Regardless of the timing of or forethought put into the conflict, America is currently engaged in a war, and it is better for us, our allies, and the world as a whole that it is resolved with an American victory rather than the perception of an Iranian one.

 

From ‘Unconditional Surrender’ to ‘Please Make a Deal’

 

President Trump may look too eager to end the war in Iran, regardless of the consequences. 

 

When I attended SERE (survival, evasion, resistance, escape) school, a course intended for service members at greater risk of finding themselves behind enemy lines, the portion of the course that simulated captivity in a prisoner of war camp included a metaphorical Whitman’s Sampler of the kind of sadism and punishment one might expect if one fell into the hands of America’s enemies.

These covered various kinds of discomfort and displeasure, usually exposing the student to each different punishment once—that is, unless the student showed obvious fear, pain, or dislike of one of these or another. In other words, if you let your captors know the specific thing they could do to you to elicit an adverse reaction, they are more likely to do it if they wish to pressure you. No matter how bad something is, do not let the enemy know what bothers you most.

Most Americans will never experience anything like SERE training, but the lesson is broadly applicable: It’s best not to demonstrate in either words or actions that your adversary has you over a barrel, unless you want that adversary to continue to use that leverage. This obvious lesson seems to have escaped the grasp of the man who has labeled himself a master dealmaker, as he, in both words and actions, lets the Iranians know that, to use a phrase of which he is so fond, the one card they do hold is the one that elicits the pain and discomfort that may motivate him to agree to a wholly unsatisfactory ending to the conflict: threatening shipping through the Strait of Hormuz.

Operation Epic Fury, initiated over nine weeks ago via nocturnal social media announcement, has ground to an odd pause. Our forces remain in theater, the combatants’ respective navies restrict passage through a critical waterway, and we are not making progress toward bringing about any of the various conditions that the Trump administration claimed would exist at the end of it. A war that started muddled in its purpose has now become muddled in its progress. 

Just over a month into the conflict, and seemingly frustrated with Iranian resistance in general and blocking the Strait of Hormuz in specific, President Donald Trump had issued a series of escalatory threats, declaring that he would order the destruction of everything from power infrastructure to Iranian civilization as a whole, and that this level of wholesale carnage might be accomplished in as little as four hours if the Iranian regime did not accede to his demand to open the strait. His original deadline of 48 hours was extended for five days, then that deadline was extended for 10 days, then that deadline was extended for an additional day, then, two hours short of the final final—for real this time final—deadline, the president announced a Pakistani brokered, two-week ceasefire to allow for talks and negotiations. All these extensions came with no substantive concessions from the Iranians.

More than three weeks into the two-week ceasefire, which began April 8, the two sides are at an impasse. An initial attempt at in-person talks in Islamabad that weekend proved largely performative and half-hearted, as the two parties each showed up with a list of non-negotiables that would be difficult to overcome through weeks of negotiations and therefore impossible with an effort wherein Vice President J.D. Vance spent more time in transit to and from the meeting site than in Islamabad itself. 

The only indications of Iranian eagerness to seek peaceful resolution come from Trump—who has a less than firm relationship with the truth—claiming that the Iranians have told him privately they are desperate to give in to each of our demands. 

After the failed Islamabad meeting, the Iranians demonstrated no earnest desire for negotiations. In the face of this Iranian intransigence, the administration could have allowed the April 22 deadline, and with it the ceasefire, to expire. Instead, it showed an amateurish eagerness, making contradictory statements about Vance’s imminent departure the day before the deadline for follow-up negotiations. One could imagine Vance moving to and from his motorcade like he was doing the hokey pokey with each new pronouncement. Ultimately, he stayed in Washington, and Trump extended the ceasefire. 

Even the alternate plan of special envoy Steve Witkoff and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner leading negotiations last weekend was halted at the last minute, potentially as a face-saving measure when Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi departed Pakistan without any interest in meeting with the American representatives.

While we should not trust any public pronouncements made by the Iranians (nor should our government take private ones at face value either), the regime has effectively acted in keeping with the perception it wishes to create: Iran’s leaders are not impatient for negotiations, nor do they seem willing to make accommodations in advance of any, while simultaneously demanding preconditions from the United States. The only indications of Iranian eagerness to seek peaceful resolution come from Trump—who has a less than firm relationship with the truth—claiming that the Iranians have told him privately they are desperate to give in to each of our demands. 

That would strain credulity under any circumstances, but especially after the president has made many, many claims of Iranian surrender or concession over the course of the nine-week conflict, all of which have proven to be demonstrably false. From promising a complete surrender of retained nuclear material, to saying the Iranians would halt executions that have continued, to assurances that the Strait of Hormuz was open as international ships came under attack, the sad truth is the American people can put no stock in anything the White House claims about Iranian compromise and, in fact, should probably assume the opposite is true in most cases. 

Trump is obviously aware that the Iranians, whom he is supposed to be pressuring to create a satisfactory resolution, know he is lying. But these statements aren’t meant to influence the Iranian regime; they are meant to try, just one more time, to pull the wool over the eyes of the American people, to whom he never made the case for war, upon whom the increased economic burdens fall, and from whom a growing disapproval is making urgent the president’s desire to move past a conflict he believed would be simple. 

It is true that the United States has done exponentially more damage to the Iranian military than it has done to ours. And it is true that the recently imposed American reciprocal blockade is far more deleterious to the Iranians than their original one is to the U.S. But neither of those may matter in adjudicating an end to the war. The Iranians seem willing to endure more military damage than our president is willing to inflict and more economic pain that our president is willing to absorb—and this is far more likely to be the determining factor. 

With each new over-the-top proclamation of pending violence, every deadline extension rewarded with nothing in return from the Iranians, and all the false claims of Iranian backchannel surrender, the Iranians’ belief that they can outlast the president is reinforced.

