Mike Rogers asks AIPAC to stand down in Michigan Senate race - analysis

www.i24news.tv/en/news/international/americas/artc-mike-rogers-asks-aipac-to-stand-down-in-michigan-senate-race-analysis-2

If Mike Rogers can’t defeat Abdul El-Sayed, despite the massive financial advantages the Republican party has, it’s questionable what difference AIPAC funding would play

The news of a reported rupture between Mike Rogers, the Republican former House member and Senate candidate in Michigan, and AIPAC, is an indication of the pro-Israel organization’s political toxicity among Democrats.

Rogers is said to have told AIPAC he doesn’t want their help in his general election campaign against Democrat Abdul El-Sayed, who used AIPAC’s support of his primary opponent, Rep. Haley Stevens, as a cudgel against her, narrowly advancing while AIPAC shelled out $30 million to try to defeat him.

One can argue whether Rogers’ method here is a savvy one. To think a pro-Israel Republican would tell AIPAC he’s better off without them – that they are a net-negative in his mind – is shocking.

It may also be the best thing possible.

Before the 2022 election cycle, AIPAC didn’t endorse candidates and didn’t directly fund them, either. Since the formation of its United Democracy Project super PAC, spending has gone from $26 million in the 2022 cycle, to $38 million in 2024, up to $62 million so far this year, with roughly half of that thrown down the drain against El-Sayed, according to the OpenSecrets tracker.

https://snippet.univtec.com/share/5a11f35ee2

While intuitively that money is needed now more than ever due to Israel’s unpopularity in the Democratic party, AIPAC’s success has been a mixed bag at best, and its foray into Democratic primaries, often with ads that don’t mention Israel, and sometimes supporting the most radical primary candidate in a general election hedge, have drawn fire from critics and even some friends.

There is zero doubt that antisemites are going to paint any loss for their candidate against someone with pro-Israel bona fides as having been engineered by the Jews, whether AIPAC’s money flows into the race or not. That’s the nature of antisemites, who see a Jewish conspiracy behind every door.

But, El-Sayed barely made it through the primary, as unsettling as his victory is. There is already a movement among Michigan’s Jewish leaders, including Democrats, to steer voters to Rogers in the general election.

If Rogers can’t defeat El-Sayed, despite the massive financial advantages the Republican party has, and despite El-Sayed’s deficiencies, it’s questionable what difference AIPAC funding would play.

Perhaps the best possible outcome is for AIPAC to listen to Rogers, sit this one out, and watch a Republican defeat an anti-Israel Democrat without them, just as anti-Israel candidates were consistently defeated for decades without an AIPAC endorsement or direct funding.

That’s not an admission that AIPAC doesn’t deserve to fund candidates in the same way, every super PAC does. It’s simply a realization, as difficult as it is to swallow, of its current standing, and the possibility that a candidate it supports in a crucial race can’t afford to be weighed down while AIPAC insists it belongs.

Wounded Israeli soldiers find support, challenge on South Africa trek

www.jns.org/feature/wounded-israeli-soldiers-find-support-challenge-on-south-africa-trek

Ten wounded soldiers take on a grueling trek through the Drakensberg Mountains as part of a recovery program supported by local Jewish communities.

Ten wounded Israeli soldiers traveled to South Africa recently for a recovery program combining support from local Jewish communities with a demanding trek through the Drakensberg mountain range.

Among them was Lt. Col. (res.) Almog S., 41, who was wounded in the thigh while commanding troops in Beit Hanoun in northern Gaza. Despite his injury, Almog declined evacuation, fearing that the sight of a wounded commander could undermine his soldiers’ morale, and continued directing his forces for hours.

After his reserve duty ended, however, Almog faced what he described as another battle: coping with the psychological impact of combat.

The trip was organized by Belev Echad, a New York-based nonprofit that supports Israeli soldiers wounded in action through respite programs, rehabilitation and emotional assistance.

The delegation’s first stop was Cape Town, where members of the local Jewish community hosted the soldiers.

“Considering the intense political sensitivities and hostility in South Africa surrounding Israel, we had to keep all activities strictly under the radar,” said Rabbi Pinchas Hecht, who helped organize the visit with the Marais Road Synagogue community. “We marketed the events exclusively within the local Jewish community, creating intimate, incredibly powerful engagements.”

The soldiers joined local residents for a run, attended synagogue services and shared their experiences with community members.

“It was an absolute honor to host these very special people. I think the soldiers deeply appreciated the opportunity to connect and see firsthand that—despite what the news says about South Africa—our community is immensely supportive and forever grateful to those who risk their lives” for Israel and the Jewish people, Hecht said.

