LLX News

By: Lenny Ben-David – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

While the “Gray Lady” may have hired a new Jerusalem correspondent to cover Palestinian affairs, the paper continues to pump out the same old anti-Israel narrative.

In her April 16 New York Times article on Israel’s response to the deadly terror wave the country has suffered in recent weeks, Jerusalem correspondent Raja Abdulrahim fails to mention that the majority of the Palestinians killed by Israeli forces were members of terrorist groups.

The article, titled, “‘We’re Exhausted’: Palestinians Decry Israeli Raids as Collective Punishment,” decries the Israeli “killings” of Palestinians “in response” to terror attacks that claimed the lives of 14 Israelis.

Given that the terrorists’ local obituaries include pictures of them in uniform or carrying weapons, this omission raises troubling questions.

These questions are not new; the Times has been guilty of journalistic malpractice in its Israel-related reporting on many occasions. In June 2021, for example, the paper published an anti-Israel blood libel purporting to document “Gaza’s Deadly Night: How Israeli Airstrikes Killed 44 People.”

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/opinion/libeling-israel-the-new-york-times-is-at-it-again/

By: Danielle Roth-Avneri – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

From its outset, the government was built out of incompatible puzzle pieces that seemed almost impossible to put together.

Earlier this month, former Israeli governmental coalition chairwoman Knesset member Idit Silman of the Yamina Party dropped a bombshell. Shortly before 7 a.m. on April 6, she publicized a resignation letter she sent to Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, chairman of Yamina, announcing her departure from the coalition.

The immediate significance of Silman’s move is that the government’s narrow advantage over the opposition—an advantage of a single vote—is now gone, and the opposition and coalition are at a tie.

In Israeli politics, a tie means that in all likelihood, the days of this government are numbered.

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/opinion/israel-is-likely-on-the-way-to-elections-in-september/

By: Ken Cohen – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

The two-state solution—most recently advanced yet again by U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken at the Negev Summit—is a figment of the Biden administration’s imagination that is of no value to the pursuit of true Middle East peace. In fact, it will only cause more blood to flow in Israel. Based on Palestinian leaders’ pronouncements and recent Palestinian opinion polls, the danger of the two-state solution lies in how the Palestinians intend to make use of it: They plan to pursue the destruction of Israel following an interim period of “two states.”

With its Palestine Partition Plan of November 1947, the U.N. General Assembly tried for a peaceful resolution to the blood-letting between Arabs and Jews in Palestine. The plan was often referred to as a two-state solution. (In fact, two states and an internationalized zone in Jerusalem were proposed.)

We now know that it wasn’t to be: Like most of the hapless efforts by the United Nations, the proposal simply poured gasoline on the Palestine fire. Israel has suffered numerous terrorist attacks and wars ever since, with little sign of any resolution.

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/opinion/the-two-state-solution-a-figment-of-the-western-imagination/

By: Dr. Michael Brown – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

On April 8, 1966, the picture-less front cover of Time Magazine asked a bold and direct question: “Is God Dead?” This was just two days before Easter Sunday, and in the decades that followed, it became increasingly common for anti-God, anti-Jesus, anti-Bible essays to be featured in various secular publications at this time of year.

Now, in keeping with this anti-God attitude during this sacred season, an April 15 op-ed piece for The New York Times was headlined, “In This Time of War, I Propose We Give Up God.”

How deeply sensitive for the Times to post this anti-God essay on the day which is both Good Friday on the Christian calendar and the first day of Passover on the Jewish calendar! What a nice touch, editorial department! You have really outdone yourselves this year. (And a special shoutout to Liana Finck for her graphic, depicting God as an angry, Godzilla-like giant, marching through the city with terror on his mind.)

cont’d…

https://www.christianpost.com/voices/from-is-god-dead-in-1966-to-give-up-god-today.html

By: Nicole Alcindor – The Christian Post; christianpost.com

Evangelist Franklin Graham, the son of legendary evangelist Billy Graham and head of the Evangelical humanitarian organization Samaritan’s Purse, preached an Easter sermon in Ukraine, urging believers not to lose sight of the true meaning of the celebration. 

As thousands have reportedly died and over 11 million have been displaced from their homes since the invasion began at the end of February, the 69-year-old Graham preached his pre-recorded Easter sermon from Lviv in western Ukraine. Fox News broadcasted the event, which featured music from the Ukrainian Easter Choir. 

Graham grieved that the world is continuing to become more “violent” and “secular.” 

“Many politicians and educators scoff at those that worship the Lord Jesus Christ. They make fun. They don’t believe,” Graham said. “For many, Easter has become Easter egg hunts and bunny rabbits and candy. But, may we never forget the true meaning of Easter, and that is the price that was paid for the redemption of your soul.”

cont’d…

https://www.christianpost.com/news/franklin-graham-easter-is-about-more-than-just-egg-hunts.html

By: Shira Hanau – Jewish Telegraphic Agency; jta.org

Mimi Reinhard had studied literature and languages as an undergraduate before World War II. But it was a course in shorthand that saved her life.

