The Jerusalem planning committee on Wednesday approved using a third of an acre of the Jabal Mukkaber neighborhood in eastern Jerusalem to build religious facilities for the Jewish neighborhood of Nof Zion, where about 90 families reside. Nof Zion overlooks the Old City, and the view encourages construction of luxury housing, despite the vicinity of the Arab neighborhood, from which several terror attacks have been launched this year. The Jewish land was purchased in the 1970s.

Councilwoman Laura Wharton (Meretz), speaking to Ha’aretz, said the land is designated for a synagogue and a mikvah (ritual bath).

The Jerusalem municipality released a statement saying, “The area in question is part of the Nof Zion neighborhood, intended for public buildings and a synagogue. The land is located in the center of the neighborhood surrounded by Jewish homes and isn’t [built] at the expense of Jabal Mukkaber. The city is working to find solutions for all its residents and to erect public buildings for the residents of both Nof Zion and Jabal Mukkaber.”

The city has already earmarked about $2.9 million a year ago, for building a mikvah in the Jewish neighborhood of Ma’aleh Zeitim in eastern Jerusalem, near the Arab neighborhood of A-Tur.

Wharton complained that “tens of thousands of Palestinians living near Nof Zion are short of classrooms, kindergartens, public parks, community centers and basic services. The city adds to its sins by advancing construction plans for new residents while failing to permit construction for the Palestinians.” She also suggested that “all Israeli citizens are paying for the expropriation of land for a small number of settlers, who move into Palestinian areas which none of the world recognizes as Israeli territory.”

Councilwoman Laura Wharton’s Meretz party only netted two seats on the Jerusalem City Council, the rest are religious and nationalist members, and not a single member is Arab. The reason is that Jerusalem Arabs habitually boycott the elections, some out of resentment of the Jewish takeover back in 1967, most because they fear retribution. No self-preserving Arab resident of eastern Jerusalem would dare run for the Zionist city council, because, win or lose, his life expectancy would be meager.

According to American analyst Nathan Thrall, in municipal plans 52% of the land in eastern Jerusalem is barred from development, 35% is designated for Jewish neighborhoods, and 13% is for Arab use, roughly comparable to the current ratio of Jewish (64%) and Arab (36%) residents of Jerusalem.

Arabs make up 20.7% of the Israeli population.

Recently, Israel approved hundreds of new homes designated for Jewish and Arab communities in Jerusalem.

{Originally posted to The Daily Wire website}

When it comes to the linkage between violence and rhetoric, I abide by a fairly simple rule: If you’re not advocating violence, you’re not responsible for violence. That doesn’t mean your rhetoric is decent or appropriate; it may be vile, awful and factually incorrect. But it isn’t the cause for violence.

President Barack Obama also abides by a simple rule when it comes to linking violence and rhetoric: If he doesn’t like the rhetoric, it’s responsible for violence. And if there’s violence associated with rhetoric he likes, then the violence must have been caused by something else.

This shining double standard was on full display this week after an anti-white racist black man shot 12 police officers in Dallas just hours after Obama appeared on national television explaining that alleged instances of police brutality and racism were “not isolated incidents” but rather “symptomatic of a broader set of racial disparities that exist in our criminal justice system.” Obama was happy to label the shootings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile in Minnesota, without evidence, as part of a broader racist trend in law enforcement across the country.

Then Micah Xavier Johnson opened fire on white police officers — and anti-police racist radicals attacked officers in Minnesota, Tennessee, Missouri, Georgia and Texas again — and Obama suddenly got amnesia. Now, it turned out, rhetoric had nothing to do with their actions. In fact, said Obama, he had no idea why Johnson — who explicitly said he wanted to murder white cops — would do such a thing. “I think it’s very hard to untangle the motives of this shooter,” Obama said while in Poland. “What triggers that, what feeds it, what sets it off — I’ll leave that to psychologists and people who study these kinds of incidents.” He did blame one element for the attack, however: lack of gun control. “If you care about the safety of our police officers,” he lied, “you can’t set aside the gun issue and pretend that that’s irrelevant.”

Odd how this works. When a white racist shoots up a black church in Charleston, South Carolina, Obama targets America’s legacy of racism, and the entire media call for a national fight against Confederate flags; when a nut tries to shoot up a Planned Parenthood building in Colorado, the left emerges to claim that the pro-life movement bears culpability. But when an Orlando jihadi shoots up a gay nightclub, Obama and company declare the motives totally mysterious and then impugn Christian social conservatives and the National Rifle Association.

Here’s the truth: Obama’s rhetoric isn’t responsible for murder, but it’s certainly responsible for death. That’s because Obama’s racist rhetoric has led to the greatest rise in racial polarization since the 1970s. In 2010, just 13 percent of Americans worried about race relations, whereas in April 2016, 35 percent of Americans did. That racial polarization has, in turn, led to distrust of police officers, many of whom respond by pulling out of the communities that need their help most. Crime rates go up, including murder rates. Ironically, Obama’s supposed rage at white officers killing blacks leads to more blacks killing blacks in cities no longer policed by whites.

But there’s good news: Obama can always blame everyone else. When you’re held responsible for your feelings rather than your actions, it’s always simple to direct attention toward the evil conservatives who insist that all lives matter rather than care enough about black lives to save them by endorsing the police who work to protect black men and women every day.

