יום שלישי, י״ד אב תשפ״וTuesday, July 28, 2026
Follow Us
It will be interesting to see whether the Palestinians will gut the new round of negotiations with Israel over the announcement of new Israeli settlement construction –and whether Israel will draw the major share of blame should that happen.
The one constant in the West’s confrontation with Iran over the latter’s nuclear program has been the Iranians’ success at delaying any American acknowledgement that the diplomatic phase may have finally run its course. All the while, of course, Iran has steadily progressed in its march toward a nuclear weapons capacity.
The ability of al Qaeda to so threaten a wide expanse of the U.S. diplomatic mission as to force the closing of our diplomatic posts in parts of Africa, the Middle East and Asia is truly remarkable. This is especially so given the president’s constant refrain that as the result of his efforts, al Qaeda is on the run and in steep decline.
The Supreme Court has yet to deliver a final word on whether American citizens born in Jerusalem can have their passports list “Israel” as their place of birth if they so choose. Last week, however, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, in the case of Benjamin Zivotofsky, invalidated a federal law authorizing such recordation on the grounds that the president has exclusive power to conduct the foreign affairs of the United States.
The hoopla surrounding the meeting in Washington this week of Israeli and Palestinian representatives appears to be much about little.
The alleged breakthrough orchestrated by Secretary of State Kerry last week between Israel and the Palestinians was the culmination of a series of desperate attempts to project the appearance of progress toward a resumption of real negotiations when, given the current circumstances, none are likely to occur.
President Obama is playing a cynical and dangerous game with his comments in the wake of George Zimmerman’s acquittal in the shooting death of Trayvon Martin. The problem is not that Mr. Obama may feel that by acquitting Mr. Zimmerman the jury was saying race played no role. That is his prerogative. But it is a problem when the president, in introducing a national dialogue on race relations at this time, indelibly links Trayvon Martin’s death with race and thereby inserts himself in the middle of a concerted effort by some, who will simply not accept the jury’s verdict, to have Mr. Zimmerman indicted on federal anti-hate laws.
In the past we have explored how President Obama’s penchant for unilateral executive actions has resulted in encroachments on the powers of Congress and the courts. This despite the constitutional blueprint for a federal government limited by a system of checks and balances through the Constitution’s separation of powers among the executive, legislative and judicial branches.
We are troubled by the reactions of some to the “Not Guilty” verdict in the Zimmerman/Martin case. The unanimous conclusion by the jury notwithstanding, there is a hue and cry that racism was behind the shooting and an injustice was done simply because Mr. Zimmerman was acquitted.
In the beginning, President Obama really thought he could change the world. And he had specific plans to do so, both here and abroad.
It’s time for Secretary of State John Kerry to take stock of his obsessive and peripatetic efforts to get Israel and the Palestinians back to the negotiating table. It is an obvious fool’s errand that demeans our diplomatic image around the world.
Rabbi Dr. Norman Lamm has retired after sixty years at Yeshiva University. In 1976 Dr. Lamm, after years as a student and then faculty member, was appointed president of YU and rosh yeshiva of YU’s rabbinical school, Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS).
Dominating the public policy discussion in New York these past few weeks have been two pieces of New York City Council legislation relating to the New York City Police Department. One creates the position of inspector general within the NYPD to monitor the department’s activities; the other grants individuals who claim to have been victims of racial profiling the right to bring a lawsuit seeking a court judgment prohibiting similar actions by the NYPD (seeking monetary damages is not provided for).
Mr. Lhota promptly followed up his attack on Mr. Silver with an extravagant fundraising e-mail.
It seems a day doesn’t go by without at least one new revelation about the scope of the federal government’s monitoring of the communications of American citizens (and of perhaps many other people around the world).
No one can envy President Obama’s current dilemma over Syria. His decision to begin arming the Syrian rebels challenging Bashar Assad’s regime drew charges that the rebel forces are driven by jihad movements, particularly al Qaeda. Further, many rebel spokesmen have regularly denounced Israel and suggested that once in power they will end Mr. Assad’s policy of not rocking the boat with Israel. How, then, critics ask, could the president align the U.S. with the rebels?
