Google, Amazon, and Israel in the new America by Caroline Glick and SENIOR DRIVERS NO LONGER NEED A LICENSE (just a joke) and no joke There are three constants in life: death, taxes, and . . . antisemitism By Jackie Mason and the Portion of Korach and the new 10 Plagues by Steve Sattler
Yehuda Lave is an author, journalist, psychologist, rabbi, spiritual teacher, and coach, with degrees in business, psychology and Jewish Law. He works with people from all walks of life and helps them in their search for greater happiness, meaning, business advice on saving money, and spiritual engagement.
My dear friends and enemies, It has struck me that We - here in Israel - are witnessing a series of unusual, rare, and historic events. They are similar to the 10 plagues that hit Egypt - those 3,370 years ago. Last year in March 2020 We had our first death from Covid and since then the number has hit 6,400 deaths. At one time - recently - we had the most cases per million over any other country in the World. (Today we are number 20 on the list).2... We have had a series of elections - and our geniuses in the Knesset cannot cobble together a Government. Bennet/Lapid is putting together an eight-party group that brings the Left, center, right, religious, and the Arabs together around one Government table - and he expects it to last. It will last a few weeks.3... Our Rabbis [who LOVE G-D,] have such magnetism for the money and income that when 45 of our religious brothers get trampled to death - it quickly gets swept under the carpet.4... and then - after a few more days - the Rabbis have a religious meeting in an unfinished Synagogue hall - and 2 more die from the wooden stands that collapse because the plastic ties fail.5... Several months ago we had 2/3 of our Med beaches covered with masses of sticky tar, and gangs of teenagers were cleaning it up.6... WE have wild pigs wandering around Haifa, Sanhedria, and the parks of Tel Aviv/ Ramat Gan6... From the 10th May, we had 11 days of rockets and mortars been fired from Gaza - and 11 people died from the events.... and damage.7... We had 5 days of street riots in many mixed towns where gangs of Arab kids were destroying and burning buildings, hotels, and Synagogues. One person died.8... We have an explosive epidemic of anti-Semitism in many large cities across the World and well-organized teams of anti-Israel and anti-Jewish demonstrators are selling their message - with a vengeance.9... The car congestion on Israeli roads has hit a super-high and every working day many drivers face a hour or even a 2-hour drive to work, and then back. 10... The Parshat HaShavoua about Korach - and the hole that swallows him - Shaarei Tzedek hospital - gets a big hole that swallows cars and trees. So, now We ask the question --- are we sailing into a bad time with black events hitting us left & right, ?or the opposite - are we facing a black-wall:- that a super-natural FORCE will soon flip-us over, into a better and GOLDEN Jewish STATE; at the next level up? Steve Sattler
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
Google, Amazon, and Israel in the new America by Caroline Glick
The tech giants' organizational culture raises significant questions about the wisdom of granting them exclusive control over Israel's government data for the next seven years
America is changing before our eyes. But the Israeli Finance Ministry apparently hasn't paid it any mind.
Last week, the head of procurement at the Finance Ministry's Accountant General's Office formally announced that Amazon and Google had won the government tender to provide cloud services to the government as Israel moves forward with the first phase of the Nimbus Project. Tender bids submitted by Microsoft and Oracle were rejected.
The Nimbus Project is a massive, multiyear project that will replace the data management infrastructure of government ministries and the IDF. To date, government ministries have used decentralized servers and dozens of independently operating websites to house and manage their data. The Nimbus Project will move all government computing data and applications to commercial clouds provided by technology giants.
When the government computer systems migrate to Google and Amazon's data clouds, these firms will manage all of official Israel's non-classified data and computerized applications. This will include everything from government and military payrolls to welfare payments, to government pensions. It will include the medical files of all Israelis. It will include their personal and corporate tax returns.
It's possible that from the technical and financial perspectives, the General Accountant's tender committee's decision to award the cloud contracts to Google and Amazon was reasonable. The two corporations are the industry leaders in cloud technologies. But even on the technical and financial levels, there are differing opinions about the committee's decision.
Oracle's bid was allegedly lower than those submitted by Google and Amazon. Moreover, the tender requires that the clouds be physically located inside of Israel. Oracle and Microsoft have both built cloud centers in Israel. Oracle's is set to open in August and Microsoft's is scheduled to open in January 2022. Google and Amazon, for their part, have yet to begin building their data centers, so for the next two years, and more likely the next three-four years, contrary to the stipulations of the tender, Israel's government and IDF data will be housed in Europe.
