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The Only Pro-Israel Argument That Works
A room full of Torah scrolls in Miami. Photo: Pini Dunner.
Baruch Hashem, this is the only pro-Israel argument that works:
There is a Creator
Who made the universe,
And gave a slice of it to the Children of Israel,
As an everlasting inheritance.
This is how every Jew should begin their conversations about Israel, because this is how Judaism’s most sacred text begins her magnum opus. (And check out the very first Rashi commentary on the very first verse of the very first chapter of the Five Books of Moses).
Indeed, it is specifically the Torah that records the name “Zion” 154 times, “Jerusalem” 669 times, and “Israel” 2,319 times. And it does so not with a pandering, insecure Zionism of recent man-made construction — but with an unstoppable, proud 4,000-year-old territorial right of an eternal people, gifted with an eternal land, by an Eternal G-d.
And yet our enemies — terrorists and terrorist sanitizers around the globe — all have the same criminal solution to the Jewish problem. To use politics, economics, and downright violence to steal an indigenous land from her indigenous people, Israel from the Children of Israel.
But there exists no one — not a single man nor a group of people — who has the right to trade, barter, occupy, or negotiate away a homeland that is the birthright of every single Jew — no matter who, no matter where, no matter when.
Paper mandates are worth less than the paper they were written on.
Ceasefires enable the fires of terrorism to never cease.
And dangerous idiots on college campuses, in the hallowed halls of government, and in anti-Jewish hate mobs everywhere refuse to answer one simple question: Where does the name “Jew” come from?
Once again, the answer comes from the Torah. From the “Kingdom of Judea” — the tribe of King David — the geographical origin point of all the Jews you know today.
As desperately as the propaganda pundits try to poison your brain, we are not “West Bankers” from the “West Bank.” We are Judeans from Judea and Samaria. Our indigenous right to our homeland is embedded in our very name itself. And no matter what lies the media tries to force down your brain, it’s impossible for us to “occupy” our own land.
It is the only land of the Jewish people.
Always has. Always will be.
And whoever gives up an inch of it is robbing the Jewish Nation.
And yet, since the destruction of our Holy Temple in Jerusalem over 2,000 years ago by the Roman Occupation of Israel, their subsequent iterations have raped, pillaged, murdered, pogromed, crusaded, inquisitioned, holocausted, and tried to wipe us off the face of the earth and make us forget our Judean identity.
But they have gloriously failed.
As Mark Twain declared in 1899, “The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and aggressive mind. All things are mortal but the Jew; all other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret of his immortality?”
The secret is simple.
It is the Torah.
The Torah is the secret to our immortality.
As the Talmud states, we are like fish in water. And no matter what the clever foxes of time whisper to us through their shiny teeth, our only way to survive is to stay in the “waters of Torah.” This is what Rabbi Akiva told Pappus Ben Judah in the time of the Roman Occupation of Israel. This is what our people’s leaders have told us throughout all the hard times since then. And this is what the Lubavitcher Rebbe has told us in our own time.
Torah isn’t just how we survive.
It’s how we thrive.
Why is this?
Because the Torah is not some history book or even a collection of religious rituals. It is a sacred book of Divine lessons, the ultimate frame-changer for all humanity. And it is exactly what we need more of right now.
So pick up a Torah book, download a Torah podcast, join a Torah class or simply call your rabbi.
The chapters of history don’t lie. We are the indigenous natives of Israel and we must always be proud of that immutable, immortal truth.
This is why the Shulchan Aruch opens her magnum opus of Jewish law with the teaching of the Talmudic scholar Yehudah ben Teima, who said, “Be as bold as a leopard … to do the will of your Father in Heaven.” The very first step of our legal system, of the pathway to justice and spiritual development, is the simple fact that it is only the proud Jew who studies Torah and cherishes her Mitzvot who passes on an unbreakable and undeniable Jewish identity to our children’s children’s children — and ensures we stand strong against all oppression and persecution, as demanded by our Torah.
Levi Y. Welton is a rabbi, stand-up comedian, and Lubavitcher Chossid. He can be reached at rabbiwelton@gmail.com
The post The Only Pro-Israel Argument That Works first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Netanyahu Expects to Meet Trump Next Week in the US
Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he expects to travel to the United States next week for meetings with President Donald Trump, after a “great victory” in the 12-Day War with Iran last month.
Netanyahu said in a statement ahead of a cabinet meeting that the visit will also include talks with other top US officials, such as Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, Trump’s Middle East envoy Steve Witkoff, and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick.
