*They Still Look Jewish To Me - Or Did They SHMAD Secretly?* “The young men of the August 2024 draft class join a proud tradition of Haredi soldiers who have taken upon themselves the sacred mission of defending the people of Israel,” he said. “Their journey has been not only physical but also deeply moral and spiritual. They are living proof that Torah values and military service can go hand in hand.”

 

[שְׁמַד] verb Haph`el destroy (ᵑ7 Pa`el make apostatize) - The Hebrew verb "shmad" primarily conveys the idea of complete destruction or annihilation. It is often used in the context of divine judgment or warfare, where the obliteration of a people, city, or object is intended. The term implies a thorough and irreversible action, often as a consequence of sin or rebellion against God.

Haredi Recruits Complete Beret Hike following Weeks of Intensive Training

 

Photo Credit: Courtesy of Netzah Yehuda Association

Haredi Netzah Yehuda Battalion recruits at their basic training graduation ceremony.

 

Under the glow of the setting sun, the newest batch of soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces’ Netzah Yehuda Battalion and the Tomer Company of the Givati Brigade completed a significant rite of passage: the beret hike.

A beret hike is a military march undertaken by soldiers of the IDF combat units, culminating in the awarding of a uniquely colored beret representing their corps or brigade. This hike also marks the completion of certain training phases, such as the conclusion of basic or advanced training.

For the young ultra-Orthodox recruits, the hike marked the culmination of weeks of intense training, testing both their physical endurance and mental resolve. The soldiers of Netzah Yehuda arrived at the Kfir Brigade Memorial in Afula, where they stood shoulder to shoulder as they received their hard-earned berets, signifying their official entry into the ranks of combat soldiers. Simultaneously, in Eshkol Park, soldiers of the Haredi Tomer Company completed their own hike and were awarded the distinctive purple beret of the Givati Brigade.

Haredi Netzah Yehuda Battalion recruits at their basic training graduation ceremony

 

The Netzah Yehuda Battalion—often referred to as “Nahal Haredi”—was established in 1999 with the goal of integrating ultra-Orthodox men into combat service while maintaining their religious observance. The battalion provides its members with a framework tailored to their way of life, offering spiritual guidance and social support. The Netzah Yehuda Association, which has accompanied the battalion since its inception, assists soldiers from enlistment through discharge and beyond, helping them transition into civilian life.

Similarly, the Tomer Company in the Givati Brigade was founded to provide Haredi soldiers an opportunity to serve in an elite combat unit while remaining true to their religious commitments. The completion of the beret hike signifies not only the end of basic training but also the beginning of their service as full-fledged fighters.

Rabbi Shaul Abdiel, the spiritual guide for Netzah Yehuda, hugs one of ‘his’ soldiers at the graduation ceremony. / Courtesy of Netzah Yehuda Association

Rabbi Shaul Abdiel, the spiritual guide for Netzah Yehuda, praised the soldiers for their perseverance and commitment.

“The young men of the August 2024 draft class join a proud tradition of Haredi soldiers who have taken upon themselves the sacred mission of defending the people of Israel,” he said. “Their journey has been not only physical but also deeply moral and spiritual. They are living proof that Torah values and military service can go hand in hand.”

Haredi Netzah Yehuda Battalion recruits at their basic training graduation ceremony

The ceremony drew families, friends, and commanders, their faces alight with emotion. For many of the soldiers, the beret symbolizes more than the completion of a training phase—it represents a personal and communal milestone, proof that they can serve their country while staying true to their faith.

Haredi Netzah Yehuda Battalion recruits at their basic training graduation ceremony

 

One father, watching his son receive his beret in Netzah Yehuda, reflected on the significance of the moment.

“This is something I will never forget,” he said. “To see my son standing here as a warrior in the IDF fills me with indescribable pride. He is defending the people of Israel with his body while safeguarding the Torah and its commandments. The journey has not been easy, but thanks to the support of his commanders and the Netzah Yehuda Association, he has arrived here strong and filled with a sense of purpose.”

With basic training behind them, the soldiers now move on to advanced training before they are deployed to operational sectors, where they will join their fellow troops in safeguarding Israel’s security.

 

https://www.jewishpress.com/multimedia/photos/haredi-recruits-complete-beret-hike-following-weeks-of-intensive-training/2025/03/05/

Dear Great Big Giant Rabbi (I don't Care If You're An Ignorant anti-Vaxxer) - Should My Kids Get A Measles Vaccine? BTW -- Did You Ever Take Antibiotics? (asking for a friend)

 

9 states report measles cases as outbreaks grow

One of the most contagious viruses in the world is spreading around the United States. So far in 2025 there have been three distinct measles outbreaks and at least 164 cases reported to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention coming from nine states.

The largest of the outbreaks is in West Texas, where the total number of people diagnosed with measles grew to 146 on Friday. An unvaccinated child in the region died last week. It was the first measles death in the U.S. since 2015.

While the focus in recent weeks has been on Texas, eight other states have confirmed cases of the virus, the CDC reports. Nine cases have been confirmed in New Mexico’s Lea County, and at least one case has been confirmed in Alaska, California, Georgia, Kentucky, New Jersey, New York and Rhode Island.

Twenty percent of the reported cases have required hospitalization, according to the CDC. Most of those infected have been children.

The virus is airborne and spreads easily when an infected person breathes, sneezes or coughs.

“On average, one infected person may infect about 15 other people,” said Scott Weaver, a center of excellence director for the Global Virus Network, an international coalition. “There’s only a few viruses that even come close to that.”

