Boukris was arrested in April and charged with predatory sexual assault against a child and first-degree sexual abuse, both felonies....

• Boy who says rabbinical student sexually assaulted him will testify



Haim Boukris, the South Fallsburg rabbinical student accused of sexually assaulting an 11-year-old boy, listens to opening statements during the beginning of his non-jury trial at the Sullivan County Courthouse on Thursday. 




MONTICELLO - The boy who said a South Fallsburg rabbinical student sexually assaulted him will testify about the alleged incident, according to Sullivan County Assistant District Attorney Eamonn Neary.


Neary said on Thursday that the boy has “gone through hell” ever since coming forward about the allegations against Haim Boukris. Neary also said the boy’s father will testify about how his son’s behavior changed following the alleged incident in 2011, when the boy was 11 years old.


“(The father) will testify about the abuse him and his son face in the community,” Neary said.


Both Neary and Kenneth Gribetz, the New City attorney representing the 29-year-old Boukris, delivered opening statements before Sullivan County Court Judge Frank LaBuda on Thursday.


Boukris was arrested in April and charged with predatory sexual assault against a child and first-degree sexual abuse, both felonies.


Gribetz said Boukris will also testify during the trial.


Boukris went through a difficult time after being accused by the boy, according to Gribetz. Gribetz then went after the DA’s office for bringing the case to trial because, he said, there’s “not a scintilla of scientific evidence” or any witnesses who saw the incident.


Gribetz also criticized the boy for taking three years after the alleged incident occurred to speak out.


“One thing is for certain, (the boy) was never ever molested by (Boukris),” Gribetz said. “This is an enormous miscarriage of justice.”


Neary went through some details about the incident. He said both Boukris and the boy - who were familiar with each other - were at a grocery store when Boukris offered the boy a ride.


It was in the car where Boukris performed oral sex on the boy in Fallsburg, according to Neary. Neary said Boukris then drove the boy to a nearby bungalow colony and took him into the woods. There, Neary said Boukris took off his clothes and undressed the boy. Boukris then forced the boy to perform oral sex on him, according to Neary.


After that, Neary said Boukris performed anal sex on the boy.


The day ended following opening statements because LaBuda must rule on several motions before him.


The trial will resume at 10 a.m. Monday.


abeam@th-record.com

http://www.recordonline.com/article/20151112/NEWS/151119763/101008

In 2010, the U.S. military created their unit, called the Cultural Support Teams, as a pilot program—the first of its kind—to test how women soldiers could access places and people that male soldiers could not....

 

SERVING WITH PURPOSE

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“I think it’s the capability of women to connect with other women that makes the difference on these missions, and that was the case with the Cultural Support Teams.”

They were told they’d be “part of history” five years ago, and yet the world had virtually no idea they existed until The New York Times best-selling author and journalist Gayle Tzemach Lemmon brought their story of courage, valor, and sisterhood to the spotlight in a new biographical novel.

In Ashley’s War: The Untold Story of a Team of Women Soldiers on the Special Ops Battlefield, Lemmon tells the story of a group of women chosen to join their male comrades on special operations missions in Afghanistan. In 2010, the U.S. military created their unit, called the Cultural Support Teams, as a pilot program—the first of its kind—to test how women soldiers could access places and people that male soldiers could not.

As Gayle explained in a recent TED Talk, “If you want to understand what's happening in a community and in a home, you talk to women, whether you're talking about Southern Afghanistan or Southern California. But in this case, men could not talk to women because in a conservative and traditional society like Afghanistan, that would cause grave offense. 

 So you needed women soldiers out there.” 

The formation of the all-female troop marked the first time that women soldiers could join male soldiers throughout the Army, the National Guard, and the Reserves on special ops missions.


 Though women were banned from combat at the time of the team's creation—a 1994 Pentagon ruling restricted women from artillery, armor, infantry, and other combat roles—the Cultural Supports Teams could help combat teams on special assignments, thus being involved in combat themselves.

The restrictions of the ruling are expected to be lifted in January 2016, which would open all U.S. military jobs to women, unless services seek exceptions to the ban's review.

“It’s important that women are working and being deployed in all kinds of roles in the military right now,” Lemmon told TakePart. “I think it’s the capability of women to connect with other women that makes the difference on these missions, and that was the case with the Cultural Support Teams.”

Many of the male rangers said that without the help of the female soldiers, they would never have found some of the things they were looking for. For instance, Lemmon said that a female soldier found a piece of intel wrapped in a baby’s wet diaper. Another discovered a line of explosives that was set up between the house they were standing in and the place they were going to visit later that night.

One soldier stood out and became the focus of Lemmon’s novel: 1st Lt. Ashley White. At five foot three, she was known to her teammates as “the best of us,” someone who would bake bread before hitting the gym and would apologize for climbing a 15-foot rope using only her arms.

White was also the first in her unit to be killed—on a combat mission, along with two male rangers, on Oct. 22, 2011.

Stories like White's and those of her teammates are examples of the importance of female soldiers, and people like Lemmon are giving a voice to a demographic that’s largely underrepresented in the media.

“Gayle is sharing a story that is missing from today's narrative on veterans,” Kate Hoit, the director of communications for the veteran-focused campaign "Got Your 6", told TakePart. “We tend to hear about the men who have served—their heroism and triumphs—despite the undeniable sacrifices women in the military have made for years. Not only is she putting a face to women who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan, but she's showing a new generation of women what is possible.”

Two weeks ago, the Army announced that it officially was opening more than 19,700 field artillery jobs to enlisted women.

Though Lemmon says the program in Afghanistan is winding down as more troops are being pulled out, she says that some of the women on the Cultural Supports Teams are still deployed there. In October, Obama announced that 5,500 troops would remain in Afghanistan to continue fighting America’s longest standing war, but it’s unclear whether the Cultural Supports Teams will be among those troops.

http://www.takepart.com/article/2015/11/11/serving-with-purpose-women-in-the-military?cmpid=tpdaily-eml-2015-11-11

“Yell it from the loudspeakers.The Messiah is at the door.”