“We still have a few things to finalize in order to reach a trade agreement in addition to other matters,” he said, referring to Trump’s tariff plans. “I’ll also have meetings with congressional and Senate leaders and some security meetings.”
Trump last month announced a ceasefire ending the hostilities between Israel and Iran.
The US president said last week that his administration would send letters to a number of countries notifying them of their higher tariff rates before July 9, when the duties are scheduled to revert from a temporary 10% level to a range of between 11% and 50% announced on April 2 and subsequently suspended.
The U.S. initially set a 17% tariff on Israeli goods sold in the United States.
The post Netanyahu Expects to Meet Trump Next Week in the US first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts
Gazans receiving humanitarian aid in the Gaza Strip. Photo: Col. Richard Kemp
A recent Haaretz exposé accusing the Israeli military of ordering troops to fire at unarmed civilians near food aid sites in Gaza relied on mistranslation, selective quotes, factual omissions, and contradictions to construct a narrative of unprovoked Israeli violence, according to independent observers interviewed by The Algemeiner.
Debunking the claim of indiscriminate fire by the IDF, the experts instead described widespread fear of Hamas, not the Israeli military.
The Haaretz report quickly gained traction in international media. Titled “’It’s a Killing Field’: IDF Soldiers Ordered to Shoot Deliberately at Unarmed Gazans Waiting for Humanitarian Aid,” it was cited by outlets such as NPR, CNN, and Reuters, .
British military analyst Andrew Fox criticized the article for its framing and language. One of the discrepancies he pointed to was the shift in the English version of the story from soldiers firing “towards” civilians, as stated in the Hebrew original, to “at” them. The original Hebrew subheader also specified that soldiers were told to fire “towards” crowds “to distance them” from the aid sites, suggesting the shooting took place as a means of crowd control.
“It’s a matter of intent,” Fox told The Algemeiner. The phrase “‘at civilians’ means they are trying to kill them. It’s misleading because they’re firing warnings to avoid harm rather than shooting to cause harm.”
“Warning shots are something all armies do — we did in Afghanistan — but when you pull the trigger there’s always a risk of harm, and that’s not great,” explained Fox, a think tank researcher and former British Army officer. “Still, there’s a huge difference between that and deliberately targeting civilians.”
Colonel Richard Kemp, a former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, said that “shooting towards,” as in the original Hebrew, was “quite reasonable as a means to exercise crowd control in a war zone.”
“It is highly unlikely the IDF would be ordered to shoot at unarmed civilians unless they directly endangered them,” Kemp told The Algemeiner, citing Israel’s interest in the success of US-backed humanitarian relief efforts in Gaza. “The IDF rigidly follows laws of war. It makes no sense for the IDF to want to damage aid efforts. They cooperate with and facilitate [the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation] and want it to succeed. The ones who want it to fail are Hamas because it deprives them of control and funds. If anyone has been doing this shooting, it would be Hamas. They have the motive the IDF do not.”
There were other discrepancies in the original headline and its translation. Whereas the Hebrew version reads “Soldiers testify: IDF deliberately shoots towards Gazans near aid collection points,” the English version not only omitted any reference to mediating testimony or attribution, but also framed the event as an empirical fact: “IDF soldiers ordered to shoot deliberately at unarmed Gazans waiting for humanitarian aid.” Further, the phrase “waiting for humanitarian aid” may carry specific legal implications under international law, suggesting heightened vulnerability, whereas the Hebrew version referred more vaguely to crowds “near aid collection points.”
The subheader — which claimed soldiers were ordered to fire at unarmed civilians “even when no threat was present” — conflicted with the body of the text, which acknowledged that Israeli soldiers were wounded near the aid distribution zones. One sentence, appearing for the first time in the 21st paragraph, stood out: “There were also fatalities and injuries among IDF soldiers in these incidents.” The piece offered no explanation for how such casualties could occur if, as the article claims, no one else present was armed.
Elsewhere in the article, a soldier is quoted describing the IDF creating a “killing field,” supposedly involving heavy machine guns, mortars, and grenade launchers. But if such weapons were used with lethal intent, as Fox pointed out in a Substack post, the casualty rate would be far higher than the one to five reported per day. “That’s not a massacre,” he wrote, going on to quip that the only massacre to take place was one of “journalistic standards by Haaretz.”
“Could some soldiers accidentally miss and hit someone?” Fox wrote. “Yes. That is tragic and warrants investigation. However, the article itself acknowledges that the IDF is already examining those incidents. To jump from that to ‘deliberate killing fields’ is not responsible reporting. It is narrative laundering.”