It’s worth remembering any of the myriad reasons for war that Trump and his acolytes have articulated and vacillated between. In January, we were going to stand up for the Iranian people, yet now there is no discussion of their fate. In February, we were going to end Iranian support to their proxy networks, yet the president has pressured Israel to stop striking Hezbollah. In March, we needed to degrade the Iranian missile and drone systems so they would number fewer than our interceptors in theater, yet the Iranians retain more of these capabilities than previously thought—while we have depleted key stocks of our interceptors and precision guided missiles. 

Meanwhile, the Iranians are not publicly backing down from their maximalist demands, having submitted a new 14-point proposal that includes many of the unreasonable conditions they had previously submitted in Pakistan, including withdrawal of American forces in theater, significant financial reparations, protection for Hezbollah in Lebanon, and some recognition of Iranian control over the strait. This Iranian proposal would also separate discussions about reopening the strait from those regarding the disposition of its nuclear weapons program. While the president originally seemed to reject this proposal outright on Friday, by the next day he seemed to be softening to the idea of entertaining portions of the Iranian language. It does not seem likely the White House would agree to all, or even most, of the Iranian demands, but any of these should be viewed as unacceptable—and even entertaining them as a basis for negotiation plays into Iran’s game plan.

We have gone from grand proclamations of “unconditional surrender” and telling the Iranian people “the hour of (their) liberation is at hand” to now sheepishly looking for any agreement, including one that does not liberate the Iranian people, does nothing to diminish Iranian support for its proxies, likely will not not end the Iranian ballistic missile program, may not secure the remaining highly enriched uranium, and at best, reopens the strait to a condition less advantageous for the U.S. and international community than status quo ante. 

The president is now dealing with the realities of neither explaining to the American people why the war was necessary and what its goals were, nor focusing on those goals himself. The former has created a domestic reaction that pressures the president to make a hasty deal. The latter means he may be willing to give away the farm to secure that deal. 

Regardless of the timing of or forethought put into the conflict, America is currently engaged in a war, and it is better for us, our allies, and the world as a whole that it is resolved with an American victory rather than the perception of an Iranian one. As of yet, the means Trump thought would be adequate to bring about this victory have proven insufficient, and he should adjust accordingly—generally speaking, this would likely require a long-term imposition of the mutually painful blockade or an escalation of combat operations, potentially including ground-based options. However, escalation or resumption of combat operations may now be complicated by the president’s attestation to Congress that the war has “terminated”—his short-term cute trick to skirt the War Powers Act potentially hindering his options over the longer term. 

Either one of these requires him to do two things he has, as of yet, been unwilling or unable to do—explain to the American people the sacrifices and difficulty to come, and why those sacrifices are worth it, and demonstrate to the Iranian regime that he is willing to endure them.

Mike Nelson

Mike Nelson is a retired Army Special Forces officer and a member of the Atlantic Council’s Counterterrorism Project. He is formerly of the Institute for the Study of War and the National Security Institute. You can find him on x.com at @mikenelson586.

https://thedispatch.com/article/trump-iran-war-negotiations-strait-hormuz-nuclear/?

What kind of man do we want possessing that much power?

 

Donald Trump’s character matters because character is not decorative. It is not a ribbon you pin on after the work is done. Character is the machinery inside the man. It is the hidden engine that drives judgment, loyalty, impulse, patience, pride, and restraint. And when a man sits in the Oval Office, that engine is not his private business. It becomes public property.

The modern trick is to pretend character is old-fashioned, almost quaint, as if it belongs to schoolbooks and Shabbat sermons, not to the hard business of power. We are told to ignore manners, overlook honesty, shrug at temperament, and focus only on outcomes. Nonsense. Outcomes do not float in the air like weather. They come from a person’s habits of mind. A leader who lies casually will govern casually with the truth. A leader who loves applause more than principle will trade principle for applause. A leader who is ruled by ego will eventually make the nation pay for his ego.

Trump’s defenders often say that critics are obsessed with his style because they cannot stand his victories. There is some truth in that. The establishment did not merely dislike Trump’s character; it feared what his character made him willing to do. He disrupted sacred cows, mocked fake respectability, and treated the ruling class with the contempt it had long earned. Fine. Good, even. But there is a deeper question that cannot be waved away by a rally crowd or a television panel: what kind of man do we want possessing that much power?

A republic does not run on charisma alone. Charisma can rally a crowd, but it can also excuse bad judgment. It can turn a flaw into a slogan. It can persuade people that aggression is strength and noise is leadership. Trump understands something important about politics: people are tired of elites who speak softly while destroying trust. But the fact that elites are rotten does not magically sanctify every counter-reaction. A nation cannot survive by replacing polished hypocrisy with unfiltered chaos and calling it honesty.

That is why character matters. Not because we demand sainthood. Not because we expect presidents to be monks. But because when pressure rises, character is what remains after the spin is gone. Crisis strips away the costume. Then you find out whether a leader is guided by duty or vanity, discipline or impulse, truth or convenience. The office of president magnifies everything in the man who holds it. Strength becomes resolve—or recklessness. Confidence becomes courage—or narcissism. Skepticism becomes prudence—or corrosive distrust. The same trait can save a leader or ruin him.

And this is the part Americans keep trying to forget: character is contagious. A nation led by a serious man behaves differently from a nation led by a showman who thinks every day is a stage. Institutions absorb the tone of the top. Staffs adapt. Allies and enemies read signals. Citizens learn what kind of behavior is rewarded. If the chief executive treats truth as a negotiable asset, the entire culture gets a little more cynical. If he treats loyalty as personal rather than constitutional, the entire government gets a little more tribal.

This does not mean Trump is uniquely unfit in some mystical sense. It means that in his case, the debate was never just about policy. It was about what happens when an extraordinarily powerful office is occupied by a man whose instincts are often smart, often useful, and sometimes self-destructive. That is exactly why the argument over character cannot be dismissed as pearl-clutching. The stakes are too high. A president is not merely a technician. He is a model, a symbol, a pressure point, and a test.