An unidentified American human rights activist whose vehicle overturned Sunday morning refused to be evacuated to an Israeli Hospital, TPS news agency reported.

The activist, who lives in Bir Zeit near Ramallah, must have shuddered at the thought of riding in a Jewish ambulance of the “occupation” that had been sent from the Nevei Tzuf community in Samaria.

Instead, he waited for a Palestinian Authority Red Crescent ambulance to take him to his preferred destination, a hospital in Ramallah.

Whether he likes it or not, initial aid was offered by Magen David medics.

He is lucky he did not lose consciousness, in which case he would have woken up in one of those Zionist hospitals.

The Israeli left is shooting itself in the foot, Shas head Aryeh Deri has said, according to the hareidi news outlet Kikar Hashabat.

Aryeh Deri, the Minister of Economy, spoke after left-wing actor Oded Kotler called Likud voters “a herd of cud-munching cattle.” Kotler joins prominent leftists such as Yair Garboz, who called right-wing voters “foolish mezuzah kissers,” and Alona Kimhi, who suggested that right-wingers are “Neanderthals” who should “drink cyanide.”

Deri joked about Kotler’s insults, saying, “At best, we’re invisible, at worst, we’re a herd of cattle.” During the last elections, Shas campaigned on behalf of “invisible” disadvantaged sectors in Israel.

Growing more serious, Deri said, “Some people on the Left have the idea that whoever thinks differently than they do is primitive.”

That attitude will lose them the next elections, too, he warned. “It’s a shame that some don’t understand that this idea, this snobbish condescension, is part of why they’ve been in the opposition for so many years,” he said.

Still, that hasn’t stopped Deri from calling on the Zionist Union to join the coalition.

It’s become clear to me that getting Haredim into the army and the workforce to “share the burden” is not and has not been about that at all, but rather, as the Haredim have been claiming all along, it’s about a war on Torah, Judaism, and observant Jews in general.

As I’ve said in the past, I think its important for Haredim to be part of the workforce, if for no other reason then to break them out of the poverty cycle. On a secondary level, I think having Haredim in the army would be good for the army, in the same way that Religious-Zionist Jews have been good for the army, for the values they bring with them that positively affect and change the organizations and environments they participate in.

And as Nachal Haredi has proven, Haredim do make very good soldiers.

So what convinced me?

The first hint is that if this really was about all citizens sharing the burden then why isn’t anyone trying to pass draconian laws forcing Israeli Arabs citizens to “share the burden” too?

But there’s a much bigger give-away.

Recently there have been virulent attacks on the Hesder system.

The Hesder system is a 5 year track which is divided between 16 months of army service and three and a half years of Torah study. Typically speaking, some Religious-Zionist students take this track as it allows them to develop their Torah studies and also serve their country. During their service, most serve in homogeneous units with other Hesder students.

After five years, the student-soldier is released from the army and allowed to go on to college and work.

Approximately 10% of Religious-Zionist students (around 750 boys) choose the Hesder track instead of the full three year army program each year. The program is actually open to any Israeli who wants to seriously learn Torah and serve. I believe it was based on the original Nachal program that combined a year and half of army service, with a year and a half of service creating new Kibbutzim.

The argument being bantered around is that it is not fair that Hesder soldier-students are not “sharing the burden” unlike other Israelis who do three full years of service, which, I guess, doing simple math would sound unfair.

But, life is hardly ever simple math, so lets look at some supporting numbers that tell a completely different story.

85% of Hesder students serve in combat units. A percent that is far above and beyond that of the general population. So when it comes to the burden they are undertaking, Hesder students are undertaking the dangerous part of that burden, unlike say, a news reader in the Army Radio unit, or an army cook who serves one week on and one week off.

And it’s no secret that Hesder students are rated as top quality combat soldiers. As Rav Eliezer Melamed has pointed out, in performance contests between units, its usually the Hesder soldiers that come in first.

10% of Hesder students go on to become commanders and officers in combat units. Officers, by the way, are required to serve 4 years.

And unlike the general population, where only around 10% of the general population shares in the reserve duty burden, the vast majority of Hesder student do decades of reserve duty in combat units, meaning those in Hesder are taking on far more than their share of the reserve duty burden.

As an aside, most Hesder students don’t make Yerida (emigrate) from Israel either.

The obvious conclusions is that if you want to produce top-notch combat soldiers, combat officers, and productive citizens, we should actually be expanding the Hesder system.

I now suspect it is exactly the statistics above that have expanded this war on religious Jews to include the Hesder program.

On Sunday evening, a hundred residents of south Tel Aviv, as well as former MK Michael Ben-Ari, demonstrated in Neve Sha’anan’s Levinsky Park, following the stabbing spree carried out by the illegal African infiltrators that have taken over this section of Tel Aviv.

The protesters claimed that the police have abandoned their neighborhoods, and have not done anything to stop the downward slide that has turned this Tel Aviv neighborhood into the most dangerous place in Israel.

Violence, stabbings, rape, and shootings have become commonplace.

During the protest, police kept thousands of African infiltrators as well as the members of Leftwing activist groups that enable and help these illegal infiltrators, away from the protesters, though that didn’t stop both the infiltrators and activists from jeering and taunting the Tel Aviv residents.

Still, it was probably the most police protection these citizens have received in months.