In a gushing report on the election of Hassan Rohani as Iran’s new president, The New York Times began with this: “In a striking repudiation of the ultraconservatives who wield power in Iran, voters…overwhelmingly elected a mild-mannered cleric who advocates greater personal freedoms and a more conciliatory approach to the world.”
Last month in this space we noted that the New York State Assembly was considering legislation that would prohibit domestic insurers from including on their financial statements investments in companies that engage in investment activities in Iran. These financial statements are relied upon by the state to determine whether the company is solvent and able to pay claims. That bill has since passed the Assembly, but the New York State Senate is balking at passing it as well.
The unauthorized release last week of the text of a four-page order issued by a federal judge sitting on the special FISA national security court has unleashed a torrent of controversy over possible governmental overreaching.
We take it as a sure sign of the times that the recent stunning news that the Claims Conference had negotiated a four-year $1 billion infusion of funds from the German government to aid Holocaust survivors has been largely overshadowed by criticism that those leading the conference mishandled an internal investigation into the embezzlement of $57 million by some employees over a fifteen-year period.
Last week we lauded the efforts of several Jewish organizations to ameliorate the plight of the victims of the recent massive Oklahoma tornado and the extraordinary gesture the owner of Agri Star Meat & Poultry of Postville, Iowa, made in donating ten tons of meat for distribution.
We have no doubt that there is some measure of political partisanship in the controversies swirling around the Obama administration. That is, after all, the American way of governance and, frankly, how wrongdoing is often identified and uncovered. But political maneuvering is just a sideshow that distracts from the questions that should concern us, each of which strikes at the heart of American self-government.
We proudly salute those Jewish organizations that have rallied in support of the victims of last week’s devastating tornado that destroyed a large swath of the Oklahoma City region. As we reported last week, though there are relatively few Jews who live in the area, Jewish groups are providing an array of assistance.
President Obama’s speech on counterterrorism last Thursday at the National Defense University was one of the more impressive he has delivered while in the White House. Indeed, in discussing a reevaluation of how to fight what we all have come to refer to as “the war on terror,” he eloquently identified some profound issues.
Reports that the Obama administration targeted the records of reporters in an effort to determine who in government leaked secret information about a Yemeni bomb plot and a CIA report on North Korea would almost be amusing if the implications weren’t so troubling. Leaking information seems to be a forte of his administration – mainly, it seems, when the image of the president is thereby enhanced.
In an editorial last week (“Circling the Wagons”) we noted the efforts by the administration and its supporters to dismiss allegations that the government’s spin on the Benghazi attack was designed to shield the president and that the IRS was improperly used to stifle opposition to Mr. Obama’s reelection.
As the controversies besetting the Obama administration continue to grow in number and intensity, the prospect that President Obama would seriously consider military action against Iran, should that country continue its drive to become a nuclear power, becomes more and more remote. So we welcome the current enhancement of sanctions against Iran on the federal and New York State levels.
Two recent revelations have raised serious questions about the kind of government President Obama is running.
We were dismayed by the announcement last week from Google that it was changing the name “Palestinian Territories” to “Palestine” across its products. In explaining the action, a Google spokesman said that “We consult a number of sources and authorities when naming countries…. In this case, we are following the lead of the UN, ICANN (the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers), ISO (International Organization for Standardization) and other international organizations.”
It seems clear that there is a lot more to the current developments regarding Syria than Israel’s bombing some sites there, though staunching the flow of Iranian weapons to Hizbullah through Syria is plainly a significant objective.
Secretary of State John Kerry’s recent embrace of the Arab Peace Initiative is, to say the least, unnerving. Certainly the response of Arab leaders to his action reflects the dangers for Israel inherent in the plan. President Obama seems to be preoccupied these days with Syria and Iran as well as serious domestic issues and is largely leaving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict to Mr. Kerry. But the secretary of state seems poised to roil things up without any prospect of real progress.
Syria’s civil war is fast becoming one of the Obama administration’s greatest foreign policy challenges, for the moment even surpassing Iran’s march toward nuclear weaponry in its urgency. Together, both issues have effectively derailed the president’s long-range intention to focus on Asia and the emerging economic and military developments in China and other nations in the so-called Asian Pivot.
