Polls show that a large percentage of Israeli citizens have lost faith in the future of their nation

Major General (Reserve) in the Israeli Army, and former ombudsman for the occupation forces, Yitzhak Brick, has sounded an alarm over the growing inefficacy of the country’s army to win a possible war.

Warning that the Israeli occupation forces have turned into an “air force army,” Brick criticized the leadership in Tel Aviv for their “sensitivity” towards human losses on the ground.

“Whoever wants to completely avoid losing on the battlefield, completely loses the deterrence of the army and the ability to win the war. This way of thinking and managing the security echelons will eventually lead to much heavier losses in the war,” the former official said in a column published on 10 May by Channel 12.

Brick went on to add that Israel’s land army and reserve system have been continuously ignored: “We lost the inter-arm combat capability and became a one-dimensional Air Force army that alone could not win a war.”

He goes on to highlight that the occupation forces in general, and the land army in particular, “are not ready for war.”

The warning comes on the heels of a number of polls showing that a large portion of Israeli citizens have lost faith in the future of their nation.

A poll published by the Pnima Movement at the start of the month showed that 40 percent of Israelis were not optimistic about the country’s future. It also showed that 33 percent of Israeli youth are seriously considering emigrating out of the occupied territory.

Meanwhile, at least 75 percent of Israeli Arabs believe Jews have no right to sovereignty in occupied Palestine, according to a survey by Habithonistim–Protectors of Israel published on 9 May.

In an article published in Yedioth Ahronoth on 7 May, former Israeli prime minister Ehud Barak expressed fears of the imminent demise of Israel before the 80th anniversary of its founding.

“Throughout Jewish history, the Jews did not rule for more than eighty years, except in the two kingdoms of David and the Hasmonean dynasty, and in both periods, their disintegration began in the eighth decade,” Barak said.

Earlier this year, former Air Force chief Amikam Norkin said Israel no longer enjoys superiority and freedom over the skies of Lebanon, highlighting that this reality was apparent to the Israeli military establishment after Hezbollah began manufacturing its own drones.

In the weeks after this statement by the Israeli official, Iran notified Tel Aviv that the army of the Islamic Republic has missiles pointed at all of their nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons sites.

Source: The Cradle

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Paris, Frankfurt (13/10 –  42)

Twenty-First Century technology has a way of speeding everything up – often overdriving events beyond human control. Exhibit “A”: the internet. Hamas and its supporters were undoubtedly aware of the multiplication impact of social media when they mounted their recent murderous attack on a “peace party” along the Israeli border (twist the irony dial); Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, intent on a blanket reprisal on the Palestinians, apparently does not care what the internet thinks, says or reports.

It is perplexing to the simple-minded when there are no “good guys” in a fight. Note how the vociferous left, long championing what they condemn as “disinformation” or “misinformation”, is now caught in their own web, as barrages of anti-Israel – not to mention pro-Hamas terrorist attack – flood the Web.

Go back a bit. Betar “pioneers” infiltrating British-controlled Palestine in the 1930s harassed the inhabitants by “occupying” ancient water sources and springs – thus preventing the Bedouins and farmers from accessing them. No water = no life.

This is related in detail in the memoir of Moshe Arens.

A video clip of an Arab man and his elderly father confronting an Israeli settler, explaining patiently that the newcomer had stolen and now occupied the old man’s land. The Arab showed the Israeli the deed. The settler responded by stating that God had given him the land.

A situation without a resolution.

An ugly history leads up to the present impossible conundrum. The Haavara Agreement, signed in 1933 by an unlikely collaboration between Zionists and German Nazis, facilitated the emigration of German Jews to Palestine, taking assets pointedly used to purchase German goods for export to that sad land. Most of the Jewish population of Germany, comfortable and prosperous, declined to move to the desert (which the British controlled, in any case, and did not welcome settlers). They had no idea of what lay in store for them, as the Jewish Agency for Palestine, the main Zionist organization there at that time, played a key role in organizing illegal immigration of Jews from Europe.

Technology exacerbates the hostility, by stoking rumors, conjectures, info and disinfo. Was Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu aware of the impending attack – considering little Israel has the most advanced military intelligence capability on the planet? Did the Egyptians not pass urgent warnings to Israel of a likely Hamas military move? Was the attack a “false flag” event laid by Netanyahu to shore up his political position? We’ll likely never know. What we do know is the furious backlash of the authorities to the media blitz.

As BLM supporters gloried in the terrorist attack, and supporters of Israel battled back in the media, the European Commission piled in, warning billionaire-joker Elon Musk that “X”, née “Twitter”, that allowing what the EC ceremoniously deemed “hate speech” was unacceptable.  According to guidelines set up by the “Digital Services Act”, rules were being breached, by jaw-snapping, foaming-at-the-mouth rabid commentors on all sides of the current matter. This dictum from “Europäischer Kommissar” Thierry Breton, wielding a whip over the reckless social media site.

“Let me remind you that the Digital Services Act sets very precise obligations regarding content moderation.”

