Tuesday Noon ~ TheFrontPageCover

Happy 4th everyone!
The Front Page Cover
~ Featuring ~
Who Cares About Jewish Unity?
by Caroline Glick
AGHnzvDgAIc_dkrUO59jF21LrUmiQ79dA3RIshU-YlAdfSFPOhc54BmJs1OTRtvnrEX-cCbeiMVXdurlydL03p7YzXsWg_6cAavWTIOYU1PogQU4ftAjtXM=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=
.
Google Donates Millions To
Fight Gun Rights And “White Privilege”
6DkfUYHL-dizqMb2-KH2kZSbMDOTH66UAPI57lkY96YGIj9S9TsxT3_Lp5L_-0xQBt7w8AJw570-VdK8_fxupljRwdLdjVjB8Ivf35Li7V8289SxGFYdxkX7Xcysf9xgz-4FlHJItt5cgCK-8w=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ Google is trying to disguise the nature of the $2 million grant they announced on Friday as being for reducing gun violence... They don’t want to come right out and say that it’s money that’s going for gun control, that might be damaging for their business. What they can do is say they’re doing the humanitarian thing, trying to stop inner city “gun violence,” and then give the lion’s share or all of the money to disarmament groups. The grant will be established by Google.org, the arm of the search engine behemoth that doles out money and resources to nonprofits, particularly to the PICO Live Free Campaign. As painful as it was to the psyche to read their liberal propaganda checklist that is the PICO website, a thorough search provided no explanation for the name PICO or if it’s an acronym for something too communist or unconstitutional to admit to just yet. They present themselves as being against gun violence, but what they really are is a leftist agitation and Constitution subverting cell as a look at their top two officials helps to reveal...http://rickwells.us/google-donates-millions-fight-gun-rights-white-privilege/
.
Palestinians: Mohammad Dahlan,
the New Mayor of the Gaza Strip?
lpPveIrsUSxa40ExveppeQ1IYGLUylQNWMMYi47B3Ea82WpS7XviK1PR3BsKa2V_bqdfClGk8uwTb6LbOTjqBEqxXhRBFA=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=
by Khaled Abu Toameh
{gatestoneinstitute.org} ~ Mohammed Dahlan is an aspiring Palestinian with huge political ambitions. Specifically, he hopes to succeed Mahmoud Abbas as president of the Palestinian Authority (PA)... Knowing this, Abbas expelled him from the ruling Fatah faction in 2011. Since then, Dahlan has been living in the United Arab Emirates. Hamas, the Islamist movement that has controlled the Gaza Strip for the past decade, used to consider Dahlan one of its fiercest enemies. As commander of the notorious Preventive Security Service (PSS) in the Gaza Strip in the 1990s, Dahlan was personally responsible for the PA's security crackdown on Hamas. On his instructions, hundreds of Hamas activists were routinely targeted and detained. The enmity was mutual; Dahlan too considered Hamas a major threat to him and the PA regime in the Gaza Strip... https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/10614/mohammad-dahlan-gaza
.
New Jersey Governor Issues A
State Of Emergency Executive Order
BSPPUl6jEQuAsymytMt0YOfVagID9wjGHwTdmeAgKafPkhV2OPnMWg5AmL7u5R7kluPynQ5bt_deed-hm8-Vub_QUy7LMWw3jfA8hfT-QKCQ123q8MEKKZNEPp2E1pElszyKmSUycWbhBUaR=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=
by Mac Slavo
{activistpost.com} ~ In an attempt to shield those living in the Garden State from the problems their government created, the governor, Chris Christie, has now signed an executive order issuing a “state of emergency.”... As speculation grows that New Jersey will soon follow in Illinois’ footsteps, the government is proving forecasters correct by their inability to pass a constitutionally mandated budget. Not only did New Jersey’s inability to pass a budget shut down the government but not really, don’t worry, you’ll still be taxed and welfare checks will still go out but it scared Christie enough to sign a state of emergency executive order... http://www.activistpost.com/2017/07/new-jersey-governor-issues-state-emergency-executive-order.html?utm_source=Activist+Post+Subscribers&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=4e65420039-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_term=0_b0c7fb76bd-4e65420039-387888649
