It’s a dangerous time to be a child in the United States....

 

Don’t Call Kennedy a Vaccine Skeptic. Call Him What He Is: A Cynic.

Listen to this article · 7:17 min Learn more

By Paul A. Offit

Dr. Offit is a pediatrician specializing in infectious diseases at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.

The news media labels Robert F. Kennedy Jr. a vaccine skeptic. He’s not. I’m an actual vaccine skeptic. In fact, everyone who serves with me on the Food and Drug Administration’s vaccine advisory committee is a vaccine skeptic. Pharmaceutical companies must prove to us that a vaccine is safe, that it’s effective. Then and only then will we recommend that it be authorized or licensed for use by Americans.

Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, is a vaccine cynic, failing to accept studies that refute his beliefs. He claims that the measles-mumps-rubella vaccine causes autism, despite more than a dozen studies performed in seven countries on three continents involving thousands of children showing that it doesn’t.

He has claimed that “there is no vaccine that is safe and effective.” (Childhood vaccines have prevented more than one million deaths and 32 million hospitalizations over the past three decades.) He has encouraged people not to vaccinate their babies: “I see somebody on a hiking trail carrying a little baby, I say to him, ‘Better not get him vaccinated.’”

When asked about the polio vaccine, Mr. Kennedy claimed that it caused an “explosion in soft tissue cancers” that killed, “many, many, many, many, many more people than polio ever did.” Setting aside the fact that an “explosion in soft tissue cancers” hasn’t occurred, studies comparing children who received early batches of polio vaccines with unvaccinated children found no differences in cancer incidence. By 1979, paralytic polio was eliminated from the United States. When Mr. Kennedy says he wants vaccines to be better studied, what he really seems to be saying is he wants studies that confirm his fixed, immutable, science-resistant beliefs. That’s not skepticism.

Here’s what good-faith vaccine skepticism looks like: In June 2022, I was one of the F.D.A. advisory committee members who voted against authorization of bivalent Covid vaccines (updated vaccines targeting both the original strain and the Omicron variant). I wasn’t convinced they were any better than the vaccines we already had, which targeted only the original strain. While the committee ultimately voted to approve the shots, the vigorous debate around the data — as well as the debates my colleagues and I have had on other issues, such as the merits of Covid booster shots for healthy young adults — shows the value of rigorous discussion about vaccines.

Vaccine skepticism is baked into the systems with which health experts monitor vaccines after they’re authorized for use. We know that clinical trials are not enough; we need to constantly ask questions and examine new data. That’s why we have surveillance systems that can detect problems too rare to be picked up in clinical trials. It’s how we know the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines caused the heart condition myocarditis in about one in 50,000 people and that the Johnson & Johnson Covid-19 vaccine caused dangerous clotting in about one in 250,000 people. Detecting such risks allows us to weigh these rare harms against the enormous benefits of these vaccines.

Mr. Kennedy, on the other hand, has claimed that the Covid-19 vaccines, which have saved the lives of at least three million Americans, are “the deadliest vaccine ever made.”

Parents have a right to be skeptical, to ask tough questions. In the first few years of life, children can receive as many as 25 inoculations to protect against diseases that many parents have never seen using biological fluids they don’t understand. When I speak with parents who are concerned that all these shots can overwhelm a young child’s immune system, I try to respond with data and compassion.

I tell them: Yes, vaccines prompt an immune response, but so does every bite of food you eat; so do the billions of bacteria living on your skin and in your intestines. Also, because of scientific advances, the total number of components in vaccines that induce an immune response, across all the vaccines given to children today, is less than what was in a smallpox vaccine given a hundred years ago. Yes, vaccines can cause side effects, but forgoing vaccination is also a risk. (Look at the case of the unvaccinated man in New York who got paralytic polio in 2022.) I try to explain that there are no risk-free choices. I talk people through the research studies and data, and I’m honest about any risks and trade-offs.

Mr. Kennedy makes these conversations harder. He has grossly misrepresented studies he has cited and ignored data that doesn’t support his conclusions. I fear what will happen in America, which is already seeing a rising mistrust of vaccines, if he becomes health secretary.

In his book “The Real Anthony Fauci: Bill Gates, Big Pharma, and the Global War on Democracy and Public Health,” Mr. Kennedy reveals one possible source of his anti-vaccine fervor. He casts doubt on the germ theory — the idea that specific germs cause specific diseases and that the prevention or treatment of those infections can be lifesaving (which is unequivocally true). He writes: “The ubiquity of pasteurization and vaccination are only two of the many indicators of the domineering ascendancy of germ theory as the cornerstone of contemporary public policy.” Rather, Mr. Kennedy seems to favor the idea that fortifying the immune system through nutrition and reduced exposure to environmental toxins may be enough to prevent infections.

It is, perhaps, this belief that explains his penchant for drinking unpasteurized milk and his view that vaccines are not beneficial. It may also explain another particularly disturbing fact: He seems to doubt that H.I.V. causes AIDS. In his book, Mr. Kennedy cites AIDS denialists who believe that AIDS wasn’t widely spread, was not transmitted from person to person and was most likely caused by recreational drugs like poppers and the antiviral drug AZT. He calls the use of AZT “mass murder.”

"Donald Tree Stump" said he would let Mr. Kennedy “go wild on health.” There’s plenty he could do.