Rabbi Kanievsky: Messiah Could Come This Week

“You shall stand up before the gray head and honor the face of an old man, and you shall fear your God: I am the Lord.” (Leviticus 19:32)

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky.

Rabbi Chaim Kanievsky is one of the most prominent rabbis of this generation. He is a leader of the Haredi branch of Judaism and the author of numerous authoritative books on Jewish law. In a distinctly uncharacteristic manner, he has recently begun making declarations of the Messiah’s imminent arrival.

In a YouTube video posted on November 2nd of a recent lecture by Rabbi Shlomo Boyer, a respected teacher in Bnei Brak, Rabbi Boyer described how Rabbi Shteinman, the leader of Lithuanian Judaism, was about to travel to America for pressing reasons. He went to Rabbi Kanievsky to receive a blessing for a safe journey and success.

Rabbi Kanievsky replied that he should not travel, saying, “It very well could be the Messiah will come this week. He can come at any moment. He is here with us already. Don’t travel.”

Rabbi Kanievsky has dedicated his life to Torah study and is generally not given to messianic or bombastic proclamations, but in the last year, this has changed dramatically. Last year, Rabbi Kanievsky announced the Messiah would come when the Shmittah year ended, which occurred on the Jewish New Year on September 13th. In August, the rabbi advised a young man,  “Gather your family and come to Israel. 

 Otherwise, there won’t be enough room for you on the airplanes.”  In April, close associates quoted him as instructing listeners to, “Yell it from the loudspeakers.The Messiah is at the door.”

When asked what needs to be done to prepare for the coming of the Messiah, the Rabbi replied that Jews must strengthen their belief and trust in God. 

After the massacre of Jews in the synagogue in Har Nof last November, Rabbi Kanievsky was asked to give some words of comfort to the people. He replied that the deaths were an atonement before the arrival of the Messiah, which would be arriving shortly.

https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/53387/rabbi-kanievsky-warns-friends-not-travel-because-messiah-can-come-any-moment-jewish-world/?utm_source=Breaking+Israel+News&utm_campaign=21a6f8316a-BIN_morning_11_15&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b6d3627f72-21a6f8316a-86615013#882MjhPjEbymXx1x.01

What I Would Say At This Year's Agudath Israel Convention!

                  LACK OF LEADERSHIP CONVENTION

(WHERE MORALITY MEANS NOTHING AND MONEY IS EVERYTHING!)

THE UOJ CLASSICS - REPOSTED FROM LAST YEAR:

I need no introduction Chaim Dovid, but thank you anyway.

I believe in Jewish Exceptionalism, not necessarily in the orthodox sense of the term (of course!). We were destined to be a great people only if we act as a great people. The same applies to us as Americans. We are a great nation because of the vision of the Founding Fathers' wisdom in setting up the rules and regulations called the Constitution, with the ability to add Amendments if deemed necessary, only after great scrutiny and consideration....And act with dignity in implementing the very basics of human needs with the understanding that societies can only exist if what is good for the individual members, is good, or should be good for society as a whole.

Perhaps the greatest of their visionary thinking, after vicious religious persecution that forced the Pilgrims to flee their country, was establishing a State with freedom of religion, or no religion; under these parameters did America become the greatest country to ever inhabit the planet, and scientific inquiry was able to flourish without the scrutiny of the ignorant and vile Church, creating and leading up to advances in medicine, for example, unthinkable a mere fifty years ago.

But as Jews we have the added privilege to have the Torah.

And as Chazal tell us, we didn't really want any rules. We were content initially, (before the Torah was forced on us), to worship false idols, many gods, Golden Cows, any cow, and Edward G. Robinson --- [born Emanuel Goldenberg; עמנואל גאָלדנבערג (Erev Rav - Cecile B. DeMille's version)] --- style leaders.

Leaders that lied to us, wreaked havoc on our value system, caused dissension among the desert nomads we once were, and guilty of every human weakness and acting out on that failing. Hashem, after offering His Torah to the rest of the nations, and being turned down, forced us slaves and nomads to accept the Torah, the literal and the implied, or he was going to lift up Har Sinai, and crush us to death. We were ingrates. Nothing He did earned our trust or respect. We acted like sub-humans regardless of all the chesed that He bestowed upon us.

And we are NO better today; you will be FORCED to accept the rule of law and protect our children first under all circumstances!

Our Erev Rav, want to tell us that the societal freaks that plague gentile children, don't plague Jewish children. A mere five years ago, a man who is the spiritual advisor to a whole city in New Jersey, told you publicly, that perhaps "one of those (freaks) slipped through his fingers, but that he/they had the matter under control according to his Torah".

Scroll down to the weekend program!

Rabbi Yisroel Belsky is a featured speaker on Shabbos. Chaim Neuhoff is a co-chair of a session that will discuss safety for your children. Rabbi Kaminetzky is another featured speaker, the man that moved Moshe Eisemann in middle of the night from his Philadelphia Yeshiva to Ner Israel in Baltimore once he confirmed the allegations of Eisemann's raping of boys in his yeshiva. And the bozo that is giving the keynote address Motzei Shabbos has in his kollel sitting today, a man who rapes baby girls in his family, and Shmuel Kaminetzky knows about it. Chaim Neuhoff, under the instruction and psak din of Sruli Belsky, participated viciously and with malice, in the cover-up for Yudi Kolko and Lipa Margulies & Co. (See hazmana below that was intended to stifle Eli Greenwald from speaking to the parent body of Torah Temima about Kolko)

Parents trusted their kids to these types that used their kids as "objects" - either making money off of them in their schools, summer camps, seminaries etc., and as we now know, that in every yeshiva and girls school, many kids were sexually, physically and emotionally abused by staff members, principals, teachers --- and these crimes were covered up by criminal circus midgets with long beards, like the ones sitting at your dais here tonight.