.
California Democrat 
Faces Death Threats from the Left
qRm_zexXokgL45iBExZNyoev9LIXfqM8tyR8phu9MDSMKP6QQsO_P5kqiuygsFtNBD_yi55fPrFn3kXlbaxXq346gcHngJnfcI49rmtGeC5yCDS3B6VTcvEyxssymAN_XLHr08lwn-rLlcx8aiYjyEU3hoKe-A0wLGDvsXS492Nou5bLG_w=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=
by Lloyd Billingsley
{frontpagemag.com} ~ The online post offered a prayer that “someone checks his schedule for a baseball practice.” That could have been taken as a threat to Republicans now trying to replace liar-nObamacare, but it wasn’t... The target was Democrat Anthony Rendon, speaker of the California Assembly. As the Sacramento Bee reported, on June 28 outside Rendon’s office a protester carried a fake knife emblazoned with “Rendon” and pretended to stab in the back another protester dressed up as a bear. The demonstrators chanted, “Rendon, Rendon, shame on you. Action now on 562” and hoisted signs reading “Inaction Equals Death.” Rendon’s crime was to pull Senate Bill 562, a measure to establish “universal health care” in California. The speaker, who earned a PhD in political science from UC Riverside, had good reason to halt the bill, authored by Democrats Ricardo Lara and Toni Adkins... http://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/267163/california-democrat-faces-death-threats-left-lloyd-billingsley
.
Trump Supporters Confront
Soros Anti-Trump Marchers In Los Angeles
x8TKXHK-06bVA4_QFR1cE62f8Zd7NKyc0cKYSP6fIc13nViGCwR671VEkNCWNXbTjhRTpdmfxybSb0Vy1-FHbZtWnIfnWOUP6W2gQkspf-jUPjebiWXFh_qaCmCynHtF-2K5ciau9TYSo0BfjzTvBg=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=
by Rick Wells
{rickwells.us} ~ All those signs, renting the truck and paying the agitators can’t be cheap but when you’ve got the deep pockets of the evil one himself, George Soros, backing you... no amount of anti-American activity is beyond reach. This event, the “Impeach Trump March,” took place on Sunday, July 2nd in Los Angeles, although Soros was buying chaos across the country. Why he’s not in prison yet is a great mystery, but hopefully Attorney General Sessions is working on it. As Grindall61 recorded, a vocal and dedicated contingent of Trump supporters was in attendance despite not having an evil sugar daddy bankrolling them or providing any illicit motivation. Love of country and anger at the attempt to take us over by this corrupt and vile organization, the Soros network of anti-American agitators, was all they needed. They do this type of thing regularly, taking personal risks to make a difference in protecting our nation’s future... http://rickwells.us/trump-supporters-confront-soros-anti-trump-marchers-los-angeles/
.
G3awWDhq0cgsx1oLFdnSVnRhXyexuF4d4rUDu3lfkpM9CEhh9A5FQE1OH4TFrExvY2Q4ahoGJYapHkZh9qWTNzup1a-HaWzeK4jRKG9BkzXE=s0-d-e1-ft#%3Ca%20rel%3Dnofollow%20href=
.
Who Cares About Jewish Unity?
by Caroline Glick
{truthrevolt.org} ~ There are four important aspects to the government’s decisions on Sunday relating to egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall and the conversion bill. The first is that by and large, the headlines of the stories distort rather than explain what the government decided.