A serious conservative should understand this instinctively. The old language of virtue did not come from nowhere. It existed because civilization is fragile, and power without discipline eventually devours itself. The old American idea was not that leaders must be perfect, but that they should at least possess enough steadiness to know when not to indulge themselves. Character was supposed to check power, not decorate it.

Trump forced a national argument that is still unresolved: do we judge leaders by whether they flatter us, or by whether their inner nature can bear the burden of office? That question matters because history does not remember merely what leaders said they wanted. It remembers what they were. And sooner or later, the country pays for that answer.

*

The best Orthodox Jewish blogs curated and ranked based on multiple factors, including content relevancy, subject expertise, posting frequency, and freshness of content. Blogs with highest credibility within the Orthodox Jewish space are ranked higher. This list is updated regularly to ensure it reflects the most active, influential, and valuable Orthodox Jewish blogs on the internet today. https://bloggers.feedspot.com/orthodox_jewish_blogs/

 

REPUBLISHED

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/what-kind-of-man-do-we-want-possessing-that-much-power/

A yeshiva administrator who fled Israel ahead of his arrest has been taken into custody in the United States on suspicion of committing sexual offenses against minors between 2020 and 2023, authorities said.

 

U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement

@ICEgov

ICE HSI and the U.S. Marshals Service arrested Yechiel Yehoshua Farkash, a foreign fugitive from Israel who was wanted in his home nation for alleged sex crimes against children. Our team arrested him at his home in Lakewood, N.J. ICE HSI Atlantic City will coordinate with ICE

@HSINewark

Victim Assistance Program to conduct any additional interviews and identify other possible victims related to the case. If you or someone you know were victimized, please call: 866-DHS-2-ICE

 

U.S. authorities arrested Yechiel Yehoshua Farkash, a fugitive in New Jersey, after Israel requested his arrest and extradition.

The 43-year-old was wanted on charges of sex crimes against children, immigration officials said on Wednesday.

Farkash, a resident of Lakewood, N.J., was arrested on April 17 by Homeland Security Investigations agents—federal law-enforcement officers within the U.S. Department of Homeland Security responsible for investigating transnational crime—and the U.S. Marshals New York/New Jersey Regional Fugitive Task Force.

“Israeli authorities sought to prosecute Farkas for attempted rape and indecent acts involving children based on acts committed in Israel between 2020 and 2023,” officials said. “Pursuant to the U.S.-Israel extradition treaty, the government of Israel requested provisional arrest with a view toward extradition, and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of New Jersey obtained a provisional arrest warrant in the U.S. District Court for the District of New Jersey.”

Michael McCarthy, HSI Newark special agent in charge, said his team is committed to “ensuring the United States does not become a haven for criminal fugitives.”

 

https://www.jns.org/news/u-s-news/fugitive-wanted-in-israel-arrested-in-new-jersey?

By turning our communal centers into well-fortified bunkers, we’re teaching our children that it is normal to associate Jewish life and identity with anxiety, with insecurity, with lack of confidence in ourselves and in our neighbors

 

Armed Guards Aren’t the Answer

Jews must stop being dependent on others for our safety

Liel Leibovitz

On a recent Sunday in New York City, my family and I went on a walk that turned from a nice neighborhood stroll into a survey of our current state of institutional security.

First, we passed a synagogue with three armed guards outside; they had earpieces firmly in place and looked furtively around. Another shul had two armed guards, a set of locked doors, and more security cameras than your average bank vault. The Jewish community center had concrete bollards on the sidewalk—the sort you’d find in front of the American embassy in a European country—and a metal detector greeting you as soon as you walked in the door. According to recently available data, a typical Jewish organization spends about 14% of its overall budget on security, with the total communal expenditure now reaching $765 million—every year.

It doesn’t take a brilliant strategist to understand why these measures are in place. We all know the statistics showing a sharp spike in antisemitism, and we can all speak intelligently about the most recent attempt—in Detroit, in Denver, you name it—to harm Jews wherever we congregate.

What I want to propose here, without everyone losing their minds, is that our approach to communal security is creating more vulnerability—of all kinds.

Spend some time in the real world, and you realize that communities tend to fall into one of two categories: Paris or Texas.

Step back for a moment and think about the meaning of a heavily fortified synagogue guarded by professional sentries. This image sends two clear messages. To our fellow citizens, it says that it is normal for Jews in the United States to require extensive security in order to safely practice their religion. This is a radical departure from this country’s self-conception; indeed, Jewish vulnerability is part of a wider collective of societal trends—district attorneys that don’t prosecute criminals, mayors doxing private citizens, etc.—all threatening America’s claim to be the freest nation in the world.

Perhaps even more toxically, though, is the message it drills into Jewish children. By turning our communal centers into well-fortified bunkers, we’re teaching our children that it is normal to associate Jewish life and identity with anxiety, with insecurity, with lack of confidence in ourselves and in our neighbors. Faced with such conditions, we should not be surprised when smart kids run as fast and as far away from our airless fortresses as they can, while others remain depressingly in place, too afraid to find any joy or meaning in their faith.

I can already hear you freaking out. But Liel, the threats are real, and getting realer every day. Are you suggesting we live in la-la land and pretend otherwise? What kind of parent would send their child to a shul, a school, or a center unguarded and exposed? And what kind of community would we be if we didn’t have a similar strategy?

I am not, of course, suggesting mindlessness or irresponsible bravado. What I am encouraging you to accept—because it is true—is that we American Jews have gotten ourselves into a moral, spiritual, and tactical arms race, one in which there can never be enough security because the vulnerability we are allowing is ever expanding. More money for more guards and bigger barricades isn’t the answer. There’s a better way, one that not only delivers comparable protection but also does so while instilling in ourselves and in our children a sense of agency, purpose, and pride, and in our neighbors a sense of respect, however begrudging.

