יום שלישי, ח׳ תמוז תשפ״וTuesday, June 23, 2026
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The Jewish Press joins Klal Yisrael in mourning the death last week of HaRav Yosef Sholom Elyashiv, widely recognized as the Torah world’s foremost authority on Jewish law for nearly three decades – a scholar who set the tone and direction for resolving its most complex issues and who in many ways defined an era.
For months, International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge has dismissed calls for a moment of silence at the opening ceremony of the London Olympics to mark the 40th anniversary of the murder of eleven Israeli athletes by Palestinian terrorists at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The New York Times greeted the release of the Levy Report with a not unexpected shrill editorial that captured the sentiment of the Arab world, the consensus of international opinion, and the view of not a few Jewish organizations here in the U.S.
Soon after the oral argument in the Supreme Court on Obamacare, when it appeared there was considerable skepticism among the justices as to its constitutionality, President Obama expressed the view that it would be “unprecedented” for the unelected court to overturn legislation passed by an elected legislature.
A comment by Kadima leader Shaul Mofaz the other day set us thinking about an element in the draft debate that could only manifest itself in an Israeli context.
We were struck by a petition drive launched by the National Jewish Democratic Council demanding that presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney and the Republican Party reject contributions from billionaire donor Sheldon Adelson.
UNESCO proved once again that UN rules mean nothing if they get in the way of furthering an anti-Israel agenda.
The Jewish Press joins Jews around the world in mourning the death, at age 96, of Yitzhak Shamir, a key leader in Israel’s fight for independence who later served as a top Mossad official, speaker of the Knesset, foreign minister and prime minister.
The traditional view of the United States Supreme Court as the ultimate, objective, arbiter of our system of government and thereby protector of our liberties took an enormous hit last week when the court upheld the constitutionality of Obamacare.
Over the past several years the editorial page of The New York Times has taken on an increasingly desperate tone. There is no doubt that the advent of the Internet and conservative talk radio came at great cost to the Gray Lady, which for some time now has seemed incapable of framing issues in the methodical – if wrongheaded – manner it once did. But the level of shrillness in recent days is completely off the charts.
There certainly is wide enough room for thoughtful and well-meaning people to disagree about the appropriate approach to the presence in the United States of millions of people who have come here illegally. But those same thoughtful Americans should be very concerned with President Obama’s unilateral amendment of federal law in this regard. It is yet another indication that the president believes no federal asset is unavailable to him in his reelection bid and that he has a presumptive monopoly on knowing what is right for America.
The Jewish Press endorses Congressman Bob Turner for the Republican nomination for United States senator from New York. The Republican primary election on June 26 will choose who will run against the incumbent, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, a Democrat seeking reelection.
The candidacy of New York City Councilman Charles Barron for Congress against New York State Assemblyman Hakeem Jeffries to replace the retiring Edolphus Towns has attracted much more than the usual interest.
Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s refusal last week to block the dismantling of Givat Ulpana enraged the Right in Israel, it was his government’s announcement of the construction of hundreds of new housing units in Beit El, Ariel, Ma’aleh Adumim, Adam, Efrat and Kiryat Arba that caused much more tumult around the world.
On its face, it might seem that Attorney General Eric Holder’s appointment of two veteran federal prosecutors to mount a criminal investigation into the recent spate of national security leaks is a step in the right direction. Indeed, those appointments seem to have quieted congressional calls for the appointment of a special independent investigative counsel and holding congressional hearings into what will doubtless come to be known as Leakgate. Yet there are some issues that come to mind.
While it is always important for our community to vote in large numbers, recent redistricting has made it all the more imperative.
Over the past few weeks we have remarked on what we see as President Obama’s presumption that public resources are for his own uses – including political uses – regardless of laws or past political protocol.
The Jewish Press endorses Erik Martin Dilan in the June 26 Democratic primary election in the 7th Congressional district. The district consists of Little Italy and the Lower East Side in Manhattan; in Brooklyn it includes, Williamsburg, Bushwick, Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill, Carroll Gardens, parts of Fresh Pond, Red Hook, Gowanus, Greenwood, Sunset Park and Cypress Hills; and in Queens, parts of Fresh Pond and Woodhaven.