Musk comes back and challenges the saucy Info-Eurocrat with “What are you talking about? Give me examples” but the Kommissar won’t step into that trap, instead primly hand-waving with “Vu, merci. You are well aware of your users’ — and authorities’— reports on fake content and glorification of violence.

“Up to you to demonstrate that you walk the talk.” [The gent means “…walk the walk…” and not just “…talk the talk…”] Idioms, Thierry, idioms!

He signs off with an unctuous “My team remains at your disposal to ensure DSA compliance, which the EU will continue to enforce rigorously.”

A challenge to which Mr. Musk promptly replied, X’ing it out:

“We take our actions in the open.

“No back room deals.

“Please post your concerns explicitly on this platform.”

 – Elon Musk

Now do you see why he shelled out the billions to buy this nonsense social media site? What fun, to tease and tickle the hypocritical Eurocrats.

What is actually accurate or fake in this kangaroo court of social media? Are we to only accept the government stamp-of-approval-issued content? Think Pravda, think Izvestia (wink, wink). Ditto for the corporate media, obedient and in league with the Official Party Line.

Deep State undoubtedly has its feelings hurt that there are no longer direct lines, offices, perks and money for FBI, CIA and other “truth agents” in the TwitteRealm.

For that matter, why are millions of previously-trusting consumers now justifiably wary of their governments cajoling, threatening and mandating the so-called “vaccine”, untested mRNA “single-stranded RNA … in a growing protein chain” into their bloodstreams? Tens of thousands crippled, thousands dead maybe? You won’t see a single case of vaccine injury on CNBC, and no hospital will ever admit to such a possibility. It’s all over the internet.

Did the Israeli authorities, and military, just stand by and allow their citizens to be kidnapped and murdered? Were they simply incompetent, unaware, distracted? Is there a “back-story”?

Will we ever know? The media barrage is intense. Advertisers are perplexed. The world is being dragged into an unending domestic disturbance in the Middle East, one with no solution, across an ancient land poisoned by hatred and greed.

The Israelis declare “This is our 9/11.” Considering the enormous doubts raised about that spectacle, their statement may be truer than they imagine.

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It goes to show: You never know where it is going to go.

A while ago, I heard a moving story about a Torah scroll that belonged to the small Jewish community in Gweru (previously Gwelo), Zimbabwe, which closed its doors in the early 1980s. At the request of Jerusalem’s Menora Organization, the scroll had been smuggled out of the country in 1986 by Gilad and Micky Stern and their four children. It was brought to Israel by South African oleh Roy Scher, and installed in the synagogue in the town of Beit Yatir in the Hebron Hills, where it is in use to this day.

An article I wrote describing the Torah’s trek was printed in the Magazine (May 19) and did the rounds among Jewish Zimbabwean expats. Then a few weeks later, my phone rang. “Hi Richard. You don’t know me. My name is Brian Brom, calling from Johannesburg.”

The evening before, Brom had received a link to the article. 

The story of the smuggled Torah continues

Brian had grown up in Gwelo. His father, Myer, like so many of his generation fleeing the pogroms and poverty of Lithuania, had followed opportunity and landed up in Gwelo in 1936. The disparity between the way of life in the stifling shtetl and that of the broad expanses of Southern Africa could not have been starker, and the elder Brom embraced his new world with fervor. 

PART OF the traveling contingent at the Tomb of the Patriarchs. (credit: RICHARD SHAVEI-TZION)

His determination to break with the past was later heightened by the shocking discovery that his entire family had been slaughtered in the Holocaust. And yet, with all the anguish he associated with Jewish spiritual life, Myer Brom, a watchmaker by profession, understood that he was the only person in the small local Jewish community who had the skills necessary to lead synagogue services and read from the Torah. 

And so, in a remarkable and enduring act of loving-kindness, that is exactly what he did, week after week for over 40 years, supported by his British-born wife, Cynthia.

SHORTLY AFTER Myer died in 1982, the community folded, and the modest synagogue that they had built was eventually sold to a local church.

Brian had left Zimbabwe long before to study accountancy in Johannesburg and had become completely estranged from his Jewish identity. After his father passed away, he took a six-month break to backpack around Europe, and it so happened that the ship he was traveling on from Italy to Greece had a stop in Haifa. 

Despite his lack of interest in exploring the city, he decided to stretch his legs and take a walk. As he descended the gangplank, he was confronted by a huge advertising billboard. He had no idea what was written on it, but the cursive Hebrew writing shook his consciousness, for he recognized the same script that he had seen in his father’s desperate letters written after the war in Yiddish in search of his lost Lithuanian family.

“Lieber broeder, liebe shvester…” (“Dear brother, dear sister…”). The letters had sadly been returned to sender. That moment changed Brian’s  life forever and signaled the beginning of a journey to his ancestral roots. Brian returned to the boat, picked up his backpack, and headed for Jerusalem.

Among the goals he set for himself was to discover the whereabouts of the Torah scroll from which his father had read with such dedication. Yet despite persistent efforts over decades, it was the one goal he had not achieved. And then he happened upon the article. Astonished, he instantly knew that a mystery that had been haunting him for decades had finally been solved.