Put simply: We Jews must get serious about protecting ourselves. This doesn’t mean firing every hired armed guard right away; it means meaningfully transitioning into accepting that you are personally responsible for protecting your institutions—a responsibility that includes overcoming the psychological crutch of being protected by others and then getting trained, armed, and involved.

Float this idea at your average Manhattan Shabbat table, and you’ll encounter a flurry of standard objections: You’re talking about guns, right? Guns are dangerous! And bad! And useless to boot: You expect the shul’s elderly gabbai to whip out his Glock and shoot a bunch of bad guys?

These objections are delivered almost as punch lines, as if the idea of an armed and competent Jew defending his or her domain is so outrageous as to be insane, even humorous.

The answer to these objections is simple. Spend some time in the real world—an undertaking that requires leaving New York City—and you realize that communities tend to fall into one of two categories: Paris or Texas.

In the former, la vie en rose means going to shul and being greeted by a security detail right out of a Jason Statham movie. Police cars, guards with Kevlar vests and helmets and powerful rifles, trained dogs: The experience feels like walking into a war zone, not a house of worship.

And then there’s Texas, where some synagogues have a guard posted somewhere on campus but don’t really need it because multiple gentlemen davening inside have sidepieces tucked neatly into their tallis bag. As a result, the entire experience feels more open, normal, and free.

To this general observation, allow me to add one more report from the field.

These past few months, I’ve been introducing my 12-year-old to firearms. Anytime we tell this to certain Upper West Side friends, they look at us as if we had confessed to child abuse. Instead, here’s what he’s experienced at the range: First came the requisite lessons about safety. Then the basics: grip, stance, aim, etc. Then familiarity with the terrifying yet exhilarating experience of a small explosion unfurling in his hands. And, finally, an emphasis on greater accuracy and competence.

The results are evident: The kid can shoot. Even more importantly, he doesn’t fetishize guns, as so many of his inexperienced peers do. He now understands them to be exactly what they are: incredible tools of self-protection, to be used responsibly and only as needed. Raise a kid that way, and chances are he or she will feel comfortable enough stepping in, stepping up, and partaking in communal protection that isn’t purchased, paranoid, and paralyzing, but integral and organic.

Here, then, is my crazy idea. Imagine if instead of another influencer campaign or conference about fighting anti-Zionism, we invested in sending our children—at seventh grade or eighth or ninth—to Texas for a week. Imagine that there, in some spacious ranch in Hill Country, these kids spent a week with IDF and U.S. Marine Corps veterans learning the foundations of self-defense. Imagine two or three days of intensive Krav Maga basics. Imagine a day or two of learning to shoot.

What would such an endeavor achieve?

First, it would show our children what we truly value. Just as so many of us spend so much on tutors and tuition to ensure that our sons and our daughters get into the best schools, so, too, we should now invest in something without which that fancy education is worth nothing: a sense of self-worth, mastery, and empowerment. I can’t think of anything better to give a young adult about to enter the moment of massive societal flux that our kids are currently facing.

Second, it would help transform the community from one reliant on bloated and comically inept organizations that fetishize victimhood to one invigorated both by the spirit of service at every level and by the understanding that the true promise of Zionism was never for Jews to be safe—it was for Jews to be free.

Finally, it would also very likely help deliver superior security solutions. Consider the attack, last Yom Kippur, on the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester, England: The attacker, Jihad al-Shamie, began his rampage by ramming his vehicle into the security guard outside the shul at 9:30 a.m. It took the police eight precious minutes to arrive on the scene, open fire, and kill al-Shamie, eight minutes during which the best the congregants inside could do was hold the door tightly shut and hope that the demon on the other side did not possess a weapon strong enough to force his way in. What would have happened if he did? And what would have happened if the cops had taken even longer to arrive?

If it becomes widely understood and accepted that most synagogues are filled with frightened, unarmed Jews who outsource their security, the only barrier to a successful attack is getting through that one single—and nowhere near impregnable—layer. If the public perception is that most synagogues are stacked with well-regulated minyans of trained shooters inside, that’s a much less appealing target.

There’s little we can do to keep the barbarians from our gates. But we do have a choice: Retreat into ever more guarded bunkers, cowering behind taller walls and hiring the services of a growing phalanx of guards, or stand tall and alert, vigilant and independent and unsubdued. It’s not very hard to figure out which way lies true freedom.

https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/community/articles/armed-guards-jews-safety? 

When Your Rabbi is an Idiot....If You Ask Them Medical Questions --- So Are You!

 

Children at Risk as Measles Cases Rise - “I would not wish measles upon my fiercest enemy,” a reader writes of the recent resurgence.

 

 

A photo illustration based on a photograph of Renae Walker that was provided by the author, her mother, Rebecca Archer

 

“I would not wish measles upon my fiercest enemy,” a reader writes of the recent resurgence.

To the Editor:

Re “My Daughter Died of Measles,” by Rebecca Archer (Opinion guest essay, April 25):

I had measles when I was 12. I almost died. I am now 78, and I remember every horrific moment … well, except when I was hallucinating with a 104-degree fever and unable to recognize my parents. It is the sickest I have ever been in my now long life, and being shut in my darkened bedroom, unable to bear even the slightest light for days, boiling hot with recurring chills, has stayed with me forever.

Measles vaccines weren’t an option then, but we now can prove the efficacy of vaccines in the near eradication of measles, along with a number of other potentially fatal diseases. And yet we have Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. — a lawyer, not a doctor! — telling people to reconsider and even to forgo vaccinating their young children, spitting in the face of proven medical science.

If you or someone you know has not vaccinated his or her kids because of misinformation, please, please listen: I would not wish measles upon my fiercest enemy.

