Over 200 cases of measles have been confirmed in the U.S. in the past few months. About half of them occurred in the Pacific Northwest, leading Washington Gov. Jay Inslee to declare an emergency and the state legislature to propose further restricting, or even eliminating, inoculation exemptions. Nonetheless, opposition to mandatory vaccines remains fierce. Special correspondent Cat Wise reports
Monday, April 15, 2019
Palestinian state likely not in US proposed peace plan: Report
newsweek
aljazeera
JARED KUSHNER'S MIDDLE EAST PEACE PLAN PANNED BY FORMER EUROPEAN LEADERS BEFORE IT'S EVEN RELEASED
European leaders have criticized the Trump administration’s approach to a Middle East peace plan, arguing that the current U.S. government had abandoned international norms.
In an open letter written to The Guardian on Sunday, a group of nearly 40 former high-ranking European leaders, including Sweden’s former Prime Minister Carl Bildt, Germany’s former foreign minister Sigmar Gabriel, the U.K.’s former Foreign Secretary David Miliband, and Belgium's former Prime Minister Guy Verhofstadt, argued that Europe must continue to support a two-state solution for Israel and Palestine regardless of what the Trump administration’s Middle East peace plan looks like.
“Unfortunately, the current U.S. administration has departed from longstanding US policy and distanced itself from established international legal norms,” the letter reads. “It has so far recognized only one side’s claims to Jerusalem and demonstrated a disturbing indifference to Israeli settlement expansion. The U.S. has suspended funding for the U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees (UNRWA) and for other programs benefiting Palestinians—gambling with the security and stability of various countries located at Europe’s doorstep,” it continued.
aljazeera
A United States's proposal for peace between Israel and the Palestinians, dubbed "the deal of the century", will likely not include a fully sovereign Palestinian state, the Washington Post reported.
According to sources familiar with the main elements of the deal, the agreement pledged practical improvements in the lives of Palestinians but stops short of securing a Palestinian state.
The White House is expected to reveal its long-awaited peace deal, spearheaded by Jared Kushner, US President Donald Trump's son-in-law, later this year.
While officials have kept details of the plan secret, comments from Kushner and other US officials suggest that it "does away with statehood as the starting premise of peace efforts", the Washington Post reported.
The plan is likely to focus heavily on Israeli security concerns.
It revolves around a proposal that foresees major infrastructure and industrial work, particularly in the besieged Gaza Strip.
For the plan to succeed or even pass the starting gate, it will need at least initial buy-in from both Israel and the Palestinians as well as from the Gulf Arab states, which officials say will be asked to substantially bankroll the economic portion.
NYC bus driver refuses to stop for haredi man over measles fears
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/261846
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority is investigating a complaint by a haredi man, who alleges that a bus driver refused to stop for him at a Brooklyn bus stop over the current measles outbreak.
The man said that the bus driver drove past the stop in the largely Orthodox-populated neighborhood of Williamsburg last week but that he caught up with it after it got stuck in traffic. The bus driver eventually let him on, covered her face with her sweater, and refused to accept the man’s transfer, while shouting “Measles! Go in!” the Brooklyn Paper reported.
The incident was reported to the MTA on Thursday by the United Jewish Organizations of Williamsburg, which is working with the city to curb the measles outbreak by educating the community and encouraging vaccination, according to The Forward.
“The measles outbreak should not be used as an excuse for antisemitism,” the group said in a tweet.
A second tweet from the group added that: “Facts are, about 95% of the community is vaccinating. We, the Rabbis and community leaders, are working hard to increase it. Not justification to attack the entire community for the shortcomings of a few.”
The incident reportedly occurred several days before New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio declared a public health emergency over the measles outbreak in Brooklyn’s haredi Orthodox community.
There have been 285 reported cases of measles in Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish community since October, including 246 children. The Brooklyn outbreak has been tied to an unvaccinated child who contracted the disease during a trip to Israel, The Washington Post reported.
Rabbi David Niederman, president of United Jewish Organization, told the Brooklyn Paperthat haredi Jews in Williamsburg are being harassed on the streets with people shouting “Jews, measles” at them.
Sunday, April 14, 2019
Woman was removed from ultra-Orthodox polling station so top rabbi could vote
Times of Israel
A female Likud election worker was forced out of a polling station in the ultra-Orthodox city of Bnei Brak during Tuesday’s election at the request of the leader of the Ger Hassidic sect, Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Alter, according to a Friday report in Haaretz.
The woman initially refused to leave the polling station, so the rabbi’s followers contacted Likud Knesset members who arranged to have the woman removed, the report said.
The Likud lawmakers sent a male party official to the polling station to replace the woman “while she took a lunch break,” during which time the rabbi cast his ballot.
Sources told Haaretz that when followers of the rabbi noticed the female Likud member at the polling station, they knew it was “going to be an issue right from the beginning.”
Rabbi Yaakov Aryeh Alter of the Gur Hassidic Dynasty attends a rally of United Torah Judaism party, ahead of the upcoming elections, in Jerusalem, April 8, 2019. (Noam Revkin Fenton/Flash90)
“They did almost everything to try to convince her to leave, including offering her money,” the source said.
One of Alter’s followers told Haaretz on Friday that the rabbi did not intend to insult the woman, but saw her presence at the polling station as a “matter of respectability.”
“The Rabbi does not receive women or look at them,” he said.”Its just the same as honoring a special request for a prime minister or president.”
Alter is the Admor, or head, of the Ger Hasidic movement and the powerful patron of Deputy Health Minister Yaakov Litzman from the United Torah Judaism party.