Then there is the issue of redundancy. The trend today among governments and large corporations is to spread their data out among several cloud providers. Israel could have chosen to award the contract to all four companies and kept costs lower by forcing them to compete over pricing every year. Redundancy in cloud servers also lowers the risks of sabotage and technical failures that can lead to loss of data or failure of computing systems.
At any rate, assuming the tender committee followed the best practices from both financial and technical perspectives in granting the cloud contract to Google and Amazon exclusively, the decision is disconcerting all the same. The problem is not financial or technological. The problem with Google and Amazon is cultural. The organizational culture of both corporations raises significant questions about the wisdom of granting them exclusive control over Israel's government data for the next seven years.
During this month's "Operation Guardian of the Walls," some 250 Google employees who identified as anti-Zionist Jews wrote a letter to Google's CEO Sundar Pichai. They began by asking that Google reject the determination that anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism and that the company fund Palestinian organizations.
The "Jewish Diaspora in Tech" called for "Google leadership to make a company-wide statement recognizing violence in Palestine and Israel, which must include direct recognition of the harm done to Palestinian Arabs by Israeli military and gang violence."
Then they turned to the Nimbus contract.
"We request a review of all … business contracts and corporate donations and the termination of contracts with institutions that support Israeli violations of Palestinian rights, such as the Israeli Defense Forces."
Shortly after the Google employees published their letter, some five hundred Amazon employees entered the anti-Israel fray. They signed a letter that was almost identical to the Google employees' letter. They called for Amazon to reject the definition of anti-Zionism as anti-Semitism. They insisted that Israel is a racist colonial project and that the land of Israel belongs to the Palestinian Arabs. They called for Amazon to financially support Palestinian organizations. And they asked that the firm "commit to review and sever business contracts and corporate donations with companies, organizations, and/or governments that are active or complicit in human rights violations, such as the Israeli Defense Forces."
Another employee group, called "Amazon Employees for Climate Justice," tweeted a long chain of posts denouncing the company's participation in the Nimbus Project. Among other things, they wrote, "We stand in solidarity with Palestinians who went on a historic general strike to protest Israel's deadly assault on Gaza. Amazon and Google recently signed a $1B deal supporting Israel's military. Amazon is complicit in state killings and human rights abuses.
"Amazon's workers didn't sign up to work on projects that support militaries and policing forces. We didn't sign up to be complicit in state killings and human rights abuses in the US, Israel, and around the world," they concluded.
The senior officials at the Finance Ministry, the National Cyber Authority and the Defense Ministry who granted Google and Amazon the government and IDF cloud contracts may simply not understand the dire implications for Israel's national security posed by the antagonistic positions of some Google and Amazon employees. The workers' protests in both companies are deadly serious. In 2018, Google employees discovered that the company was working with the Pentagon to develop an artificial intelligence system to improve the accuracy of U.S. military drones. Some 4,000 Google employees, including dozens of senior engineers, signed a petition to Pichai demanding that Google end its involvement in the project. As they put it, "We believe that Google should not be in the business of war."
Google management caved to the pressure and canceled the contract with the Defense Department.
In January, Amazon canceled its cloud service contract with the social media platform Parler, which was identified with Republicans. Amazon justified the move by claiming that Parler contained "violent content." The fact that violent content is also contained on other social media platforms—including Amazon itself—was neither here nor there.
Notable as well is the fact that Amazon's CEO and founder Jeff Bezos is a close friend of musician Brian Eno. Like Roger Waters, Eno is a prominent proponent of the anti-Semitic BDS campaign that seeks to boycott Israel and demonize and silence its Jewish supporters worldwide.
The senior officials at the Finance Ministry, the National Cyber Authority and the Defense Ministry who granted Google and Amazon the government and IDF cloud contracts may simply not understand the dire implications for Israel's national security posed by the antagonistic positions of some Google and Amazon employees.
In a press conference this week, the heads of the Finance Ministry actually presented these statements as testaments to the credibility of the contracts. The fact that the leaders of Google and Amazon signed the deal with Israel despite the hatred their employees express towards the Jewish state is proof of the companies' commitment to the project, they insisted.