Sally McBee
Stonington, Conn.

To the Editor:

My heart breaks for Rebecca Archer, whose daughter, Renae, died at age 10 as a consequence of exposure to measles earlier in her life. The family lives in England, where vaccination for measles is not compulsory.

This family’s tragedy should be read as a warning to all Americans that mandatory vaccination requirements for measles are the best remedy for keeping your own children safe as well as your fellow citizens’ children. We need to start listening to our doctors again.

Gerri Stewart
Montclair, N.J.

To the Editor:

My mother was exposed to measles when she was pregnant with me in 1947. As the current measles outbreak has spread across the United States, I’ve been puzzled about why I haven’t seen more coverage of the potential impact of this disease on pregnant mothers and their unborn children until reading this piece. My heart goes out to Rebecca Archer for her loss.

I was born without an optic nerve, essentially making me blind in one eye. This was diagnosed early, and I was fortunate to have 20/20 vision in my left eye, but my right sees nothing.

I’ve learned to live with this limitation, but it has made life challenging. I have no depth perception and little capacity to judge distances or read small print.

I hope greater attention can be given to the impact of measles on pregnant mothers and their unborn children. Perhaps those who oppose vaccines for measles will reconsider.

To the Editor:

In the early 1990s I was persuaded by folks around me to forgo vaccinations for my children. But during Covid my daughters convinced me that the science behind vaccines was sound and told me that they wanted me to get the Covid vaccine. That was the turning point for me, and I now avail myself of all the appropriate shots and encourage others to do the same.

Thank you to The Times for your excellent journalism and all it does to combat dangerous disinformation.

Elizabeth Rivera
McKinleyville, Calif.

To the Editor:

Re “Measles Is Back. It’s a Sign Worse Things Are Coming” (editorial, April 26):

I’m glad your editorial board is acknowledging that the resurgence of measles could be “a harbinger of something even worse.” However, you call for state officials, members of Congress and doctors to speak out without giving credit to those who have already been shouting this from the rooftops.

West Coast and Northeastern states have formed their own health alliances. Multiple members of Congress, including several Republicans, have spoken out repeatedly. Most major professional physician groups (pediatricians, family medicine doctors, internists, obstetrician-gynecologists, infectious diseases specialists and the American Medical Association) as well as new groups of doctors such as Defend Public Health have joined together specifically to speak out for scientifically based public health policies, including recommending vaccines to save lives.

You meekly state that “so long as Mr. Kennedy remains health secretary … the options will be limited.” Why not state it like it is: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is a threat to our nation’s health and should be ousted immediately from his position as secretary of health and human services. Period.

Lisa Plymate
Seattle
The writer is a retired internist.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/28/opinion/letters/measles-children.html

Haredi Leaders that are intellectually & morally handicapped is history repeating itself

 

For two thousand years, the great tragedy of Jewish history was not only hatred, but helplessness. 

 Jewish blood was cheap because Jewish power was absent. From the massacres of the First Crusade, to the butcheries of the Khmelnytsky Uprising, to the pogroms of Czarist Russia and the furnaces of the Holocaust, the lesson was repeated with merciless cruelty: defenseless Jews were dead Jews. That is why there is something profoundly disturbing—morally and intellectually—about leaders among the Charedim who seem incapable of grasping that without the Israel Defense Forces there would likely be no Israel at all. This is not a secondary political question. It is the central fact of modern Jewish existence.

The psychology of such leadership deserves scrutiny. There is a kind of moral ignorance that grows in sheltered worlds, where dependence on others is mistaken for spiritual superiority. Protected by soldiers, some speak as though soldiers are unnecessary. Living beneath the shield of sacrifice, they convince themselves the shield is incidental. Gratitude gives way to entitlement; realism dissolves into theological fantasy. This is not piety. It is historical amnesia elevated into doctrine.

No serious Jew acquainted with history can indulge the illusion that Torah study alone guards Jewish life. Did prayer stop Crusaders at the gates of Mainz? Did holiness prevent Cossack massacres? Did piety halt the trains to Auschwitz? The martyrs of Jewish history were often righteous beyond measure. They were also unarmed. Their tragedy was not lack of faith, but lack of power. The rebirth of Jewish sovereignty was meant to end precisely that condition.

The Israel Defense Forces is not merely another institution of the modern state. It is the negation of exile. It is the answer to Kishinev and Treblinka. It is the declaration that Jews will no longer entrust their survival to the mercy of others. When the founders of Israel built a state, they were not rebelling against Torah; they were rebelling against helplessness. They understood what some insulated religious leaders seem determined to forget: in a violent world, Jewish continuity requires Jewish force.

History itself has already judged the matter. In the Six-Day War, Israel survived because Jews fought. In the Yom Kippur War, Israel survived because Jews fought. When enemies mass on the borders, when rockets fall, when terrorists infiltrate communities, no one survives by abstraction. They survive because young Israelis stand watch, bleed, and sometimes die. To enjoy that protection while diminishing its necessity is not merely hypocrisy; it is a kind of moral blindness.

There is also an intellectual provincialism at work, a refusal to understand that sovereignty changes religious responsibility. Categories forged in exile cannot govern a Jewish state under siege. A Jew in the ghetto could dream of survival without power. A Jew in Jerusalem cannot afford such illusions. To speak casually about a society defended by others, while treating military service as spiritually inferior, reveals not elevated wisdom but a catastrophic failure to understand the age we live in.

Even Jewish tradition itself refutes this false dichotomy. Moses had Joshua. King David had warriors. The Maccabean Revolt was not won through study halls alone. The guardians of Jewish continuity were often scholars with swords when history demanded it. Torah and defense were never enemies. Only in the distortions of modern ideological rigidity have they been made to appear so.