Measles then spreads from the respiratory tract throughout the body, causing a high fever; runny nose; cough; red, watery eyes; and a rash.

Measles isn’t usually deadly, but it can have serious complications, especially for young children. Among kids with measles, about 1 in every 20 develops pneumonia, which can be fatal. About one in every 1,000 also suffers swelling of the brain called encephalitis — which can lead to convulsions, deafness or intellectual disability.

How can you prevent measles?

The best way to avoid measles is to get the measles, mumps and rubella (MMR) vaccine. The first shot is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old and the second between 4 and 6 years old.

“Before a vaccine was developed in the 1960s, everybody got” measles, Weaver said. “But then when the vaccine came along, that was a complete game-changer and one of the most successful vaccines in the history of medicine.”

There is “great data” on the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine, he said, because it’s been around for decades.

“Any of these outbreaks we’re seeing can easily be prevented by increasing the rate of vaccination in the community,” he said. “If we can maintain 95% of people vaccinated, we’re not going to see this happening in the future. And we’ve slipped well below that level in many parts of the country.”

Vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

Adults can also get MMR boosters, even if they had two doses as a child or aren’t sure if they were vaccinated when young. Those who are immunocompromised or who are living in an area with a large outbreak may want to ask their doctor about getting another dose.

“But I don’t think everyone needs to go and run out to their doctor right now if they did receive two doses as a child,” Weaver said. “If people would just get the standard vaccination, none of this would be happening.”

https://thehill.com/policy/healthcare/5173803-9-states-report-measles-cases-as-outbreaks-grow/

 

RFK Jr sparks alarm after backing vitamins to treat measles amid outbreak

Health experts wary as US health secretary fails to endorse effective vaccines and instead calls them a ‘personal choice’

Robert F Kennedy Jr, the US health secretary, has caused alarm among pediatricians, vaccine experts and lawmakers with an opinion piece that focuses on vitamin A and nutrition as treatments for measles.

In response to a measles outbreak in Texas, which resulted in the first American measles death in nearly a decade, Kennedy wrote for Fox News about the benefits of “good nutrition” and vitamin A – but did not explicitly recommend highly effective vaccines.

“In fact, relying on vitamin A instead of the vaccine is not only dangerous and ineffective, but it puts children at serious risk,” Dr Sue Kressly, the president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, told the Washington Post.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/mar/04/rfk-jr-vitamins-measles-outbreak

What Timothy Snyder gets right on Ukraine and wrong on Israel --- As I argued in 2020, the idea that Trump would be “good for Israel” was an illusion. The consequences of an “America First” policy are terrible for any country, whether in Europe, Asia, or Israel, which depend on the United States.

 

Featured Post

 

What Timothy Snyder gets right on Ukraine and wrong on Israel

Comments the historian made to ToI's David Horovitz on antisemitism and events on US campuses are neither convincing nor accurate

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Snyder said protests were suppressed. Were they? 

 

 

 Since the “Orange Revolution” in Ukraine and the Russian invasion of Crimea in 2014, Timothy Snyder has been publishing widely and well on ongoing events in Ukraine and on authoritarian trends in US politics. This week, The Times of Israel ran a lengthy interview with the American historian conducted by editor-in-chief David Horovitz. In the interview, Snyder draws attention to the destruction of fundamental capabilities of the United States government that is being carried out by President Donald Trump and by the unelected but powerful Elon Musk. Snyder is right to warn Israelis that the country that Israel depends on is shredding the expertise of its national security institutions.

 

 As I argued in 2020, the idea that Trump would be “good for Israel” was an illusion. The consequences of an “America First” policy are terrible for any country, whether in Europe, Asia, or Israel, which depend on the United States.

Indeed, as Adam Garfinkle brilliantly examined in an essay published this week in Quillette, the damage to American foreign and military policy due to Trump’s evisceration of the NATO Alliance is even worse than the grim picture that Snyder paints. The ability of the US Navy and Air Force to assist Israel depends on its continued, secure presence in the Atlantic Alliance in Europe. Should the United States voluntarily destroy its position in Europe, creating an advantage for Russia, the consequences for its ability to serve as Israel’s ally will be severely limited.

During the Cold War, Israeli leaders understood that if the Soviet Union were to succeed in driving the United States out of Europe and extending its political influence over Western Europe, the prospect of a successful Arab attack would have been greatly enhanced, deeply endangering Israel’s security. Thus, the defeat of the Soviet Union’s efforts to break the Atlantic Alliance, the spread of democracies to Central and Eastern Europe, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union itself represented enormous gains in security for Israel. Donald Trump and the America First ideologues in his administration appear to have no understanding of the connection between preserving the American position in Europe and being able to project power in the Middle East. The interview with Snyder is a valuable reminder that authoritarian politics in the United States endanger its foreign and military policies and that his mass pardon of those convicted of crimes in the attack on the US Capitol on January 6, 2021, appeased right-wing antisemites.

Yet, when Snyder turns to the issue of antisemitism and events on American campuses, he offers comments that are neither convincing nor accurate.

  Snyder, referring to the demonstrations on American university campuses denouncing Israel in the aftermath of the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023, asserted that “the cause of suppressing these protests was largely the cause of people who didn’t care about Jews or antisemitism in American domestic politics. That ought to be worrying if you were Jewish and if you care about antisemitism.”

