Lapid: We won't allow Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and Proof of the curvature of the earth and 2,000 flight hours, 100 sorties: UAVs dominated Gaza skies in Operation Breaking Dawn and Calling for the Death of Jews on campus
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.
Prime Minister Yair Lapid addressed the Arab public and asked that they vote for his Yesh Atid party in the upcoming Knesset elections, citing his government's support for Muslim rights on the Temple Mount and policy prohibiting Jews from praying at the site.
In an interview with two Israeli Arab channels, Lapid stated that his government has done a lot in the fight against crime in the Arab sector, but qualified by saying: "It is not enough. There is improvement, but the improvement is too small. It is a process, and we need to make sure that this process continues and is strengthened."
According to Lapid, "Women should not be murdered. Children should not be murdered. We need to deal with the criminal organizations. The plan we built in the end pushed out (the criminals), some of the leaders of the criminal organizations have already fled to Turkey and other places. We hit their money."
Lapid blamed the previous Israeli governments for the problem of crime in Arab society. "There was neglect here that lasted for 12, 15 years in a row. The curve of violence went up and up. It's not just the murders, it's also the protectionism, also the rampage on the roads in the south... The government's neglect was complete, and when these things were neglected for so many years, it takes time to fix."
Lapid also said on this subject: "There is years of neglect here that built very, very strong criminal organizations and it will take time for us to deal with it... There was a terrible neglect that resulted, among other things, in the creation of these criminal organizations and their tragic results."
Lapid also blamed the previous governments for the housing problem in the Arab sector. According to him, "For many, many years, many, many governments, most of the years it was Netanyahu in the last 15 years, on the one hand they told the Arab public: Don't build illegally, and on the other hand they didn't make outline plans. People can't live in the air. We are now within this framework that in the last year we have doubled the building permits, there are also more building permits and there is much more planning in the Arab sector. It's still not enough."
Lapid expressed support for the construction of new Arab settlements to deal with the housing problem in the Arab sector. "Young Arabs, like any other young Israeli, need to have a place to live, and the way to do that is to make outline plans. We need new Arab settlements, we need to expand existing settlements. In the Negev, the government approved five new settlements," said Lapid.
"I am addressing the Arab public from here," said Lapid, "this is also a political period and we are before elections. If they want it to continue, they should vote Yesh Atid so that these processes continue."
Referring to the Arab demand to repeal the Nationality Law, Lapid said: "I opposed the Nationality Law. I think the Nationality Law should be changed and a civil equality clause added to it... At the time, I opposed the Muezzin Law, and I went on the stage of the Knesset and said: I want to tell you something, members of the Knesset. Countries do not insult their own citizens. These people are citizens of Israel and we must not insult them just because you want to make a political profit. The Nationality Law as it is written today is a law that has something insulting to non-Jewish citizens of Israel and it needs to be amended."
Lapid emphasized that he believes in the two-state solution. "I think and have always thought that we should say goodbye to the Palestinians... Our goal is to calm down, our goal is that there will be no violence and no terrorism. We will fight terrorism with determination, so that no one gets confused on this issue. And we will fight it wherever terrorism comes from, but that is not our goal Our goal is to live in peace."
In addition, Lapid accused the previous governments of ugly racist incitement against the Arab public in Israel. In response to a question about what he says to the claim that his government is no less right-wing than Netanyahu's, Lapid said: "They probably don't remember what kind of incitement there was against the Arab public in the State of Israel all these past years, because it happened many times. When there is silence and when emotions calm down, then people don't remember what was before? There was incitement here for years and years, from the famous video of the 'Arabs flocking to the buses', as if Arabs do not have the right to vote in the State of Israel. For years there was ugly racist incitement against the Arab public, and it stopped the day this government was established."
Lapid stated his determination to maintain the right of Muslims to hold religious worship at the Al-Aqsa Mosque, and on the other hand to prevent Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount. "Regarding Al-Aqsa (Mosque), I have made it in every possible way. We are not changing the status quo at Al-Aqsa, and we will take care of the freedom of worship of Muslims at Al-Aqsa. During Ramadan, I don't know, a million people came to pray at Al-Aqsa, and we made sure that they were able to go up and pray, because it is our duty as a government to allow freedom of worship for any Muslim who wants to come and pray at Al-Aqsa and we will protect it."