What is most painful is that this blindness insults the memory of defenseless Jews throughout history. Every victim of a pogrom, every mother who watched her children dragged away in Europe, every martyr abandoned by a powerless people, stands as a warning against precisely this complacency. “Never Again” was never meant to be a slogan. It was meant to mean armed Jewish responsibility.

One may debate burdens of service, civic arrangements, or the role of religious communities. But one cannot honestly deny this foundational truth: without the Israel Defense Forces, there may be no Jewish state in which Torah can flourish. To refuse to appreciate that fact is not merely an error in judgment. It is a failure of moral imagination.

For the first time since the destruction of the Siege of Jerusalem, Jews possess both Torah and power. To disdain one in the name of the other is civilizational folly. Without Torah, Israel loses its soul. Without those who defend it, Israel may lose its life. A leadership unable to recognize both truths is not preserving Judaism. It is misunderstanding the very miracle it inhabits.

 

REPUBLISHED

 

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/haredi-leaders-that-are-intellectually-handicapped-is-history-repeating-itself/

How We Got Iran's Nuclear Secrets --- Why Iran Wants the Bomb! Yossi Cohen - First Agent Who Joined the Mossad With a Yarmulke ("He can Recruit a Chair & Convince the Chair To Become a Table")

Yossi Cohen—the former director of Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency—spent most of his 38-year spy career in the shadows. He was known only by a letter: Y, or sometimes “The Model,” apparently for his looks. He was, as he writes, “a ghost, never to be seen and unable to be heard. I was invisible, a breath of wind in human form.” Cohen operated under dozens of different identities in some of the most dangerous places for an Israeli, and he personally orchestrated some of the most daring operations in Israel’s history: stealing half a ton of Iran’s most secret nuclear documents from a warehouse in Tehran; assassinating Iran’s top nuclear scientist using an AI-powered machine gun operated remotely via satellite; setting the stage for the pager attack that crippled Hezbollah last year; creating secret relationships with Arab leaders—relationships that changed the direction of the Middle East.

 

Because sexual abuse prevention doesn’t happen all at once—it happens in everyday moments. And it starts with adults who are prepared to act.

 

Hi Paul,  Not everyone knows where to start when it comes to protecting children. But it doesn’t have to be complicated. This Child Abuse Prevention Month, taking action can be as simple as learning something new, starting a conversation, or making one small change. Because prevention doesn’t happen all at once—it happens in everyday moments. And it starts with adults who are prepared to act. Here are a few ways to get started: Learn 👉 Start our free training Join thousands of adults learning to recognize the signs of abuse and take action to protect children. Apply 👉 Download the guide Get simple, practical steps you can use today to create safer environments for children. Spread the word 👉  Share the campaign Start conversations. Raise awareness. Help more people take action by sharing this campaign.   We believe childhoods are worth protecting. What’s worth protecting to you—and what will you do next? Protect a Childhood →

The Iranians Take Trump for a Sucker - Iran Takes America Hostage By Another Name - This will be the Iranians’ third swindle...So far...

 

Jimmy Carter #2

 TRUMP APPROVAL: 32%
MATCHING CARTER LOWS
IRAN GUNBOATS MENACE HORMUZ
SEIZE SHIPS AS 'CEASFIRE' EXTENDED
USA BLOCKADE COLLAPSES

 

How many times will President Trump pay Iran for the same real estate? Twice he has announced the opening of the Strait of Hormuz, and twice he has given up U.S. leverage in exchange. Yet the strait remains closed, as Iran’s regime demands more.

On April 7, Mr. Trump announced a two-week cease-fire—“subject to the Islamic Republic of Iran agreeing to the COMPLETE, IMMEDIATE, and SAFE OPENING of the Strait of Hormuz.” This implied that Iran hadn’t quite agreed to it yet, and two sources familiar with negotiations told me gaps remained. But Iran’s foreign minister eased concerns: “For a period of two weeks,” he wrote that evening, “safe passage through the Strait of Hormuz will be possible” within certain limits.

By the next morning, Mr. Trump was ebullient. “A big day for World Peace! Iran wants it to happen, they’ve had enough!” he wrote. “We’ll be loading up with supplies of all kinds.” When the Journal’s editorial board warned against declaring “premature victory,” the president was dismissive. “Actually, it is a Victory, and there’s nothing ‘premature’ about it!” he wrote on April 9. “Very quickly, you’ll see Oil start flowing,” he added. “The Wall Street Journal will, as usual, live to eat their words.”

But the oil didn’t flow. Tanker traffic declined even further. “That is not the agreement we have!” Mr. Trump would complain. This was Iran’s first swindle.

After the cease-fire, Iran’s regime insisted on a new condition: Israel would have to stop attacking Hezbollah in Lebanon before negotiations could advance. This wasn’t part of the deal, Mr. Trump replied. Hezbollah had started the war, and by smashing Iran’s most important terror proxy, Israel was adding to the pressure on the regime and thus to U.S. leverage.

Then again, pausing would be seen as an Israeli concession, politically easier for the president. “I spoke with Bibi [Netanyahu], and he’s going to low-key it,” Mr. Trump said on April 9.

April 10-11 negotiations followed in Pakistan, and the U.S. walked away when Iran resisted key nuclear concessions. Mr. Trump now needed a new way to force the regime’s hand. In the absence of military strikes, a blockade of Iran’s ports would be America’s stick; its carrot would be an Israeli cease-fire in Lebanon.

Direct Israel-Lebanon talks, previously scorned by Washington as pointless given Beirut’s inaction against Hezbollah, were arranged hastily for April 14. The spectacle could distract some from the fait accompli: To smooth U.S. negotiations, Mr. Trump had dictated that Israel give Iran the reprieve it wanted in Lebanon. This second cease-fire was announced April 16.