Mr. Kennedy could undermine school vaccine mandates, further eroding vaccine uptake. Or he could instruct the C.D.C. to no longer recommend certain vaccines. His lawyer recently filed petitions to the F.D.A. to halt the use of the stand-alone polio vaccine and hepatitis B vaccine. He could remove some or all vaccines from the federal program created to prevent frivolous civil litigation. Doing so could return us to the days when baseless lawsuits drove many pharmaceutical companies out of the vaccine-making business altogether.

Given the lack of appropriate guardrails that would normally prevent an anti-vaccine activist, science denialist and conspiracy theorist from heading the country’s most important public health agency, it’s a dangerous time to be a child in the United States.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/13/opinion/rfk-jr-is-a-vaccine-cynic.html

What was the impact of Shabtai Tzvi on World Jewry? The Dangers of False Hope - Toward True Leadership - Pursue truth, and protect it. The reward is great for doing so, and the opposite is true when it is left vulnerable to abuse...

97% OF WORLD JEWRY BELIEVED THE MESSIAH IS HERE!

 

These false messiahs, whether individuals, movements, or ideologies, often exacerbate existing tensions rather than resolving them, leading to cycles of destruction and disillusionment.

UOJ OPINION:

The connection between the concept of a "Messiah" and contemporary wars or tragedies has become a frequent theme in recent podcasts, reflecting the intersection of religious eschatology, current events, and human psychology. These discussions often explore how apocalyptic beliefs or messianic expectations influence global or local conflicts and shape societal responses to crises.

Throughout history, the concept of a "messiah" has been a powerful and enduring symbol—a savior or liberator anticipated to bring salvation, peace, and justice. Yet, alongside the genuine hope for deliverance, history also reveals a recurring pattern of false messiahs who exploit fear, suffering, and uncertainty for personal or ideological gain. This phenomenon remains relevant today, particularly when examining its intersection with modern crises such as the wars in the Middle East and the persistent wildfires devastating California. These false messiahs, whether individuals, movements, or ideologies, often exacerbate existing tensions rather than resolving them, leading to cycles of destruction and disillusionment.

A false messiah typically emerges during periods of widespread crisis or upheaval. Promising solutions to complex problems, these figures often rely on charisma, rhetoric, and a superficial appeal to divine or ideological authority. Historically, they have appeared in contexts of war, famine, social instability, and natural disasters.

What unites them is their exploitation of desperate populations, offering simple answers to intricate issues while ignoring, falsifying, or manipulating underlying complexities.

The Middle East, with its deep historical, religious, and geopolitical significance, has often been a stage for the emergence of false messiahs. In modern times, figures and movements have claimed divine or ideological mandates to justify violence. From extremist leaders who distort religious texts to secular autocrats promising stability, these actors prey on the vulnerabilities of war-torn societies.

On the other side of the world, California’s wildfires offer a different but equally poignant stage for false messianic rhetoric. The fires, fueled by climate change, urban sprawl, and decades of environmental mismanagement, have destroyed homes, ecosystems, and lives. In this context, certain political and corporate actors emerge, presenting themselves as saviors while often contributing to the underlying problems.

Some propose quick fixes, such as deregulation or superficial reforestation programs, that fail to address the systemic drivers of the crisis. Others exploit the situation to push profit-driven agendas, such as land redevelopment or resource extraction, under the guise of rebuilding and recovery. These false messiahs capitalize on the public’s desperation for safety and stability, offering short-term relief at the expense of long-term sustainability.

The allure of a false messiah lies in the promise of immediate resolution. In the Middle East, this might manifest as the promise of Islamic rule or political utopia. In California, it might take the form of a quick technological or economic fix to environmental devastation. In both cases, the results are often disillusionment, as the promised salvation fails to materialize, leaving behind deeper fractures and more entrenched problems.

Moreover, false messiahs often distract from genuine solutions. By focusing attention on their promises and narratives, they sideline the difficult but necessary work of systemic change, collaboration, and accountability. This diversion is particularly harmful in interconnected crises like wars and climate change, where comprehensive, coordinated action is crucial.

Countering the influence of false messiahs requires fostering a culture of critical thinking, resilience, and community-oriented leadership. True leaders acknowledge the complexity of crises and work transparently to address their root causes. They prioritize the collective good over personal gain or ideological purity, recognizing that meaningful change often requires patience, sacrifice, and cooperation.

The persistence of false messiahs reminds us of humanity’s vulnerability during times of crisis and the enduring appeal of simple answers to complex problems. Whether in the war-torn landscapes of the Middle East or the fire-ravaged hills of California, these figures and their promises often lead to deeper suffering and division. By recognizing their patterns and investing in genuine, collaborative solutions, society can move beyond the illusions of false salvation toward a more resilient and equitable future.*

The previous government’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that the lack of regulation of unregistered educational settings – which Charedi yeshivas largely are – leaves children vulnerable to abuse. But extremist elements of our community are attempting to persuade the government to ignore these findings, brandishing the only card they have: religious exceptionalism.

 

Charedi leaders don’t believe their own rhetoric and neither should you

 

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is urgent and does what it says on the tin: it ensures the wellbeing of all youngsters, including Charedi children

Hundreds of Strictly Orthodox Jews protested outside Westminster as MPs inside Parliament debated a bill which could outlaw the Charedi practice of educating their children in religious Jewish institutions not currently recognised by the government

 

The second reading of the Children’s Wellbeing and School’s Bill has drawn a fresh round of protests that have been both feverish and tone-deaf.