The delegation then headed to the Drakensberg mountain range for four days without cellphones. The soldiers hiked about 15 kilometers (9 miles) a day, carrying 30-kilogram (66-pound) rucksacks and reaching elevations approaching 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) in freezing winter conditions.

“Up there, where the air is thin and the screens go dark, the noise of war and trauma fades away,” said Belev Echad founder Rabbi Uriel Vigler.

“When you take ten men who have sacrificed so much, put 30-kilogram bags on their backs, and lead them up the highest peaks in South Africa, they stop surviving as isolated individuals. They are forced to lean on one another,” Vigler’s wife, Shevy, added.

The journey ended in Johannesburg, where the soldiers were hosted by the Sydenham Synagogue and met with about 150 congregants at a Shabbat dinner.

“We made sure to spoil them, to thank them, and to give them experiences where they were pampered and loved,” Sydenham’s Rabbi Yehuda Stern said. “But we were inspired by them, by their heroism, by their courage, by what they’ve done.”

Israel moves attack helicopter squadron north

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432081

Why Israel is moving attack helicopters north

Following an Air Force investigation into the October 7 massacre, Squadron 190 has relocated north as the IDF seeks faster response times and greater readiness along Israel’s northern border.

The Israel Air Force has completed a major operational relocation, with Squadron 190, which operates attack helicopters, transferring its activities from Ramon Airbase in the Negev to Ramat David Airbase in northern Israel.

The move follows an Air Force investigation into the failures during the October 7th massacre and is intended to improve operational readiness and ensure a rapid response to developments along Israel’s northern border.

During the October 7th massacre, air crews were forced to operate under exceptionally complex conditions as they attempted to assist ground forces and civilians while working with an unclear and rapidly changing operational picture.

As part of the lessons learned from the events, the IDF decided to move attack helicopters closer to the northern front. The Air Force has emphasized the critical role of attack helicopters on the modern battlefield, particularly during extreme and rapidly developing situations.

One of the squadron’s crew members described the importance of the aircraft: “There is no substitute for this machine. It has no substitute on dark nights, in crazy weather, in the toughest situations there are. When a combat helicopter arrives, it changes the battle."

“I think the whole system today is a very well-oiled system, working amazingly," he added. “The ability to provide the fire ground forces need is on a significantly higher order of magnitude than what we had years ago. In the end, the security of the State and protecting the borders remain our only goals."

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432081

Report: Iran-linked hackers shut down UK power plant

www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432083

The Telegraph reports that Iran-linked hackers shut down a small British power plant for four days in an unprecedented cyberattack.

A British power plant was forced offline for four days in what The Telegraph reported on Saturday was an unprecedented cyberattack linked to Iran.

The incident is believed to be the first known case in which hackers affiliated with the Iranian regime successfully shut down a power facility in Britain. Officials reportedly consider it the most successful cyberattack of its kind against UK energy infrastructure.

The attack occurred last month, around the same time as a series of cyberattacks against water infrastructure in the United States that affected 12 states and raised concerns at the White House, according to The Telegraph.

British officials have declined to identify the affected facility, citing security considerations. The plant is understood to have been relatively small, however, meaning the disruption did not threaten Britain's overall electricity supply or energy production. Staff worked for four days to restore the facility.

The government subsequently briefed the chief executives of power companies and contacted businesses with guidance and instructions on how to respond. The incident was also reported to the National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC), the public-facing cybersecurity arm of GCHQ.

The NCSC declined to comment specifically on the incident. British and US intelligence agencies have repeatedly warned that hackers linked to Russia, China, Iran and North Korea regularly target critical infrastructure and government systems.

Previous cyberattacks have disrupted NHS systems, schools and industrial operations, including manufacturing lines at Jaguar Land Rover. Foreign hackers have also stolen customer data from retailers and voter information from the Electoral Commission.

Despite those incidents, there had previously been no known case of a cyberattack bringing a British power plant to a standstill.

The attack does not appear to have been intended to cause widespread harm to the public and reportedly went largely unnoticed, according to The Telegraph. One possibility being examined is that the operation was intended to demonstrate that hackers connected to Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps could penetrate British systems and disable sensitive infrastructure.

Britain has dozens of smaller power stations connected to the national grid. Many are gas-fired facilities that operate only intermittently, such as when low wind speeds reduce electricity generation. A prolonged shutdown at one such plant would not affect the wider grid, while some industrial sites and hospitals maintain independent generators.