The investigation into the Boston bombings is still in its early stages but what seems to be emerging is that the presumed perpetrators were not directly linked to any foreign terrorist infrastructure. Rather, they were individual Americans radicalized by jihadist teachings and guided in their weapons-making by jihadist websites.
During the run-up to the confirmations of Secretary of State Kerry and Secretary of Defense Hagel, we and others forcefully challenged the latter over statements he had made about Iran and Israel, and were more favorably inclined toward the former.
This week Jews around the world celebrated Yom Ha’Atzmaut, Israel Independence Day. Sixty-five years ago on the day before the British mandate over Palestine was set to expire, the Jewish People’s Council, comprised of the political leadership of the Jewish residents of Palestine, proclaimed the establishment of the State of Israel.
Recent events demonstrate that the Jewish community is fast losing the free speech wars. Those who wish to condemn Israel at public forums are seemingly immune to efforts at having an alternative view heard, while those who seek to talk tough about radical Islam are vulnerable to being blocked altogether.
We initially thought it rather odd that President Obama chose an audience of mostly students to deliver an important speech during his visit to Israel last month. Indeed, his message was a call for them to change the Israeli system from within so that the government might be more receptive to peace proposals.
Would that more Margaret Thatchers were found in office in capitals around the world.
There is a certain disconnect in the brouhaha over the Cardozo School of Law’s Journal of Conflict Resolution offering its International Advocate for Peace Award to serial Israel-basher Jimmy Carter.
Much has been written about the eleventh-hour agreement between Israel and Turkey designed to mend fences and return to normal relations.
The Jewish Press joins Klal Yisrael in mourning the death of Rabbi Herschel Schacter, paradigmatic pulpit leader, former chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and adviser to President Nixon on the plight of Soviet Jews.
We were disappointed to hear from President Obama that he would not break with the precedent set by his predecessors, Presidents Reagan, Bush I, Clinton and Bush II, and release Jonathan Pollard. Though we think Mr. Pollard deserved to be punished for his serious crimes, we believe that twenty-eight years of imprisonment is enough.
President Obama’s speech in Jerusalem was remarkable in many ways. Not only did he proclaim U.S. support for Israel and describe Jewish history in glowing – and for an American president, unprecedented – terms, he also seemed to take great pains to address, point by point, the criticism of his 2009 Cairo speech that soured many Jews on his presidency.
President Obama will finally follow up his June 4, 2009 visit to Cairo with one to Israel. Though he was just a stone’s throw from Israel at the time, he chose not to go the Jewish state and it is not too hard to figure out why.
The Obama administration, from Mr. Obama on down, has made every effort to assure that the agenda for the president’s Israel trip and discussions with Prime Minister Netanyahu would center around burnishing the U.S.-Israel relationship and the issues of Iran and Syria.
Ambassador Rice touted the notion of a spontaneous mob action for several days after the event despite the evidence to the contrary. On what basis did Ms. Rice promote the false storyline?
What intrigues us most about Justice Milton Tingling’s decision invalidating New York City’s ban on large sugary soft drinks is that his opinion contained nothing we all hadn’t heard before. The judge said the ban was “arbitrary and capricious” – a judicial no-no that is the legal equivalent of “it makes no sense” – and was improperly adopted by a non-elected Board of Health.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has made no bones about his disdain for Israel. Soon after assuming office he gave a speech at the 2009 World Economic Forum at Davos in which he harangued Israel and its policies and publicly insulted President Shimon Peres.
The Obama administration's various policies have signaled to the mullahs that they ultimately have nothing to fear from Washington.
When the White House announced some weeks ago that President Obama would be visiting the Middle East with the goal of burnishing U.S.-Israel relations rather than offering any new proposals for restarting the moribund negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians, we assumed it would only be a matter of time before a new intifada broke out.
In his State of the Union speech two weeks ago, President Obama seemed to echo his predecessor’s extravagant “Mission Accomplished” declaration respecting the war in Iraq when he announced that in light of the substantial gains in the fight against the Taliban in Afghanistan, some 34,000 U.S. troops will return home by this time next year.
