Many investors find the idea of socially responsible investing (SRI), appealing.
What makes a company socially responsible? How can you solve ethical dilemmas that can arise in business?
Rabbi Shaya Karlinsky, head of Darche Noam institutions, explains how Jewish thought can answer some of the most difficult moral questions in the investment world today.
Should you invest in a self-driving car company that pre-programs its cars to kill pedestrians? Is it appropriate to invest in a tobacco company?

Apart from moral issues, another question that investors often ask is what form their investment should take – stocks and bonds, or real estate? Find out what you need to know about investing in real estate and being a good landlord.

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{Originally posted to the author’s website, The Daily Wire}

On Thursday, President Obama reacted to the cell-phone-captured footage of the police killings of Alton Sterling in Louisiana and Philando Castile by suggesting that such killings were “not isolated incidents.” Instead, he said, “They are symptomatic of challenges within our criminal justice system, the racial disparities that appear across the system year after year, and the resulting lack of trust that exists between law enforcement and too many of the communities they serve.”

In effect, Obama said – just as he’s been saying for years – that what he believes are extrajudicial murders of black men by police officers are the result of systemic racism, reflected in disproportionate arrest and imprisonment statistics.

Then, on Thursday night, anti-white racist snipers began firing on white police officers in Dallas. When the smoke had cleared, five officers were dead and another seven were wounded, some grievously.

This raises an obvious question: what sort of responsibility does President Obama bear for the massacre?

This isn’t the first time such questions have been raised about leftist anti-cop rhetoric. After the death of Eric Garner in New York City in 2014, New York Mayor Bill De Blasio echoed Obama’s message: “We are dealing with centuries of racism that brought us to this day.” Obama promptly called De Blasio to thank him. De Blasio bragged that he had met Obama at the White House, and said that he had told his son, who is black, “about the dangers he may face” from police. Days later, two police officers in New York City were murdered in cold blood by a black criminal who pledged to put “wings on pigs” on social media. The NYPD turned their backs on De Blasio when he attended the funeral for one of the officers.

Yet the media today – and President Obama himself – blame lack of gun control for Dallas, or claim that motives are unclear. They certainly distance the Black Lives Matter movement from the shootings, even as the Democratic National Committee released a statement essentially lumping together BLM with the anti-cop terrorist attack: “while most protesters have made their voices heard peacefully, tonight’s shooting of officers in Dallas is unacceptable and a reminder that the time to address these tensions and find common ground is long overdue.”

So, what is the relationship between anti-cop rhetoric and the racist murder of cops?

First off, let’s point out the obvious double standard from the left: when a white racist, Dylann Storm Roof, shot up a Charleston black church, the left immediately blamed a widespread culture of racism, and insisted that states across the country tear down Confederate war memorials and stop sponsoring the Confederate flag at state capitols. When non-black cops shoot black suspects, the left insists – without a shred of evidence – that such killings are endemic among police officers, and that the entire system is racist. When anti-Donald Trump protesters riot against Trump supporters, the left blame Trump’s rhetoric. When a nutcase shoots up an area near a Planned Parenthood, the left blames the pro-life movement. When another nutcase shoots Congresswoman Gabby Giffords, the left blames Sarah Palin’s Congressional targets map. But when obvious anti-white racists murder white cops, the left suggests that gun control is the issue; when obvious Islamic terrorists murder gay people in a nightclub in Orlando, the problem is white Christians who don’t support same-sex marriage and Republicans who defend gun rights.

In other words, for the left, rhetoric can only connect with murder when it’s rhetoric they don’t like. If they do like the rhetoric — or at least if they want to defend the people responsible for the rhetoric — then the actual motivation for murder will be [omitted].

But now let’s tackle the real question: when is rhetoric responsible for violence? Rhetoric is responsible for violence when it calls for violence. Radical Islam calls for jihad. Protesters chanting “pigs in a blanket, fry ‘em like bacon” calls for violence against cops. Barack Obama didn’t call for violence against cops.

That said, he did do three things that are particularly despicable:

He denied that murder charges require evidence;
He denied that charges of racism require evidence;
He ignored the actual cause of anti-cop violence.

Obama didn’t cause the Orlando shooting attack, but his failure to label it Islamic jihadism surely stopped America from fighting it properly. Obama didn’t cause the Dallas shootings, but his attempts to turn the conversation toward gun control or police brutality are just another way to avoid a real conversation about anti-white racism.

So no, of course Obama isn’t responsible for the Dallas shootings. But he’s surely responsible for cultivating a racially polarized culture, ignoring the real causes of anti-cop violence, and leaving cops out in the cold to fend for themselves.

This has got to be one of the strangest Arab terror cells captured to date in Israel.

On the eve of Israel’s Memorial Day a series of bombs exploded in the Hizme junction, seriously wounding an IDF officer.