Reinhard was imprisoned at the Plaszow concentration camp outside of Krakow when she was chosen, due to her excellent German and shorthand skills, to work as a secretary instead of being sent to perform hard labor. That assignment would save her life when she went on to type up the list of Jews to be saved by Oskar Schindler, the German industrialist later named a “righteous among the gentiles” for his efforts to save the approximately 1,200 Jews who worked for him.

When Reinhard typed up that list, her own name would be on it.

Reinhard died Tuesday at 107 in Israel, where she moved in 2007 to be near her son, Sacha Weitman, then a professor at Tel Aviv University.

cont’d…

https://www.jta.org/2022/04/11/obituaries/mimi-reinhard-jewish-secretary-who-typed-up-schindlers-list-saving-herself-and-other-jews-has-died-at-107

By: Davis Suissa – Jewish Journal; jewishjournal.com

In spreading the propaganda of Jews as foreigners and land thieves, Palestinian leaders know that nothing fires up the masses like Jerusalem.

How many times have we heard Western voices call terror acts “senseless”? We heard it again this week after a Palestinian terrorist murdered three Israelis and injured several others on trendy Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.

After saying that “Americans are, once again, grieving with the Israeli people in the wake of another deadly terrorist attack,” Secretary of State Tony Blinken added that the U.S. “stands resolutely in the face of senseless terrorism and violence.”

But is the violence really senseless, Mr Blinken?

It may be for you, but it’s not for the terrorists.  They think their terror has a purpose. If you despise Jews and think they don’t belong in the Middle East, killing them gives you purpose. If it makes you sick to see Jews you hate having fun in a cool city like Tel Aviv, killing them gives you purpose.

cont’d…

By: David Isaac – Jewish News Syndicate; jns.org

Half of the country’s consumable wheat products and a third of its animal feed are supplied by Russia and Ukraine, according to numbers from the Ministry of Agriculture.

The problem of national food security, which formerly preoccupied specialists, began to penetrate the world’s consciousness with COVID-19 supply disruptions, but it’s Russia’s war with Ukraine that has given governments a jolt. Ukraine, together with Russia, supplies the world with 27% of its wheat and 53% of its sunflower oil and seeds. While some countries, like the United States, have well-developed food strategies, Israel does not, with experts telling JNS there is a lack of strategic planning, poor coordination and government turf wars. They warn that the longer the government fiddles, the worse things will get.

“Our prices are just beginning to rise. Unless the war ends quickly—and it doesn’t look like this is going to be over quickly—everyone around the world is going to be scrambling over food within their societies and in competition between states,” Aron Troen, professor at the School of Nutrition Science and the School of Public Health at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told JNS.

cont’d…

https://www.jns.org/war-in-ukraine-sparks-food-security-fears-experts-say-israel-needs-national-strategy/

By: Jerusalem Post Staff – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

With the resignation of MK Idit Silman from the coalition, there are now four possible scenarios of what will come next.

With the resignation of MK Idit Silman from the coalition, here are four possible scenarios of what will come next:

1. Domino effect

Another member of the Knesset quits the coalition and helps the opposition – led by Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu – to pass a bill dispersing the Knesset and taking Israel to a new election.

In this event, immediately after the dispersion of the Knesset, Foreign Minister Yair Lapid would become prime minister until the formation of a new government.

For Silman, the ideal situation would be for another member of Yamina to break away from the party so that she can then – together with earlier Yamina rebel MK Amichai Chikli – form a new faction that would be able to merge with an existing party and run in a new election.

cont’d…

https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-703372

By: Dr. Tom Copeland – The Jerusalem Post; jpost.com

Opinion: Anti-Zionism is poised to shape the future of Evangelical support for Israel.

While American Protestants have long been seen as key allies to the Jewish state of Israel, there are disturbing signs of an emerging anti-Israeli sentiment. This comes in pure political form, as when the Presbyterian Church USA recently opposed the Abraham Accords. Somewhat more quietly, the American BDS movement depends on support from academics, social justice warriors and from liberal religious communities.

Until the 1930s, there was broad American Protestant support for a future Jewish home, some of it driven by hope of proselytizing Jews, some of it by the hope that a Jewish state would bring the world closer to the return of the Messiah. Today, many conservative American Christians support Israel more on political than theological grounds: Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East, is a strategic partner to the United States in a hazardous region of the world, and there is a strong feeling that the Jewish people deserve a homeland of their own after the unspeakable horrors of the Holocaust. 

Mainline Protestants (the seven largest and oldest denominations in America) were initially in favor of Christian Zionism, but their views began to diverge shortly after 1948. They observed Israel’s expansion in the 1967 war and the condition of Palestinians in refugee camps, and during the 1970s these denominations began passing resolutions condemning Israel and arguing for Palestinian rights and statehood. The fall of apartheid in South Africa, and Israeli responses to the Second Intifada (including the construction of the security fence), solidified Mainline opposition to Israel at the turn of the new century. Despite recent protestations by the liberal World Council of Churches that it no longer supports BDS, the WCC and all of the Mainline denominations continue to move forward with BDS policies.

cont’d…

https://www.jpost.com/christianworld/article-702574