But I know of no protests directed against Israel, on or off American university campuses, since October 7, 2023, that were “suppressed,” and Snyder offers no examples. Some universities did stop protests if they violated time, place, and manner rules, such as bans on making noise in the middle of the night that disturbs students sleeping in dorms, preventing students from attending classes, or disrupting classrooms. Other universities, however, tolerated these violations for many months. Since October 7, 2023, chapters of the pro-Hamas organization Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) were and still are allowed to publicly chant “free, free Palestine, from the river to the sea” due to protections of free speech that remain intact.

Furthermore, while Snyder does not specify who or what he has in mind when he refers to “people who didn’t care about Jews or antisemitism,” the implication is that criticism of the protests or describing them as forms of antisemitism was primarily a preoccupation of American conservatives who used the antisemitism issue for their own political purposes. In fact, both Jewish and non-Jewish students and faculty on campuses, such as our University of Maryland Faculty Against Antisemitism and for Academic Freedom group, cared very much about the antisemitism. We had witnessed it from the pro-Hamas demonstrators who were calling for the destruction of the state of Israel or who sought to cancel or expel “Zionists” from campus. The excellent reports by a task force on antisemitism at Columbia University include no desire to “suppress” protest, but they do point to the reality of antisemitism that came from the protests Snyder has in mind. Numerous other Jewish organizations, on and off campuses, have repeatedly expressed public alarm about the explosion of hatred toward Israel that came from “progressive” circles on the faculty and students. Snyder writes as if that did not occur.

Snyder refers to a specific concern about “the blanket ban and the de facto consensus on the issue that students are not allowed to protest.”

“That’s really a very bad thing,” he continues, “because if students aren’t allowed to protest, whatever the origins of that, if students aren’t allowed to protest, then who is going to protest in American society? That’s where we are right now. That is, unfortunately, a very bad thing as we head into all the other problems that we’re going to face in 2025.”

This comment also flies in the face of the facts. Certainly, it would be “a very bad thing” if that were the case, but I know of no case in which any American university, even in the most conservative parts of the country, has issued a “blanket ban” or supported a “de facto consensus on the issue that students are not allowed to protest.” It is not true that “students aren’t allowed to protest” or that “that’s where we are right now.” Especially as Snyder is a historian, it is most unfortunate that he makes these assertions without the support of evidence.

At the University of Maryland, College Park, the Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) sought to hold a rally on October 7, 2024 – that is, on the anniversary of the attack the previous year. Jewish students, faculty and alumni were outraged at what would be understood as a celebration of the terrorist assault. Wes Moore, Maryland’s Democratic Governor, stated, “I think Oct. 7 is an inappropriate date for such an event. Terrorists target civilians, and that’s what Hamas did a year ago on Oct. 7. And that’s what that day should be remembered as — a heinous terrorist attack on Israel that took innocent lives.”

The University leadership initially decided to cancel all events for that day, including memorial events by Jewish students. A federal judge reversed that decision and SJP was allowed to have its demonstration, while about 1,000 Jewish students attended a memorial service at the campus Hillel. There was no “blanket ban.” On the contrary, a pro-Hamas student group was allowed to hold a rally even on the anniversary of the October 7 massacres.

Snyder did not seize the opportunity, really the great privilege, of an interview with the editor-in-chief of The Times of Israel to denounce the apologia and silences about Islamist antisemitism that became so evident in American universities since October 7, especially in departments in the humanities and social sciences. Throughout this period, the voices that dominated discussion about these issues were those denouncing Israel as a form of settler colonialism, apartheid and then genocide. Only a minority of us in those fields raised the issue of the ideological hatreds of Hamas, Hezbollah, the Islamic Republic of Iran and of Islamist antisemitism in general.

As Paul Berman has recently demonstrated in an essay in Liberties, an anti-Zionist consensus has found a firm footing among tenured faculty, especially alarmingly, in fields related to the Middle East and Israel. One result of that successful long march through the institutions is that far too few faculty were teaching or conducting research on antisemitism in its leftist and Islamist forms. The YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York City sponsored a series of widely attended webinars on scholarship on Islamist forms of antisemitism and the origins of Hamas’s ideology, but such discussions were rare in the relevant university departments.

If Timothy Snyder recognizes that Ukraine’s fight to survive Russia’s aggression is part of the same struggle that Israel is waging to survive against the efforts of Islamist organizations and Iran to destroy it, he did not make that connection explicit in the interview with David Horovitz. Due partly to the tradition of frank confrontation with the crimes of the Nazi regime, and to awareness of the historical links between Islamists and the Nazis, it is in Germany, more than in the United States, where scholars and journalists have most clearly drawn the connection between the two wars. That has happened most consistently and powerfully in the writing of the journalist and essayist Richard Herzinger, who published “Israel and Ukraine Are Fighting the Same Battle” in November 2023. This essay, available in English via Google Translate, is especially important to read in view of Trump’s attack on Zelensky and his repetition of Russian propaganda. Herzinger wrote in part:

While the Western world’s unconditional solidarity with Israel is now essential, the direct connection between the anti-Semitic terror of destruction carried out by Hamas for the benefit of Iran and the genocidal war of annihilation waged by Russia, Tehran’s closest ally, against Ukraine must not be forgotten. Israel and Ukraine are both fighting not only for their own survival, but to defend democratic civilization, basic human rights, and dignity. The West must never cease to support them both with equal intensity in this fight, which they are waging for all freedom-loving humanity.

Herzinger’s plea takes on added urgency in view of the ambush of Zelensky by Trump and Vice President JD Vance in the Oval Office.