London protests were mirrored by parallel demonstrations at the British Consulate in New York, with protesters wearing black and white scrubs reminiscent of concentration camp uniforms. One widely circulated explainer of the draft Bill drew a sickening comparison between the Nazi practice of tattooing numbers on the arms of Jewish people and the Bill’s intention to allocate single unique identifiers to children, which will enable health, education, and other public services to work together to safeguard children.

The previous government’s Independent Inquiry into Child Sexual Abuse found that the lack of regulation of unregistered educational settings – which Charedi yeshivas largely are – leaves children vulnerable to abuse. But extremist elements of our community are attempting to persuade the government to ignore these findings, brandishing the only card they have: religious exceptionalism.

Determined to prevent children from accessing a basic, secular education, crowds of Charedi men and boys outside parliament have protested a bill that has children’s wellbeing at its heart, in order to undermine the wellbeing and prevent the safeguarding of Charedi children. This dismal situation should invite the urgent and critical attention of the wider Jewish community.

The regulatory improvements that this Bill provides, as they pertain to Charedi children, are simple: Yeshivas will no longer be able to continue to claim that they are not schools, despite being places of education for children of school age, and will be required to register, bringing children into line of sight of safeguarding authorities. In addition, the Bill proposes a register of homeschooled children.

It makes provisions for local authorities to ensure that parents who are genuinely educating their children at home are free to continue to exercise that right. There are also provisions to identify those who are cynically claiming to do so, when their children are, in fact, spending long days studying exclusively religious studies with no access to maths, English, or science education.

Yeshivas run on schedules that do not plausibly allow for adequate home education once the Yeshiva day has ended, even for parents who are inclined to arrange it.

This dismal situation should invite the urgent and critical attention of the wider Jewish community

Home education has long been the go-to, if implausible, explanation rolled out to explain how Charedi parents whose children are not on any school register are fulfilling their legal duty to educate their children. But those who assert that children are genuinely being homeschooled rely on challengers being inhibited in further investigating such obvious inconsistencies. They also rely on the rest of the Jewish community, who would never accept their own children suffering the indignity of such neglect, not being willing or confident enough to draw attention to the way Charedi children are treated.

The Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill is urgent and it does what it says on the tin: it ensures the wellbeing of all children, including Charedi children. The Bill ensures they are known to the authorities, so that they can be certain that these children have proper access to education. There is nothing controversial about supporting it. Those who ask you not to are relying on you doing a cost benefit analysis in which you attach less value to the wellbeing of Charedi children than you do to smooth inter- and intra-community relations.

What the “Yellow Star” protestors want you to forget is that ordinary Charedi parents want their children to have access to adequate schooling, but the social cost of expressing this desire is extremely high

What the “Yellow Star” protestors want you to forget is that ordinary Charedi parents want their children to have access to safe, adequate schooling, but that the social cost of even expressing this desire has intentionally been made extremely high. It is simply not safe for Charedi parents to say, out loud or in writing, that they want their children to be educated in a Jewish school where they learn as much about their faith as possible, whilst simultaneously receiving a broad and balanced secular education. On the day of the second reading, a Charedi father of eight with children in yeshivas and Charedi (registered, independent) primary schools texted me to say: “Most people want the changes, but we are scared and silenced. We are under tight control, with no freedom and no ability to voice independent opinions”.

The control this man speaks of is by design and, I argue, testifies to the lack of faith that Charedi leaders photographed protesting at the second reading have in their own rhetoric: it appears they do not believe that anyone able to make an educated choice would actually stay within the community.

 

https://www.jewishnews.co.uk/opinion-charedi-leaders-dont-believe-their-own-rhetoric-and-neither-should-you/

Orthodoxies are not without their legitimate uses. We need them to make sense of the world at times. But they need to be held loosely, and be capable of adjusting to new facts. When they become ways to deny reality, to exculpate criminals, to censor dissent, and to take the souls and bodies of the least of our fellow humans, we need to re-examine them too. Before they consume more victims.

 WARNING : EXPLICIT CONTENT - NOT FOR THE SENSITIVE!

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The Price Of Orthodoxies

They can blind us to uncomfortable reality, hideous crimes, and powerless victims.

Andrew Sullivan Jan 10

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Mugshots of 20 men “found guilty of being part of a grooming gang that raped and abused girls as young as 11 in Huddersfield. The men were convicted of more than 120 offences against 15 girls.” (BBC / West Yorkshire Police)

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The first response of most human beings to news of irredeemably evil acts is to ask who committed them. And if the answer makes us deeply uncomfortable, we tend to move on pronto. You see this most obviously on social media with news of an atrocity. Was the shooter white, a Democrat, a Republican, Muslim, MAGA, woke, trans? And where did the victim fit into these categories?

Our priors instantly color our moral judgment, and even our sense of the seriousness of the offense. And the temptation simply to deny what seems to be in front of our nose can be overwhelming.