The Jewish Press endorses Hakeem Jeffries in the June 26 Democratic primary for the 8th Congressional District. In Brooklyn the district consists of Fort Green, Bedford-Stuyvesant, East New York, Canarsie, Flatlands, Mill Basin, Bergen Beach, Marine Park, Brighton Beach, Coney Island, Sea Gate and Manhattan Beach. In Queens the district includes Ozone Park and Howard Beach.
For too long, Palestinian claims concerning the number of Arabs displaced from their homes in the course of Israel’s 1948 War of Independence have been accepted with little or no attempt at verification.
The full story has yet to be told, but even talk of the so-called Flame virus carries an important message. Certainly the widespread belief that Israel was behind this and earlier computer viruses that wreaked havoc on Iran’s nuclear efforts – a notion hinted at by Prime Minister Netanyahu and Vice Premier Moshe Ya’alon – should be taken as evidence that all things being equal, left to its own devices Israel is quite capable of taking care of itself. But there is an added dimension.
We urge readers in New York’s 6th Congressional District to vote for New York State Assemblyman Rory Lancman in the June 26 Democratic primary.
We call on voters in the 9th Congressional District in New Jersey to vote for Congressman Steven Rothman in the June 5 Democratic primary.
While we share the belief of most Americans that candidates for office should run on a level playing field, we are not naïve enough to believe incumbency doesn't matter. There are perks that come with political office, particularly the highest political office in the land. For example, presidents running for reelection are allowed to use Air For One, with all its attendant trappings of power, when traveling to and from campaign events – though their campaigns are required to reimburse the public treasury for expenses incurred.
The New York Times has now confirmed that it is once again in the tank for President Obama even as it was for candidate Obama four years ago. Over a period of four days beginning last Thursday, it unleashed an astounding four articles and an editorial slamming any discussion by Romney supporters of Mr. Obama’s two decade-long attendance at a church led by a virulent anti-white, anti-American minister on the grounds that such discussion raised the race and religion cards.
Last week we called attention to the extraordinary reports that the Obama administration had taken to scrubbing references in official documents to Jerusalem as part of Israel.
Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to form a coalition government with Kadima and cancel planned early elections has inspired endless speculation as to his motives. Some maintain he was seeking a unity government in order to bolster his position with regard to Iran. Others point to his desire to be better able to deal with certain domestic issues such as election reform and changes to the Tal Law.
The current issue of Commentary magazine tells of sordid – and possibly criminal – Obama administration efforts to alter some files of the George W. Bush administration that refer to Jerusalem as being part of Israel. The article also adds a fascinating footnote to the much-publicized Zivotofsky case.
When Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas tried to end run the PA’s treaty obligations to negotiate its statehood with Israel and instead secure recognition from the United Nations, Congress reacted by forbidding the transfer of State Department foreign aid funds to the PA. Several days ago, however, President Obama invoked a waiver provision in the law and authorized the funding to be resumed. And therein lies an important tale.
The Jewish Press urges readers to sign a circulating petition that calls on Shimon Peres to do all he can, in advance of accepting the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, to persuade Mr. Obama to free Jonathan Pollard, the Israeli spy serving a life sentence in a federal prison. (President Obama announced last month that he would be awarding the Medal to Mr. Peres, the president of Israel, in June.)
We were dismayed by the criticism Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel leveled at Prime Minister Netanyahu following the latter’s speech marking Holocaust Remembrance Day. Mr. Wiesel took issue with what he said was the prime minister’s likening of the Holocaust to the threat posed to Israel by Iran. Obviously whatever Mr. Wiesel says about the Holocaust is worth listening to. But we are nonetheless puzzled.
We would never presume to second-guess the IDF’s judgment concerning the actions of one of its officers while on duty. But several observations need to be made about the worldwide reaction to that video of IDF Lt. Col. Shalom Eisner’s striking a demonstrator with a rifle butt.
On recent occasions we have noted that several of President Obama’s public actions reflect a disdain for the traditional American view of the governmental process. Most stunning perhaps was his threat to the Supreme Court that it had better come out his way on Obamacare, or else. Having steamrolled the legislation through Congress (urging, it will be recalled, violations of longstanding procedures if necessary) he issued his challenge to the Supreme Court despite its constitutional duties to pass on the law’s constitutionality.
The highly publicized IDF expulsion from Hebron’s Beit Hamachpela of Jews who purchased and were residing in it was an extraordinary event. And it does not bode well for what we can expect from the Israeli government regarding historical Jewish sites.