I look around this room and I know many of you; I find it incredible to believe that you are here showing support for this criminal enterprise. In effect, you have created "a race to the bottom" of what was once a beautiful heritage and tradition. Have you no shame? What will your legacy be, if not leaving the world a much worse place than how you found it? Your kids are ashamed of you --- and are voting with their souls, hearts and feet " out of here!"

Who do you think you're kidding? They see through you! They know that there's not a darn thing about your lifestyle that they want to have anything to do with!

Hashem had sent His messenger to America in September 1913 to set up shop with a model that would work for American Jewry. And a model that was mostly foolproof until the end of time. Children were to be cared for and loved by how you educated them and protected them from evil forces, within and outside our community. They were to be first and foremost bnei Torah in all its glory. Being a mensch was not optional! They needed to spend most of their school day with model rebbes/humans... not some garbage can with a lid that the sanitation department would refuse to pick up!

They needed to be educated as proud Americans, with full knowledge of most every subject taught in American secular schools (at the time). They needed to understand that they would one day need to go out in the world and either be a proud supporter of Torah institutions, or become a member or founder of a Torah institution. There was no gray area;... in order to support Torah, you had to appreciate what you learned as a child. And you had to love it, not loathe or fear it! In order to "stay in chinuch" you had to excel in your abilities, in your emunah, in your middos, and wisdom of the printed Torah and its spirit. And that required that you had to give up the so-called good-life, "without ever having to say you're sorry!" There had to be mesiras nefesh, knowing that your ben Torah neighbor that has gone to work, may have a nicer car than you.

Look at you! Look at what you have become! Either felons, or felons that have not been caught yet!

You trusted your kids to lowlifes, degenerates and perverts! They'd sell you down the river in a second, the second you stopped giving them money, or not as much as they wanted from you! And then your kid would be out on the street too, because he "did not measure up"! Which guy at the dais here has to be concerned about mundane issues like paying their mortgage, or tuition? Do they even have a mortgage? Or was it paid off with your money combined with whatever they could steal from Uncle Sam?

So why are you here?

There was a reason that Dr. Joseph Kaminetzky was appointed the head of Torah Umesorah. He graduated from Columbia University and had the wisdom needed in every area of education, and was rightfully in charge of the curriculum in each and every Torah Umesorah affiliated school.

It was no coincidence that Dr. David Stern was selected as menahel/principal of Yeshiva Torah Vodaath. He too was a graduate of Columbia University and a rabbi at one of the early Young Israel synagogues.

And when Rabbi Alexander Linchner z"l left his position at Mesifta Torah Vodaath to focus full time on the building of Boys Town Jerusalem, he hired Rabbi Moshe Lonner PhD, to be the high school secular studies principal; with the same intent, gusto and spirit that his father in-law had in appointing Drs. Kaminetzky and Stern to their respective positions.

So how did we get here? What group of ignoramuses led us down this path of "the more ignorant, the more uneducated, the more dumb" -- the better? "Where are the lomdim?" an ultra-orthodox rabbi recently bellowed! Where are the Torah scholars?

What have you done to your kids and their kids?

Go back to the original model set up by Hakodesh Baruch Hu Himself; pick the few select students to toil in Torah, to stay in chinuch, and to be a model for your grandchildren. Get rid of the gangsters running the American yeshiva system and its affiliated organizations -- they have already destroyed two complete generations.

You will hear from the likes of psycho misfit Avremel Schorr, who will tell you the "dangers of the new technologies". "GET RID OF THEM" - he will hyperventilate! And I say...it's here to stay and only in the developmental stages --- you must educate your children with love and patience about the appropriate uses for these devices....BANS DO NOT WORK and are the products of sick and ignorant minds!

Supporting Agudath Israel in any way, will only encourage them to continue to run a parallel justice system to shield themselves and their institutions from illegal and nefarious conduct --- with total disregard and abandonment of societal protections that we must have in place for the safety of our kids, ourselves and our Jewish families. You saw what transpires under the bais din system run by these very criminals.

And finally...

My advocacy for the causes that are close to my heart are who I am, proudly. I have no other motive other than to see the betterment of all of humankind. I am a product of an illustrious family and upbringing, and would have preferred to do my work anonymously - as a true chesed shel emes, in the realm of a mes mitzvah. Those that I work with, know I spurn the spotlight, have distributed my own funds to the necessary professionals and costs associated with protecting kids, under a pseudonym, and postmarked from cities that I hoped could not be traced back to me. My father and grandfather sat in the back of the shul as I do. That was not meant to be - but the only "being" that I will explain it to when the time comes, is THE "Yodea Machshavot" - but of course, He already would have known that.

Chazak
UOJ

CLICK ON IMAGES TO ENLARGE:

  

HOW SOME "GOYIM" DEAL WITH CHILD SEX-ABUSE COVERUPS:CLICK ON LINK BELOW
http://news.yahoo.com/scandal-leaves-paternos-reputation-tatters-163331841.html

What Agudath Israel & All Jews Can Learn From The "Goyim"! THOUSANDS OF PEOPLE KISSED THEIR RELIGION GOODBYE! Deal With This At Your "Feel-Good" about Nothing Convention - Where Lies & BS Prevail!

The Catholic Church’s Sins Are Ours

It’s fashionable among some conservatives to rail that there’s insufficient respect for religion in America and that religious people are marginalized, even vilified.

That’s bunk. In more places and instances than not, they get special accommodation and the benefit of the doubt. Because they talk of God, they’re assumed to be good. There’s a reluctance to besmirch them, an unwillingness to cross them.

The new movie “Spotlight,” based on real events, illuminates this brilliantly.

“Spotlight” — which opens in New York, Los Angeles and Boston on Friday and nationwide later this month — chronicles the painstaking manner in which editors and writers at The Boston Globe documented a pattern of child sexual abuse by Roman Catholic priests and the concealment of these crimes by Catholic leaders.

Because of the movie’s focus on the digging and dot-connecting that go into investigative reporting, it has invited comparisons to “All the President’s Men.”

