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June 2021

ISRAEL Comments turned off

GOOD NEWS FROM AMAZING ISRAEL FROM MICHAEL ORDMAN

By on June 6th, 2021

https://verygoodnewsisrael.blogspot.com/

 

Mainstream media, the academies and the collective cretins who routinely libel Israel ignore the news that exemplifies Israel. Behind the headlines and despite its chaotic parliamentary politics, and the vicissitudes of enemies poised to destroy the nation, the nation’s state of the art research, medical, technology and scientific institutions produce daily results which benefit citizens of every single nation in the globe. Thanks to Michael Ordman for compiling this weekly list of the foregoing as well as examples of Israel’s humanitarian concerns put into action by impressive social justice institutions. rsk

 

ISRAEL’S MEDICAL ACHIEVEMENTS

Severe Covid patients cured in a day. (TY UWI) Israel’s Bonus BioGroup (see here previously) tested its MesenCure MSC treatment on 10 severely ill, high risk Covid-19 patients at Haifa’s Rambam hospital. All ten improved sufficiently to be discharged just one day after treatment. MesenCure now advances to Phase 2 trials.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/10-serious-covid-patients-given-israeli-drug-leave-hospital-in-one-day-669564  https://www.israel21c.org/israeli-biotech-company-aces-phase-i-covid-cure-trial/

Cancer treatment trial extended. The Phase 1 / 2 trial of DSP107 from Israel’s KAHR Medical (see here previously) has commenced and will now be expanded to include blood cancer patients in addition to solid tumors. KAHR has received an additional investment of $5 million to fund the enlarged trial.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/immuno-oncology-startup-kahr-gets-5-million-for-trial-of-drug-on-blood-cancers/

Baking soda helps kill cancer cells. (TY Nevet) Israeli-Arab Technion PhD graduate Hanan Abumanhal has discovered sodium bicarbonate (baking soda) increases the potency of chemotherapy. For her doctorate, she developed nano particles to reduce the acidity of tumors, allowing reduced quantities of chemo to penetrate.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/israeli-researcher-discovers-baking-soda-helps-chemotherapy-kill-cancer-cells/

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/30615983/

Balancing gene expression to prevent cancer. Researchers at Ben Gurion University have discovered a new biological event that can control an excessive production of genes involved in cancer cell formation. Discovery of “the methylation of BRD4” advances scientific understanding of human cancer progression and its treatment.

https://in.bgu.ac.il/en/pages/news/breast_cancer.aspx

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/bgu-researchers-find-promising-target-for-cancer-treatment-669488

The immune cells that accelerate liver disease. Scientists at Israel’s Weizmann Institute have discovered that the dendritic immune cell cDC1 increases the severity of fatty liver disease and NASH, suffered by 90% of obese individuals. The discovery may lead to treatments that could benefit millions of patients.

https://www.jpost.com/health-science/israeli-scientists-find-cell-involved-in-fatty-liver-disease-progression-668743   https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01344-3

Software to help correct genetic defects. The development of CRISPR technology to prevent genetic diseases is hampered by off-target (unintended) changes to the genes. New software called CRISPECTOR from Israel’s IDC and Bar-Ilan University can prevent the consequences from transplanting erroneously modified cells.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/new-israeli-tech-gives-accuracy-boost-to-microscopic-scissors-for-dna-editing/

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/306746 

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-22417-4

In touch with the senses. Israel’s CorrActions is developing technology to detect deterioration in human cognitive state from drowsiness, fatigue, exhaustion, intoxication, age, and health issues. A sensor monitors slight, unique, changes in human touch or motion. It could prevent accidents or work errors by professionals.

https://www.calcalistech.com/ctech/articles/0,7340,L-3908719,00.html  https://www.corractions.com/

Migraine wearable wins Medtech award. The Nerivio therapeutic wearable for treating migraine pain from Israel’s Theranica (see here previously) won “Best New Technology Solution for Pain Management” award in the 2021 MedTech Breakthrough Awards program. It beat more than 3,850 nominations from 17 countries.

https://unitedwithisrael.org/israelis-invent-first-wearable-migraine-device-for-acute-pain/