As a passionate enthusiast for the Iraq War, I remember very, very distinctly when I first heard the rumors about alleged war crimes by US forces during the occupation. I assumed they were enemy propaganda and didn’t look into it any further. In November 2003, I even described Robert Fisk as “nutty” because the Spectator reported that he had “haunted the prison of Abu Ghraib ... exclusively searching for American brutality.” My view of the ethics of the US military simply precluded such barbarism. But more importantly, I didn’t want it to be true because it would destroy the entire moral rationale for the war, in which I’d invested a huge amount. It took the images of Abu Ghraib many months later for me to wake  up.

The more intense the horror, the more powerful the instinct to doubt when you first hear of it. The sex-abuse scandal in my own church first numbed and incapacitated me. It took some time for me to see the totality of what had happened, and how deeply it had destroyed Catholic moral authority. Again, when I first read about, say, the Catholic school for deaf children where a priest had picked his victims among those whose parents did not know sign language, the feeling of horror was almost too much to process at all. And as with the Bush administration’s torture policy, it took even more time to grasp how this moral rot had been enabled by the very top.

This is why, I think, the scandal of Britain’s Pakistani rape-gangs, and the institutional negligence toward tens of thousands of underage victims over several years, has had a second burst of life. A serious national inquiry on the scandal was conducted years ago (its recommendations not yet implemented). But several towns with the worst records were omitted from that inquiry; and the sheer scale and depravity of what happened has finally begun to sink in. The precipitant was Elon Musk pontificating about the scandal on X, as part of his campaign to bring down Keir Starmer.

The details are hard to absorb. Think of the hideous abuse suffered by that extraordinary French woman, Gisèle Pelicot, sedated and raped by dozens of French men, organized by her husband. Now think of that kind of organized gang-bang — but make it close to ubiquitous in some towns and the victims under-age girls: raped, brutalized, mutilated, beaten, their lives destroyed. Yes, it was that bad. Tens of thousands of rape victims across the country. This is how one British judge addressed some culprits at sentencing:

You coerced her into providing sex to vast numbers of strangers. Up to four or five men would be invited to addresses so they could have sex with her ... Threats were made to kill her ... If she resisted, she would be coerced. Customers would become angry … If oral sex was required, her head would be pushed down, her hair pulled and she would be slapped. Strangers would burn her with cigarettes. A stranger almost throttled her. One deliberately scratched her vagina with his nails. One inserted a hairbrush into her vagina.

The victim was just 13 years old. And she wasn’t unconscious. In just one town, a “conservative estimate is that approximately 1,400 children were sexually exploited” between 1997 and 2013. And in communities dominated by men of Pakistani origin, largely from the Mirpuri region of Kashmir, who held huge sway over the police and local community — just like the Catholic Church in Boston — cover-ups were routine.

Among the abuse concealed: gang-rapes of a single minor by 20 men; putting a pump into a girl’s anus so more men could penetrate her at once; and constant threats of murder of the girls or their families if anyone spoke up. In one case, a minor was arrested and charged with prostitution for having oral sex in a car with a john. When she attended her trial, she discovered that the magistrate in charge of her case was the man she’d fellated. No one knows the full number of minor girls affected, but it is in at least the tens of thousands, and possibly in the six figures.

Why was this allowed to go on for so long? For the same reason the Catholic Church covered up child rape for decades, and Dick Cheney covered up torture. Because the orthodoxies of Catholicism, of the American military, and, in this case, the multicultural experiment were respectively involved. These orthodoxies were sacred, their cultural power extreme. Catholic Boston, conservative America, and elite liberal Britain therefore defended their own orthodoxies for a very long time. And with every successful deflection of responsibility, the number of victims increased.

The truth damns the multicultural project in Britain. Rather than integrating these men of Pakistani heritage, insisting that they adopt the laws and mores of the native population, and treating them like everyone else, the UK elites celebrated cultural difference, enabled the siloing of these populations, bemoaned their own white working-class populations, and forbade any criticism of Islam. So if you called out this stuff, you were instantly called racist. After all, to accuse a non-white minority of raping white girls was a trope right out of white-supremacist fever dreams. And yes, it is a hideous racist trope — from the depths of the American South. But sometimes the trope is the truth.

In all the major cases, I’ve found no reported evidence of Pakistani or Muslim girls being groomed and raped — only poor, white natives. The justification among the rapists, moreover, was that these non-Muslims were sluts who were asking for it and beneath contempt. Racist insults were common as these girls were brutally abused. These were not just rapes, but hate crimes of a grisly sort.

It’s not true that the Brit media ignored the scandal. But it is also true that the space they gave it was trivial compared with, say, coverage of the George Floyd murder, thousands of miles away. And ask yourself: if it had been discovered that there were gangs of white nationalists singling out Pakistani-heritage girls for rape and abuse, with racist and Islamophobic slurs added for good measure, what would the media response have been? The question answers itself.

And if a white Brit had been found guilty of organizing the brutal gang-rape of a Pakistani 12-year-old girl, it’s hard to imagine him receiving a sentence of just three years. To get a sense of why the British public is pissed, it’s worth noting that last year, a white Brit was sentenced to a longer 38-month sentence for writing a social media post. More punishment for a white man’s inflammatory speech than for a non-white man’s gang-rape of a child: a near definition of wokeness. And you wonder why they call him Two-Tier Keir.