The Finance Ministry added that there is no cause for concern because the contracts require that Google and Amazon set up subsidiary firms in Israel to actually manage the clouds. As Israeli registered companies, the subsidiaries will be bound to the requirements of Israeli law. And as such, they will have no option of sabotaging the work or otherwise breaching the contract, no matter how anti-Israel the Google and Amazon employees outside of Israel may be.
The problem with this argument is that the subsidiaries in Israel will be wholly owned by their mother corporations. All of their equipment will be owned by Google and Amazon in the United States. If the mother corporations decide to pull the plug on the Nimbus contract, the local subsidiaries will be powerless to maintain them.
The same Google management that blew off the artificial intelligence project with the Pentagon three years ago to satisfy their workers should be expected to repeat their actions in the future. If their employees unite to demand that Google abrogate the Nimbus contract, management can be expected to absorb a few hundred million dollars in losses to keep their workers happy.
The polarization of opinion on Israel that we are witnessing in American politics between Republicans who support Israel and Democrats who oppose Israel is an expression of a much larger division within American society. The heartbreaking but undeniable fact is that today you can't talk about "America" as a single political entity.
Today there are two Americas, and they cannot abide one another. One America—Traditional America—loves Israel and America. The other America—New America—hates Israel and doesn't think much of America, either.
Traditional America believes that the United States brought the promise of liberty to the world and that even though it is far from perfect, the United States is the greatest country in human history. In the eyes of the citizens of Traditional America, Israel is a kindred nation and the United States' best friend and most valued ally in the Middle East.
New America, by contrast, believes that America was born in the sin of slavery. New Americans insist America will remain evil and an object of scorn at home and abroad so long it refuses to exchange its values of liberty, capitalism, equal opportunity and patriotism with the values of racialism and equity, socialism, equality of outcome, and globalization. For New Americans, just as the United States was born in the sin of white supremacy, so Israel was born in the sin of Zionism. In New America, Israel will have no right to exist so long as it clings to its Jewish national identity, refusing to become a "state of all its citizens."
New America's power isn't limited to its control over the White House and Congress. It also controls much of corporate America. Under the slogan, "Stakeholder Capitalism," corporate conglomerates whose leaders are New Americans use their economic power to advance the political and cultural agendas of New America. We saw stakeholder capitalism at work in March following the Georgia statehouse's passage of a law requiring voters to present identification at polling places. Major League Baseball, Coca Cola, Delta and American Airlines among others announced that they would boycott the state, denying jobs to thousands of Georgians in retaliation.
Silicon Valley is the Ground Zero of Stakeholder Capitalism. Its denizens are the loudest and most powerful proponents of using technological and economic power to advance the political and cultural agendas of New America.
Microsoft and Oracle are appealing the Nimbus tender award. They are basing their appeals on what they describe as technical and other flaws in the tender process. Israel should view their appeals as an opportunity to reverse course.
In light of New America's hostility towards Israel generally, and given the proven power of Google and Amazon employees and their expressed antagonism towards Israel, the Finance Ministry should reconsider the tender award. Technical considerations aside, the decision to grant Google and Amazon exclusive control over the State of Israel's computer data did not give sufficient weight to all the relevant variables.
Caroline Glick is an award-winning columnist and author of "The Israeli Solution: A One-State Plan for Peace in the Middle East."
SENIOR DRIVERS NO LONGER NEED A LICENSE
My neighbor was working in his yard when he was startled by a late-model car that came crashing through his hedge and ended up in his front lawn.
He rushed to help an elderly lady driver out of the car and sat her down on a lawn chair said with excitement, "You appear quite elderly to be driving."
"Well, yes, I am," she replied proudly. "I'll be 97 next month, and I am now old enough, that I don't even need a driver's license anymore."
He asked, "How do you know?"
"The last time I went to my doctor, he examined me and asked if I had a driver's license
I told him, yes and handed it to him."
He took scissors out of the drawer cut the licence into pieces, and threw them in the wastebasket, saying, 'You won't need this anymore.'
So, I thanked him and left!"
There are three constants in life: death, taxes and . . . antisemitism
By Jackie Mason May 31, 2021
Well, it is happening again. My grandfather told me about it. My father told me about it. Every other Jew who came over from Europe told me about it. Even the New York Times told me about it. You got it, antisemitism and the persecution of Jews.When I was a young man sometime in the early part of last century, whenever I looked into the NY Times classified section for a job that I really needed, the jobs available would say "White Christian only".< >
The NY Times wasn't always as woke as it is now. I'm not even as woke as I am now, because I just fell asleep while writing this sentence.
