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May 2025

ISRAEL Comments turned off

Here on Island Israel, Bewilderment and Tough Questions It’s been a rough week and it’s not over yet. P. David Hornik

By on May 9th, 2025

https://pdavidhornik.substack.com/subscribe?

It was reported Thursday evening that Israel’s Transportation Minister Miri Regev, Economy Minister Nir Barkat, and heads of Israeli airlines were holding an emergency meeting on what to do about thousands of Israelis who have been stranded abroad since Sunday—the day a Houthi ballistic missile from Yemen penetrated both Israeli and American air defenses and hit the perimeter of the main terminal of Ben Gurion Airport, injuring six people.

Those Israelis have now been stranded all that time because the Houthi airstrike prompted almost all foreign airlines to immediately cancel flights to Israel. Many of them now say their flights to Israel will be suspended until at least mid-May; for British Airways, at this point, it’s until June 14.

The two Israeli ministers and the airline chiefs were discussing ways to help the far-flung, stranded Israelis get home; the option of the local carriers, for the time being, reducing ticket prices; and “emergency plans in case of another wave of cancellations.”

Since October 7, 2023, the feeling of being isolated on Island Israel is not new to Israelis; many of the international airlines had suspended flights to Israel since that day and only resumed them in March or April this year.

Indeed, there was something almost bizarre about what happened on Sunday. Since March 18, when Israel resumed fighting in Gaza, the Houthis had launched 26 ballistic missiles and several drones at Israel, and all had crashed into the sea before getting here or been shot down.

Yet Sunday’s missile, aimed at the airport, managed to evade both Israel’s Arrow defense system and the US THAAD defense system, deployed to Israel amid heightening tensions with Iran.

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ANTI-SEMITISM, EDUCATION Comments turned off

Probe the foreign influence behind these terror-loving, anti-Jew college agitators By Douglas Murray-

By on May 9th, 2025

https://nypost.com/2025/05/08/opinion/probe-foreign-influence-behind-terror-loving-anti-jew-college-agitators/?utm_campaign=iphone_nyp&utm_source=mail_app

I wonder how Columbia University would behave in the following scenario. A bunch of students and outside agitators descend on their campus. They are dressed in the gear of the Ku Klux Klan, being careful to conceal their faces so as to avoid any personal criticism. They then enter the university’s library and other sacred spaces of learning and chant for the lynching of black Americans.

Would Columbia University sit by while this happened? Would Democrat prosecutors and left-wing activists claim that this was simply a case of people exercising their free-speech rights? And would conservative pundits wishing to appear as being “on the right side of history” insist that the hooligans should be allowed to continue their threatening actions with impunity?

I would guess that the answer to these questions would be “no,” “no” and “no” again.

So why do so many people think that a movement which dedicates itself to intimidating and threatening another minority group in America — specifically Jews — find itself so cosily protected?

The thought occurs after a friend at Columbia sent me footage from the university’s Butler library — the main library on campus — from earlier this week. The Butler library is a beautiful building, intended as a sacrosanct place of study and education. Which was what places like Columbia were once for.

But on Wednesday those students who did want to study had to put up with a mob of fascists descending on their place of learning. Scores of students and others came in dressed in their terrorist chic. Their heads were wrapped in Palestinian terrorist scarves and some of them — as ever — decided to mix this up with COVID-19 protective masks.

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OPINION, RELIGION Comments turned off

Fear of freedom leads us to vote for more government Diane Bederman

By on May 9th, 2025

https://dianebederman.com/fear-of-freedom-leads-us-to-vote-for-more-government/

The Jewish people gave the world the ethic of freedom some 3500 years ago. God said to all present and future:

All people are born with equal intrinsic value, all life is sacred and most importantly and most frightening – we have free-will.

God told us what is good and what is evil

God gave us the blessing and the curse; life and death; choose life. Choose Good over Evil.

Unheard of until that moment. It was the first time people were told they had the right to their own views and the responsibility to make decisions. They were no longer under the control of a supreme leader. This was the first time in history that people were given freedom: and it is frightening. And, too often, fear leads to submission. Today, that submission is to governments in so-called freedom-loving countries in the West.

On the sixth day, God created man and woman: not from an utterance, not from a word, but from His hands and His breath; we are created in His image, capable of reason, moral thinking, and free will. He created Adam and Eve, the first children, the first of His children. And He placed them in the lush Garden of Eden. And He told them to eat and enjoy all that was before them in the Garden of Eden, all but the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil. That tree—right there in the middle of the garden. That sensual tree with luscious fruit. That tree. Don’t eat from that tree.

But, like all children, the admonishment not to eat piqued their curiosity, their childishness, and their innocence. How could they not try the fruit? It’s not as if it were hidden in a corner of the garden behind a fence. It was right there. In front of them. So easy to access. So forbidden. It is too much to bear. And the first children that ate of the fruit now exist in all of us, as does the first breath…

We naturally bemoan the expulsion of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden. Had they not disobeyed God’s commandment not to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge, we would all be living in paradise. And the story of the human journey would have ended. But they chose to eat of the fruit and condemned—or gifted—all of us with free will.

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