I think it’s the accumulated frustration at these things that has led to the new outburst of attention. Musk’s rescue of Twitter from woke control and censorship has allowed the story to gain new oxygen. Trump’s re-election and the collapse of woke credibility (if not power) has disinhibited many. The “racist” accusations have lost their power to silence dissenters, as the consequences of that silence have played out.

And this is a good thing for two reasons.

The first is that we haven’t had real accountability at the top for any of these atrocities. No one in the police or local government has faced legal consequences for their enabling of the gang-rapes. Many have gone on to have new careers in government. Just as the entire Catholic hierarchy escaped any legal punishment for their crimes of negligence and complicity in child abuse, so too did Dick Cheney and George W Bush bust open the Geneva Conventions only to be protected by Obama. One of the key architects of the torture regime, Gina Haspel, even became CIA director.

The second is that in all these cases, the victims were among the least powerful in the world: dark-skinned prisoners accused of terrorism, young boys whose word was usually dismissed in favor of the priest’s, and white, uncouth girls of the British underclass. I also cannot stop thinking of the countless gay and lesbian children with gender dysphoria who have been recklessly experimented on these past several years, fed lies by their doctors, and abandoned by gay and lesbian adults: all to sustain the orthodoxy of critical queer and gender theory. And you know full well that none of these cowards and quislings will ever be held to account.

So let it rip. Expose it all. After all, 76 percent of the British public want the new, more focused inquiry that Starmer just denied them: 91 percent of Reform voters, 84 percent of Tories, 71 percent of Liberal Democrats, and 65 percent of Labour voters. And don’t balk at legal prosecution of the enablers. It takes time to absorb horror, and hold it properly to account.

Orthodoxies are not without their legitimate uses. We need them to make sense of the world at times. But they need to be held loosely, and be capable of adjusting to new facts. When they become ways to deny reality, to exculpate criminals, to censor dissent, and to take the souls and bodies of the least of our fellow humans, we need to re-examine them too. Before they consume more victims.

 

The Biggest Peacetime Crime—and Cover-up—in British History

Britain’s prime minister Keir Starmer during a meeting at 10 Downing Street on December 12, 2024, in London. Starmer has come under fire this week for his role in an alleged cover-up of a serial rape scandal

The serial rape of thousands of English girls went on for many years. Few in power cared. Then Elon Musk started tweeting.

 

MORE:

https://www.thefp.com/p/muslim-grooming-gangs-cover-up-keir-starmer-elon-musk?

 

Most of us, as adults, live in a state of spiritual confusion and uncertainty. We rarely get to choose between good and evil but often face a frustrating choice between actions that lead to marginally better or worse consequences. Rewards for good behavior are often ephemeral, and punishment for bad decisions is mostly of our own making.

 

Shamsud-Din Jabbar

 

 

 

Years after its zenith, ISIS has demonstrated remarkable adaptability. As an organization, it may yet grow stronger. After its territorial defeat in 2019, stated U.S. military strategy shifted its focus from counterterrorism in the Middle East toward nation-state adversaries, notably China and Russia. But the underlying conditions that first enabled ISIS’ rise in the region persist: Weak states, unstable governments, large populations of underemployed youth, and religious and ethnic conflicts all continue to create fertile ground for extremism.

Don’t Underestimate the Enduring Power of ISIS

A memorial on Bourbon Street in New Orleans

 

Listen to this article · 7:56 min Learn more

Ds. Stern is a research professor at Boston University and an author of “ISIS: The State of Terror.”

• 
  

On New Year’s Day, a confused, disgruntled and indebted veteran drove into a crowd of joyful celebrants in New Orleans, killing 14 and injuring 35 more. The assailant said shortly before the attack that he had joined the Islamic State, the brutal terrorist movement that at one point controlled an area in the Middle East the size of Britain.

In its heyday, ISIS marketed itself as offering what one fighter called a “five-star jihad,” promising recruits a paradoxical mix of religious authenticity and material rewards, from free housing to a glamorous new identity to access to wives. At its height, it was the wealthiest terrorist organization in modern history.

Today, while the ISIS caliphate is gone, the group has cells and affiliates scattered across Africa, Southeast Asia, Afghanistan and Syria. It maintains an active online presence, and is still a threat: With the fall of the Assad regime in Syria, the authorities are concerned about a potential resurgence by ISIS there, while an offshoot in Afghanistan, ISIS-K, claimed responsibility for a significant attack last year in Russia and is believed to be behind another in Iran.

But the twisted heart of the utopia ISIS was trying to build, and all that it claimed to offer, no longer exists. So why would the group’s extreme ideology — rejected by the overwhelming majority of the world’s Muslims — appeal to a down-on-his-luck American veteran, five years after the caliphate’s fall?

For 20 years, I’ve been studying Western recruits to domestic and transnational terrorist organizations. I’ve interviewed jihadis, white-nationalist terrorists and eco-terrorists to understand their motivations and to prevent future violence. In my view, the appeal of some of the most crucial elements that ISIS offered to vulnerable or confused Western recruits — doctrinal certainty, identity, redemption and revenge — is as strong as ever, and will continue to resonate with people who can find it online.

Most of us, as adults, live in a state of spiritual confusion and uncertainty. We rarely get to choose between good and evil but often face a frustrating choice between actions that lead to marginally better or worse consequences. Rewards for good behavior are often ephemeral, and punishment for bad decisions is mostly of our own making.