But it isn’t about journalism. Or, for that matter, Catholicism.

It’s about the damage done when we genuflect too readily before society’s temples, be they religious or governmental. It’s about the danger of faith that’s truly blind.

It takes place in 2001 and 2002, and that time frame itself is a remarkable reflection of how steadfastly most Americans resist any intrusion into religious groups, any indictment of religious officials.

Eight years earlier, James Porter was convicted of sexually abusing 28 children in the 1960s, when he was in the Catholic priesthood. He was believed to have abused about 100 boys and girls in all, most of them in Massachusetts.

Major newspapers and television networks covered the Porter story, noting a growing number of cases of abuse by priests. Porter’s sentencing in December 1993 was preceded by two books that traced the staggering dimensions of such behavior. The first was “Lead Us Not Into Temptation,” by Jason Berry.

 The second was “A Gospel of Shame,” with which I’m even more familiar. I’m one of its two authors.

But despite all of that attention, Americans kept being shocked whenever a fresh tally of abusive priests was done or new predators were exposed. They clung to disbelief.

“Spotlight” is admirably blunt on this point, suggesting that the Globe staff — which, in the end, did the definitive reporting on church leaders’ complicity in the abuse — long ignored an epidemic right before their eyes.

Why?

 For some of the same reasons that others did. Many journalists, parents, police officers and lawyers didn’t want to think ill of men of the cloth, or they weren’t eager to get on the bad side of the church, with its fearsome authority and supposed pipeline to God. (After the coverage of the Porter case, Cardinal Bernard Law of Boston announced, “We call down God’s power on the media, particularly the Globe.”)

“Spotlight” lays out the many ways in which deference to religion protected abusers and their abettors. At one point in the movie, a man who was molested as a boy tells a Globe reporter about a visit his mother got from the bishop, who was asking her not to press charges.

“She put out freakin’ cookies,” the man says.

When the cookies finally went away, many Catholic leaders insisted that the church was being persecuted, and the crimes of priests exaggerated, by spiteful secularists.

But if anything, the church had been coddled, benefiting from the American way of giving religion a free pass and excusing religious institutions not just from taxes but from rules that apply to other organizations.

A 2006 series in The Times, “In God’s Name,” noted that since 1989, “more than 200 special arrangements, protections or exemptions for religious groups or their adherents were tucked into congressional legislation, covering topics ranging from pensions to immigration to land use.” That was before the Supreme Court, in its Hobby Lobby decision, allowed some employers to claim religion as grounds to disobey certain heath insurance mandates.

A story in The Times this week described how various religions are permitted to use internal arbitration procedures to settle disputes that belong in civil court. It cited a federal judge’s ruling that a former Scientologist had to take his claim that Scientology had defrauded him of tens of thousands of dollars before a panel of current Scientologists.

To cloak sexual abuse and shield abusive priests, Catholic leaders and their lawyers routinely leaned on the church’s privileged status, invoking freedom of religion, the separation of church and state, and the secrecy of the confessional. They thus delayed a reckoning.

“If it takes a village to raise a child, it takes a village to abuse one,” says a character in “Spotlight.” Indeed it does: a village too cowed, and a village too credulous.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/04/opinion/the-catholic-churchs-sins-are-ours.html?_r=0\

JACOB PERLOW/ SAMUEL KAMINETZKY - WHAT WOULD YOUR MOTHERS SAY!?

http://bdnews24.com/entertainment/2015/11/01/survivors-of-clergy-sex-abuse-hope-spotlight-film-brings-victims-forward

Ninety-two Israeli Arab Muslims have committed terrorist attacks. They are not under occupation (and have better freedoms and living standards than most of the Arab world has). So clearly these attacks are not about any political dispute; they are driven by the same hateful incitement that rejects any state for the Jews....

An Idiot’s Guide for the Media on How to Do Your Job Properly

An imaginary newspaper report about 9/11

What if your Newspapers were run by Terrorists?

A new instructive video shows what news reports would look like if they applied their outrageous Israel-reporting techniques to terrorist attacks in the rest of the world. In the hope of lessening the egregious anti-Israel bias, here are some pointers to members of the media:

1) Your job is to report facts, not reinforce a narrative. Really. The facts matter – they form the basis for judgments. So here are some facts for you, meticulously documented and updated (with details and graphs worthy of a data scientist) in a shared Google spreadsheet by Nehemia Gershuni-Aylho. According to his data, in the fifty days from September 11 through October 31, there have been 1,315 Arab Muslim attacks on Jews, including stabbings, bombings, rock-throwing, etc. That’s about 26 attacks per day resulting in the murder of 11 innocent Jews. Adjusted for the US population, that’s over 1,000 knife, bomb and other attacks per day that kill 440 people during fifty days of terror. How would the US react to that?

2) Remember that the weaker party can be wrong. Actually, when a Palestinian man stabs a 70-year old woman, he’s not even the weaker party. Sometimes Palestinians do indefensible things. Sometimes Israel is guilty of only trying to protect its citizens from insanely hateful violence. And as an honest reporter, you should try to show this.

3) Properly identify the terrorist and the victim when reporting on casualties, and describe the main causal sequence of events with relevant context. That’s how you avoid headlines like “Jewish man uses his neck to attack the blade of Palestinian’s knife.” The BBC’s distortions were actually not far from that when they effectively turned terrorists into victims. The BBC’s bias is so egregious that even its former chief complained.

4) Do your homework on this region. Learn its basic history so that you don’t moronically suggest (as the NY Times did) that Jews have no historical connection to the Temple Mount. Otherwise it looks like you’re trying to support Palestinian revisionism against basic facts and endless archaeological evidence (including what a 10-year old recently discovered).