 For Israel, the lesson from that disgraceful display of extortion and bullying is that the more vulnerable a small state, the more dangerous it is to have to depend on the United States in the era of Trump and Trumpism. The United States is no longer a reliable ally if reliability refers to a policy based on a blend of shared values and interests. As Trump’s embrace of Putin’s Russia deepens, the less likely he may be to support a military strike against Iran’s nuclear program. If Trump thinks Saudi oil and sovereign investment funds are more important than the votes of American Jews, or that Israel has become a nuisance that gets in the way of a great-power rapprochement with Russia and perhaps China, I can well imagine an American turn against Israel.

Herzinger’s voice does not reflect a majority sentiment in Germany, but neither is he completely alone. There remain wellsprings of support for Israel in Europe, along with a recognition that Europe’s fight against Russian aggression is of a piece with Israel’s military response to Hamas and Hezbollah. As the United States threatens to retreat from Europe and ceases, at least for the time being, to be the leader of the free world, that is, of the world’s liberal democracies, Israel would be well advised to strengthen its bonds with a Europe that is belatedly but surely awakening to a world transformed.

Though the primary threat to our democracy comes from Trump and his supporters, Timothy Snyder and other trenchant critics of American authoritarianism need to write and speak much more clearly about antisemitism and hatred of Israel when such ideological hatreds and misconceptions about Israel come from within the American university.

About the Author:

Jeffrey Herf is Distinguished University Professor, Emeritus in the Department of History at the University of Maryland, College Park, USA. He has published extensively on modern German and European history, and in its intersection with the Middle East, most recently, Israel's Moment: International Support for and Opposition to Establishing the Jewish State, 1945-1949 (Cambridge University Press, 2022), and Three Faces of Antisemitism: Right, Left, and Islamist (Routledge, 2024). 

 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/ukraine-and-israel-a-reply-to-timothy-snyders-interview-with-david-horovitz/

Gangster Blackmail as Israel Fights For Its Very Survival! Goldknopf has repeatedly issued ultimatums linking the budget to the enlistment issue

 While cautioning that the party will not make any final decision before obtaining guidance from its rabbinic leadership aka money fressers,(keeping their businesses running with empty chairs is not good for their bottom line - rather keep them bums in the streets of Tel-Aviv up to no good) -- Goldknopf declared that the enlistment bill should be prioritized as a condition for the government’s continuation, and that it should “be made clear to the general public” that unless it is passed before the budget, the enlistment bill “will never be enacted.”

 

Haredi party threatens to topple government unless it gets NIS 1 billion for yeshivas

 

Writing to cabinet secretary, UTJ chief Goldknopf demands ‘immediate’ action on issue to ensure his party backs the crucial state budget; previous ultimatums haven’t been acted on

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Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, left, and Housing Minister Yitzhak Goldknopf, right, arriving for a cabinet meeting at the Prime Minister's Office in Jerusalem 

 

Housing Minister Yitzchak Goldknopf, the leader of the ultra-Orthodox United Torah Judaism party, threatened on Friday to oppose the 2025 state budget, which would topple the government, unless it allocates more than a billion shekels in coalition funds for Haredi yeshivas.

It is Goldknopf’s second threat to the continued stability of the coalition in less than a week, and the latest in a string of Haredi ultimatums that so far have all been backed down from.

In a letter to Cabinet Secretary Yossi Fuchs published by the Ynet news site, Goldknopf complained that while Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich had recently promised him the money, it were not included in a list of coalition funds set to be approved by the cabinet on Sunday morning.

Goldknopf called on Fuchs to rectify the situation “immediately” in order to ensure his support for the budget in the Knesset.

The 2025 state budget must be passed by the end of March or the government will automatically fall, triggering early elections.

According to the Kan public broadcaster, the cabinet is expected to approve NIS 1.3 billion ($370 million) in coalition funds for yeshiva budgets to the ultra-Orthodox in the coming days. Responding to Kan’s report, Opposition Leader Yair Lapid accused the government of “corruption,” describing the Haredi educational funds as “loot.”

Last week, ultra-Orthodox radio station Kol Hai reported that Netanyahu and Smotrich had offered he coalition’s Haredi parties concessions on the 2025 state budget in order to secure their agreement for the postponement of the passage of a law exempting yeshiva students from military service.

According to the report, Netanyahu and Smotrich offered the Haredi parties a 15 percent increase in the budgets of ultra-Orthodox school networks, as well as additional funding for kindergarten teachers, under the government’s Ofek Hadash (New Horizon) plan

The enlistment crisis

Goldknopf’s latest threat against the budget comes only days after he warned that he would topple the government if it does not approve a law largely excluding the ultra-Orthodox from IDF conscription prior to the passage of the state budget.

According to a report Wednesday in the Hamodia daily, which is affiliated with Goldknopf’s Gur Hasidic movement, the UTJ chief complained during a faction meeting in the Knesset that a bill enshrining yeshiva students’ military exemptions should have been passed a long time ago, but Netanyahu’s government has repeatedly given “excuses” and postponed its advancement.

“We have two options before us: either they put off the conscription bill and we go to summer elections, or they insist on the conscription bill before the budget and the government completes its term,” Goldknopf insisted.

While cautioning that the party will not make any final decision before obtaining guidance from its rabbinic leadership, Goldknopf declared that the enlistment bill should be prioritized as a condition for the government’s continuation, and that it should “be made clear to the general public” that unless it is passed before the budget, the enlistment bill “will never be enacted.”

