Opinion

Since August 2021, when President Joe Biden executed the disastrous pullout from Afghanistan, he’s been underwater in the polls.  According to the RealClearPolitics polling average, he never got above 46% approval in all that time, and he usually hovers between 38 and 40%.  The latest war under his watch has not helped his approval numbers, and his polling against Trump and other Republicans is even worse.  For many reasons, this war in Israel could be the final nail in the coffin of the Biden re-election campaign.

Election Day 2023 was another downer for Republicans nationally.  Losses in Ohio, Kentucky, and Virginia showed yet again how poorly the national GOP is doing messaging to and bringing out voters.  Once again, like in 2022, a bright spot for the Republican Party comes from the most unlikely of sources: deep-blue New York.

On October 6, Israel and Gaza were in a ceasefire. How did that work out?

10,000,000 civilians were killed in World War I. Where were the protests? Where were the cries for humanitarian aid? Where were the cries, “Watch out for the civilians?” Where were the flyers to notify civilians of where to expect the strikes so they could move out of harm’s way? Where were the demands for a humanitarian ceasefire?

Rose Lubin excelled at anything she put her mind to. She left a comfortable life in the suburbs of Atlanta because she knew where she had to be. After literally saving hundreds of lives on Simchas Torah, she was killed last week at her post, while preventing a larger terrorist attack in the Old City of Jerusalem. She died doing what she loved, protecting the Land of Israel and the Jewish people. Few of us will be called on to make the sacrifice that Rose and her family made. But all of us have a responsibility to sacrifice something in this time of existential crisis.

This week’s parshah begins with the story of Yaakov Avinu’s dream of the ladder ascending to heaven and the angels going up and down. At the end of the dream, G-d speaks to him. It is a promise to a man, but it foretells the history of a people. It is a lesson of profound importance in our own time.

The enemies of Israel are out in full force, pressuring Western countries into bullying the Jewish state to forget about the atrocities committed on October 7. It’s simple to recognize the ones who march on the streets and scream for Jewish blood, spray-paint genocidal slogans, don themselves in terrorist clothes, and shoot explosives at police officers.  Everyone can see that those are the bad guys.  What’s more insidious are those who sit on stages in suits, being interviewed by intellectuals, and say the exact same thing in a more politically correct way.