For several days the media seized on the furor unleashed by comments made by Hilary Rosen – described rather vaguely in news accounts as a Democratic Party strategist and White House adviser, though she has visited with the president on at least 35 occasions, more frequently than the heads of key government agencies – about Ann Romney, wife of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney.
The announcement last week that, at the initiative of the Palestinians, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and PA Prime Minister Salam Fayyad and some of their senior aides are scheduled to meet soon in Jerusalem underscores a striking fact about the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians. It comes after a several months-long virtual vacuum of attention pertaining to the matter, and no one seemed to care.
Much attention has properly been paid to President Obama’s unprecedented remarks about the Supreme Court, which, he worries, may find his signature health care law unconstitutional. It will be recalled that the president spoke after the oral argument in the case in which the justices asked many highly critical questions about the constitutionality of the law and comments from many legal observers that the law is in trouble.
President Obama’s extraordinary public broadside on Monday against the Supreme Court, in reaction to questions posed by the justices during the course of three days of oral argument in the Obamacare case, is further confirmation that liberal supporters of Obamacare, including the president himself, are beginning to panic.
We were gratified that the anti-Israel Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement failed in its bid to bring the Park Slope Food Co-op, located in Park Slope, Brooklyn into its ranks. Last week, co-op members voted overwhelmingly against a motion calling for a referendum on whether to join BDS and refuse to carry Israeli goods.
The Jewish Press joins Klal Yisrael in mourning the loss of Rav Chaim Pinchas Scheinberg, a world renowned Talmudist and posek, longtime rosh yeshiva of Yeshiva Torah Ore in Jerusalem, and one of the foremost figures in the yeshiva world for three quarters of a century.
We share the dismay many have expressed over the recently announced decision by the State University of New York to abandon a longtime practice and no longer refrain from scheduling classes on major Christian and Jewish holidays. Nothing in the nature of new facts on the ground has been offered by the university to explain the controversial move, though concerns for Muslim sensitivities were apparently behind it.
For those of us with an abiding concern that a reelected Barack Obama, free of the fear of the dynamics of another political campaign, will revert back to his full-court press against Israel to make a deal with the Palestinians – even at substantial cost to its national and security interests – the president’s widely reported overheard comment the other day to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev was anything but reassuring.
The Jewish Press joins Klal Yisrael in mourning the death of Rav Moshe Yehoshua Hager, the Vishnitzer Rebbe in Bnei Brak since 1972 and a major Torah personality for more than sixty years.
European Union foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton’s condemnation of the murders in Toulouse, France, on Monday was symptomatic of the problem facing Israel in the international community.
It has largely passed under the radar screen, but Stephanie Rose, who was the deputy chief of the criminal division in the U.S. attorney’s office in northern Iowa at the time of the Agriprocessors immigration and Rubashkin prosecutions, has been nominated by President Obama to be a federal judge.
A new book by foreign policy pundit Peter Beinart, The Crisis of Zionism, seems certain to reignite the debate over President Obama’s feelings toward Israel and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But the focus will be a little different this time around. It will be not on his exposure to the likes of Rev. Jeremiah Wright, William Ayres or Rashid Khalidi but rather on the prominent members of the Chicago Jewish community who took him under their wing.
The Jewish Press urges its readers in the 27th Senate District to vote for Lew Fidler in the special election on Tuesday, March 20. As New York City Councilman representing Marine Park, Mill Basin, Sheepshead Bay and Madison, Mr. Fidler has ably represented the interests of his Orthodox Jewish constituents and deserves their support.
The current New York State Senate redistricting map championed by the Republican majority calls for the establishment of what has been characterized as a super Jewish district.
The New York Times recently threw a hissy fit over what it felt were overzealous efforts by Mayor Bloomberg and Police Commissioner Kelly to defend NYPD anti-terrorist surveillance programs the Times opposes.
Apartheid in Israel does not exist, however gender apartheid, apartheid against gays, as well as slavery and racism against blacks, Palestinians and non-Muslims are all commonplace in the Muslim world.
While the personal relationship between President Obama and Prime Minister Netanyahu thankfully seems to have taken a turn for the better, and on several issues they had a meeting of the minds – it seemed almost like a minuet – there is no escaping the reality that sharp policy differences remain on some fundamental issues.