According to Hebrew press reports, at the weekly cabinet meeting last week, Netanyahu indicated that the budget would be passed first. In response, Goldknopf was said to have asked rhetorically why his party was remaining in the government.

In June, the High Court of Justice ruled that the government must draft ultra-Orthodox yeshiva students into the military since there was no longer any legal framework to continue the decades-long practice of granting them blanket exemptions from army service.

Haredi leaders vehemently oppose members of the community serving in the military, fearing they will be secularized. The issue, long a sensitive one in Israeli public discourse due to the perceived inequality created by the blanket exemption, has taken on renewed urgency as the military is short of manpower amid a multifront war.

Ultra-Orthodox students study at the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnei Brak

 

Under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox allies, Netanyahu has repeatedly promised a quick resolution to the issue in recent months.

Despite the prime minister’s assurances, a bill dealing with the issue of enlistment is currently stuck in the Knesset Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee, whose chairman, Likud MK Yuli Edelstein, has stated that he will “only produce a real conscription law that will significantly increase the IDF’s conscription base.”

A history of threats

Goldknopf has repeatedly issued ultimatums linking the budget to the enlistment issue but has failed to follow through.

In October, UTJ appeared to backtrack from a threat to derail state budget talks only hours after demanding that the government quickly pass a new conscription law.

Instead, the party’s rabbinic leadership reportedly instructed the party leadership to focus on a bill aimed at circumventing a High Court ruling that such financial support is illegal in cases where the father should be serving in the Israel Defense Forces but is not.

The party later issued a public warning that it would boycott all votes on coalition legislation if the bill was not advanced. However, due to opposition from coalition lawmakers, Netanyahu was forced to remove the bill from the Knesset agenda, and UTJ continued to vote with the coalition.

Ultra-Orthodox Jews protest against mandatory enlistment outside an IDF Recruitment Center in Jeursalem,

In December, Agudat Yisrael, Goldknopf’s faction within UTJ, threatened to oppose a key budget bill, demanding that the coalition meet their demands before they begin voting with it again.

However, Likud officials managed to head off opposition by two members of Agudat Yisrael, with MKs Yisrael Eichler and Moshe Roth staying away rather than voting against the coalition, denying what would have been a rare victory to the opposition. UTJ’s Yaakov Tessler voted with the opposition.

In a similar move, last month, Aryeh Deri, the chairman of the Haredi Shas party, warned Netanyahu that he had two months to resolve the status of yeshiva students or “we’ll go to elections.”

The following day, Shas spokesman Asher Medina walked the statement back, telling Channel 12 that his party would “not topple the right-wing government. There is no threat and no ultimatum.”

https://www.timesofisrael.com/haredi-party-threatens-to-topple-government-unless-it-gets-nis-1-billion-for-yeshivas/?

BIBI ---- He's Talkin' to You! You Could Be The Next Zelensky Set Up, Ambushed, and Defunded! * I found his warnings that Israel stands to be deeply harmed by the Trump administration’s embrace of dictatorships and by what he believes to be the Musk-Trump assault on the fundamental functioning of the United States to be important and worrying.*

 

* How Many Soldiers Will Die To Free The Living Hostages? ACT NOW - Take Over Gaza - DeNuke Iran - You Can Not Count On Trump Tomorrow! PM *

 "In that vein, he also talked about Zionists having looked back at thousands of years of Jewish history and accurately recognized that “there has to be a state.” By contrast, “the people who are now running my country,” he said, are engaged in “the self-destruction of American state capacity.”

Israel depends upon a functioning US. Trump and Musk are destroying it

 

A deeply disturbing interview with the Yale historian, famed for offering 20th century lessons for protecting today’s democracies. 

 

I had been trying for several weeks to arrange an interview with American historian Timothy Snyder. I wanted to speak to him in particular about a bestselling book he wrote, “On Tyranny,” that offers “Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century” that might help prevent the collapse of democracies.

The short volume includes advice about not making it easy for leaderships who are bent on authoritarianism by preemptively consenting to their goals, defending targeted institutions, remembering professional ethics, and not confusing dangerous nationalism with commendable patriotism. One of the many memorable epithets from the text that stuck in my mind was: “A nationalist encourages us to be our worst, and then tells us that we are the best… A patriot, by contrast, wants the nation to live up to its ideals.”

Not everything in the book has obvious relevance for an Israel whose democratic institutions are under attack by the coalition led by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. But much of it has — certainly with regard to the growing concentration of power in the hands of a single leader and the ongoing attempts by his coalition to radically constrain the judiciary.

As it turned out, the date we set for the (Zoom) interview, February 20, coincided with the return by Hamas of what it said were the bodies of four slain hostages — Oded Lifshitz, Shiri Bibas, Ariel Bibas and Kfir Bibas — and we were speaking as Israel’s national forensic institute was in the process of establishing whether Hamas had indeed sent home the four bodies it had promised. It had not.

The sheer volume of breaking news since that day meant I only found the time to write up the Snyder interview now, a week later. And the news keeps moving, of course: As I was reading over this piece before publication, US President Donald Trump was publicly berating Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in the Oval Office — a staggering confrontation that, as you read on, you will gather would have dismayed but probably not surprised Snyder.

A professor at Yale specializing in Central and Eastern Europe, Russia and the Holocaust, who sits on the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Committee of Conscience, Snyder has been to Israel and has lots of friends here, but took pains in our interview to stress that he is not an expert on Israel and its current affairs. “It doesn’t make sense to ask me about detailed Israeli things,” he said, but “what I can do is apply different kinds of knowledge to the predicaments that you describe.”