Lapid added, "We allow Jewish visits. We do not allow Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount. We allow Jewish visits. They visit. It is under supervision so that the status quo is not violated. The status quo is not violated."
The Three Musketeers at the Kotel
The Three are Rabbi Yehuda Glick, famous temple mount activist, and former Israel Mk, and then Robert Weinger, the world's greatest shofar blower and seller of Shofars, and myself after we had gone to the 12 gates of the Temple Mount in 2020 to blow the shofar to ask G-d to heal the world from the Pandemic. It was a highlight to my experience in living in Israel and I put it on my blog each day to remember.
The articles that I include each day are those that I find interesting, so I feel you will find them interesting as well. I don't always agree with all the points of each article but found them interesting or important to share with you, my readers, and friends. It is cathartic for me to share my thoughts and frustrations with you about life in general and in Israel. As a Rabbi, I try to teach and share the Torah of the G-d of Israel as a modern Orthodox Rabbi. I never intend to offend anyone but sometimes people are offended and I apologize in advance for any mistakes. The most important psychological principle I have learned is that once someone's mind is made up, they don't want to be bothered with the facts, so, like Rabbi Akiva, I drip water (Torah is compared to water) on their made-up minds and hope that some of what I have share sinks in. Love Rabbi Yehuda Lave.
Calling for the Death of Jews on campus
Israel-hating activists justify and valorize terrorism. Jews are the only victim group that is unprotected on today's woke campus
Dr. Richard L. Cravatts
In their zeal to create "safe" campus environments, universities have attempted to create an educational environment where students from approved victim groups are coddled, nurtured, and shielded from any criticism or intellectual or emotional challenges.
So-called hate speech—which now includes any expression that contradicts the prevailing progressive orthodoxy on campuses—is said to be harmful, even violent, by those forced to listen to others' ideas.
Not content with simply acknowledging disparities between races, the orthodoxy on campuses now forces everyone to confront racism—including their own—with talk of implicit bias, invisible racism, "white privilege," and microaggressions, together with a consequential battery of programs and initiatives to protect minority students from this alleged bigotry: mandatory sensitivity training for all faculty and students, publicly announced, school-wide solidarity with the Black Lives Matter movement, and campus-wide initiatives to increase the recruitment of minority students and faculty.
Anyone who questions or challenges these sweeping, unproved allegations of systemic racism can be accused of white supremacy and the promotion of injurious hate speech which further marginalizes and harms a victim group.
Conservative speakers or faculty who challenge issues such as illegal immigration, abortion, gay rights, race-based admissions quotas, or even radical Islam can find themselves vilified, shouted down at lectures, censured and denounced by their academic departments or the university administration, or even purged from campus—all as a result of the belief that chosen student victim groups—LGBTQs, Hispanics, Muslims, blacks—have to be shielded from any critique and that anyone who "harms" these groups with alleged hate speech is unwelcome at the university.
There is, however, one victim group that is rarely protected from vilification and ideological assault, namely, Jewish students who are supporters of Israel.
Progressive students have decided, from within their own moral self-righteousness, that the Palestinian Arab campaign for self-determination is such a sacred cause that anyone who defends Israel is a moral retrograde. To support Israel is to risk being deemed a racist, an imperialist, a tacit supporter of apartheid, or even a white supremacist now that Jews are considered to enjoy white privilege.
Groups such as the virulent Students for Justice in Palestinian (SJP) have waged an unrelenting cognitive war against Israel and its campus supporters and Jewish students are confronted with active hatred, rhetoric, and condemnation that, were it aimed at any other minority group, would be immediately and forcefully denounced, not only by fellow students but by university officials as well—just as they do when a racist, homophobic, or other incident against a victim group takes place.
BDS resolutions are pushed through student governments in which Israel is maligned as a racist, apartheid regime, existing on stolen Arab land, and chronically oppressing the human and civil rights of Palestinians. Yearly Israeli Apartheid Weeks reinforce this false narrative with mock apartheid walls constructed in university quads and guest speakers who parrot calumnies against the Jewish state while falsely accusing its supporters of racism, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.
Often heard at these campus anti-Israel hate-fests is the grotesque chant, "Intifada, intifada, long live intifada," referring, of course, to an uprising in which Israeli civilians, not soldiers, are murdered randomly by psychopathic Arabs. Anti-Israel activists regularly support "resistance" on behalf of the ever-aggrieved Palestinian Arabs, resistance being a comfortable euphemism for terrorism against Jews.
