By Ira Stoll
The New York Times is covering Israel’s counterterrorism operation in Gaza by whitewashing the terrorist organization’s goals.
Under the headline, “What Is Islamic Jihad and Why Is Israel Targeting It?” the Times offers what it calls “A brief guide to the armed group that saw three leaders killed in Israeli airstrikes early Tuesday.”
Times reporter Raja Abdulrahim reports, “Islamic Jihad was founded in the 1980s in the Gaza Strip to fight the Israeli occupation and maintains a presence in Gaza and the Israeli-occupied West Bank.”

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
Sefer Vayikra comes to an end this week as we lain the parshiyos of Behar and Bechukosai. Both open with the obligation to go to extremes in mitzvah observance. The mitzvah of Shmittah demands that the land of Eretz Yisroel is to lie fallow for a year, with no work done on it and no commerce conducted with any fruits or vegetables that happen to grow during the year.
Hashem promises that those who follow the laws of Shmittah will not go hungry and there will be food for them to sustain themselves.

The following editorial appears in The Washington Post:
President Biden hasn’t dropped the microphone; he appears to have lost it. Biden is turning into a news media evader, and it’s harmful to his presidency and the nation. In the past 100 years, only presidents Richard M. Nixon and Ronald Reagan averaged fewer news conferences than Biden. (A news conference involves the president taking questions from multiple reporters; a one-on-one interview with a handpicked journalist doesn’t count.)

By Tony Kinnet, Daily Signal
Following an 18-part investigative series in The New York Times alleging various forms of maleducation and malfeasance in New York City yeshivas, the New York Board of Regents began implementing regulations targeting these Hasidic Jewish day schools.

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
The news landed like a thud. A heavily edited, carefully scripted and produced three-minute video announced that Joe Biden was running for reelection as president of the United States. The present occupant of the most prestigious and difficult job in the land is going to try to get another four years as commander-in-chief of this country and the so-called leader of the free world.

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
We live in a bizarre period in history. We see things transpiring in this country and across the world that are stranger than fiction and people are powerless to stop the retreats from normalcy, morality and common sense. What can we do to ensure that we aren’t infected by what is going on around us and are able to maintain our fidelity to propriety and decency? What does Hashem want from us in times like these?
Perhaps He wants us to keep to ourselves, minding our own business as we withdraw from involvement with what is going on in our communities and in the world in general.

By Meryl Ain
On a freezing day last March, 24 hours after my husband had a kidney transplant, I stood in a long line waiting to get into Weill-Cornell Medical Center in Manhattan to see him. As I waited, I noticed two men in Chassidic garb cut to the front of the line. I cringed.
Why had they not politely waited their turn rather than calling attention to themselves? They were so obviously Jewish. But I soon learned that calling attention to themselves was the last thing they wanted to do.

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
We just recently completed observing the eight-day Yom Tov of Pesach, which celebrated our freedom – geulah – from Mitzrayim. After many generations of subjugation under a depraved nation, Hakadosh Boruch Hu heard the cries of pain and intense tefillos of our forefathers and mothers, and brought about our miraculous deliverance. From there, we were led though the Yam Suf and the midbar, reaching great heights, attaining prodigious achievements, and overcoming disasters of our making and enormous tragedy. Finally, with our shared destiny, we entered the Land of Israel as a nation, bound to one another.

By Mordechai Kedar
I hesitated quite a bit about whether to publish this piece because of the panic it might cause in Israel. However, in the Middle East environment and particularly in Iraq, these things are known and serve as a topic of open discussion, so it is unthinkable that the Israeli public should not be aware of them as well, especially since they concern Israelis much more than the citizens of Iraq.
A source I’ve known for years—an expatriate from the Middle East, a supporter of Israel, who lives in Europe and is in continuous contact with people in Iran and Iraq—conveyed to me their assessment that Iran plans to launch a combined attack on Israel in the foreseeable future that will include all the forces at its disposal in several Arab countries:

By Rabbi Pinchos Lipschutz
Pesach is a Yom Tov of chinuch. The Gemara derives the concept of the Seder from the posuk of “vehigadeta levincha,” which instructs us to tell our children the story of our redemption from Mitzrayim on the night of Pesach. It is all about speaking to our children in a way they can accept and believe.
Thus, we proclaim in the Haggadah that the Torah speaks to all types of children, “Keneged arba’ah bonim dibra Torah.”