 

Demonstrators gather in New York’s Union Square - One of the protesters holds a placard with a quotation from Timothy Snyder’s book “On Tyranny.” New York, February 17, 2025

 

Our conversation wound up not focusing very much on the Israeli coalition’s judicial overhaul and, indeed, took several unpredictable turns — to the point where, at the end, Snyder noted that “It may not have been what you were looking for, but I hope it was of interest.”

Indeed it was.

I found his warnings that Israel stands to be deeply harmed by the Trump administration’s embrace of dictatorships and by what he believes to be the Musk-Trump assault on the fundamental functioning of the United States to be important and worrying.

And I was intrigued by his suggestion that Netanyahu might be among the world leaders most capable — if not the best-placed of all — when it comes to trying to talk Trump out of policies that are not in the American interest and, by extension, not in Israel’s interest either. If Netanyahu is trying to humor the president and scared of crossing him, “I would find that worrisome,” he said. Israel’s leaders, he elaborated dryly, might want to “counsel the United States that it’s not a good idea to disassemble your national security apparatus… or to fire your best generals.”

“In terms of the long structural relationship, Israel depends upon a functioning United States,” Snyder stressed. “More important than the particular goodies that Trump might give you right now,” he said, “is whether, in 2030, the United States is actually going to be capable of doing basic things.”

In that vein, he also talked about Zionists having looked back at thousands of years of Jewish history and accurately recognized that “there has to be a state.” By contrast, “the people who are now running my country,” he said, are engaged in “the self-destruction of American state capacity.”

The Times of Israel: It’s an awful day in Israel because they returned four bodies of hostages, including the Bibas family. I assume you’ve followed a bit. They’re just waiting to confirm the identities of them. 

I know you’re incredibly busy and I appreciate that you found some time. I want to set up the context in which I wanted to speak to you. Forgive me if I’m telling you stuff that’s really obvious to you.

This is a country that’s been in a war for 16 months after an invasion by Hamas terrorists, and 1,200 people killed, and hostages abducted, and there are lots of people around Israel trying to murder us and, in many cases, to wipe out Israel. And they have lots of support internationally. We’re facing an incredibly oppressive region, as has always been the case.

At the same time, we have a very problematic, divisive government that, it seems to me, is battering away at the pillars of our democracy. As you probably know, we don’t have a constitution in Israel. We don’t have a strong, independent legislature because the majority coalition controls parliament. We only, therefore, have the executive, really, and the judiciary. The judiciary is pretty feisty and independent, but the current coalition is trying to undo that. It’s trying to oversee almost the entire process for choosing judges, and to limit the capacity of the Supreme Court to intervene on anything. Basically, the only thing protecting any individual rights from the political majority is the judiciary, and they’re under assault.

So that’s the context. And I wanted your insights, echoes, and lessons we might learn from other eras and other parts of the world.

How worried are you as a scholar in America about what Trump is doing in America? And what we should make of Trump, therefore, who is being very supportive of Israel at the moment.

There is such a thing as too much of a good thing. There are relationships where one person gives the other person everything they want, and that’s not necessarily a healthy relationship because maybe we shouldn’t get all the things that we want. I think Gaza here is a good example, where Israelis might think, okay, well, Trump is showing his general sympathy by saying that he wants to ethnically cleanse everybody from Gaza and build a bunch of hotels.

Timothy Snyder, a professor of history at Yale University and the author of books including “Bloodlands” and “The Road to Unfreedom,” speaks in Kharkiv, Ukraine, September 8, 2024.

 

You could read that as general sympathy, or you could just read it as someone who has crossed over from pro-right-wing Israeli political instincts into absolute madness. And that if something like that were actually attempted, it could not possibly be understood as pro-Israeli. Not that it is going to happen, by the way, because these are all just fancies. But if something like that actually happened, that would break precisely the Israeli Arab reconciliations that have happened over the course of the last 15 years or so. That’s the one thing.

The other thing is that the Israeli-American relationship has always depended upon the American state capacity to do various things. But the crucial story of the Trump administration so far is the self-destruction of American state capacity.

So if Israelis in the future are expecting things like arms deliveries in crucial times, or they’re expecting the ability to broker peace talks or whatever, the Trump administration has essentially fired everybody who has the confidence to do that kind of thing, and the prospects are for more of that.

Trump is making the United States dysfunctional. And at that point, it becomes a little bit academic whether he’s pro-Israel or anti-Israel or whatever, because there isn’t going to be the capability anymore

This sort of … libertarian-style America is going to be dysfunctional and not capable of the things that Israel has been used to, whether we’re talking about 1967 or 1973 or whether we’re talking about 2023. I don’t think this America is going to be capable of those kinds of things. I would suspect that’s the thing about Trump which maybe hasn’t reached Israel yet: that he’s making the United States dysfunctional. And at that point, it becomes a little bit academic whether he’s pro-Israel or anti-Israel or whatever, because there isn’t going to be the capability anymore.

But if you’re asking me, as an American, what I think: I think it’s bad for Israel that the United States is now taking the side of dictatorships around the world. That’s not going to create an environment which is going to be helpful for Israeli democracy. And I take democracy to be in the interest of Israel.

Elon Musk is the most powerful person in the United States now, not Donald Trump

You’re describing a Trump, who I’m sure you were troubled by in 2020, as, nonetheless, a very different and more dangerous president now?