The Jewish Press notes with sorrow the recent passing of Rabbi Herbert W. (Chaim Zev) Bomzer, a leading personality in the American Jewish community who served for forty years as the rav of the Young Israel of Ocean Parkway in Brooklyn and for fifty years as a maggid shiur at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary.
The controversy over Chuck Hagel’s nomination as secretary of defense continued to roil this past week with the revelation that he did not provide the Senate Armed Services Committee information concerning several of his speeches to controversial pro-Arab and Iran advocacy groups.
Last week the House of Representatives approved, by a vote of 354 to 72, a bill that would specifically permit the use of federal money to rebuild synagogues, churches and mosques damaged by Superstorm Sandy.
It should not be forgotten that in the immediate run-up to President Obama’s May 19, 2011 speech at the State Department in which he delivered his “ ‘67 lines” scenario for Middle East peace, the informed buzz among Beltway pundits was that the president would break no new ground with his remarks. So much for informed buzz.
Now that the forum co-sponsored by the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and the Brooklyn College political science department has come and gone, it is incumbent on Brooklyn College and Mayor Bloomberg to vindicate their claim that the event had to be allowed to take place in the interests of academic freedom.
Ed Koch’s ebullient personality and can-do attitude provided a much-needed shot in the arm to a city that had barely dodged bankruptcy under the dour and ineffectual Abe Beame, and his willingness to buck the city’s liberal establishment was a balm for New Yorkers, particularly those in the outer boroughs, fed up with the accelerating social experimentation that characterized city governance for decades.
An editorial in Tuesday’s New York Times provides an important perspective on how Israel is viewed by our country’s liberal elites.
Some recent developments fuel speculation as to what President Obama has in mind for the next four years in several areas.
This past Sunday – on International Holocaust Memorial Day – Britain’s Sunday Times ran a cartoon that depicted a burly and menacing Prime Minister Netanyahu, wielding a blood-covered trowel, in the process of building a wall using the blood and limbs of trapped, writhing Palestinians. It carried the caption, “Israeli Elections – Will Cementing Peace Continue?”
We were dismayed by the sudden announcement last week by New York’s senior U.S. senator, Charles Schumer, that he would support President Obama’s nomination of former senator Chuck Hagel for secretary of defense.
As it now appears, the recent terrorist attack on the American consulate in Benghazi was not an anomaly but rather the tip of a growing iceberg.
The right-wing parties in Israel have been gaining traction in the run-up to next week’s election, and to our mind that is a good thing. It is crucial that the world come to appreciate the broad resurgence among Israelis of the notion of a vibrant and dynamic Jewish state in the land of its biblical patrimony.
We certainly agree with Vice President Joe Biden that the massacre last month in Newtown, Connecticut, that took the lives of twenty elementary school children “touched the heart of the American people so profoundly” that it “requires immediate, urgent action.” And we would hope Congress and the president can avoid the partisan bickering that has caused so much gridlock in Washington and reach a solution to the problem of firearm violence in America.
We join with Klal Yisrael in mourning the passing of Rabbi Abraham B. Hecht.
It was hardly surprising that Prime Minister Netanyahu’s announcement, made on Sunday, that Israel will build a fortified fence along its frontier with Syria was characterized by many of the usual suspects as yet another example of Israeli apartheid policies.
There are those who are taking delight in pointing out that former vice president Al Gore, perhaps the individual most identified with the movement to reduce greenhouse emissions, now stands to make a personal profit of $100 million in the sale of the TV station he headed to the Al Jazeera network, wholly owned by the oil-rich Qatari royal family.
We were taken by PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s television address to a large Gaza audience, which included both members of his own Fatah group and also the rival Hamas. Long hailed by world leaders as the only Palestinian “peace partner” on the horizon, Mr. Abbas actually revealed himself for what he really is.
It certainly is no secret that Great Britain is adamantly opposed to any construction by Israel on any land claimed by Palestinians in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. So it was not all that surprising that the UK condemned recent announcements by Israel of construction plans in various areas over the green line. But its hyperbolic reaction to the announcement that the Israeli government is granting university status to Ariel College suggests that not a whole lot of thinking goes into its anti-settlement declarations.