Tool for diagnosing autism. Israeli startup Cell-El Therapeutics.is developing a diagnostic tool for “triple A” (autoimmune antibody associated) autism. It has identified 30 immunological biomarkers and is developing a blood test using the best five. This could help identify severely autistic children and implement early therapies.

https://www.israel21c.org/a-diagnostic-tool-that-treats-autism-like-cancer/   https://www.cell-el.com/

VeryGoodNewsIsrael can be good for your health. It’s official. Researchers at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem have published the findings of their longevity study of 1200 Israelis that began in 1990. Participants aged 85-90 with a high optimism score had a 20% higher rate of survival over those who were less optimistic.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/307287

https://academic.oup.com/biomedgerontology/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/gerona/glab051/6145793

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HISTORY, NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Remember Tiananmen Square The Chinese are keen to brush the historical reality of what happened in 1989 under the rug. Don’t let them. By Roger Kimball

By on June 6th, 2021

https://amgreatness.com/2021/06/05/remember-tiananmen-square/

Early June marks the anniversary of the brutal suppression by the Chinese Communist Party of the Tiananmen Square protests in Beijing. The pro-democracy, anti-corruption protests started in the spring of 1989. At first, the Chinese authorities oscillated between conciliation and crackdown. But on June 4, the hard-liners, led by Premier Li Peng, prevailed. As the protests continued and became more virulent, the military was summoned. Estimates of Chinese citizens murdered range from many hundreds to many thousands. Thousands more were injured. 

On June 5, 32 years ago as I write, a lone man in a white shirt stepped in front of a column of tanks, temporarily halting its progress. The lead tank turned to go around him. He gingerly stepped in front of it again. And again. At one point, he clambered onto the tank to talk briefly to a crew member at the gunner’s hatch. Back on the ground, he continued to offer himself as a human obstacle. Eventually, some people in the crowd pulled him aside and the tanks proceeded.  

No one knows the name or the fate of that brave man. But photos and a fuzzy video of the event surfaced and etched the episode into the world’s conscience, catapulting the man to anonymous fame. Just utter the phrase “Tank Man.” Every adult, even those educated at the best schools, will instantly know whom you mean.  

Every adult in the West, that is. In China, the situation is different. There, the totalitarian’s most faithful handmaid, historical amnesia, has been the order of the day. (Though not yet in Hong Kong, as Claudia Rosett vividly reminds us.) 

I was alerted to the extent and seamlessness of that deliberately cultivated amnesia several years ago. Our son, then a freshman in high school, had befriended a young Chinese student in his class. One day, he brought his friend home for dinner, the first of several such gatherings. His English was still a little rough—it improved rapidly—but he was clearly very intelligent. He was also, we discovered over the next four years, socially accomplished and vibrating with energy. 

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NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Jordan Peterson needs to get off my lawn By Jamie Dyson

By on June 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/jordan_peterson_needs_to_get_off_my_lawn.html

Dr. Jordan Peterson has the attention of many around the world, including America, with his psychological insights into the book of Genesis; his clear-eyed appraisal of the excesses of the left; and his three books, Twelve Rules for Life, 12 More Rules for Life, and Maps of Meaning.  His record of wise and careful thought lends to all his pronouncements a certain gravitas.

On May 29 of this year, he tweeted:

The conservatives have to sacrifice Trump and the stolen election narrative.  The liberals have to sacrifice DIE and CRT.  The road to peace requires its pound of flesh from both parties.

(DIE stands for “Diversity, Inclusivity and Equity,” CRT for “Critical Race Theory”.)

I think Dr. Peterson lets himself down whenever he opines on U.S. politics and most especially here.  He has been clear in condemning DIE and CRT as erroneous, divisive, and malign, yet he posits these philosophies as commensurate with support of our 45th president and a desire to thoroughly investigate our 2020 election.  How dare he?  To tens of millions of Americans, Donald Trump is objectively a stalwart champion of the Constitution, the country, and its citizens.  Yet Dr. Peterson here presents him as a should-be pariah, just the other side of the coin to a collectivist, racist, un-American, and hateful ideology.  By so saying, he slanders America, Trump, and us.  Peterson owes us all an apology.  Is he even aware of Trump’s executive orders banning CRT from the federal government?