To some, ISIS offered a seductive alternative: moral certitude, backed by brutal enforcement. From 2013 to 2019, an estimated 53,000 fighters from 80 countries traveled to ISIS-held territories in Syria and Iraq to be a part of what the group sold as an idealized Islamic state. An estimated 300 individuals from the United States either made their way to ISIS-held territory or tried to. Some foreign fighters became notorious for perpetrating the caliphate’s worst atrocities.

For sympathizers unable to make the journey, ISIS’ chief spokesman, Abu Muhammad al-Adnani, called for supporters around the world to attack nonbelievers at home. In a September 2014 speech, Mr. al-Adnani said that if you are unable to bomb or shoot the enemy disbeliever, “smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car.” ISIS sympathizers began undertaking such vehicle attacks, including a truck assault in Nice, France, in 2016 that killed 86 people and injured 450. It was followed by many others.

In the last few hours before his suicidal rampage in New Orleans, the attacker, Shamsud-Din Jabbar, posted about his plans on Facebook. Perhaps the most telling recording was his confession that he had considered harming his family. “I don’t want you to think I spared you willingly,” he said. But Mr. Jabbar apparently worried that if he hurt only his family, news headlines might not focus on the “war between the believers and disbelievers” that he thought was taking place.

In my work, I have found that self-recruited, lone-actor terrorists are often motivated at least as much by personal grievance as their claimed ideals. In one recent study, many former violent extremists said that underlying social and emotional distress was as strong a factor in their radicalization as intellectual or religious adherence to extremist ideologies. Most reported having a history of mental health problems, such as depression, and suicidal ideation was common.

Obviously, most people experiencing a mental-health crisis do not become lone-actor terrorists. But there is often so much distress in individuals carrying out attacks on their own that it is reasonable, in my view, to think of lone-actor terrorism as a crime of despair.

There is no single pathway into violent extremism, but many of the risk factors I’ve observed in my research seem to apply to Mr. Jabbar. He was a veteran who appeared to be having difficulty adjusting back to civilian life. He had been divorced for the third time. He had run-ins with the law. He may have been deeply distressed over his financial burdens. Revenge against his family — and a world that had disappointed him — appears to have been a significant part of his underlying motivation, with his allegiance to ISIS providing a perverse spiritual gloss.

The persistent appeal of ISIS in America was evident in a disturbing series of alleged plots in the last year alone: the arrest of an Afghan in Oklahoma accused of conspiring to commit an attack on Election Day; the arrest of an Arizona teenager accused of planning an attack on a Pride parade using a remote-controlled drone armed with explosives; the indictment of a Houston man on charges of attempting to provide material support to ISIS; and the arrest of an Idaho teenager accused of plotting to attack churches on behalf of ISIS. In December, the F.B.I., the National Counterterrorism Center and Department of Homeland Security warned law enforcement that pro-ISIS messages were calling for attacks at large holiday gatherings, pointing out the previous use of vehicles to ram victims.

Years after its zenith, ISIS has demonstrated remarkable adaptability. As an organization, it may yet grow stronger. After its territorial defeat in 2019, stated U.S. military strategy shifted its focus from counterterrorism in the Middle East toward nation-state adversaries, notably China and Russia. But the underlying conditions that first enabled ISIS’ rise in the region persist: Weak states, unstable governments, large populations of underemployed youth, and religious and ethnic conflicts all continue to create fertile ground for extremism.

No single solution exists for preventing terrorist attacks. But actions can be taken to reduce their impact, as well as their frequency. For cases like New Orleans, prevention is critical.

Perpetrators of targeted violence often “leak” their intentions ahead of time to family, friends, social media and even to the authorities, creating the opportunity for communities to step in to help people who are at risk. One approach to preventing violence like the attack in New Orleans builds on public-health models that aim to reduce the rates of suicide, domestic violence and drunken driving. For it to prevent terrorist attacks, the authorities have to educate the public about the importance of bystander reporting and “off ramps” from violent radicalization.

The New Orleans attack serves as a grim reminder that the ISIS digital caliphate is still able to transform personal crises into public tragedy. The alarming reality is that many other people remain vulnerable to similar paths of radicalization.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/01/09/opinion/isis-new-orleans-attack.html

 

Israel Suffered Over 18,000 Terror Attacks in 2024, New Government Report Says

Israeli forces stand near the scene of a shooting attack in Jaffa, Israel, Oct. 1, 2024

Israel endured over 18,000 terrorist attacks last year in which nearly 150 people were killed as the Jewish state faced an onslaught of terrorism from seven fronts in the Middle East, according to a new Israeli government report.

The National Public Diplomacy Directorate in the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office on Thursday released its annual “Summary Report on Terrorism Against Israel” for 2024. The report gathers information and data from the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), Israel Police, the Israeli Security Agency (ISA), and the emergency and rescue authorities.

In total, there were 18,665 terrorist attacks in Israel last year in which 134 people were murdered and another 1,277 were injured. A summary of the report noted that Israel “was attacked from seven fronts: Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Gaza, Iraq, Yemen, and from within Israel.”

