RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.commentarymagazine.com/articles/the-new-york-times-slanders-israel-again/

From an e-pal Craig C. “For those who may still subscribe to, or purchase weekly, the NY Times you may wish to read the brilliant column by Meir Soloveichik in the current Commentary Magazine.  After reading it, you may wish to cancel your subscription to the NY Times if you still have one.”

In the summer of 1920, Herbert Samuel, the high commissioner of British Mandate Palestine, made his way to the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City to mark the Sabbath with his fellow Jews. He entered the Hurva Synagogue, one of the most exquisite edifices in the Jewish world, with its marble floor and its dome adorned with designs that imitated the starry sky. As the guest of honor, Samuel was invited to read the hafatarah, the prophetic portion, from the magnificent bima, or podium, in the center of the synagogue.

It was the Sabbath immediately following the Ninth of Av, when the destruction of the Temple had been mourned. His Majesty’s representative opened the Bible and proclaimed to the assembled Isaiah’s immortal words: “Comfort ye, comfort ye my people…O Jerusalem, that bringest good tidings, lift up thy voice with strength; lift it up, be not afraid; say unto the cities of Judah, Behold your God!” On the heels of the 1917 Balfour declaration promising a Jewish home in Palestine, the messianic era almost appeared to be at hand.

Yet the very name of the synagogue in which these Jews found themselves, the Hebrew word “hurva,” means “ruin,” and would seem to have been a strange description of this beautiful building. It reflected the fact that it had been constructed at the site of a synagogue destroyed a century before, burned to the ground by an Arab mob along with 40 sacred Torah scrolls inside. Calling it “Hurva” emphasized that the structure was built on the ashes of what had been before, a vindication of the Jewish love for Jerusalem. Yet the name also hinted at the hatred some may have for Jews who chose to dwell in Jerusalem—even as Jews celebrated the arrival of a Jewish high commissioner to the bima.

In this, the word “Hurva” proved eerily prophetic. The heady days of Samuel’s visit to the synagogue were followed by a series of British “White Papers” limiting Jewish immigration. In 1942, some of Jerusalem’s most important rabbis gathered in the sanctuary to pray for the doomed Jews of Europe who had been left by the British to die.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2019/10/media-threat-america-daniel-greenfield/

It’s always bad news for the media.

Verizon is looking to dump the Huffington Post. It’s the latest bad news for the industry in a year that has already seen over 7,200 job cuts across the media spectrum from digital to old-fashioned print.

Why should the rest of the country care about what’s happening to the media industry?

Same reason you should care about what happens when a crackhead can’t pay for his crack.

Like the proverbial crackhead, the media has two survival strategies: stealing and going crazy. These strategies are happening all around us and they’re wrecking the country worse than a million crackheads could.

Unable to make its business model work, the media turned to cannibalism. The print media began merging into bigger conglomerates, and, lately, the failing digital media has gotten merger fever. But the media can’t actually outgrow its problems, and the bigger organizations, after cutting jobs and outlets, still can’t make it work. But the mergers also spurred unionization in print and digital media. While the media bowed to political pressure and signed off on the unions, the costs are killing the media.

Unions aren’t just making it too expensive for the papers and sites they work for to operate, they’re also wiping out freelance journalism. The furor over AB5, a California law that makes it all but impossible for freelance journalists in the state to find work, pitted freelancers against unionized media members.