On campuses where misgendering someone is now considered an act of "violence," it is very telling that when there is rhetoric calling for the murder of Jews, there is a shocking silence on campus, made even more ironic by the fact that those same activists most likely think of themselves as woke, tolerant, and compassionate for the plight of the underdog.
On August 15th, for example, the University of Melbourne Student Union (UMSU) tabled an anti-Israel motion that included the expected slanders against the Jewish state, including the allegation that Zionism is racist and colonial, that Palestine is occupied by Israel, and that ethnic cleansing is part of that situation.
Most inflammatory, though, was the language in the motion that "UMSU supports the self-determination of the Palestine people and their right to engage in self-defence [sic] against their occupiers," that self-defense, of course, being the assumed right of the Palestinian Arabs (including the terrorist thugs of Hamas) to indiscriminately lob lethal rockets and mortars into southern Israeli towns from Gaza with the express intent to murder Jewish civilians in their sleep.
Even when university campuses worked diligently in the 1980s to dismantle South African apartheid, no one called for blacks to murder their white oppressors; no one yearned for the complete destruction of the South African state and its replacement with a new, black-run sovereignty. But in the fictitious narrative about Palestine, illegal occupation, and Israeli oppression of an "indigenous" people, these students make it clear that terrorism and the murder of Jews are not only condoned but celebrated.
The pro-Palestinian movement has always devalued Jewish lives, assuming that the murder of Israelis was justified because of the alleged systemic racism and oppression inherent in Zionism and the very existence of the Jewish state. So the language in the UMSU motion calling for and justifying terrorism against Israel is not uncommon, despite its ghoulish lethality and indifference to Jewish suffering.
Lately, that genocidal support for Palestinian Arab terrorism has become even more extreme, suggesting that, if anything, the toxic activism against Israel and its Jewish supporters on campus has grown more sinister and morally debased.
At Ohio State University, for example, the school's Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) chapter just hosted a vigil to honor terrorist Ibrahim Nabulsi, who was killed in a joint operation by Israeli counter-terrorism forces. "Come out for our emergency protest and candlelight vigil for the recent tragedies happening in Palestine," the group's Instagram post read. "We will be honoring our martyrs Ibrahim Nabulsi, Hussein Taha, Islam Soboh, and Momen Jaber. Please join us as we continue to fight and stand for justice in Palestine," justice presumably meaning the continued murder of Israelis in the name of Palestinian Arab self-determination.
One of those so-called "martyrs," Ibrahim Nabulsi, also known as the "Lion of Nablus," was not a random terrorist but a key member of Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, designated as a foreign terrorist organization by the U.S. State Department. He was responsible, before being neutralized on August 9th, for multiple shootings against Israeli civilians and the IDF.
Unsurprisingly, when OSU officials were queried about the event being held by one of the university's student groups, they fecklessly sidestepped the issue, claiming that the university is committed to free speech and disingenuously refusing to condemn the event by suggesting it was not an official university event since it was being held off campus.
In Canada, two student organizations, Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights McGill and Solidarity for Palestinian Human Rights Concordia, co-sponsored a similar grotesque vigil for the murderous terrorists slain by Israel, "Glory to Our Martyrs."
"Over the past few days," the McGill Facebook post read, "Zionist aggression has escalated . . . Despite the ruthless attempts to break Palestinians' collective spirit, the latest war has been named 'The Unity of All Fronts.' It is in this spirit of unity that we call on the Montreal community to march against Zionist aggression and honour [sic] our martyrs. Until full liberation and return, the struggle continues."
That 230 miles is the curvature of the Earth. The Planet curves away from you in all directions equally.
The problem with the arc of the Earth (commonly confused with curve), is that we humans are very, very small. Compaired with the planet in fact, we are beyond microscopic.
A water bear on a beach ball would say the ball is flat, though we know it's a ball, because it is small enough not to be able to see the arc
Earth is 24,000 miles (40,000 km) around and a human's eyes are two inches (4.5cm) apart. So, 48 billion centimeters.
48 Billion divide 4.5 makes 10.6 billion times the scale we can see at as an individual. That's how large the Earth is to us, 10.6 billion times.
Astronauts have to be about 120 miles (200 km) above the planet before the see a hint of the arc. It's just that big.
To see the whole planet it's about 18,000 miles. This Apollo 17 picture was taken from that far out.