The Shabak announced today that in a combined effort between the Shabak and the IDF’s Duvdevan unit, the terror cell which exploded the bombs has been captured. The cell had been planning additional attacks near Maale Adumim.

What is surprising is the makeup of the terror cell.

Three of the five Arab terrorists are dentists, one is a (male) nurse who works in a hospital (which wasn’t named). Two of the suspects had been arrested earlier which apparently led to the capture of the entire cell.

The terror suspects arrested in this raid were:

• Dr. Samer Mahmoud Daoud al-Halabi, born in 1980, a resident of Abu Dis, a dentist – he placed and activated the bombs by cellphone.

• Dr. Dagana Faiz Gamil Nabhan, born in 1980, a resident of the Kalandia, a dentist – he assisted al-Halabi.

• Daoud Mahmoud Shehada al-Halabi, born in 1952, a resident of Abu Dis, a (male) nurse in a hospital – the father of the perpetrator.

• Dr. Daoud Mahmud al-Halabi Shehadeh, born in 1974, a resident of Abu Dis, a dentist – the terrorist’s brother and his assistant in the bombing.

• Shadi Mohamed Ahmed Muhsen, born in ’84, a resident of Abu Dis – the perpetrator’s cousin and an assistant in the bombing.

The surname al-Halabi indicates the family immigrated to Israel from Aleppo [Haleb], Syria.

The medical terrorists

The bombs were originally made and stored in one of the dental clinics in the village of Akav.

Security forces found 56 small pipe bombs, as well as one larger bomb, and two Molotov cocktails.

The professional assessment was that all the bombs were very lethal.

So much for the theory that well-educated, upper-middle class Muslims will not get involved in terror.

56 small but powerful pipe bombs.

The Hamas organization accepted responsibility on Sunday for the digging of the “terror tunnel” exposed by the IDF a week and a half ago in the area between Kibbutz Ein Hashlosha and the Gaza Strip border.

It turns out the Hamas has a “military arm,” which is responsible for doing the bad things, while the “civilian arm” continues to receive donations from the nice folks in Europe. This way they make sure that the money donated to Hamas is only used to feed orphans and widows, all of them 100 percent victims of Israeli genocide.

On Sunday, a spokesman for the bad Hamas, a gentleman nicknamed Abu Ubaida, after a medieval Muslim language scholar (on account of the talking, you get it, right?), told the Hamas radio station in Gaza that the Hamas military force “dug the tunnel and were responsible for it.”

Abu Ubaida stated that the tunnel was dug in an attempt to kidnap an Israeli soldier or civilian, and use them to force Israel to release the remaining thousands of Palestinian prisoners in its jails.

Israel has established many times in the past that not only is it happy to negotiate with terrorist, but that it’s willing to give away the story. The going rate for 1,000 jailed Arabs is one captured Israeli.

In 2011, 1,027 Palestinian prisoners, who were collectively responsible for 569 Israeli deaths, were released in exchange for Gilad Shalit. The campaign to release him (see the girls below painting his portrait on the pavement) reassured Hamas that they don’t need to ever give up anything in negotiations, or recognize, not even on paper, the Jews’ right to live. All they need is to get them a succulent Israeli with good, middle class parents.

It should be noted that the IDF blamed Hamas for the tunnel as soon as it was discovered. It also blamed winter for rain, and summer for those long, hot days in August.

It should also be noted that the tunnel required some 500 tons of cement, which was produced in Israel and provided to the Arabs in Gaza for the explicit purpose of rebuilding their neighborhoods following the 2012 Operation Pillar of Defense.

It appears that the Arabs went ahead and used that precious cement to aggressive ends, rather than to construct their homes. In fact, the IDF estimated that an astounding 20% of Hamas’s annual budget goes into building terror tunnels.

This is astonishing, in light of the fact that they’ve never done anything like that before, and no one in Israel could have imagined this kind of treachery. This is a moral failure on the part of the bad Hams, and we certainly hope the good Hamas will give them a sound rebuke!

The tunnel, incidentally, was 45 feet deep in places, and looks like a mini subway tunnel, complete with a track and a small car that could be used to whisk away the kidnapped soldier, even as his or her parents are being called and urged to start organizing a mass grassroots movement to release a thousand murderers.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu congratulated the IDF for the discovery, saying it’s all part of Israel’s new, aggressive security policy, which is the reason why we’ve had the “quietest year in a decade” in Gaza, despite the rise in terrorist activity in recent years.

Of course, it could be that the reason the Arabs have been so quiet is that they’re all underground, digging up tunnels.

It’s interesting to note that the Egyptian Army has found a very effective way of securing its own border with the Gaza Strip: they caved in all the tunnels with bulldozers, then used the same bulldozers to raze a swath of several kilometers worth of buildings, creating a no man’s area where Arabs who dare to enter will be shot.

Could we contract the same Egyptians to fix our Gaza problem?