MORE: https://www.algemeiner.com/2025/01/09/israel-suffered-over-18000-terror-attacks-2024-new-government-report-says/

 

Bnei Torah continues to lead an uncompromising battle against the drafting of Haredi men, including those not learning in yeshiva. Bnei Torah also has a daily mouthpiece called Hapeles, or Leveler in English, which advances the party’s political agenda — namely, not serving the country.

 

Till death do them part: After top rabbi dies, power struggle blazes at elite Haredi yeshiva

 

The split at Ponevezh Yeshiva runs so deep that it delayed the head rabbi’s funeral last month, but when it comes to the army, the question is not ‘if’ but ‘how’ to evade the draft

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Rabbi Asher Deutsch teaches a class in Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnai Brak 

 

A sacrilegious tug-of-war over the body of a brilliant Talmud scholar and firebrand as he was being brought to rest has unleashed a new bout of violence in a decades-old power struggle at Ponevezh Yeshiva, where young men belonging to the intellectual elite of the Haredi community are educated.

Divisive in his lifetime, the head rabbi of Ponevezh, Rabbi Asher Deutsch, was no less so in his death.

On December 16, Deutsch’s body awaited burial at his apartment at Rabbi Wasserman Street 5 in Bnei Brak, a short walk from Ponevezh Yeshiva. Ponevezh is the Haredi equivalent of an Ivy League university where Deutsch taught since 1988.

Meanwhile, two warring yeshiva factions bickered over where to bury his remains.

Deutsch’s detractors, aligned with Rabbi Eliezer Kahaneman, the 77-year-old grandson of Ponevezh’s founder — and who has property rights over most of Ponevezh’s assets, including the Ponevezh Cemetery — opposed allowing Deutsch’s burial anywhere in the cemetery, let alone in the VIP section.

Deutsch’s supporters, led by 77-year-old Rabbi Shmuel Markovitz, who is married to Kahaneman’s sister, insisted that Deutsch’s body be buried in the section of Ponevezh Cemetery reserved for the yeshiva’s most illustrious rabbis.

A secular former judge was called in to mediate.

Retired Jerusalem District Court judge David Cheshin, who was born into a well-connected Haredi family and speaks Yiddish but left religious observance after IDF service, has been serving as mediator in a myriad of conflicts between the two brothers-in-law for three years.

Rabbi Shmuel Markovitz, left, and Rabbi Asher Deutsch in an undated photo. (Givat Hayeshiva)

As the recitation of Psalms by tens of thousands of Deutsch’s students, followers and admirers through a vast PA system dragged on, Cheshin called an impromptu Zoom meeting that brought together representatives of the Deutsch family and representatives of Kahaneman and Markovitz in an attempt to reach a compromise that would enable Deutsch’s body to be laid to rest in a dignified manner.

The hatchet was not buried

After over two hours of back-and-forth, Cheshin finally got the sides to agree that Deutsch would be buried in Ponevezh Cemetery, but not in the coveted “Tet” section, but rather in the neighboring “Yud” section.

But even after Cheshin’s ruling and Deutsch’s subsequent burial, the sides remained split over whether or not Deutsch ended up buried in the plot agreed upon in Cheshin’s arbitration decision.

Kahaneman’s camp said in an affidavit written on December 25 that Deutsch’s followers buried him in the Tet section in a stolen plot in direct violation of the agreement.

Students cry over the casket of Rabbi Asher Deutsch, head rabbi of Ponevezh Yeshiva, in Bnai Brak, December 16, 2024

Markovitz’s camp responded in an affidavit on January 2 that it was Kahaneman who attempted to renege on the arbitration agreement and that Deutsch was buried as stipulated in Cheshin’s ruling.

The bickering escalated during Deutsch’s shiva — the seven days of ritual mourning following burial.

Yeshiva students from Markovitz’s camp hurled metal lecterns at Kahaneman, his son Yosef and members of the Kahaneman camp and used a fire hose to disrupt a Torah lesson, according to Kahaneman’s affidavit, which said that rabbis and students needed medical treatment.

Both sides accused the other of brandishing pepper spray and tear gas during the altercations.

An aide to Markovitz who asked to remain anonymous blamed Yosef Kahaneman for provoking the violence by bragging that Deutsch would soon be disinterred from the “stolen” grave.

The aide condemned the violence, which he said hurt Markovitz’s cause, adding those responsible, if found, would be expelled from Ponevezh.

A former Ponevezh student aligned with Kahaneman who is familiar with the recent turmoil and asked to remain anonymous, denied that Yosef Kahaneman threatened to disinter Deutsch.

Rabbi Asher Deutsch teaches a class in Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnai Brak

 

Brothers in (not bearing) arms

The newest ignominious chapter in Ponevezh’s long-running power struggle takes place against the backdrop of an unprecedented public outcry over sweeping exemptions from mandatory military service for some 66,000 military-age yeshiva men — some 4,000 of whom at Ponevezh — as the manpower-strapped IDF fights a multi-front war that is the longest in Israel’s history.

Both sides of Ponevezh’s conflict are aware of how media coverage hurts their public image and are particularly concerned about the negative impact on their fundraising efforts, which is a major source of the yeshiva’s budget.

But spokesmen from both sides, convinced of the rightness of their respectful causes, talked not of contrition, but of the proper framing of the conflict so that the worthiest side — their own — is given fair media coverage.