While Peterson is adept at describing the corruption of the state — usually archetypically referencing ancient Egypt — and recognizes the rot in the academy from the left, he is naïve, ignorant, or willfully blind when it comes to Washington, D.C.  He appears not to see that conservatives and regular Americans have been paying their pound of flesh for decades under both Republican and Democrat governments while the left advanced inexorably until Trump’s arrival.  Peterson mistakes the Uniparty game just described as a hierarchy of competence and prescribes to us the sacrifice of the one man who was brave enough to throw sand in its gears on our behalf.  Peterson cannot apparently see the cardboard placed over the windows of the ballot-counting rooms to block the view of election-observers last year or that Biden was personally involved in Soviet-style political spying on Trump’s campaign.  (Biden reportedly personally unmasked Lt. Gen. Flynn while V.P.)

Dr. Peterson is a Canadian.  One of the chapters in 12 Rules for Life is titled “Set Your Own House in Perfect Order Before Criticizing the World.”  Last I checked, Canada was arresting pastors for holding church services, has little to no international clout or cachet, and re-elected as its premiere an effeminate and unimpressive scion who stated that his country has “no core identity” and was roundly humiliated by Trump in the negotiations of USMCA.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

Big Tech takes a giant step towards totalitarianism By David Zukerman

By on June 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/big_tech_takes_a_giant_step_towards_totalitarianism.html

Twitter has banned former President Trump for life, while Facebook has settled for a two-year suspension.  How proud these mammoth-valued censorious outfits must feel.  Well, the late Associate Supreme Court Justice William J. Brennan, Jr., is likely to be rather disappointed.  As for Framers of the Constitution, they must wonder why they bothered to enact the First Amendment’s free speech guarantee.

Justice Brennan, of course, in the 1964 case, New York Times v Sullivan, 376 U.S. 254 took note of some precedents underscoring our tradition of free speech, and then summed up our “profound” free speech tradition.   The justice’s sources included this observation from Bridges v. California, 314 U.S. 252, quoted at 376 U.S.  269 of his Sullivan opinion:

“[I]t is a prized American privilege to speak one’s mind, although not always with perfect good taste, on all public institutions.”

Ah, but if you are a president, or former president, loathed by privately owned media outlets, with an enormous impact on the free flow of information, you will find a wall as iron as that which surrounded the former Soviet Union, a wall that blocks your ability to speak one’s mind freely, even “not always with perfect good taste.”

Justice Brennan, at 376 U.S. 270, then quoted at length from the incisive “classic” statement on free speech that Justice Brandeis included in his concurring opinion in Whitney v. California, 274 U.S. 357:   The Framers

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EDUCATION Comments turned off

San Francisco teachers’ union embraces anti-Semitism By Andrea Widburg

By on June 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/06/san_francisco_teachers_union_embraces_antisemitism.html

Last week, United Educators of San Francisco (i.e., the San Francisco public school teachers’ union) issued a “Resolution in Solidarity with the Palestinian People” and voted to boycott Israel. San Francisco’s Jewish community is unhappy and Jewish parents are worried. Not only is the resolution disgraceful, but it also reflects everything that’s wrong with government unions.

Let me begin by stating my bias. I don’t merely dislike teachers’ unions, I absolutely despise them. As a public-school student in San Francisco in the 1960s and 1970s, I saw how the unions worked to protect bad, even evil, teachers, without regard for students. And as the daughter of a public-school teacher, I got the inside scoop on the increasingly leftist politics driving these unions. (Even worse, back in the day, they didn’t even get a decent salary for teachers. It was all about the predecessors to today’s woke politics.)

I also believe that government unions are inherently corrupt. In the private sector, both management and the unions have skin in the game when they sit down at the negotiating table. They’re negotiating for their own benefit (profits versus wages and job safety), and both have an interest in ensuring that the company survives.

However, when it comes to government unions, the only people with skin in the game – the taxpayers – aren’t at the table. The government representative ostensibly speaks for the taxpayers but the reality is that both the union negotiator and the government representative want to funnel as much money to the union as possible, in exchange for the union funding Democrats.