Iran’s foreign minister again acknowledged what had been agreed. “In line with the ceasefire in Lebanon,” he wrote on Friday, “the passage for all commercial vessels through Strait of Hormuz is declared completely open.” A day after granting the concession, however, the regime withdrew it. This was the second swindle.

On Saturday Iran’s military said the strait was closed. Approaching it “will be considered cooperation with the enemy,” the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps warned. It even attacked a few vessels. The regime says it won’t open Hormuz until the U.S. ceases blockading its ports.

This will be the Iranians’ third swindle—if Mr. Trump goes along. The regime wants the strait closed and U.S. leverage diminished for nuclear negotiations. “They can’t blackmail us,” Mr. Trump said on Sunday. But they think they can. Certainly, they are comfortable embarrassing the president. What’s stopping them from playing the same games over their stockpiles of enriched uranium?

Mr. Trump first suspended attacks on Iran, then on Hezbollah. Iran now presses him to give up U.S. economic leverage too. Sometimes, diplomacy can lock in military gains. This time, it has been set up to give them away.

https://www.wsj.com/opinion/the-iranians-take-trump-for-a-sucker-8a211f94?

Mr. Kaufman is a member of the Journal’s editorial board and a co-author of “In the War Room: The Inside Story of Israel’s Fight Against Hamas and the Iranian Axis.”

Remembrance to Independence – From Siren to Celebration

 

From Memory to Miracle As Yom Hazikaron gives way to Yom Ha’atzmaut, the Jewish heart moves through one of the holiest passages in our calendar. Tonight, we do not move from sorrow to joy because the sorrow is over. We move from sorrow to joy because the sorrow made the joy possible. We remember those who gave their lives so that the Jewish people could live free in our ancestral homeland, defend ourselves in our own language, raise our children under our own flag, and stand among the nations not as wanderers at their mercy, but as a sovereign people restored to history. Yom Hazikaron asks something sacred of us. It asks us to remember that Israel was not born in theory. It was born in sacrifice. It was built by men and women who understood that Jewish survival could no longer depend on the goodwill of others. It would require courage, responsibility, and a willingness to bear the burden of freedom. And then comes Yom Ha’atzmaut. Seventy-eight years. Seventy-eight years of Jewish sovereignty after exile, persecution, dispersion, and catastrophe. Seventy-eight years of reviving an ancient language, rebuilding a nation, defending a homeland, gathering exiles, cultivating the desert, creating beauty, producing wisdom, and proving to the world that the Jewish people did not return to history to disappear from it again. That is not merely politics. That is not merely statecraft. It is something close to a miracle. And yet this year, we do not mark the miracle lightly. We do so in the long shadow of October 7. We do so after a year in which Israelis and Jews everywhere were forced to remember, once again, that freedom is never self-sustaining. We do so under the shadow of war with Iran, with uncertainty still hanging in the air and the possibility that the ceasefire may not hold. We do so knowing that the threats around us have not disappeared, and that the burden of vigilance remains. But if the past year has reminded us of danger, it has also reminded us of something else: the depth of Jewish courage. It has reminded us that there are still young men and women willing to stand between our people and those who would destroy us. It has reminded us that the State of Israel is not an abstraction. It is a living covenant of responsibility between generations. It is the promise that Jewish blood will not be abandoned again. It is the answer our grandparents prayed for—and the answer our children will one day judge us by. This is why we must hold both days together. Without Yom Hazikaron, Yom Ha’atzmaut becomes shallow. Without Yom Ha’atzmaut, Yom Hazikaron becomes unbearable. One tells us what was paid; the other tells us why it was worth paying. One sanctifies memory; the other sanctifies purpose. So tonight, as we remember the fallen and celebrate the rebirth of Jewish sovereignty, let us do so with humility, gratitude, and resolve. Let us honor the memory of those who gave everything not only with tears, but with the kind of Jewish future worthy of their sacrifice. Let us build a stronger Israel. Let us build a prouder Jewish people. Let us build children who know who they are, where they come from, and what this flag has cost. Let us never again take sovereignty for granted. And let us never forget that the existence of Israel, after everything, remains one of the most extraordinary chapters in the story of our people. May the memories of Israel’s fallen be a blessing. May the wounded find healing. May Israel’s defenders be protected. And may the State of Israel continue to stand, to thrive, and to shine as a sign that the Jewish story is not over. Am Yisrael Chai. Happy Yom Ha’atzmaut!

With gratitude and hope,    Adam Scott Bellos    Founder & CEO, The Israel Innovation Fund

Perhaps Someone Can "Read" This Article To The Rabbinical Medical Geniuses In Lakewood, New Jersey, Philadelphia & Williamsburg, Brooklyn.

 

Measles Took My Daughter. This Is What I Want Everyone to Know.

A photo illustration based on a photograph of Renae Walker that was provided by the author, her mother, Rebecca Archer

By Rebecca Archer

Ms. Archer is a mother in Salford, England. Her daughter Renae died of a complication of measles in 2023.

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When my daughter Renae, my firstborn, was 5 months old she spiked a fever. By that evening, she was having trouble breathing — the color was gone from her face and I could see her skin tugging in around her ribs. At the hospital the doctors noted the red spots on her body and diagnosed her with measles.

This was 2013, and Manchester, England, where we lived, was experiencing a measles outbreak that resulted in more than 1,000 suspected cases. A 1998 study by a British doctor, Andrew Wakefield, linking the measles, mumps and rubella vaccine to autism had caused vaccination rates to plummet. The study was later retracted and Mr. Wakefield stripped of his medical license, but the damage had been done. In 2013, most of the cases were among school-age children whose parents had refused to give them the vaccine, which is not compulsory in Britain, or among babies too young to be vaccinated, like my daughter. (The first measles vaccine is usually given at 1 year of age.)

While I was concerned about Renae, I wasn’t panicked by the diagnosis. At the time, I thought of measles as being like chickenpox. And I knew she was in the right place, in the hospital. Doctors were able to stabilize her breathing quickly, and her fever was responding to Tylenol. Renae would feel poorly for a bit, and then get better.

