If You Read Between the Lines, This Is Deeply Pessimistic…

The West is sick of the New Woke Jihadism

By Victor Davis Hanson

Published June 14, 2024

The West is sick of the New Woke Jihadism

What are the mobs in Washington defiling iconic federal statues with impunity and pelting policemen really protesting?

What are the throngs in London brazenly swarming parks and rampaging in the streets really angry about?

Occupations?

They could care less that the Islamist Turkish government still stations 40,000 troops in occupied Cyprus. No one is protesting against the Chinese takeover of a once-independent Tibet or the threatened absorption of an autonomous Taiwan.

Refugees?

None of these mobs are agitating on behalf of the nearly 1 million Jews ethnically cleansed since 1947 from the major capitals of the Middle East. Some 200,000 Cypriots displaced by Turks earn not a murmur. Nor does the ethnic cleansing of 99% of Nagorno-Karabakh’s ancient Armenian population just last year.

Civilian casualties?

The global protestors are not furious over the 1 million Uighurs brutalized by the communist Chinese government. Neither are they concerned about the Turkish government’s indiscriminate war against the Kurds or its serial threats to attack Armenians and Greeks.

The new woke jihadist movement is instead focused only on Israel and “Palestine.” It is oblivious to the modern gruesome Muslim-on-Muslim exterminations of Bashar al-Assad and Saddam Hussein, the Black September massacres of Palestinians by Jordanian forces, and the 1982 erasure of thousands in Hama, Syria.

So woke jihadism is not an ecumenical concern for the oppressed, the occupied, the collateral damage of war, or the fate of refugees. Instead, it is a romanticized and repackaged anti-Western, anti-Israel, and antisemitic jihadism that supports the murder of civilians, mass rape, torture, and hostage-taking.

But what makes it now so insidious is its new tripartite constituency.

Continue reading…

From Jewish World Review, here.

The Binyan Tzion’s Argument Against (Most) Korbanos In Our Time

Bringing Sacrifices Today

by R. Gil Student

Rav Tzvi Hirsch Kalischer (19th cen., Poland) famously proposed bringing sacrifices today (i.e., the 1860’s) even though there is no Temple standing. He brilliantly argues in his 1862 book, Derishas Tziyon, that there is no need for a Temple in order to bring sacrifices. He was roundly critiqued by the greatest scholars of his day, but since he was in their league he continued debating the subject.

Rav Ya’akov Ettlinger (19th cen., Germany) wrote a response to Rav Kalischer, now printed as the first responsum in his 1868 collection of responsa, Binyan Tziyon. Rav Ettlinger summarizes Rav Kalischer’s main arguments and disputes them. He then offers his own counterproof from the verse: “I will lay your cities waste and bring your sanctuaries to desolation, and I will not smell the fragrance of your sweet aromas” (Lev. 26:31). After the destruction, God will not “smell the fragrance of your sweet aromas,” i.e. accept sacrifices. Therefore, we may not bring sacrifices until the Temple is rebuilt. (Netziv (19th cen., Russia; Ha’amek Davar, Lev. 26:31) offers the same reading of the verse but adds that since the Pesach sacrifice is not considered a sweet aroma, it alone may be offered today.)

In 1868, Rav Kalischer published additions to Derishas Tziyon in a booklet titled Shelom Yerushalayim. He appended to that booklet a response to Rav Ettlinger’s critique titled Shivas Tziyon. This essay includes notes titled Mikhtav Me-Eliyahu by Rav Eliyahu Guttmacher, a colleague and supporter of Rav Kalischer.

Continue reading…

From Torah Musings, here.

Debunking the Lie That the Succah Near Huwara Diverted the IDF on Shmini Atzeres

Were IDF Troops Moved to Hawara Prior to Oct. 7?

Sunday, June 02, 2024

A staple claim of Israel’s Left is that a day or so prior to October 7th, significant enough numbers of soldiers were moved from the Southern Front Command to the area of Samaria and, specifically, to Hawara to protect the succah that MK Tzvi Succot had set up in the town

as a protest against repeated terror attacks against Jews traveling through the town. That move of soldiers supposedly affected the ability of the IDF to defend the Gaza Envelope area from the Hamas-led invasion and slaughter. It wasn’t clear exactly how many but the rumor made its rounds. The assertion was the “settlers” had “blood on their hands“. One tweet claimed 25 battalions were moved over (that’s thousands of soldiers).

Here’s from a news report quoting Roy Sharon of Kan News, Channel 11:

 

Over 100 soldiers diverted from Gaza to Judea and Samaria just days before massacre. Two troop companies were relocated from the Gaza Division to Judea and Samaria two days before the Hamas massacre.

Continue reading…

From My Right Word, here.