Opinion

Late last week, the International Criminal Court issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Defense Minister Yoav Gallant. The ramifications for this are equally broad and non-existent.  Nothing will change because these warrants were issued, yet everything has changed because they were issued.  How the United States and the world reacts to this is what makes the warrants themselves so dangerous.

With impressive speed and a lot more fanfare than normally accompanies such news, President-Elect Donald Trump has nominated and staffed up a large number of his incoming administration.  This is the first part of a lengthy process of hearings and confirmations, but like most of what Trump does, the American media and people are fascinated and riveted by each new decision. In the spirit of adding to that fanfare and throwing more gasoline on the fire, here are the grades for the most consequential of Trump’s picks.

The shocking murder of Rabbi Zvi Kogan has sent ripples of grief and concern through the UAE, Israel, and the global Jewish community. A 28-year-old emissary of the Orthodox Jewish Chabad movement, Rabbi Kogan’s death in the Emirati city of Al Ain marks a dark moment in the evolving relationship between Israel and the UAE, a relationship that has seen remarkable progress since the signing of the Abraham Accords in 2020.

It’s time to abandon the smears about Donald Trump and his voters being fascists and prioritize the clear-and-present danger to Jews from woke and Islamist antisemites.

(Nov. 19, 2024 / JNS) Maybe he isn’t Hitler after all. That’s the upshot of the announcement by political talk-show hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough after they journeyed to the Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida this past weekend for a chat with President-elect Donald Trump.

Israel has been at war for more than 14 months. We are told that Hamas has been destroyed as a military force. Yet soldiers die almost daily in Gaza. We are told that Hezbollah has been brought to its knees and no longer functions as a cohesive fighting army. Yet rockets continue to fly; according to the Alma Research and Education Center, in October more projectiles were fired from Lebanon than in any month since October 7, 2023, and 54 Israelis were killed in the North. The IDF is performing at a laudable level and we must be united in its support until the war is over. However, we are battling on multiple fronts and the cost to families, businesses, and the government is high. How can we retain our spirit and confidence under such stressful boundary conditions?

In the greatest comeback in political history, Donald Trump was elected to become the 47^th President in American history. The joy in the Jewish community was palpable, with a huge sense of relief in many neighborhoods knowing that, for now, a return to normalcy was approaching. Electoral success is only the beginning, however. For the second Trump term to be truly historic, he needs to accomplish very specific tasks to get the country back on track.