I've always said there are three constants in life death, taxes, and antisemitism, a subject I'm an expert on unfortunately. All these people here in America and around the world commenting on the atrocities of the Israelis. Killing women and children! Ethnic cleansing! Apartheid!
Thousands of journalists sitting on their good for nothing tuchses yelling into the internet. All you hear is oy what a terrible thing the Israelis are doing. Evicting people from houses! Stopping people from praying! Terrible!
And, my friends, if you would go to any young Israeli man asking him what would he prefer to do, sit by an anti-missile battery or in a fighter jet, or would he rather go with his girlfriend to sit on the beach?
It seems to me that the answer is obvious, and the absurdity of the question says everything about what's going on in the Middle East. Yet we hear so many people who have given very little thought to the topic yelling and screaming like they have lived in the region for 100 years and know every nuance of this terrible conflict.
They have decided that this is what they are going to spend their time screaming about. They don't scream about the hundreds of thousands of Syrians who have died in the last decade by their own co-religionists' hands, more people killed than all sides combined in the entire history of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
You don't hear anyone screaming on Twitter about that. You don't hear anyone screaming about the 50 Afghani schoolgirls who were blown up by the Taliban last week. No, you just hear the one off-key, off-kilter continuous blast about the terrible human rights violators, the Israelis.
Go look, my clear eyed, lucid friends at which countries are on the Human Rights Commission at the UN. Try not to laugh or cry, just let the idea simmer in your head like an exploding Qassam rocket.
Now that we've got all of that out of the way, I'd like to tell you something that you might not like to hear. Something even more controversial than drinking coffee without any artificial sweetener.
Here it is. Everything took a turn for the worse after Donald Trump left office.
For four years there was relative calm. For four years the region took a turn for the better, and for four years sensible thinking about Israel was becoming a reality. Everything about the region was becoming normalized. Diplomatic relations were being renewed, and with the Abraham Accords masterfully orchestrated by the Trump administration, the potential for regional peace was no longer an idealistic fantasy.
At the least, a new balance of power was developing, and things were more stable than they had been in a long while. There were still what seemed like insurmountable problems, for example, the desire of a large part of the Arab world to "drive the Jews into the sea."
You don't have to take my word for it. You can read the translations of Arab newspapers and media on the terribly accurate website- Palestinian Media Watch, or have a look at Camera, Or Memri. I just gave you enough homework to take you through the summer. You know, some light poolside reading. You might have to stockpile some anti-nausea pills or give up entirely because the news is so bad.
The truth is, as much as you might not like to hear it, when Trump was in office it was good for the Jews. Too bad most Jews just don't know what's good for them. Also most of the Jews that might benefit from clear thinking will surely not read this. Perhaps you'll share this with someone who needs to hear it and we can all pray that they will listen. Believe me, it's as important as ever.
Now Mr Biden is in office, the flood of money to terrorists has begun again. The funnels of money to Iran turns around into tunnels in Gaza.
The efficiency is blinding, like with one touch of a button, quicker than PayPal, US taxpayer money is magically transformed into terrorist infrastructure. Don't forget about the padded pockets of the corrupt Palestinian leadership.
You do know that the hero of his people, Yasser Arafat, died with two billion dollars in his bank accounts. This is public knowledge, of course. Try telling that to the day labourer from Ramallah, and don't forget all the pension payments that go to the families of suicide bombers. Look up the Taylor Force Act that was pushed through under Trump's watch.
Yes, Biden turned the spigot of money back on, and here we are again, back on the rodeo. Tell me that he, and his policy makers and budget appropriators, don't know that every American rifle and bullet sent over to Lebanon goes straight to Hezbollah. Even Robert Malley knows that every dollar sent to Iran goes into the hands of groups on the U.S. terrorist list.
To give Trump credit is too much, and the bias against him is too great. Love him or hate him, and he's got good sides and bad sides, and he made plenty of mistakes, but in certain areas he was more than flawless.
He protected the Jews, and nobody messed with them. Which president ever had the balls to knock out a General in Iran. Qasem Soleimani was directly responsible for the deaths of countless Americans. What a brave act to order his death extrajudicially. It was an extra judicious use of American power, and only Trump could have pulled such a brazen act off, just like his move of the US embassy to Jerusalem.