5) Learn the history of this conflict enough to know that Pallywood has been actively deceiving journalists for at least 15 years now, in an effort to delegitimize Israel. Before publishing “information” fed to you by fixers and “eyewitnesses,” realize that even Amnesty International has admitted the unreliability of “eyewitnesses” in this conflict. The most galling Pallywood example from this latest round of Arab terrorism is the inflammatory lie – by “moderate” Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas – that Israeli forces had “executed” a 13-year old. The truth: he was treated in the same Israeli hospital caring for the boy he tried to murder.

Such lies can kill. Because when it comes to this conflict, Arab leaders know that violence replaces reason at the slightest provocation – like hooligans at a football game incited to attack the opponents of their beloved team. So inciting lies are very much a weapon. The media should know this and expose the falsehoods, rather than blindly proliferate them. Journalists should know that “reporting” inflammatory claims can produce mob violence, and should therefore be doubly careful about checking facts, unless of course their goal is to trigger riots (which do produce more sensational news stories).

6) Learn the history of this conflict enough to know that Arab Muslims have been killing Jews in this area for over a century, with shifting excuses over time.

7) Stop trying to use the latest of those shifting excuses to justify the unjustifiable (here, too, the BBC is an offender). No alleged grievance warrants randomly stabbing people in the street. The average Syrian is infinitely worse off than anyone in Gaza or the West Bank, but Syrian teens aren’t randomly stabbing civilians. Countless refugees from Syria, Iraq, and elsewhere have risked their lives for the hope of a better future in Europe. And yet there are virtually no Palestinians from the West Bank or Gaza among the millions desperate to reach Europe. So random stabbings don’t reflect some miserably unfair existence – they are the product of raw hatred and incitement.

8) Take note of nuances. Ninety-two Israeli Arab Muslims have committed terrorist attacks. They are not under occupation (and have better freedoms and living standards than most of the Arab world has). So clearly these attacks are not about any political dispute; they are driven by the same hateful incitement that rejects any state for the Jews.

9) Show cause and effect (ideally one before the other), and not just effect. When you show only Israeli responses to attacks, it makes Israelis look as if they wake up every morning asking how they can hurt Arabs. Israelis actually have better things to do with their mornings. Like cure cancer and stuff. But when people are trying to kill them, they understandably get a bit distracted. If the world could keep Israelis safer, cancer might get cured faster.

10) Articles should contain a logical subject and verb, preferably in a way that indicates who did what. According to CNN, Joseph’s Tomb spontaneously “catches fire.” CNN would rather change the laws of physics than blame Muslims for trying to burn a Jewish holy site. But there is a long list of non-Muslim sites that have been desecrated or destroyed by Muslims – from the Buddhas of Bamiyan razed by the Taliban to the countless monuments and churches destroyed by the Islamic State. History is also littered with Islamic conquests that converted non-Muslim holy sites into mosques.

11) Israeli lives matter. Getting both sides of the story means including photos and profiles of Israeli victims of Arab terrorism at least as often as you include photos and profiles of Arab attackers who were killed while trying to murder innocent Israelis. In case you’re not sure what it’s actually like to survive a stabbing attack, Kay Wilson’s TED Talk is a must-watch for some valuable context (and a reminder of what a life-affirming culture looks like, as opposed to the death cult trying to stamp it out).

12) Don’t be afraid to present Gazans as they present themselves (brandishing butcher knives and calling for Jewish blood). Show this Palestinian mother who celebrates that her child was killed trying to murder Israelis and who hopes that she and her other children all die for the same “cause.” Showing the Palestinian death cult of Jew-hatred that runs from crib to coffin might help observers understand why there’s still no peace.
Just for some context, when was the last time that you saw a video of a Jewish mother hoping that she and her children can all die for the sake of murdering some Germans to avenge the German Nazi murder of six million Jews (which seems a bit worse than praying on a contested holy site)?

13) If you want to falsify information to sanitize Palestinian terror, as NBC correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin did, try not to do so on live TV, because you’ll look really biased (and stupid).

14) It’s better to research whether the maps you display on your “news” broadcast were produced by anti-Israel propagandists BEFORE you broadcast them, because otherwise you’ll look as biased (and stupid) as NBC/MSNBC did.

15) To ensure that your reporting is fair and consistent, consider how a similar event was covered in other countries/contexts. For a strikingly convenient example, contrast how differently NBC News (again!) reports on airstrikes taking place in two neighboring Mideast conflicts, within just eight days of each other:
On October 3, NBC News used this headline to report that 60 Russian airstrikes in Syria killed 39 civilians: “Russia Launches New Wave of Airstrikes in Syria.” On October 11, NBC News used a much more personalized headline – with victim profiles – when reporting on one Israeli air strike that killed two civilians: “Israeli Strike in Gaza Kills Palestinian Woman, Child as Violence Continues.” So are two Gazan civilians more worthy of attention and sympathy than 39 Syrian civilians?

Ironically, despite your endless bias in favor of Palestinian terrorists, they thank you by posing as journalists in order to stab Israelis – a deceit that only undermines the trust that combatants have in the label “PRESS” and potentially endangers true war correspondents.

Each small instance of bias may seem like a mere “journalistic microagression” against Israel, but its cumulative effect is toxic and sometimes deadly. At best, the persistent anti-Israel bias poisons many millions – from voters to policy-makers – against Israel.  Even worse, it can lead to anti-Semitic violence, by mobs and/or individuals thugs, as is so often the case in Europe.

You journalists are key to a fair and civilized world. Start acting like it.

Noah Beck is the author of The Last Israelis, an apocalyptic novel about Iranian nukes and other geopolitical issues in the Middle East.

http://www.algemeiner.com/2015/11/03/an-idiots-guide-for-the-media-on-how-to-do-your-job-properly/

Pick a "Kol Koreh" / Rabbinic Proclamation That Works For You!

GUEST POST:

by Daniel Schwartz Esq.

So, The Jewish people are suffering a wave of random terrorist stabbing attacks in our homeland. Islamic State is now making videos in Hebrew threatening annihilation of the Jewish people. Anti Semitism the world over abides and in some places rears its ugly head more often and louder than it has in the recent past. Iran marches on toward the bomb; which they say will be pointed at Tel Aviv, once they get it.