The head of the Likud polling committee Yaakov Vidar downplayed the report, saying the party made “manpower changes as needed” during the busy election day.
Ultra-Orthodox communities frequently try and impose a separation between men and women. The two genders sit separately at synagogues and weddings, and women and men who are not relatives refrain from physical contact.
There have also been attempts to enforce gender segregation on public buses, but the Israeli Supreme Court has ruled it illegal, and also frequent instances where ultra-Orthodox men have refused to sit next to women on planes.
It’s not just in person, most of Israel’s ultra-Orthodox media — which includes four daily newspapers, two main weeklies and two main websites — refuse to show images of women, claiming it would be a violation of modesty.
Saturday, April 13, 2019
SENIOR LONDON RABBI REMOVED FROM POSITION AFTER HAVING AFFAIR
The rabbi, Yonason Abraham, founder of the Toras Chaim synagogue near the primarily Jewish Golders Green neighborhood and one of four judges in the London Beth Din court, said he had "fallen short of the standards expected," according to a Daily Mail report.
Tuesday, April 9, 2019
‘Monkey, Rat and Pig DNA’: How Misinformation Is Driving the Measles Outbreak Among Ultra-Orthodox Jews
'The Vaccine Safety Handbook” appears innocuous, a slick magazine for parents who want to raise healthy children. But tucked inside its 40 pages are false warnings that vaccines cause autism and contain cells from aborted human fetuses.
“It is our belief that there is no greater threat to public health than vaccines,” the publication concludes, contradicting the scientific consensus that vaccines are generally safe and highly effective.
The handbook, created by a group called Parents Educating and Advocating for Children’s Health, or Peach, is targeted at ultra-Orthodox Jews, whose expanding and insular communities are at the epicenter of one of the largest measles outbreaks in the United States in decades.
What Another Round of Netanyahu Will Mean for American Jews
the atlantic
Benjamin Netanyahu’s main opponents have tried to use an unusual weapon against the longtime prime minister ahead of a defining Israeli election set for Tuesday: They’ve argued that he has damaged the relationship between Israel and diaspora Jews.
For some American Jews, the strong alliance between Netanyahu and Donald Trump of the past few years has added stress to their relationship with Israel, which has become especially fraught in the years since the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process in the early 2000s. While some Jews in the U.S. appreciate Trump’s positions on Israel, many detest the American president’s domestic politics and believe that he has enabled anti-Semitism and xenophobia. And while segments of the self-identified pro-Israel community in the U.S. resolutely support anything that the Israeli prime minister does, some have been wary of Netanyahu’s alliance with right-wing forces, and disappointed by what they see as his failure to facilitate religious pluralism. Tuesday’s major election in Israel marks a high point of strain in the relationship between at least some American Jews and Israel, which has changed radically in the past generation.
To understand the American Jewish relationship with Israel, it’s helpful to divide American Jews into three rough categories. On the right lies the self-described pro-Israel crowd, many of whom are Republicans, and many of whom are deeply religious. For the most part, this group would cheer another round of Netanyahu. Among modern-Orthodox Jews, for example, “the relationship is incredibly strong—it’s as strong as ever,” Nathan Diament, the executive director of the Orthodox Union Advocacy Center, told me. Part of this connection is sociological; these Jews often travel to Israel, have family there, and send their children there to study. Some in this group don’t believe it’s their place to criticize Israeli policy. “We should be deferential to the decisions that the democratically elected leaders in Israel make about Israel’s security,” Diament said. “They’re the ones whose lives are on the line, and they’re the ones whose kids are serving in the [Israel Defense Forces].”
Monday, April 8, 2019
NJ THERAPIST ELLIOT HALBERSTAM SENTENCED TO 13 YEARS FOR ABUSING CLIENT
.jewishcommunitywatch
In 2015, the FBI arrested and charged New Jersey- based therapist Elliot Halberstam with three counts of sexual enticement and exploitation of a minor and receipt of child pornography. The arrest was widely reported at the time.
The charges alleged that Halberstam had groomed one of his clients, then a 16 year old boy, who he had been seeing since 2011. He manipulated the boy who had hopes of becoming a model, and created a fake email address to convince the boy that he was in fact a lawyer who would help him break into the modeling industry. He coerced the boy to engage in sexually explicit behaviors with him, which he sometimes filmed in a hotel room he had rented. He also coerced the victim to send him pornographic images and videos from the victim.
In July 2018, Halberstam pled guilty to coercion and enticement of a minor to engage in illegal sexual activity.
On February 28, 2019, Halberstam was sentenced to 13 years in prison.
Rabbis Defending Life Video
 |
|
Saturday, April 6, 2019
LIBERAL ORTHODOX YESHIVA SAYS IT WILL NOT ORDAIN GAY STUDENT
jpost.
In a statement to The Jewish Week, Yeshivat Chovevei Torah student Daniel Atwood, 27, wrote: “Four years ago I came out as gay during my first year at Yeshivat Chovevei Torah Rabbinical School, and it was decided that I would receive semicha [ordination] as their first openly gay student. After four years of study and my completing almost all of the program’s requirements, YCT decided not to give me semicha, news delivered to me only a few weeks ago, three months before my graduation, without any prior conversation on the matter.”
Atwood became engaged in the fall and is living with his partner.
Thursday, April 4, 2019
Monday, April 1, 2019
Please report the anti Vaxx Gofundme campaig
The anti vaxxers are running a anti vaxx campaign in gofundme. Goal is to raise 100K. They already raised over 8K. They are violating the terms and conditions. Please report
Help report this campaign
GoFundMe pledges to remove anti-vax campaigns
Subscribe to:
Posts
(
Atom
)