The Democrats, in turn, ensure that government employees get salaries and benefits far greater than those available in the private sector. It’s a massively corrupt system that has kept Democrats in power even as their policies fail whenever implemented.

So, as I write about the disgraceful, anti-Semitic San Francisco teachers’ union, you know that I come from a place of pure loathing. But even without that loathing, one ask to ask why teachers, whose job is supposed to be teaching San Francisco students reading, writing, and arithmetic are, instead, getting involved in international politics:

The San Francisco teachers union turned its attention away from city schools and toward international conflict, calling for a boycott of Israel in a strongly worded statement that has angered some families and outraged Jewish organizations.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Biden and the Ayatollah’s Game Plan by Amir Taheri

By on June 6th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17434/biden-and-the-ayatollah-game-plan

[I]n dealing with the mullahs it is appeasement that encourages war.

[N]o sooner had Biden’s appeasement squad been deployed than Ayatollah Ali Khamenei… revive[d] the embers of several conflicts into blazing flames.

The revised budget… includes a 62 percent raise in the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps’ share. The Quds (Jerusalem) Force, which is in charge of exporting revolution and keeping the pot boiling in Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon and Gaza, sees its budget increased by almost 40 percent. Some estimates put the total increase of Iran’s military budget since 2019 at around 150 percent

[Khamenei’s] kind of war is labelled in many different ways: proxy, asymmetric, low-intensity, low-cost, cottage industry war…. he pursues it through surrogates and mercenaries recruited in Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iraq, Lebanon, Gaza and Yemen.

According to best estimates the Islamic Republic has spent around $20 billion in its various low-cost wars since 2000, a relatively modest sum compared to the huge cost of a full-scale war…. the regime needs a minimum of $60 billion a year to cover its basic costs and survive while continuing its decades-long campaign to de-stabilize the Middle East in the hope of what Kayhan, a mouthpiece for Khamenei, describes as “the inevitable tsunami of Islamic revolution”….

Blinken talks of his hopes for a “breakthrough”… Khamenei, too, wants a breakthrough based in a promise to enrich the uranium he does not want or need at a lower grade in exchange for the cash flow he does need to reactivate his momentarily interrupted special kind of war against the US and its regional allies, indeed against what is often known as ” the world order”.

Fear of an illusory war may lead to a deal which would allow a real war to continue behind the façade of an illusory peace.

Last February, when the new Biden administration launched its promised bid for a revival of the Obama “nuclear deal” with the Islamic Republic, apologists described it as an attempt at preventing another Middle Eastern war. This echoed the old mantra that in dealing with the Khomeinist regime, the choice is between appeasement and full-scale war.

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WORLD NEWS Comments turned off

Self-Criticism: A Conversation with Göran Adamson by Grégoire Canlorbe

By on June 6th, 2021

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17411/goran-adamson

In 2017, three out of four people suspected of murder in Sweden were migrants — a figure that seems frightfully high. The funny thing is that the Swedish Social Democrats, and others you might call multiculturalists — the “politically correct” — they have not been interested in investigating this, even though these are issues that Swedish people are talking about.

In Sweden, however, what people talk about are “socioeconomic factors” — which they claim are the causes behind everything: crime, rape, marginalization, exclusion, unemployment and financial issues. The multiculturalists link these issues to our country and say they are something we are to blame for. Those are completely different from culture, which is something that people bring with them when they come to Sweden.

“Culture,” they repeat over and over again, “has nothing to do with it!” So we ask them, “Then how do you explain that migrants from, say, Vietnam or Thailand, have a far lesser propensity for crime than migrants from other parts of the world?”

Orwell said something like, “I know enough about the working class not to idealize it.” You can apply the same concept to… fantasies about other cultures: the fact that we know very little about them because if we knew enough… we would not idealize these countries the way many academics in Sweden, Paris, or London are doing: we would know too much.

Another aspect here relates to when migrants come to Sweden. They are greeted by those who know very little about their own culture, who care very little about it and who are happy to compare it unfavorably to other cultures. Almost like a pastime. “Oh, you know, the way we treat homosexuals or women or migrants or structural racism in Sweden…” It is simply not true. We all have these dinners and just sit around and harass our own country, and everyone else does the same and we love it.