 But here in America, rabbinic leadership [sic], both its Modern Orthodox and Chareidi varieties, has determined that the greatest threat to Jewish survival, the two headed devil that has to be beheaded, are a growing group of uppity women who want to dedicate their professional lives to service of the Jewish people and a sub denomination that both supports those rebellious women and dares to ask and ponder questions on Jewish belief and practice to which there are no simple and pat answers.

 Around a year ago, when three boys in Israel were kidnapped and murdered, we all extolled the unity that was engendered by that horrific crime. We all knew in our hearts that our strength as a people lies in our fraternal love and unified voice. Well, that's what we projected. But it was a lie, the worst kind of self deception.

 The existential threat has not abated. The barbarians remain at the gate. And the threat grows with each day. Achdut? Areivut? Not this time, I guess. The "Gedoilim" have a new idea. Before "they" kill us, we'll kill each other- with words. Let me know how that works out for you.

Why would we trust information that doesn’t ever change? Information shifts perspective, deepening understanding.

Science Doesn't Find Truth, It Understands Change

 

People love the benefits of science. They generally like the advances made in technology, biology, psychology, chemistry, and physics. And yet, there seems to be confusion about what science is and how we perceive it, which has led to a strange backlash against pursuing knowledge. In a recent and riveting piece for Aeon, David P. Barash, a professor of psychology and biology at the University of Washington, dissects our modern suspicion of science with razor-sharp insight.

NASA Just Released The Largest Photo Ever Taken. What It Shows Will Shake You Up.

The video shows over 100 million stars and thousands of star clusters embedded in a section of the Galaxy, stretching over 40,000 light-years. Nature is truly breathtaking and immensely vast...

The public distrusts science because it appears to change, Barash says. One day nerve cells don’t regenerate; the next day they do. Sugar is good; wait no bad; wait no evil — "wake me up when you make a decision," the weary public mumbles. But Barash points out that it’s only our paradigm that is shifting; not the actual truth, just our understanding of it.

That is something that seems difficult for people to understand. For example, if there is “breaking news” on TV, information starts rolling in to help us understand what happened. The event itself doesn’t change based on what we know or don’t know about it. So it is with science — the truths are always going to be true, regardless of the information we have. To continue with the news analogy, the reporters do research to find the facts. The facts give context. With science, the research being done by its practitioners gives us context to understand the story of the universe.

As our tools and abilities to investigate on micro and macro levels become rapidly more sophisticated, it should be expected that old information will be invalidated and new information will be discovered.

 We are capable of forgiving public figures for mistakes (especially if they go on a late show and act cute), yet forgiving scientists for misjudging or misunderstanding something makes us assume that the entire endeavor is faulty. This type of black-and-white thinking is evident throughout modern society, particularly in politics, where nuance and gray areas have basically been eradicated. We ask from science that it be completely accurate all the time, a set of rules that go unchanging. Yet, our understanding of the world is constantly changing and evolving.

Neil deGrasse Tyson explains where future scientific breakthroughs will come from:

Why would we trust information that doesn’t ever change? Information shifts perspective, deepening understanding. As our tools and abilities to investigate on micro and macro levels become rapidly more sophisticated, it should be expected that old information will be invalidated and new information will be discovered. The fact that things are changing at the speed that they are is encouraging! It means that we are becoming increasingly more informed and knowledgeable, that our methods are refined and tools more precise. If there was a greater lag time between discoveries, it would be a sign that our methods of research were as outdated and inaccurate as they were when we thought the Earth was flat.

Our culture doesn’t like science because it doesn’t offer a quick, easy answer that you can hang on to and use when you play Trivial Pursuit. Science is an ongoing investigation and observation. Instead of dismissing it just because it’s fluid and complex, maybe we should take a step back and do an observation all our own: look at how quickly we are advancing. Faster than ever before. More sophisticated than ever before. What an exciting time to be alive. After all, thanks to science, your lifespan is a whole lot longer than our ancestors. Maybe we’re scared of knowledge, because the more we find out about the universe, the smaller we feel. But I can’t help but be in awe of our achievements, and the continuing discoveries being made every single day all over the planet. Science is only how we understand reality; it’s nothing to be apprehensive about. Or as the great Bill Nye once said, science rules.

--

Lori Chandler is a writer and comedian living in Brooklyn, NY. She has been published in The New York Times and on CollegeHumor. You can follow her on Twitter @LilBoodleChild to keep up with her latest pieces, performance dates, and wry observations. 

http://bigthink.com/ideafeed/if-you-think-science-is-the-enemy-you-dont-know-what-science-is

Another American victim of Palestinian terrorism was buried this week. Does it matter that he was an American? Why should the American government, or American Jews, take any more interest in the latest victim than in any other victims?

Another American Victim of Palestinian Terror: Why it Matters

Author:

Stephen M. Flatow / JNS.org

 

 

Richard Lakin, who succumbed to wounds he sustained in a terrorist attack on a bus in Jerusalem.

JNS.org – Another American victim of Palestinian terrorism was buried this week. Does it matter that he was an American? Why should the American government, or American Jews, take any more interest in the latest victim than in any other victims?

Richard Lakin, a 76-year-old former Connecticut school principal, died Oct. 27 of wounds he suffered in a recent Palestinian terrorist attack in Jerusalem. He was the 137th American citizen murdered by Palestinian terrorists since the 1960s.

Since he was an American citizen, Lakin’s death will merit a brief mention in many American newspapers, and newspapers in his hometown will give more extensive coverage.

That’s the first reason the American identity of these victims matters. If not for the sense that “he was one of us,” these terror victims would be completely forgotten. Newspapers have limited space. They choose the stories they will cover based primarily on what they think will interest their readers. They believe that Americans will care more about other Americans than about other victims, and that residents of Connecticut will be more interested in what happens to other residents of their state than residents of other states. And that’s a reasonable assumption, whether we like it or not.