The second is the nature of the American Jewish community’s response to the government’s moves.

The third important aspect of the story is what the government’s decisions tell us about how the government perceive Israel’s relations with the American Jewish community.

Finally, the aftershocks of the decisions tell us something important about the prospects for Jewish unity today.

To the first issue. From the headlines in the newspapers, it is easy to assume that the government just struck a blow at egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall plaza and changed for the worse the status of non-Orthodox conversions in Israel. But neither is the case.

As far as the Western Wall is concerned, the government decision doesn’t harm the egalitarian prayers at the holy site. For the past several years, egalitarian prayer services have been taking place regularly at Robinson’s Arch along the southern wall of the Temple Mount Plaza, just outside the archeological park.

The area, easily accessible from the Dung Gate, is easier to reach by car and foot than the regular Western Wall complex.

In January 2016, after protracted negotiations with progressive American Jewish groups, the government agreed to connect the Robinson’s Arch complex to the Western Wall complex. The government also agreed that management responsibility for the egalitarian prayer area would be transferred from the ultra-Orthodox-controlled Western Wall Foundation, to a new body that would include representatives of Reform and Conservative Judaism as well.

On Sunday, the government reversed that decision.

People have every right to be angry about the government’s move. It just reneged on its agreement, and that isn’t right.

Substantively, though, the government didn’t change the status quo. It just chose not to change it.

While wrong, it doesn’t justify the vitriol being leveled at the government by American Jewish leaders threatening to rethink their support for Israel.

As for the conversion law, the government’s decision on Sunday should make the members of the American Jewish community angry, but not for the reasons they claim. The draft conversion law the government just approved doesn’t change the status of converts who were converted by non-Orthodox religious courts outside of Israel.

Twenty years ago, the Neeman Commission decided, with the agreement of the Reform and Conservative movements, that people who converted in Reform or Conservative conversions outside of Israel would receive citizenship if they chose to make aliya under the Law of Return. They would not, however, be registered as Jews for the purpose of marriage, divorce or burial by the state rabbinate.

This would remain the case under the proposed law.

The people who are harmed by the conversion law are the more than half a million Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union who made aliya under the Law of Return because they have Jewish lineage, but are not halachicly Jewish because their mothers are not halachically Jewish.

As Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, the chief rabbi of Efrat and noted conversion expert, explains, “According to great halachic authorities like the former chief rabbi of Israel Rav Ben-Tzion Uziel, although these Israeli citizens are not formally Jewish and must undergo a formal conversion, ‘it is incumbent upon the Religious Court to convert them because they have Jewish seed (zera Yisrael).’” Riskin adds, “Of course, we must always encourage observance of the commandments, but the bottom line must be to love and embrace them; they are living in Israel and their children will be going to the IDF.”

Uziel’s ruling informs the conversion policies of religious-Zionist rabbis and conversion courts, but it is rejected by the ultra-Orthodox religious authorities who today exercise absolute control over state conversions.

When the Neeman Commission reached its accord with the Conservative, Reform and Orthodox Jewish authorities in 1997, the Orthodox authorities included both ultra-Orthodox and religious-Zionist, or Modern Orthodox, rabbinic authorities.

As a result, the assumption of the commission members was that the state conversions would be conducted in an atmosphere that reflected a plurality of views represented in the Orthodox Jewish world, including the view of Rav Uziel, which informs the judgment of religious-Zionist rabbinic authorities.

This assumption ceased to be correct however in 2004.

That year, then-prime minister Ariel Sharon’s coalition began unraveling. Sharon’s decision to adopt the policy of the Left and unilaterally withdraw from Gaza while destroying the Israeli communities in Gaza and northern Samaria and forcibly expelling their 10,000 residents tore his party and government apart. Sharon fired the ministers from the National Religious Party and the National Union.

To survive in office, Sharon had to retain the support of the ultra-Orthodox parties. To this end, he acceded to their demand to kick religious-Zionist rabbis out of the state rabbinate and replace them with ultra-Orthodox rabbis. Sharon’s move gave the ultra-Orthodox total control over all state conversions.

Since then, the ultra-Orthodox rabbis have used their absolute to cancel the conversions performed by the most senior rabbis in the religious-Zionist community. Some of the converts affected have been Jews for decades and raised Jewish children.

Their Judaism and that of their children was retroactively denied by the rabbinate.

The ultra-Orthodox rabbinic courts subject half a million Israeli citizens who made aliya under the Law of Return to humiliating and drawn-out conversion processes even though many of them have lived their entire lives as Jews in Israel.

Rather than be given consideration as Rav Uziel and the national-religious religious authorities prescribe, they are treated as though they never had any relationship with the Jewish people of which they have always considered themselves members.