If people come to Sweden, how are they supposed to respect Swedish culture if we do not respect it ourselves? But in Sweden, we are not allowed to do that. In basically every other country, every other culture, people have a certain respect — even in dictatorships, they love their country, the tradition, and so on. In dictatorships, of course, if they do not love their country, they are not allowed to say so. If Sweden is such a bad place, why is everyone coming here?… No one is escaping from Sweden to Yemen.

It is as if we simply cannot accept the fact that we are fortunate and privileged because it goes against our own self-deception…. This whole self-critical, self-harassing attitude is a perfect way to avoid the kind of shame of being privileged. This self-critical attitude among scores of Western elites can only occur in wealthy societies. It is an odd fruit among those who are troubled by the fact that they are privileged and fortunate. But why on earth be troubled by it? Why be ashamed by all those before us who made our country so successful? This is just head-spinningly grotesque.

So, this is a one-sided tolerance: self-criticism, even if sometimes possibly justified, is replaced by self-annihilation. An idea fostered from above by political elites whereby Western cultures, Western traditions, Western ideas are being dismissed for the benefit of some kind of multicultural veneration and idealization of anything exotic — the more exotic, the better.

You could say that this whole focus on…. sexual identities and so forth sounds not only like sidetracking, but also an attempt to… engage people in… relatively unimportant battles while there are much more important battles to be fought. Most prominently, the battle against globalization, neo-liberalism, the dismantling of national borders, and the intensifying aggression of predatory nations. Those are the most important.

Göran Adamson, an associate professor of sociology with a PhD from the London School of economics, is engaged in public debate in Sweden focusing on issues of free speech and diversity; and an outspoken critic of “multiculturalism.” His most recent book — Masochist Nationalism: Multicultural Self-hatred and the Infatuation with the Exotic — was published by Routledge in March 2021.

Grégoire Canlorbe: You have been working on a statistical study of the relationship between ethnic background and crime in Sweden. Have you found a connection?

Göran Adamson: Important information was just revealed in an update of the 2005 prevention agency report I recently headed — a completely private initiative. It had been almost 20 years since the Swedish state had done any research about the relationship between migration and crime. The two most salient features we found were that that among people who were suspects or were, with good reason, suspected of a crime were migrants. The result was more than half — about six out of 10 in Sweden. When it comes to the murder rate, people suspected, with good reason, of murder made up about 73% or 74%. In 2017, three out of four people suspected of murder in Sweden were migrants — a figure that seems frightfully high. The funny thing is that the Swedish Social Democrats, and others you might call multiculturalists — the “politically correct” — they have not been interested in investigating this, even though these are issues that Swedish people are talking about. Maybe the most important issue — and the reason why the other party, Sweden Democrats, has become so huge over the last 10 years; they are now almost the biggest party in Sweden — like Marine Le Pen’s National Rally Party in France. I think if you check the migrants who are the most likely suspects of crime, many of these people are, regrettably, Muslims — the risk that this person has committed a crime is about roughly three times higher than for a Swede. So, sadly you could say that there is a link.

If you were to say that crime among migrants has to do with culture, I think unfortunately it is fair to say that an association has to be made.

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

What Do Advocates of a Two-State Solution Actually Advocate? By John F. Di Leo

By on June 6th, 2021

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/06/what_do_advocates_of_a_twostate_solution_actually_advocate_.html

There are approximately 13.5 million people in the current geographical nation of Israel – about 9 million Israeli nationals and 4.5 million others known as “Palestinians” (primarily ethnic Egyptians and other Arabs who moved into the area early in the 20th century).

Due to some very peculiar agreements that would be unimaginable anywhere else on earth, this tiny country is currently divided into parts in which this external third of the population has been granted almost complete self-rule as “The West Bank” (actually, the provinces of Judea and Samaria) and “The Gaza Strip.” While these two areas are governed completely separately and somewhat differently, the rest of the world, out of ease or ignorance, refers to them together as the Palestinian Authority (PA).

It doesn’t work.

For a number of reasons that have been analyzed to death already, this artificial construct, the Palestinian Authority, is already a failed state, long before it has even achieved statehood. 

