Earlier this month on September 11, a young IDF soldier named Sgt. Gideon Hanghal was on duty, manning a booth to provide security for the Jewish community of Givat Asaf, near Beit El.

Hanghal, 24, had come a long way in just a few short years. In December 2020, he had made aliyah from the northeastern Indian state of Manipur together with his parents and some of his siblings.

A member of the Bnei Menashe community, which is descended from one of the Ten Lost Tribes, Hanghal was fulfilling his dream and that of his ancestors by settling in the Land of Israel and defending it.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

There is bitter irony underlying the raging debate about whether Israel should hold on to the Philadelphi Corridor at the southern end of Gaza even at the expense of a possible hostage deal with Hamas.

It was, after all, precisely 19 years ago this month, on September 12, 2005, that the IDF withdrew from Philadelphi, thereby capping off the Israeli retreat from the Gaza Strip.

That disastrous move, in defiance of strategic logic as well as common sense, set the stage for the traumatic series of events that have enveloped the Jewish state since Oct. 7.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

Of all the falsehoods promulgated about the Middle East – and they are many – one of the most dogged and pernicious of all is the assertion that an immutable status quo exists on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

Indeed, whenever Jews seek to exercise their fundamental right to freedom of worship on the Mount, as they did last week, the same tired platitudes are paraded about by the media and various world leaders to denounce such activity as a violation of the status quo.

Well, I hate to break it to them, but the Temple Mount status quo is nothing more than a myth, as anyone with access to Google can easily verify.

Here are the unvarnished facts.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

For American Jews still faithful to the Democratic Party, the writing is on the wall, and it has increasingly begun to look like antisemitic graffiti.

For decades, a majority of US Jews have loyally cast their ballots for the Democrats, irrespective of how much the party has been waffling on issues close to their hearts.

The time for change is long overdue.

For their own sake and for the sake of America and for Israel, American Jews need to embrace the Republican Party and make it their new political home.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles

Jewish history over the past two millennia is rife with episodes of trauma and tragedy. Nearly every century, it seems, has seen Jews in various parts of the world massacred or expelled, forcibly converted, or oppressed.

The litany of horrors is so long, the suffering so unimaginable, that it is perhaps inevitable that our collective memory would fail to contain it all.

And yet, if we truly believe that every person is akin to a world unto himself, then we owe it to those who were murdered because they were Jews to salvage as much as we can about what befell them.

Continue to the full article  |  More articles