Several weeks ago it was reported that Robert “Bud” McFarlane, President Ronald Reagan's national security adviser at the time of the Pollard arrest and obviously someone privy to all the information known to the government – wrote a letter to President Obama asking that Mr. Pollard’s sentence be commuted to time served.
We can be justly proud of all the media coverage revolving around a group of Orthodox Jewish students at Houston’s Beren Academy who had decided not to participate in a prestigious basketball competition if it conflicted with the requirements of their faith.
We are now more than ten years into America's invasion of Afghanistan, which was designed to rout the Taliban who had harbored Al Qaeda. The fighting has resulted in thousands of American and NATO deaths and casualties as well as billions of dollars spent. It would appear, however, that little has been accomplished in terms of American goals, with the Taliban still a formidable military and popular force in the country.
There is something off-putting about President Obama’s having announced in a video that his reelection campaign was launching a movement called “African-Americans for Obama.” The unease is not over an appeal to a particular ethnic group, which is a hallmark of American political campaigns.
We are encouraged by signs that shortsighted attempts by some Muslim groups to blunt the obviously successful proactive NYPD anti-terrorism programs – programs that involve heightened scrutiny of some Muslim-Americans – are not getting any traction.
It seems like only yesterday that the Obama administration missed no opportunity to declare its solidarity with Israel regarding the threat of a nuclear Iran.
We were disappointed by the Obama administration’s announcement that it intended to ask Congress to waive a ban on funding UNESCO because of its recognition of Palestinian statehood.
The two apparently coordinated attacks on Monday against Israeli diplomatic personnel present Israel with a significant challenge of how to respond, aside from an obvious concern for the safety of its citizens abroad.
In many respects President Obama’s imposition of a federal mandate calling for free contraception and certain abortion procedures on demand – and the uproar it has caused – is emblematic of the problems inherent in the way he sees his role.
The Affordable Health Care Act is the official title of what has become known, primarily to its opponents, as Obamacare. It provides for a variety of changes in the American health care system and has generated enormous controversy, some of which will be the focus of the Supreme Court in the next few months.
Many of us continue to be apprehensive about what the Middle East policy of a reelected President Obama would look like. Though Mr. Obama continues to insist that U.S. support for the security of Israel is "unshakable," his turnaround on pressing Israel on the 1967 lines and settlement growth, while welcome, was unnerving. Not only did it occur at the outset of the presidential campaign season, it was also uncommonly abrupt.
Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas's statement last Saturday that "Israeli intransigence" was behind the collapse of the recently convened Israel-Palestinian talks in Jordan may provide a moment of truth for President Obama.
The current controversy surrounding the film "The Third Jihad" is ostensibly over the propriety of the NYPD's airing it as part of in a training program.
A significant number of suicide attempts are committed by boys from not just religious but rabbinic homes -- because they thought they were homosexual and had no place in the Orthodox world they grew up in, even if they had never acted on those impulses.
Given its context, the recent declaration of the mufti of Jerusalem that it is Muslim destiny to destroy the Jewish people cannot be dismissed as the primitive rant of a crackpot cleric.
We were dismayed by a press release the other day from the World Jewish Congress describing a meeting WJC leaders had with PA President Mahmoud Abbas in London.
No one in the know is talking about the reason(s) for the abrupt postponement of the of those much ballyhooed joint U.S.-Israel military maneuvers that had been scheduled for this spring.
Back in September 2011, in an editorial titled "Magen David Adom: No Time to Blink," we expressed our dismay over reports in several Israeli newspapers that Israel's national ambulance service – its version of the American Red Cross – was in the process of removing the display of the Magen David symbol on its ambulances operating over the Green Line as a sop to the International Red Cross and the Palestinian Red Crescent, which are averse to the display of the Jewish symbol there.
We do not mean to denigrate the impressive military support and cooperation the Obama administration has directed toward Israel.
We applaud the passage by the New York State Legislature of the Iran Divestment Act of 2012.
We thought the outrageous incident involving an eight-year-old child being spat on by a haredi man because he didn't think she was modestly dressed was about as over the top as one could get.
It is hard to make much sense out of the recent military threats Iran has been aiming at the West and the U.S. in particular.
It would appear that New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg's vocal support for the Ground Zero mosque – not only did he come out in favor of it, he labeled opponents as un-American – is coming back to haunt him. Some leaders of New York's Muslim community apparently believe he will bend over backward to accommodate their concerns, however wrongheaded.
June 21, 2026 