In election after election, the residents elect the terrorist leaders of Hamas, Fatah and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ), as their representatives (and even when they aren’t elected, these terrorists just seize power anyway, as Hamas has done in Gaza, without serious objection from their subjects).

The area they control is governed exactly as one would expect places ruled by terrorists to be governed: with minimal emphasis on economic opportunity, living conditions and the rule of law, and instead, with primary emphasis on political power and a permanent state of war.

As the current conflict – a particularly hot moment within the constant conflict that has lasted the past century, to be honest – attracts more of the world’s attention than usual, the dream remedy known as “the two-state solution” returns to the fore.

Now, what all students of the Middle East should know already, though they often need to be reminded, is that the current map is already the result of a two-state solution.  The British Mandate for Palestine of a century ago was first promised to be all Israel, then was debated, derailed, and divided as the years went on, as statecraft was practiced in country clubs and far-off retreats.  The Mandate wound up split into an Arab state and a Jewish one, the Arab one substantially larger, with seaports in the Gulf of Aqaba, the Jewish one far smaller, but blessed at least with seaports on the Mediterranean.

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MEDIA Comments turned off

The Media’s Lab Leak Debacle Shows Why Banning ‘Misinformation’ Is a Terrible Idea How a debate about COVID-19’s origins exposed a dangerous hubris Robby Soave

By on June 6th, 2021

https://reason.com/2021/06/04/lab-leak-misinformation-media-fauci-covid-19/

Facebook made a quiet but dramatic reversal last week: It no longer forbids users from touting the theory that COVID-19 came from a laboratory.

“In light of ongoing investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and in consultation with public health experts, we will no longer remove the claim that COVID-19 is man-made or manufactured from our apps,” the social media platform declared in a statement.

This change in policy comes in the midst of heated debate about how to respond to the perception that social media is amplifying the spread of false information. For the last several years, journalists and politicians have pushed to police so-called misinformation through various means. Major news organizations have hired mis- or disinformation reporters. Lawmakers such as Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D–Calif.) have urged social media sites to prohibit speech deemed wrong or dangerous—and have sometimes suggested that this should be required by law. More recently, various groups have asked President Joe Biden to establish a federal initiative to combat online misinformation.

But Facebook’s concession that the lab leak story it once viewed as demonstrably false is actually possibly true should put to rest the idea that banning or regulating misinformation should be a chief public policy goal.

It’s one thing to discuss, debate, and correct wrong ideas, and both tech companies and media have roles to play in fostering healthy public dialogue. But Team Blue’s recent obsession with rendering unsayable anything that clashes with its preferred narrative is the height of hubris. The conversation should not be closed by the government and its yes-men in journalism, in tech, or even in public health.

From False Claim to Live Possibility

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ISRAEL Comments turned off

Zionism and Judaism: Are they interdependent? Moshe Dann

By on June 6th, 2021

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/zionism-and-judaism-are-they-interdependent-67018

Judaism needs Zionism because it enabled Jews to return and to establish a state; this allows Jews to have a national identity and engage in fulfilling commandments that can only be done in Israel.

Although some people – such as those in the Reform and Reconstruction movements, “Progressives,” and some left-wing Israelis – claim to support Judaism and Zionism, in fact, they do not. For example, on May 15, 2021, a large group of students, mostly from Reform and Reconstructionist colleges, published a letter condemning Israel for “apartheid” and for “violating human rights” in its war against Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip. This explains why some Jews in America have turned their backs on Zionism, Israel and Judaism.

Zionism is connected to Judaism because it provides a text, the Jewish Bible, or Tanach (The Five Books of Moses, Prophets, and other writings), as well as libraries of theological and philosophical writing that define and mandate the Land of Israel as the homeland of the Jewish people.

Judaism needs Zionism because it enabled Jews to return and to establish a state; this allows Jews to have a national identity and engage in fulfilling mitzvot (commandments) that can only be done in Eretz Yisrael. This is the basis for creating the Third Jewish Commonwealth/Civilization.

Although they need each other to become fulfilled, Zionism and Judaism can and do exist separately and independently in the Diaspora. One can practice Judaism without being a Zionist, just as one can be secular or a non-Jewish Zionist.

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