Richard Lakin was Jewish. As a result, American Jews will take a particular interest in what happened to him. And they should. The organized American Jewish community actively encourages Jews to visit Israel. The community, as my family does through the Alisa Flatow Memorial Scholarship Fund, also supports “study abroad” programs at Israeli schools, seminaries, and universities in order to attract American Jewish college students to study there for a semester or a year. And a number of Jewish organizations provide financial assistance and other incentives to American Jews to move to Israel.

These American Jewish initiatives to send Jews to Israel are an expression of the strength and warmth of the ties that bind Israel and the Diaspora. We derive inspiration and spiritual sustenance from our relationship with the Jewish state. We want our children to share in that. And if we are going to encourage American Jews to go to Israel, then we have a special obligation to care, and to act, if any of those Jews are harmed by Palestinian terrorists in Israel.

Moreover, American Jews have the ability to make a difference. Our relationship with the White House and Congress, our electoral clout as a community, and our skills at reaching out to the wider public enable us to influence America’s policy on these issues.

The American public should care, too. The people of the United States have always had a special attachment to Israel, because the Jewish state shares our democratic, humanitarian, and Judeo-Christian  values. Americans who visit or even live in Israel are putting into practice the heartfelt sentiments of millions of their fellow American citizens.

American taxpayers should care for another reason: the US government sends $500 million of their tax dollars to the Palestinian Authority (PA) every year. So the public has a right to expect the government to intervene when PA employees or PA-incited terrorists murder our citizens, or when the PA names streets, parks, and soccer teams after murderers of Americans.

The American government, too, has a special obligation with regard to American victims of Palestinian terrorism.

First, there is a legal obligation. American citizens, whether they are visiting, studying, or living abroad, are still American citizens. They pay taxes just like the rest of us, and in return the US government has a legal responsibility to act when they are harmed by terrorists abroad just as it would have an obligation to act if they are harmed by terrorists within the US.

Second, the US government has a strategic obligation to act. Fighting Palestinian terrorism must be part of America’s global war on terror. Bringing Palestinian killers of Americans to trial in the US would contribute significantly to anti-terror efforts, by making it clear to Palestinian terrorists that they could face the death penalty, or at least life in prison with no hope of release in a prisoner exchange — something that is not the case when they kill Israelis.

So, yes, it is relevant that Richard Lakin was an American. It’s not just a question of narrow national pride, or ethnic solidarity, or curiosity. For important moral, legal, and strategic reasons, the American victims of Palestinian terrorism should matter to American Jews, to the American public, and to the American government.

 

Stephen M. Flatow, an attorney in New Jersey, is the father of Alisa Flatow, who was murdered in an Iranian-sponsored Palestinian terrorist attack in 1995.

"A scholar of Biblical texts, Jewish law and Hasidic philosophy, Leifer is a mother of eight. But evidence given earlier this year in a civil case in the Victorian Supreme Court portrayed her as a calculating, predatory paedophile...."

Charismatic school principal Malka Leifer was adored within a strict Jewish sect in Melbourne’s east. Despite whispers of inappropriate acts with students, it was years before her dark secrets were exposed.
 

"My childhood was very difficult,” Sarah* says, in a matter-of-fact way. Now in her mid-20s, she has a quiet voice, but speaks with a forceful elegance. 

“I just knew that when my mother hit me and when she screamed at me, I couldn’t tell anyone. For anybody to know would be the scariest thing.

“We weren’t allowed to go to the toilet. We weren’t allowed to sleep, or we had to sleep in the way she wanted us to. We’d go to bed and she’d decide she wanted some food made for her in the middle of the night, so she’d wake up. But we had to be dressed in a certain way.”

Sarah and her siblings would dress in socks, dresses, dressing gowns; layer upon layer, so that they appeared “modest”.

“She’d wake us up, just as we’d fallen asleep, make us get her food, and then go back to bed. Ten minutes later, she’d wake us up because she wanted a glass of water.”

“I knew what that looked like, though,” she says. “I’d go to friends’ houses and see how their mothers would feed them, how they would look at them and give them hugs.”

None of the children were exempt from abuse, but Sarah and her youngest brother suffered most. They were also the darkest-skinned and looked more like their mother.

“She used to tell us all the time how ugly we were,” says Sarah, “and how she wished we would die.”
The children “self-diagnosed” their mother as having borderline personality disorder.

“There was no love, there were no hugs, there was no encouragement. It was basically trying to survive.”

Sarah says her mother routinely hit her until she turned 16 and was “very smart about it”, hitting her in places covered by her clothes – places even an observant teacher wouldn’t notice.

Malka Leifer

“A teacher with the right knowledge would be able to see that we looked… haunted,” Sarah says.

That teacher was Malka Leifer.

“I would say it took her about two years to work her magic,” Sarah says.

Malka Leifer was principal of the ultra-Orthodox Adass Israel School in Elsternwick, Melbourne from 2002 to 2008, a pillar of her tight-knit community. At 48, Leifer was, according to parents of former students, recruited specifically because of her ultra-Orthodox beliefs.

At the time of her appointment, she was widely regarded within the community to be its second-holiest member, behind spiritual leader Rabbi Avrohom Zvi Beck.

A scholar of Biblical texts, Jewish law and Hasidic philosophy, Leifer is a mother of eight. But evidence given earlier this year in a civil case in the Victorian Supreme Court portrayed her as a calculating, predatory paedophile.

"She knew exactly when to do it,” alleges Sarah.

“It was all planned. Slowly, when she set herself up in the community and had their love and respect, at the point when such a thing would never enter their minds, that’s when she started.”

Sarah claims she was systematically abused by Leifer for years, along with “seven or eight” other female students.

“I don’t know how I could explain how charming she was,” says Sarah.

“The community absolutely respected and loved her. They basically treated her like God.”

“The way she played her game was… she’d start by calling you out of class, in the middle of a lesson, and would sit with you and ask you how you were doing, how you were feeling. When I finally, eventually opened up to her and told her that things were really bad, that’s when she made her move.”