Due to the progressive American Jewish groups’ enthusiastic support for the withdrawal from Gaza and the destruction of the Israeli communities in Gaza and northern Samaria, they did not object to Sharon’s move.

And now, by mischaracterizing the government- backed conversion bill as a slap in the face to Reform and Conservative converts, they miss the real reason they should be fighting the legislation.

They should be fighting the bill because a large majority of the members of their communities are intermarrying. The children of many of those marriages who want to make aliya will be subjected to the same humiliating conversion processes undertaken by the ultra-Orthodox state rabbinic courts as the half a million Israelis who are not registered as Jews with the Chief Rabbinate face.

The fact that this doesn’t seem to be a concern for them indicates two things. First, their anger over the proposed law is not substantive. The contents of the bill – from their perspective – do not change the status of their converts. They have been living at peace with that status, which they agreed to, for 20 years.

At the same time, the American Jewish leaders who threaten not to speak to or host Israeli politicians who support the bill, ignore the fact that the current law would doom the children of their intermarried community members to second-class status in Israel if they try to convert halachically in the framework of aliya, rather than ensuring that they are treated with the love and respect their deserve.

Along these lines, and in relation to the Israeli citizens from the former Soviet Union, Rabbi Riskin notes, “The entire fabric of Israeli society would be torn as under if a division were made between Israelis and halachic Jews. The religious courts must do their utmost to expose them to basic Shabbat, festivals and kashrut observance, but the most important goal must be to bring them into the Covenant with the Jewish people. After all they have gone through because of their ‘Jewishness’ under the Communist regime, it behooves us to incorporate them within our Jewish collective as part of the miracle of the ingathering of the exiles.”

So both in the case of the government’s decision regarding the Western Wall and in relation to its decision regarding the draft conversion law, American Jewish leaders are reacting with fury unhinged from the substance of the decisions themselves.

They cry foul to perceived, but largely imaginary, slights while ignoring the real problem with the conversions bill.

This then brings us to the government, and what apparently motivated it to take action that so provoked the American Jewish leadership.

In an interview with The Jerusalem Post, Rabbi Julie Schonfeld, vice president of the Conservative Rabbinic Assembly, accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of preferring momentary political advantage to the interests of the Jewish people. In her words, “The prime minister will do what he sees as beneficial for the next five minutes of his political life... There’s no possible way that the prime minister and his officials can argue they’re acting in the best interests of the State of Israel. They are betraying the citizens of the State of Israel in order to keep themselves in power for the next five minutes.”

While nasty, her criticism is not without foundation.

But what was Netanyahu’s alternative? If the American Jewish community flies off the handle and declares war against the government, threatening to blackball the elected leaders of the Jewish state when they adopt measures that while impolite have little substantive effect on their positions, then why should Israel take their views into account? If everything that the government does is terrible, then dialogue is reduced to recrimination. Sitting with progressive Jewish leaders from America means being subjected to a lecture about how terrible Israel is by people who do not live here and are not interested in having a serious discussion about what is actually on the table.

The fact that they are not interested in having that sort of discussion, and that they have no interest in making Israel their home, is demonstrated by their indifference to the real implications of the draft conversion law. Leaders truly invested in the future of both their communities and of their communities’ ties with Israel would be appalled by the retention of monopoly control over conversions by rabbinic authorities who refuse to recognize the difference between children of intermarriage and non-Jews with no relation to Judaism and the Jewish people.

They would insist that religious-Zionist rabbis be reinstated in the state rabbinate, and work avidly to ensure that conversions once approved cannot be overturned.

The real problem here is that while everyone involved speaks of the need for Jewish unity, no one involved in the conversation seems to be motivated to work toward that goal.

Jewish unity isn’t achieved by mutual recrimination.

And it isn’t achieved by one-upmanship. It is achieved through compromise based on mutual respect and love for fellow Jews. Absent that, nothing good will come from negotiations or laws or agreements. Absent that, nothing good will come at all.
E-mail me when people leave their comments –

You need to be a member of Command Center to add comments!

Join Command Center