Renae when she was 3 years old.Credit...via Rebecca Archer

And that’s what happened. Within a week she seemed back to normal. What I didn’t know was that measles can cause long-term complications. A child can seem fine while the virus slowly replicates in her brain, poised to exact a terrible toll years later. Because both Britain and the United States are confronting outbreaks, I am sharing my story. Parents should know just how dangerous this disease is.

Renae was a happy and bubbly child. She was early to talk, and speaking in full sentences well before she turned 2. She could write her name at 3. When she was 8, she was so proud when she brought home her report card, which said she read at the level of a teenager. She loved arts and crafts and books — every day after school she’d ask me to read with her. She squabbled with her two younger siblings and also adored them. You could never really scold Renae because if you did, she’d just find a way to make you laugh.

It was in the spring and summer of 2023, when Renae was 10, and I was pregnant with my fourth child, that we got the first hints that something might be wrong.

Renae’s handwriting, which had always been exceptionally neat, got a bit wobbly. Renae was never an athletic kid, but when I attended her school’s Sports Day, she wasn’t participating at all. She seemed a bit off balance. She was growing up quickly. She had just started her period. The school had called to say she was holding hands with a boy in her class. So when her personality changed and she became more snappish, I didn’t think much of it at first. She was excited about the new baby, helping set up the nursery.

In mid-June, I got a call from her teacher. Renae had had a seizure — could I come straightaway? By the time we got her to the hospital, she was pretty much back to herself. “Oh, my God, did it happen at school!?” she asked, mortified. We were referred to an epilepsy clinic.

A week after that, she had another seizure. And then several days later, while lying in bed with a friend, another one. She was admitted to the hospital, where she received an M.R.I. that showed mild brain swelling. The doctors told us that this can happen sometimes, that maybe she had a recent infection, and it often resolves on its own. They started her on an anti-seizure medication and, since it seemed that she was getting better, released her.

The author and Renae.Credit...via Rebecca Archer

But toward the end of the summer, she told us she saw things that weren’t there. I wondered if it could be a side effect of the medication, but she had also started moving very slowly, almost robotically, and often seemed confused. We took her back to the hospital, where another M.R.I. showed the swelling in her brain had become much worse.

The doctors put her on an antibiotic drip. They did lumbar punctures, collecting cerebrospinal fluid from between her vertebrae. They hooked her to a machine that took the blood out of her body, cleaned it, and put it back in.

She was rapidly slipping away. The nurses tested her strength each day, and each day she was getting weaker. I remember giving her a bath. She said, “Mom, get in.” So I did, and I brushed her hair. When she tried to get out, she fell. After that, we started using a wheelchair.

Renae would ask me, “What could it be?” I told her once the doctors figured it out, they could make her better. Her voice got weaker and she started sleeping more and more.

Within a couple weeks, Renae had stopped talking and eating. Her last food was cotton candy and an Oreo doughnut, which she always loved. She was transferred to the intensive care unit and given a breathing tube. Though she couldn’t speak to me, she still squeezed my hand when I talked to her. I worried she could overhear us talking about her condition, and wondered how scared and confused she must be.

We got the diagnosis when one of the tests of her spinal fluid had come back from London. Renae had subacute sclerosing panencephalitis, a rare complication of measles. The doctors told me it was fatal, and there was nothing else they could do.

I ran outside onto the hospital grounds and sat on a bench. I looked down and at my feet was a stone that said, “Keep smiling” — it’s a phrase Renae used to say to me.

Not long after, one of the doctors got on his knees and held my hands and told me that, with all the stress, he was worried about the health of the baby I was carrying. I was 38 weeks pregnant. The C-section was a blur. The doctors told me to rest, but I said, “No, I’m going back to Renae.” My sister took care of my newborn, the little sister Renae had been so excited to meet.

That last weekend in the hospital, watching Renae die, was so traumatic. I told the doctors that I didn’t want them to continue the treatments. I could tell Renae was in distress, and I just wanted her to be at peace. We turned off the machines on a Friday. My family and I stayed in the room that weekend. On Monday morning, Sept. 25, 2023, Renae took her last breath. It was nine days before her 11th birthday.

Renae in the intensive care unit due to complications from measles.Credit...via Rebecca Archer

In January of this year, Britain lost its measles elimination status. Our national M.M.R. vaccination rate hovers at 84 percent, far below the 95 percent target set by the World Health Organization.

In the United States, where schoolchildren are required to be vaccinated against measles, the national vaccination rate is 92 percent. Many states also allow for exemptions to vaccine requirements, and as a result, U.S. vaccination rates are uneven. Last year, the United States saw its highest rate of measles cases in more than three decades and the country may soon lose its measles elimination status as well. Despite this, Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. said he doesn’t think the government should be mandating vaccines, and that they should be a matter of personal choice.

Parents must realize that refusing vaccinations doesn’t just put your own child at risk. It puts other children at risk. I don’t know where Renae picked up measles. It’s one of the most contagious viruses that exists, and it could have been from anywhere.

That’s why herd immunity is so important. If there hadn’t been an outbreak when Renae was a baby, I don’t think she would have contracted it. She was eligible for the vaccine just seven months later, and I gave it to her, but it was too late.

For a long time after Renae died, I couldn’t really believe she wasn’t coming back. It’s only been in these past several months that it’s started to really sink in. I have days that I don’t want to see anyone, but I try to stay strong for everyone else, including my children who are now 8, 5 and 2. The youngest, who was born less than two weeks before Renae’s death, has glasses just like her older sister and many of her mannerisms.

It’s hard to tell Renae’s story, but I can hear her saying, “Go on, Mom.” It’s the only thing I can do.

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/04/21/opinion/measles-child-britain-vaccination.html