He took such bold steps that nobody thought of messing with the Jews, and finally after years of struggle, they were beginning to have a more equitable position in the region.
I've heard Biden talk of his experiences as a young senator meeting Golda Meir, and how after a meeting where the threats facing Israel before what was to be the Yom Kippur War were explicitly laid out, she said to him, "Senator, you look so worried. I said, well, my God, Madam Prime Minister, and I turned to look at her. I said, the picture you paint. She said, oh, don't worry. We have — I thought she only said this to me. She said, we have a secret weapon in our conflict with the Arabs. You see, we have no place else to go."
Biden proudly told this story at countless functions, gatherings, and dinners. At AIPAC and Federation conferences. At fundraisers and parlour meetings. And clearly he has forgotten that oh so important story that he oh so importantly told. He claimed to know the score, to know the drill. He just doesn't have the spine to stand up to all the antisemites that have co-opted the once sane Democrat Party.
Whoever has hijacked the party are the mouthpieces that directly contribute to the wave of anti-Jewish sentiment that is flooding the world. Israel was once thought to be the Noah's Ark of our time, but it doesn't look like it's enough. It looks like the Jews will have to look to outer space.
Right now, as I'm writing, there are Jews who I am in touch with in London who are cowering in their houses, afraid to step outside. This palpable fear has not been felt since Nazi Germany, and it is here again, with no end in sight.
Biden, with the Squad egging him on, is allowing this terror to be funded, whether he knows it or not. If you see these videos of Free Palestine marches in London and other European capitals and hear the chants of "kill Yahud", and rape Jewish women, you can't ignore it any longer. The can has been kicked down the road long enough, and now is being emptied of its contents.
Many people at these Free Palestine rallies are crazed, rabid animals. Just look at the video of the Jew who was beaten up at one of these rallies last week at the New York Public Library building on 5th Avenue and 42nd Street. Hysteria and mob mentality has emerged without restraint, and the irrational forces of antisemitism have resurfaced once again.
All this anti-Israel rhetoric from American politicians has tremendous ancillary effects, giving license to bigots worldwide to unleash themselves, spewing invective and vitriol that will undoubtedly have collateral damage.
It's ironic that this is the same exact kind of criticism that was levelled against Trump. It's clear that all the rhetoric coming from left circles are beginning to have real world consequences.
This canard that anti-Zionism is not antisemitism is a heaping pile of smoking BS, served on the finest silver platter. You know, it's like those people who say, but some of my best friends are Jews. Yes, some of my best friends who I speak badly about behind their back.
The Jews who I have been hearing from overseas have been telling me things that I hoped I would never hear, although I knew deep down that it was inevitable. Jews of whatever level of observance or identity sitting pretty here in the United States have no understanding of what's going on.
My friends, worldwide Jewry is under siege. We are under siege. Like I told you in my earlier articles, I didn't know what was going to happen with Biden's presidency. I was hoping for the best when it came to Israel, but I was expecting the worst.
Unfortunately, my worst fears have come true. I'm not saying that I'm a prophet or anything, but it seems like you just have to have eyeballs that work to see what's going on. All the radical activists screaming about Israel, who sound like they are on a religious mission from I don't know what God, don't know the first thing about what's really going on in Israel.
All the journalists who have been covering this tiny sector of the world have been telling the same narrative, the same lie, for so long that any 18-year-old on any American campus thinks that Israel is the antichrist, devil and Charles Manson all wrapped in one.
Stay strong, be sensible, and G-d help us all.
The Portion of Korach
The Torah Itself Feels the Pain
The atmosphere in the camp, following the long litany of complaints (lack of meat, the spies, etc.) was perfect for a challenge of the leadership. Korach had no problem in seizing the moment and assembling and inciting a crowd of supporters against Moses and Aaron.
They assembled against Moses and Aaron, and said to them, "You take too much upon yourselves, for the entire congregation are all holy, and the Lord is in their midst. So why do you raise yourselves above the Lord's assembly?" (Numbers 16;3)
Whoever reads the portion of Korach cannot help feeling the pain and anguish felt by Moses and Aaron after having devoted their lives in behalf of their people.
This feeling of pain and cry of anguish "vey" is alluded to in the unusual manner that the letter "vav" is written as the first letter, and subsequent letters, in this portion, thereby emphasizing the very harsh atmosphere present in the camp.