The astronauts were coasting towards the Moon, approximately 40,000 kilometers from Earth, when this picture was taken. Because the mission took place during the beginning of the summer in the Southern Hemisphere, the Southern Hemisphere is brightly Iit by the Sun.
Go higher; the curvature is visible from a blackbird 85,000 feet over Manhattan:
[place a straight edge on the image if the curvature isn't apparent.]
2,000 flight hours, 100 sorties: UAVs dominated Gaza skies in Operation Breaking Dawn
IDF reveals extent to which drones were used during recent conflict with Islamic Jihad in Gaza.
With over 2,000 flight hours, more than 100 flights and dozens of targeted strikes, the RPA array played a valuable part of the IDF's operational activity during Operation "Breaking Dawn," the IDF revealed Wednesday. The RPA array operated in a precise manner and significantly decreased the Islamic Jihad terrorist organization and its capabilities.
Remotely Piloted Aircraft have become a dominant factor in the IDF's operational activity in recent years. RPAs gather intelligence, observe the enemy and engage contact. The striking capabilities of the RPA array were recently authorized for publication. These capabilities allowed for the neutralization of terrorist organizations and their operatives in the Gaza Strip.
The RPA array mainly operates in the "Palmachim" Air Force Base, where three out of five of the IAF RPA and "Zik" squadrons are located. An additional RPA squadron is located in the "Tel Nof" Air Force Base, and operates the "Eitan" RPA. Over the past month, a new squadron opened in the "Hatzor" Air Force Base, which operates the "Spark" RPA. The squadron operates as part of the expanding and strengthening IDF RPA array, as well as the effort to collect intelligence and provide support to the maneuvering forces.
The RPA array works in cooperation with the Intelligence Directorate (J2) units and is operated by the fire control centers in different brigades, divisions and commands. The operators maintain the situational assessment for a long duration and are expected to carry out precise and high-quality strikes to prevent harm to uninvolved civilians. The RPA array constitutes about 80% of the IAF's operational flight hours and is an integral part of all operational activity in the IDF.
Commanding Officer of "Palmachim" Air Force Base, Brig. Gen. Omri Dror said: "Remotely Piloted Aircraft collect intelligence data 24 hours a day, around the clock. The Southern Command, the Gaza Division, the Israeli Air Force Headquarters, as well as other branches, are all producing quality intelligence data and turning it into targets. Some of these targets were struck by IAF fighter jets in the past few days, and of course by our RPAs, which are an integral part of the IDF's striking capabilities. The striking capabilities of the RPA array are exceptionally diverse. They are able to locate a single person or rocket launcher and neutralize the target without causing damage to the surrounding area or harming non-combatants. The RPAs also have superb scanning abilities that allow for large-scale strikes, as can be seen recently and in the past few years. They are also able to perform more extensive strikes with a large payload, while minimizing collateral damage. Part of this success is attributed to the RPA array. More than once we have stopped planned strikes from being carried out in order to prevent harm to uninvolved civilians."
Chief Artillery Officer, BG Neri Horowitz said: "In the days leading up to Operation 'Breaking Dawn', the 'Zik' unit operated in the Gaza Strip and prepared for several operational scenarios. When the decision was made to launch a proactive operation, the unit carried out a wide range of field intelligence and striking missions, from neutralizing senior officials, targeting rocket launchers and mortars, to detecting and targeting surface-to-surface rockets and mortars preparing to launch rockets. The 'Zik' Unit specializes engaging in contact, exposing the enemy and initiating strikes as part of the IDF's defensive efforts. The two decade old unit has significantly reinforced many operations over the years and holds an extensive combat history. Since its inception, the unit has been a pillar of multi-branch cooperation in the IDF."
Commander of the 52nd RPA Unit of the Artillery Corps, LTC "M" said: "Unit 52, alongside the rest of the RPA Squadrons in the array, was already a few days into preparations for Operation "Breaking Dawn". The recent operation allowed us, the unit, to gain a relative advantage through connection with the Gaza Division and the Southern Command for missions aimed to defend the communities surrounding the Gaza Strip. The RPA array specializes in support and striking missions. As a unit of the Ground Forces, the unit operated in coordination during the operation with the Gaza and Southern divisions. We are operating 24/7 to ensure the safety of Israeli civilians living near the Gaza Strip. We will continue to operate to allow for everyone to return to their normal lives."