This past Sunday, Israel’s Supreme Court overturned a decision by Israel’s Central Election Committee to disqualify MK Haneen Zoabi of the Balad Party from running for a seat in the January 22 parliamentary elections. The court rejected the committee’s ruling that she should be banned based on her involvement in the Gaza flotilla of May 2010.
As we noted last week, President Obama’s apparent inclination to appoint former Republican senator Chuck Hagel as his new secretary of defense has been disturbing from the start, given Mr. Hagel’s record of opposing sanctions against Iran, his criticism of U.S. partiality toward Israel, and his reference to what he called “the Jewish lobby” in Washington, which, he suggested, unduly urges the U.S. government to act on behalf of Israel’s interests.
Two weeks ago we suggested that Hamas officials had seized on Israel’s decision not to invade Gaza in the course of Operation Pillar of Defense as somehow demonstrating that Hamas was quite capable of taking on the Israeli military, and that the world, particularly the Palestinian street, should take notice.
The 26 murders at the Sandy Hook elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut last Friday have triggered yet another nationwide debate over how something so horrific could happen in the United States.
The Washington buzz earlier this week was that President Obama had decided on Sen. John Kerry to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state and was close to settling on former Republican senator Chuck Hagel as his new secretary of defense.
Many Washington officials have long spun the story that convicted Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard did immense harm to this country’s national security by stealing vital American military and intelligence secrets. Thus, the U.S. intelligence community has always opposed Mr. Pollard’s release.
The Jewish Press joins Klal Yisrael in mourning the death, at age 79, of Rabbi Mendel Weinbach, a founder of Yeshiva Ohr Someach, a leading educational institution in the ba’al teshuvah movement.
Early this week it appeared the end could well be in sight to the ordeal of Jacob Ostreicher, an Orthodox Jewish businessman from Brooklyn jailed in Bolivia without being charged for a year and a half on suspicion of money laundering.
The Hamas bluster about having bested Israel in Operation Pillar of Defense should not be dismissed as typical Arab hyperbole.
The UN General Assembly’s resolution granting nonmember-state observer status to “Palestine” – a document drafted by the Palestinian Authority – and the worldwide negative response to Israel’s reaction to it is reminiscent of Lewis Carroll’s classic 1871 poem “Jabberwocky,” which depicts a world filled with illogic and nonsensical speech.
Jonathan Pollard’s long incarceration has taken its toll and he is now seriously ill. While he is not the first inmate to suffer in this manner, most are given consideration for compassionate early release. It in no way diminishes the severity of his crimes to suggest he should be sent home. His sentence was Draconian, as attested to by a growing number of former senior federal officials, including several from Congress and the intelligence community.
Reports in recent days suggest that Republican opposition to the possible nomination of UN Ambassador Susan Rice as secretary of state seems to be softening. Critics such as Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham are changing or at least modifying their tune regarding concern over Ms. Rice’s statements in the aftermath of the attack on U. S. diplomats in Benghazi.
We doubt anyone outside of the Palestinian street really believes the stream of Hamas hyperbole that it emerged from Operation Pillar Of Defense in a better position than before. Of course, we have come to expect this sort of fantasy-based spin from much of the Arab world. Indeed, all reports prior to the cease-fire indicated that Hamas’s military capacity had been severely degraded and its ability to shoot rockets at Israel largely neutralized, at least for now. And Hamas lost some of its top military commanders.
Getting at the truth of the attack on the U.S. consulate in Benghazi is a work in progress and this is certainly a story with legs. Why U.S. personnel were not given adequate protection despite danger signals for weeks prior and why the Obama administration, in the face of intelligence information to the contrary, downplayed any terrorist dimension in the assault, urging instead that the attackers were ordinary Muslims upset about an anti-Muhammad video, is sure to be the focus of intense congressional attention.