Illustrative: Rabbi Shmuel Markovitz addresses students at Ponevezh Yeshiva

 

“It’s really bad timing for Rabbi Deutsch to pass away and have this ugly fight come to the public’s attention now,” admitted a spokesman for Kahaneman’s camp. “But what choice did Rabbi Kahaneman have? Should he have given in and let Rabbi Deutsch be buried next to the Rabbi of Ponevezh [Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman] or next to Rabbi David Povarsky in the place reserved for his son, the present dean, Rabbi Baruch Dov Povarsky?”

“It wouldn’t have ended at that. We have 30 years of experience with them. They [Markovitz’s camp] are a problematic bunch who seek out conflict and strife and violence. We can’t give in to them every time,” he said. “Rabbi Kahaneman tried to prevent them from setting precedents in the cemetery so there won’t be fights all the time there too.”

Meanwhile, a Markovitz spokesman said that his camp was battling for the integrity of the yeshiva.

“We are fighting to protect the continuity of Ponevezh Yeshiva as envisioned by its founder [Rabbi Yosef Shlomo Kahaneman],” said the Markovitz spokesman. “Rabbi Markovitz was the faithful servant of Ponevezh’s former deans Rabbi Elazar Shach, and Rabbi Shmuel Rozovsky and its spiritual advisors. He is the torchbearer of their legacy and he is the worthiest to lead Ponevezh.”

Exterior of the Ponevezh Yeshiva in Bnai Brak

 

A separate peace?

A tense truce now reigns at “Yeshiva Hill,” the name used for the complex of offices, study halls and dormitories where 2,500 unmarried young men aged 18 and up and another 1,500 married men spend as many as 18 hours a day learning Talmud.

During a recent visit to Ponevezh, The Times of Israel saw hundreds of young men enthusiastically debating the intricacies of ancient rabbinic arguments and the myriad commentaries on these debates in Ponevezh’s main study hall, which is adorned by a large and ancient gilded Ark inscribed with the verse from the book of Ezra “To exalt the house of God.”

Ponevezh Yeshiva students dance at the end of the Jewish holiday of Simhat Torah in Bnei Brak, near Tel Aviv

The hall is split down the middle by an imaginary boundary. Markvotiz’s faithful, known in the Haredi world as “m’chablim,” or terrorists, sit to the left of the Ark, Kahaneman’s followers, called “sonim,” or haters, sit to the right.

M’chablim and sonim also have separate dormitories.

There is little if any day-to-day interaction between the m’chablim and the sonim. Ponevezh has effectively split into two distinct institutes of learning under the same roof using the same buildings.

M’chablim and sonim said they were educated from a young age to identify with their respective camps. Over the course of more than two generations of conflict, the warring sides have set up separate elementary schools, as well as yeshivas for those not accepted to the flagship Ponevezh. There are also separate educational institutions for the females of the respective camps.

Today, said the students, who asked to remain anonymous, there is little if any intermarriage between the sides in order to avoid unnecessary family conflicts — except for “30-year-old bachelors that are desperate to marry.”

Asked to describe their ideological differences, a group of sonim said they had a more tolerant attitude to secular Israeli society while the m’chablim were more extreme.

 Haredi men clash with police during the funeral of Rabbi Gershon Edelstein, head of the Ponevezh Yeshiva and spiritual leader of the Degel HaTorah party, in Bnei Brak

“They don’t even show up at the IDF induction office to ask for a deferral, while we do,” said one of the students. “They take part in demonstrations against the draft, while we don’t demonstrate, and when secular female tourists visit Ponevezh, the m’chablim scream at them ‘shiksa’ [a pejorative for a non-Jewish woman]. They are more aggressive, but except for a few guys on the fringe they are not violent.”

Meanwhile, members of the m’chablim took pride in the fact that they had no political representation in the Knesset. They said that members of the group did not vote in recent elections.

In the eyes of the m’chablim, Degel HaTorah, a party with seats in the Knesset that represents non-Hassidic, Lithuanian ultra-Orthodoxy, is not zealous enough in its defense of yeshiva students’ right to exemption from military service.

“The Degel representatives that were sent to the Knesset are under too much pressure to compromise, they can’t really fight for maintaining the status quo providing Haredim with exemption from military service, so it’s better not to be there,” said a member of the m’chablim.

Ponevezh Yeshiva head Rabbi Asher Deutsch, right, and Rabbi Shmuel Markovitz

Deutsch was a rare combination of erudite scholar and teacher intimately familiar with the vast corpus of Talmud and a charismatic political leader with the moral authority to mobilize tens of thousands.

As a teacher at Ponevezh, Deutsch was known for his intricate Talmudic lessons geared toward Ponevezh’s advanced students during which he would lose track of time and would have to be reminded by students to conclude.

Deutsch was also a pragmatic political leader who co-founded with the late Rabbi Shmuel Auerbach the Bnei Torah political party, also known as the Jerusalem Faction, which split the non-Hassidic Orthodox community and ran in a number of municipal elections.

Bnei Torah continues to lead an uncompromising battle against the drafting of Haredi men, including those not learning in yeshiva. Bnei Torah also has a daily mouthpiece called Hapeles, or Leveler in English, which advances the party’s political agenda — namely, not serving the country.

https://www.timesofisrael.com/till-death-do-them-part-after-top-rabbi-dies-power-struggle-blazes-at-elite-haredi-yeshiva/