ON A typically sweltering August day, a crowd of people gathered at Beit Yatir. They consisted of Brom family members and friends who had traveled from Southern Africa and the US, ex-Southern African Israelis including Dorron Kline – CEO of Telfed, which assists in the integration and welfare of Southern African and other olim – and local community members. 

On the bus ride from Jerusalem, the traveling contingent stopped off at Kiryat Arba, for it is there that years before, Brian had dedicated a children’s park in memory of his brother Dr. Les Brom, who had died tragically in a car accident. He could not have known at the time just how close the park was to the location of the scroll that had eluded him for so long.

The memorable event at Beit Yatir sponsored by Brian and his wife, Audrey, was organized by the same Roy Scher who had brought the scroll to Israel from Cape Town so many years before. Tears flowed as the eloquent and impassioned Brom told his story. 

After a wonderful luncheon, the crowd gathered in the synagogue. The scroll, adorned with a new mantel (cover) dedicated to the Gwelo community and to the memory of Myer Brom, was carried from the ark to the bima accompanied by joyous dancing and singing. Then, closing the circle, Brian’s son Dovi read from the scroll just as his grandfather had done for so many years.

Brian had mentioned in his speech that when his father died, he knew nothing about saying Kaddish during the year of mourning. As we approached the end of the Mincha service after the ceremony, I suggested to him that it would be appropriate to say Kaddish in his father’s memory at this momentous moment. So it was, that the circle was closed ever tighter.

Source: The Jerusalem Post

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Morocco’s royal court on Monday condemned comments by a leading Islamist opposition party that accused the authorities of defending Israel.

“The general secretariat of the PJD [the Justice and Development Party] recently published a declaration containing irresponsible excesses and dangerous approximations regarding relations between the Kingdom of Morocco and the State of Israel,” the royal court said in a statement, AFP reported.

“Morocco’s position towards the Palestinian question is irreversible,” the royal court continued.

“The kingdom’s international relations cannot be the subject of blackmail by anyone or for any consideration whatsoever, particularly in the current complex global context. The instrumentalization of the kingdom’s foreign policy in a domestic partisan agenda thus constitutes a dangerous, unacceptable precedent,” it added.

The PJD, an Islamist party led by former Prime Minister Abdelilah Benkirane, issued a statement last week in which it “deplored…recent positions taken by the foreign minister [Nasser Bourita] in which he appeared to defend the Zionist entity [Israel] in African and European meetings.”

It claimed this came as Israeli forces were committing “criminal aggression against our Palestinian brothers.”

Morocco normalized relations with Israel in December 2020 as part of the Abraham Accords, a series of U.S.-brokered deals between Muslim countries and the Jewish state.

Those agreements broke with decades of Arab consensus that formal ties should only be established with Israel in the event of a peace agreement that gives the Palestinians their own state.

Source : Jns

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Israeli private detective, Aviram Azari has pleaded guilty for involvement in surveillance and cyber intelligence hack scheme in April 2022. Azari, who has been detained and under investigation in the United States since 2019, used New Delhi-based hacking company BellTroX Info Tech Services to conduct surveillance operations on Russian oligarchs.

The Azari case surfaced the name of a Russian businessman and aluminium magnate, Oleg Deripaska as one of the Israeli private detective’s clients. Deripaska allegedly employed Azari in connection with a business dispute in Austria. Both BellTroX and Deripaska’s press secretary had denied being involved in the hacking and claimed that the accusation was false.

New York prosecutors alleged that Azari had orchestrated a series of hacking attacks on behalf of unnamed third parties against US companies that are based in New York, using fake websites and phishing messages to steal passwords from email accounts. Azari’s attorney Barry Zone said the allegation against the defendant stemmed from the work that Azari did for German payment company Wirecard, which filed for insolvency in June 2020, owing creditors almost $4 billion, after disclosing a 1.9 billion hole in its accounts that EY said as the result of a sophisticated global fraud.

New investigation reports by an international consortium of journalists at The Guardian revealed a team of Israeli contractors who claim to have manipulated more than 30 elections around the world using hacking, sabotage and automated disinformation on social media. The team appears to have been working under the radar in elections in various countries for more than two decades.

The team was led by Tal Hanan, a 50-year-old former Israeli special forces operative who works privately using the pseudonym “Jorge”. Team Jorge ran a private service offering to covertly meddle in elections without a trace. The team also have corporate clients.

One of Team Jorge’s key services was a sophisticated software package, Advanced Impact Media Solutions also known as Aims. It controlled a vast army of thousands of fake social media profiles on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Telegram, Gmail, Instagram and YouTube.

Hanan told the undercover reporters that his services, which others described as “black ops”, were available to intelligence agencies, political campaigns and private companies that wanted to secretly manipulate public opinion. He said they had been used across Africa, South and Central America, the US and Europe. The methods and techniques described by Team Jorge raise new challenges for big tech platforms, which have for years struggled to prevent nefarious actors spreading falsehoods or breaching the security on their platforms. Evidence of a global private market in disinformation aimed at elections will also ring alarm bells for democracies around the world.

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