True to his word, President Obama has demonstrated that when it comes to Israel’s security, he does indeed have the country’s back. In the current confrontation with Hamas, he has from the start unequivocally laid the blame on Hamas and said Israel has the right to defend itself and that for the crisis to end Hamas must stop firing rockets at Israel.
By any measure, our newly reelected president has a great number of issues that will compete for his attention and among which he will have to prioritize. During the presidential campaign we repeatedly voiced concern that Mr. Obama might reprise the full-court press treatment he accorded the Israeli-Palestinian conflict early in his first term, and we can only hope he will focus elsewhere.
There are some fascinating questions that come to mind regarding the current controversy concerning Gen. David Petraeus, and in the coming weeks and months many of the blanks will doubtless be filled in. To be sure, the personal dimension to the story will continue to draw much attention – infidelity and personal failure in high places will always have a certain allure. But there are some serious public issues involved that we hope will be pursued.
We salute President Obama on his solid reelection victory. Though we were highly critical of his performance these past four years in a variety of areas, we hope he succeeds in his second term, as his success is America’s success.
CBS News withheld, until this past Sunday – two days before the election – a key portion of its “60 Minutes” interview with President Obama conducted within hours after his Rose Garden press conference on September 12, the day after the attack on the American consulate in Benghazi.
.In the congressional race in the 9th CD (Englewood, NJ) Rabbi Shmuley Boteach gets our support. Though he has gained notoriety as a celebrity rabbi, he possesses a formidable intellect and a deep grasp of a wide range of issues. There can be no doubt that when it will come to dealing with matters of concern to our community, he will be there for us.
It should come as no surprise to readers that The Jewish Press endorses Governor Mitt Romney in the November 6 presidential election. We’ve regularly expressed serious concerns about Barack Obama’s views on the Middle East in general and the Arab-Israeli situation in particular from the onset of his 2008 presidential campaign through his four years in the White House.
While it is still unclear whether the clear victory by Mitt Romney in the first presidential debate two weeks ago will amount to a more than a mere bump in terms of his popularity, or whether Vice President Joe Biden’s aggressiveness in last week’s vice presidential debate stanched the bleeding, we certainly have been witness to some troubling developments over the past couple of weeks.
Even before the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee announced it would begin hearings on last month’s terrorist attack on the U.S. diplomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, it was clear to many that important questions needed to be answered.
We have long been dismayed by the trust some prominent Jewish groups place in the established non-evangelical Protestant Christian denominations. Aside from some occasional and perfunctory conciliatory statements on minor matters offered by the denominational leaders, the relationship has never become a true dialogue but rather an embarrassing, self-conscious cry for acceptance from insecure Jews.
We know we speak for many in our community when we express sadness at the news that the United States Supreme Court on Monday decided not to review the 27-year sentence meted out to former Agriprocessors chief executive Sholom Rubashkin.
In the course of his lamentable stopover in New York last week, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave an interview to Washington Post columnist David Ignatius just prior to President Obama’s speech to the UN General Assembly. One of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s comments made us think that maybe there is something to his apparent madness.
In an interview on “60 Minutes” this past Sunday, President Obama was asked about his very public spat with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu over the latter’s call for the U.S. to set “red lines” for Iran’s nuclear advance which, if crossed, would trigger an American military response coordinated with Israel and perhaps others.
It took a federal judge to get New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority to allow ads to run on buses calling for support of Israel against terrorist attacks. Though a year ago the MTA accepted an ad sponsored by an anti-Israel group calling for an end to military aid to Israel, it initially refused to permit display of an ad sponsored by a pro-Israel group that read, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man./ Support Israel/Defeat Jihad.”
The current clash between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu over U.S. policy regarding Iran’s efforts to secure a nuclear capacity calls to mind the contretemps between President Lyndon Johnson and Israeli Prime Minister Levi Eshkol in 1967.
We probably will never know for sure whether President Obama was involved or even aware of the decision not to carry over a reference to Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel in the Democratic Party’s 2008 platform to its 2012 platform.
Anyone who reads the text of the New York City Department of Health’s proposed rule regarding metzitzah b’peh will immediately notice that two fundamental concerns have been virtually ignored in all of the public debate over the measure.
July 24, 2026 