The lack of video footage of the alleged mass shootings near GHF sites raises questions, given the large volume of media typically produced from Gaza, according to Fox, who noted that Hamas has repeatedly circulated images and clips for propaganda purposes.
“Every Gazan has a mobile phone, and numerous videos of other events have been released,” he wrote. “Why is there a total absence of any credible footage of these supposed IDF combined arms assaults on queuing civilians?”
Kemp, who visited two of the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation’s distribution sites in the days following the report’s publication, described hearing distant gunfire but reported that the aid operation proceeded mostly without disruption.
Col. Richard Kemp at humanitarian aid site with Gazans. Photo: Provided
“None of the Gazans there showed any concerns [about the IDF] whatsoever,” he said. Many of the civilians identified Hamas, not the IDF, as the main threat to the aid effort — a dynamic not acknowledged in the Haaretz report — telling Kemp they could not return home for fear of being recognized and targeted by Hamas.
“I must have spoken to at least 50 Gazans at each site,” he said. “Many told me they feared Hamas and Hamas threatened them if they used the sites.”
Kemp added that the atmosphere was chaotic but manageable, with GHF workers — most of them local Gazans — interfacing directly with the crowds. He described people smiling, holding up food packages, and expressing gratitude for the aid.
“The overwhelming impression was how grateful they were to be getting free aid for once, as opposed to buying aid looted by Hamas and sold at a premium,” he told The Algemeiner.
Many Gazans at the GHF sites who spoke to Kemp voiced hatred for Hamas and praised the US-backed aid effort, with some chanting “kill Hamas” while others said “I love America” or expressed admiration for President Donald Trump. The alignment between Hamas and UN criticism of the food program was “shocking,” Kemp added, particularly given the visible gratitude expressed by many recipients.
“They associate this aid program with the US,” he said. “They seem to like it, whereas Hamas and the UN seem to be its greatest enemies.”
The post Haaretz Claim That IDF Was Ordered to Fire on Unarmed Gazans Refuted by Translation Discrepancies, Contradictions, and Eyewitness Accounts first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS
Illustrative: Supporters of Hamas gather for a rally in Melbourne, Australia. Photo: Reuters/Joel Carrett
Two former Australian nurses who were charged over a viral video in which they allegedly threatened to kill Israeli patients have been banned from working under the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), four months after being suspended from their jobs at Bankstown-Lidcombe Hospital in Sydney.
Earlier this year, Ahmad Rashad Nadir and Sarah Abu Lebdeh, both 27, gained international attention after they were seen in an online video posing as doctors and making inflammatory statements during a night shift conversation with Israeli influencer Max Veifer.
The widely circulated footage, which sparked international outrage and condemnation, showed Abu Lebdeh declaring she would refuse to treat Israeli patients and instead kill them, while Nadir made a throat-slitting gesture and claimed he had already killed many.
Following the incident, New South Wales authorities suspended their nursing registrations and banned them from working as nurses nationwide. They are now also prohibited from working with or providing any services — paid or unpaid — to NDIS participants for two years.
This latest ban, which took effect on May 9, applies nationwide and prohibits Nadir and Abu Lebdeh from working with NDIS participants or performing any role for or on behalf of NDIS providers in any Australian state or territory.
Abu Lebdeh was charged with federal offenses, including threatening violence against a group and using a carriage service to threaten, menace, and harass. If convicted, she faces up to 22 years in prison.
Nadir was charged with federal offenses, including using a carriage service to menace, harass, or cause offense, as well as possession of a prohibited drug.
Currently, both of them remain free on bail and have not yet entered any pleas, with a court appearance scheduled for July 29. They’ve been prohibited from leaving Australia or using social media while their cases proceed.
According to Nadir’s lawyer, the video was captured “without the consent and knowledge” of his client, and he intends to argue for its exclusion from court.
“We will be challenging the admissibility of the video recording because it was a private conversation which was recorded by the person overseas without my client’s consent and without his knowledge,” Nadir’s lawyer said. “That video recording was made secretly overseas and was unlawfully obtained.”
This incident, which drew international attention, occurred amid a surge of antisemitic acts across Australia since the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza began in October 2023, with Jewish institutions targeted in arson attacks and businesses defaced.
Antisemitism spiked to record levels in Australia — especially in Sydney and Melbourne, which are home to some 85 percent of the country’s Jewish population — following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, with the escalation continuing amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Iran.
According to a report from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s Jewish community experienced over 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024, more than quadrupling from 495 in the prior 12 months.
The number of antisemitic physical assaults in Australia rose from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.
The post Former Australian Nurses Charged Over Threatening Viral Video Banned from NDIS first appeared on Algemeiner.com.