There are two basic differences to start with. Number one, Elon Musk is the most powerful person in the United States now, not Donald Trump. And we didn’t have that factor in 2016. We didn’t have somebody who was determined to neuter American public administration or the American civil service. And we have that now. We have somebody whose life’s mission essentially is to make American government dysfunctional. That’s something which is new.

Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk with his son X Æ A-Xii join US President Donald Trump as he signs executive orders in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, February 11, 2025.

And the second thing that we didn’t have the last time around is that we didn’t have a Trump who was completely surrounded by people who would actually do the things that he says he wants them to do.

 READ ALL OF IT:

https://www.timesofisrael.com/tim-snyders-warning-israel-depends-upon-a-functioning-us-trump-and-musk-are-destroying-it/?

It’s been five years, and more than 20 million deaths globally.

 

The Covid Alarmists Were Closer to the Truth Than Anyone Else

It’s been five years, and more than 20 million deaths globally. The first official case was in December 2019. The World Health Organization designated Covid-19 a public health emergency at the end of January 2020, the U.S. government declared it a national emergency on March 13, and every single state ordered or recommended schools close at some point between March 16 and March 27. What followed was trauma: years of mass mortality, inescapable infection and deep disruption, even to the lives of the relatively safe.

Next week I’ll be publishing an essay reflecting on where that world-historical whirlwind eventually left us, focused less on the emergency itself than on all the ways, both obvious and subtle, an unthinkable — even unbelievable — mortality event transformed our world. But today I just want to remind us where things started, half a decade ago now.

My first hint came via Twitter on Dec. 31, 2019, when I saw the health and medicine journalist Helen Branswell warning of “unexplained pneumonias” in China. The plot beats that would follow were, in certain ways, familiar enough, Hollywood and science fiction having taught us all about global health emergencies and what might be done to stop them. But although I could easily imagine a pandemic unfolding onscreen, I couldn’t really believe we’d end up living through one, so deep were my intuitions that plagues were — at least in the wealthy world — a thing of the past. Whatever I’d heard from scientists about the risks of this or that future outbreak, I was living firmly in epidemiological denial.

Two months later, in the first days of March, I found myself having dinner with an old friend who told me that he and his father had recently made a casual bet about how many Americans would ultimately die of the disease. His father had bet the total would be under 100,000; my friend had guessed more. “What do you think?” he asked me. I grimaced a little. “I’d take the over at a million,” I said.

I was reminded of this all recently when reading about a similar bet that the writer and podcaster Sam Harris said he made with his former friend Elon Musk at the beginning of the pandemic. (It’s ugly but perhaps illuminating to realize how many responded to the scary news by gambling on it.) Musk’s intuition was that the whole thing would just go away. On March 19, 2020, he tweeted that “on current trends,” the country was headed to no new cases sometime by the end of April, and he bet Harris that the outbreak would produce fewer than 35,000 cases in total. When the official count of Covid deaths passed 35,000 in April, Harris wrote to Musk to ask, cheekily, whether this meant he’d won the bet. Musk did not respond. In fact, to read Harris’s retelling of it, that was the end of their friendship and the moment he watched his old comrade disappear into a kind of alternate reality.

Today, the official Covid death toll in the United States stands at 1.22 million. Excess mortality counts, which compare the total number of all-cause deaths to a projection of what they would have been without the pandemic, run a little higher — about 1.5 million.

In other words, the alarmists were closer to the truth than anyone else. That includes Anthony Fauci, who in March 2020 predicted 100,000 to 200,000 American deaths and was called hysterical for it. The same was true of the British scientist Neil Ferguson, whose Imperial College model suggested that the disease might ultimately infect more than 80 percent of Americans and kill 2.2 million of us. Thankfully, the country was vaccinated en masse long before 80 percent were infected, but as early as March 2020 Donald Trump and Deborah Birx (who helped run the White House’s Covid response) appeared to be referencing Ferguson’s figure to claim credit for avoiding more than two million deaths — a success they explicitly attributed to shelter-in-place guidelines, business closings and travel restrictions.

Five years later, though the world has been scarred by all that death and illness, it is considered hysterical to narrate the history of the pandemic by focusing on it. Covid minimizers and vaccine skeptics now run the country’s health agencies, but the backlash isn’t just on the right. Many states have tied the hands of public health authorities in dealing with future pandemic threats, and mask bans have been implemented in states as blue as New York. Everyone has a gripe with how the pandemic was handled, and many of them are legitimate. But our memories are so warped by denial, suppression and sublimation that Covid revisionism no longer even qualifies as news. When I come across an exchange like this one from last weekend, in which Woody Harrelson called Fauci evil on Joe Rogan’s show, or this one from last year, in which Rogan and Tony Hinchcliffe casually attribute a rise in excess and all-cause mortality to the aftereffects of vaccination, I don’t even really flinch.

To be clear, their suggestion is spurious. (Ironically, the vaccines are the reason we can even entertain such speculation.) In some countries where vaccination was more universal than here, such as the U.K., shots effectively brought an end to the pandemic emergency. And as I wrote two years ago, total mortality through the pandemic has tracked so closely with known Covid waves — spiking when cases were also spiking, subsiding when the disease was also in retreat — it was disingenuous to pretend the “unexplained” death was driven primarily by something other than the disease itself. American contrarians have often pointed to Sweden to suggest a lighter-touch alternative was possible, but even the architect of that policy, who owes his global stature to the story of Swedish exceptionalism, has spent the five-year anniversary emphasizing, among other lessons, how similar his country’s approach was to the rest of the world.

