on 3 Adar II 5768) to deposit a get according to bais din's instruction at the Bais Din Kedushas Levy of Monsey, New York; and since she ignored (according to ORA's advice) the bais din's call for her to come to them to receive her get (according to their instruction), that is what caused the necessity to grant the husband permission to remarry with a Heter Meah Rabbonim, and that is what he did.

And It is obvious that to persecute an upstanding man that did everything according to bais din, and to smear him in public, just in order to boss him around and to deprive him of the right that every Jew has: To contact a rov or bais din of his choice with any problem he may have; and more than that, they have done so without any sources to justify their approach, at the very same time that the bais din that he chose did indeed provide sources to justify their own position (see the bais din records: transcript 1025, 1072), is a miscarriage of justice that cries out to the heavens, and it's a sin that has no atonement.

And now, after almost eight years have passed since the husband deposited the get for her, without her even once contacting the bais din with a request to receive the get (this is what the ORA jokers call an "aguna" today.., making a complete mockery of this grave concept), she finally realized that she wouldn't be receiving anything tangible through any of ORA's bully tactics against her husband. She contacted us (on 3 Elul, 5775) and asked, what does she have to do in order to receive the get that was deposited for her, and we answered her: That until such time that all the "seruvs," defamations, and alienations are removed from the husband without any obligation on his part, and shall thus remain for a prolonged, unlimited period of time, it is forbidden according to the inherent halachic framework to begin to discuss anything, and we had thus ruled to the husband according to the words of our holy Torah: That it is forbidden for him to trip her with a null and void "get meusa." To that she answered us: That ORA won't agree to it! (And the wife said this also to the Av Bais Din of Kedushas Levy), and I replied to her: That their disagreeing won't do anything to change the halacha..., and after that we did not hear a peep out of her! (And we told this to a number of "askanim" who contacted us with the above question), and there was dead silence!

So you see that although ORA knows that according to our ruling it is forbidden for the husband to cave in to their pressure, and although they know that through their refusal to remove the slander against the husband, they are causing the wife to remain an "aguna," nevertheless they refuse to stop because of their bias and fear that it will become known that they didn't accomplish anything, and that they didn't care whatsoever about "setting her free."

The time has come already for the public to see for themselves and decide who is responsible for this misfortune; the time has come already for people to open their eyes and realize the hypocrisy of these two-faced evildoers known as ORA, that is being led by the bully and thug Jeremy Stern, who is making a living and waxing fat off of his hooliganism and false propaganda all over the world, in an effort to portray his gang as the "savior and redeemer who is setting women free." When in reality, the truth is exactly the opposite: That they themselves are the creators of those "agunas" and not the husbands; because you see, they have demonstrated that due to their "victory" complex they are preventing women from becoming free.

And all of this is besides for the stumbling block of gittin that are meusa, which are obtained from husbands through shaming and demonstrations, that cause her to remain a married woman, and her children from the second husband to be mamzeirim (not any less than if she remarries without a get at all as in the Friedman-Epstein affair, but that is for another time).

And let it be known that this case is just one of many in which we delved into the matter, and we saw clearly that had ORA, who advises women to insist on their positions, not been involved, the parties would have reached a compromise and concluded their affairs early, either towards peace or towards a get; and they would have spared the couple and the children many years of great misery and anguish, and they are the inhibitors.

In summation, the ORA gang are the real destroyers of women; that their main focus is achieving their "win" even if it comes at the expense of the distress and the chaining of women, for they don't care about that at all; woe is to them on the day of judgement and on the day of reproach; they have chained many women, they have grieved many couples, many have left the fold on their account, many children went down the tubes materially and spiritually on their account.

And Chazal have said: "A mouse is not a thief, rather the hole is a thief," and until there is public protest against those enablers and supporters who encourage them to continue with their evil deeds, this breach that diminishes every good share in Klal Yisroel will not be repaired, G-d forbid.

To the above we sign our name, and in the name of the associates of the Bais Din Shimru Mishpot on the 21st day of Shevat, 5776.

Avrohom Shmuel Yehuda Gestetner
Av Bais Din Shimru Mishpot

Rabbinical Court statistics: Since 2012 nearly 12% more women refused to accept divorce than men who refused to grant one.


Israel's Rabbinical Court system statistics for the past five years paint an interesting picture regarding the number of estranged spouses who refuse a divorce (unless their conditions are met), the low number of dispensations given to men to marry a second wife, and more.

A get-refuser ("get" is the Hebrew word for "divorce papers") is defined as either a man who refuses to grant a get or a woman who refuses to accept one within a month of the issuance of a ruling that a get should be given.

Surprisingly to many, some 56,000 couples have divorced over the past five years. In the vast majority of these cases, the Beit Din (Rabbinical Court) either succeeds in bringing about a divorce by mutual consent, or is presented with a "done deal." However, in nearly 7,000 cases, the Beit Din was forced to order a get – 3,566 against the man, and 3,384 against the woman. In all but 809 of these cases, a get was given within a month.

Of those 809 cases, 382 of them involved a recalcitrant husband, while the other 427 – nearly 12% more – involved women who refused to accept a get. This flies in the face of the conventional perception that unresolved divorces are invariably the result of men holding their estranged wives "hostage" until their unreasonable demands are met.

Between the years 2012 and 2015, 249 women refused a get, while 205 men did. The year 2016 saw a surprising jump in the number of unresolved divorces, caused equally by men and women: 143 by men, 142 by women. So far in 2017, 36 women and 34 men are refusing their estranged spouses' conditions.

During this five-year period, 69 men were imprisoned for refusing to give a get; no women were imprisoned for refusing to accept one.

On the other hand, since 2012, 53 men were granted permission to marry a second wife. Such permission involves a complex process involving two levels of courts and requiring the express permission of the President of the High Rabbinical Court. It is done only when the woman is either physically unable to accept a get, or when her refusal to receive one appears to be intractable.

It could very well be that since women are Biblically forbidden to remarry without a divorce, the only measures that can be taken against men is imprisonment – whereas recalcitrant women are punished not with jail, but with the permission granted to their husbands to marry a second wife.

Nineteen men who were granted permission to remarry by the Regional Beit Din were prevented from doing so by the High Beit Din.[...]