Sarah says she heard whispers about Leifer’s relationships with other students, but was not equipped to comprehend the implications behind the rumours.

“I heard little things, but I didn’t really understand. All I knew was that at school if she likes you… that’s what you should aim for.”

Adass Israel is a strain of Hasidism, a movement which was founded in the 18th century by Jewish mystics and quickly became a populist alternative to traditional Judaism. The Hasidim, or “pious ones,” are an ultra-Orthodox movement with a focus on self-preservation.

After generations of persecution, many Hasidic Jews today are second- and third-generation Holocaust survivors, who take quite literally the Lord’s order to “be fruitful and multiply”, to replenish a devastated population. Today, Australia has the second-highest population of Holocaust survivors per capita in the world.

The insularity of the movement is, in part, born of the caution that comes of a history shaped by adversity. It’s also the product of a rich cultural heritage and religious strength that has allowed it, and others like it throughout the diaspora, to flourish and bring new prosperity – both to itself, and to its adopted home of Melbourne. That same insularity has also allowed it to harbour dark secrets. Growing up in the Adass community, Sarah tells me, is to grow up in a culture of humiliation and shame, particularly centred around the body.

Sexual education exists only in the form of a special lesson administered by a community member – with a strict focus on procreation – after a young man or woman is already engaged.

Sarah recalls reading Enid Blyton books at school, where every third or fourth paragraph would be missing a word. Sarah read the whole of The Magic Faraway Tree without knowing the names of two main characters: Dick and Fanny.

“We wouldn’t have even known what ‘Dick’ was supposed to mean, because we didn’t know what a dick was,” she tells me. “Their crossing it out only made us more inquisitive, but biology wasn’t even a subject.”
Outside school, a few of Sarah’s classmates had read different books without their parents’ consent and they shared with friends what they had learned.

“We knew that a penis goes into a vagina when you get married,” she recalls. “And I remember a friend saying, ‘There’s no fucking way I’m letting that near me’.”

Sarah grimaces. “I also said that I was never going to let that happen.”

Without sex education, Sarah had no defence against sexual predators.

“I’ve always wanted to share my story,” Sarah tells me on a particularly bleak morning, over three cups of strawberry tea. But it has taken her seven years to feel comfortable doing so.

I ask about her earliest memory.

“When people ask me my memories of my childhood, the good things don’t come to my mind,” she says. “I try not to dwell on that too much. The main good thing about my childhood was having my siblings. If I didn’t have them, I probably wouldn’t be alive.”

She talks about being eight years old.

“We used to go on family holidays and we couldn’t go to the beach because it wasn’t modest enough. Or we’d walk down the street in summer and everyone else would be in shorts and singlets, and we’d be wearing long dresses and tights.

“I remember thinking even at that age that I didn’t want to be different, I just wanted to be the same as everyone else,” she says.

Sarah’s entire universe was contained in one suburb: “We went to Carnegie once, and that felt like going to the end of the world.”

Her parents had moved to Australia fleeing disapproval of their marriage, and soon started a family. “Then they decided to become religious, and they went all the way to the extreme," Sarah says.

“I think a lot of that shift has to do with my mother’s extreme nature,” Sarah says. “She needed to grab onto something and when she encountered someone from our community who was really kind to her, she decided they were the type of people she wanted to be around.”

Sarah believes her mother’s urge to fit in prompted her to join the community.

“Only if you become so extreme can you become one of them,” she says.

“There’s no middle ground. You’re either extreme or you aren’t part of the community.”

When Sabbath begins on Friday evenings, what is already the quietest neighbourhood in Eastern Melbourne becomes almost eerily silent. Restaurants close down, cars are parked in driveways where they remain for the next 24 hours, and families gather indoors to feast and to pray, shutting out the white noise of contemporary life even more resolutely.

Without the internet, television, media or movies, she says, “you don’t have much to talk about.” Sarah characterises the community as “a world of nothing”.

“What do they talk about? Who has the nicest car. Who has the nicest house. Who has the nicest clothes. I find all that stuff really trivial.”

“It sounds very… strict,” I offer.

Sarah corrects me. “It was a cult.”

The Adass community is the most insular of the Haredi or ultra-Orthodox spectrum of Jews. Melbourne’s Jewish communities have long dominated the Eastern suburbs of St Kilda East, Balaclava and Caulfield; the Adass community is confined to a small grid bordered by Brighton, Orrong, Balaclava and Glenhuntly Roads.

The concept of an eruv encircles this boundary: all buildings within are ritually integrated into a private domain where residents may carry objects that are otherwise forbidden to be held on the Sabbath: prams, house keys, tissues, medicine and babies.

They have their own telephone directory, schools, ambulance service, synagogue, shops, cemetery, bathhouses, security patrols and rabbinical court system.

Male “Adassniks” have long, dark beards and wear black silk coats that reach their knees over white pantaloons and stockings. Twin sideburn ringlets curl down beneath enormous mink fur hats. Female members of the community wear thick tights, long skirts and loose blouses. Married women wear wigs, in keeping with the law that their heads must be covered for modesty’s sake.

Adass Israel School is responsible for the education of 600 students from preschool to year 12. The girls’ and boys’ campuses are strictly segregated, separated by a two-minute walk and gated security. The VCE curriculum that is the benchmark for university entry is not offered: boys leave around the age of 16 to pursue religious education, while girls complete a vocational certificate – if they aren’t married off beforehand.

Adass Israel School, Elsternwick Victoria

Mornings are dedicated to Jewish history and scripture. Three hours in the afternoons are spent studying maths and science. 

“I was very under-stimulated and very under-challenged,” Sarah says. “Kids would play up because they didn’t care about secular subjects, because their parents kept instilling ‘this is not important, you don’t need to know this,’ because you get married and then that’s it. You won’t ever get a degree because you don’t need one.”

READ ENTIRE ESSAY:
http://www.sbs.com.au/features/news/dear-teacher/