The pandemic response wasn’t perfect. But the pandemic itself was real, and punishing. Above all, it revealed our vulnerability — biological, social and political. And in the aftermath of the emergency, Americans have largely looked away, choosing to see the experience less in terms of death and illness than in terms of social hysteria and even public health overreach. For many, the main lesson was that in the world of humans, as in the world of microbes, it’s dog-eat-dog out there.

But the consequences and aftershocks were also more subtle and diffuse: it isn’t easy to live in isolation and in fear, often largely online and surrounded by exceptional illness and mortality, as we watched aspects of the world and our own lives we’d long taken for granted be withdrawn or torn apart. And it isn’t easy to get over all that, however eager we thought we were to “return to normal.” We lived through as many deaths as some of the worst-case scenarios predicted, and without an initial spasm of inspiring solidarity and miraculous biomedical intervention, it could have been worse.

 But when we came out the other side — 1.5 million fewer of us — we were, as a country, exhausted, resentful, deluded and distrustful. A huge amount of the world in which we now reside was formed in that crucible. I will write more about that next week.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/26/opinion/covid-fifth-anniversary.html

#DiedSuddenly Was BS: Why Did We Believe It?

F. Perry Wilson, MD, MSCE

 

I suppose, in retrospect, it was inevitable. The moment that COVID-19 vaccines were approved in what was an unprecedented scientific effort, the backlash began. There have always been vaccine skeptics, but this response was worse, fueled by suspicions that the work done to create these vaccines was somehow too fast and was turbocharged by the amplifying effect of social media. 

There is a bit of a hack to getting your voice amplified on Twitter — now X — or Facebook, or any engagement-based platform: Inflame emotions. And few anti-vaccine trends were more powerful in 2021 than the one with this hashtag: #DiedSuddenly.

The stories were heartbreaking: young people, healthy, struck down in the prime of their life, with no symptoms to speak of. One moment playing soccer or football, the next in cardiac arrest.

MORE:

https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/diedsuddenly-was-bs-why-did-we-believe-it-2025a10004rc?ecd=WNL_trdalrt_pos1_250226_etid7258351&uac=404005EZ&impID=7258351

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is “watching” cases --- Kamenetzky, Kotler & Salomon ("Perhaps ONE Child Rapist Got Away") are not!

 

A Texas child who was not vaccinated has died of measles, a first for the US in a decade

 

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LUBBOCK, Texas (AP) — A child who wasn’t vaccinated died in a measles outbreak in rural West Texas, officials there said Wednesday, the first U.S. death from the highly contagious respiratory disease since 2015.

The school-aged child had been hospitalized and died Tuesday night, state officials said, amid the widespread outbreak, Texas’ largest in nearly 30 years. Since it began last month, a rash of 124 cases has erupted across nine counties.

The Texas Department of State Health Services and Lubbock health officials confirmed the death to The Associated Press. The Lubbock hospital where the child had been treated didn’t respond to a request for comment.

Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the nation’s top health official and a vaccine critic, said Wednesday that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is “watching” cases, though he did not provide specifics on how the federal agency is assisting. He dismissed Texas’ outbreak as “not unusual” during a Wednesday meeting of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet members.

“We’re following the measles epidemic every day,” Kennedy said. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control has told the AP it is providing vaccines as well as technical and laboratory support in West Texas, but the state health department is leading the response.

Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said through a spokesman that his office is in regular communication with the state health department and epidemiologists, and that vaccination teams are in the “affected area.”

“The state will deploy all necessary resources to ensure the safety and health of Texans,” said spokesman Andrew Mahaleris, calling the child’s death a tragedy.

The CDC has said it will only provide weekly updates on the measles outbreak, and has not yet updated its public webpage to reflect the child’s death. Texas health department data shows that a majority of the reported measles cases are in children.

The virus has largely spread among rural, oil rig-dotted towns in West Texas, with cases concentrated in a “close-knit, undervaccinated” Mennonite community, health department spokesperson Lara Anton said. Gaines County, which has reported 80 cases so far, has a strong homeschooling and private school community. It is also home to one of the highest rates of school-aged children in Texas who have opted out of at least one required vaccine, with nearly 14% skipping a required dose last school year.

The measles, mumps and rubella vaccine — which is safe and highly effective at preventing infection and severe cases — is recommended for children between 12 and 15 months old for the first shot, with the second coming between 4 and 6 years old.

Vaccination rates have declined nationwide since the COVID-19 pandemic, and most states are below the 95% vaccination threshold for kindergartners — the level needed to protect communities against measles outbreaks.

The vaccine series is required for kids before entering kindergarten in public schools nationwide.

Last week, Secretary Kennedy vowed to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule that prevents measles, polio and other dangerous diseases, despite promises not to change it during his confirmation hearings.

Measles is a respiratory virus that can survive in the air for up to two hours. Up to 9 out of 10 people who are susceptible will get the virus if exposed, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most kids will recover from the measles if they get it, but infection can lead to dangerous complications like pneumonia, blindness, brain swelling and death.

Measles cases rose in 2024, including a Chicago outbreak that sickened more than 60.

 

 

 

https://apnews.com/article/measles-outbreak-west-texas-death-
rfk-41adc66641e4a56ce2b2677480031ab9

 

CDC layoffs strike deeply at its ability to respond to the current flu, norovirus and measles outbreaks and other public health emergencies

https://theconversation.com/cdc-layoffs-strike-deeply-at-its-ability-to-respond-to-the-current-flu-norovirus-and-measles-outbreaks-and-other-public-health-emergencies-248486?