The NCSC advised British organizations in March to reassess their cybersecurity measures amid the conflict. Its chief executive, Richard Horne, said in June that the agency had dealt with more than 200 attacks targeting critical national infrastructure during the previous year.

A Government source said, “We have thresholds for important generators to legally notify us of cyber activity, and this site is nowhere near. It’s a very small scale site, less than a rounding error compared to grid capacity."

A Government spokesman said, “The UK has a highly resilient energy system. We work closely with the energy sector to protect infrastructure and ensure the highest security standards. This story refers to an incident impacting a small-scale energy generator, and at no point was there a risk to the wider energy system."

Nihilism, anarchism, and radicalism in American politics

www.israelnationalnews.com/news/432080

The rise of the Democratic Socialists of America and its alliance with Radical Islam. Opinion.

 

 

Definitions

Nihilism rejects traditional morals, absolute truths, and religious beliefs.  

Anarchism views government and hierarchical authority as harmful, unnecessary, unjust and advocates for replacing the state and capitalist systems with stateless societies.

Radicalism rejects all hierarchical authority, the state, and capitalism and demands an immediate, root-and-branch dismantling of "coercive" institutions such as the police and army.

Hence the ideology, braggings and acts of the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA) who come to tear down the current political system of the United States, a country based on 250 years of established democratic liberal Western civilization. This civilization derived from the cultural legacies of ancient venerable Judeo-Christian spiritual and ethical ideas based on the Bible and the Greco-Roman philosophical and governmental systems.

 

Radical Islam seeks to transform society or politics by returning to foundational roots, rejecting Western or secular governance, and-in its most common contemporary usage-advocating or using violence to achieve political goals. A radical Islamist is an individual or group that believes Islam should guide all political, legal, and social systems, and seeks to overhaul existing secular or Westernized governments to establish a strict Islamic order. While some movements pursue this through peaceful political or social activism, others use militant or violent means.

Nihilists, anarchists, radicals - disguised as the Democratic Socialists of America

The DSA cloak themselves in the words "Democratic" when in fact they rely on mob rule, mass-manipulation, hysteria, class warfare and race baiting. They are not merely "social democrats" in the calm Western European sense of the term, but in truth they are more proactive Marxist, Leninist, Trotskyist, and Maoist from the education they got in left-leaning colleges and universities that shaped their outlook and practices.

The last thing they value is good old America which they seek to turn into a "people's republic" or even an "Islamic republic" more along the lines of Soviet Russia and Communist China.

And, yes, they admire the Islamic Republic of Iran especially because it arrogantly defies America and the West.

And yes, they speak American English beautifully and know how to smile wide for the TV and news cameras. They have mastered the art of sound bites and know how to project themselves and their ideas on Tik-Tok and Instagram and on YouTube and Facebook. In short they are masters of propaganda and know how to sway the minds of the mindless masses.

And they are dangerous people simply by virtue of being die-hard nihilists, anarchists and radicals in a de facto alliance with radical Islam.

American academia embraces Marxists

Following the end of the Second World War in 1945, for some or other reason higher education in America became the home base of varieties of leftists, Marxist and Communist academics who slowly but surely poisoned the minds of younger generations until producing the current crop of DSA-like left wing radicals.

What on Earth were American colleges and universities thinking when they hired untold numbers of left-wing ultra-liberal professors and lecturers steeped in the writings of Marx and Trotsky, who admired Lenin and Mao? Supposedly there was the McCarthy era that rooted out Communists in the politics of America but instead many left wing intellectuals found a haven and burrowed themselves deeply into the vast porous American college and university system and did their damage from there.

New departments of African and Asian studies became the cover for hiring all sorts of dubious academics who admired Third World anti-colonialist liberationist movements that had been backed and trained by the USSR and Communist China, and the liberationist methodologies in Africa, Asia and Latin America. Che Guevara may have died but the spirit of his ideas did not and was carried forth by the ultra-leftist professors on American campuses. That now bears fruit in the popularity and rise of the DSA.

How the West learned to love Arabs and Islam

The roots of all this goes back to days when European countries colonised swaths of Africa and Asia. A sub-culture arose among the elites of the colonial European powers of admiration for the colonised people and of taking on a romanticized adoption of their ways. During the First World War 1914-1918 this took on geo-political significance when the the British deployed the Arab-loving Lawrence of Arabia to raise up an Arab army to revolt against the Ottoman Turks.

This created a partnership between the British and the Hashemites, who were first in Arabia and then got Transjordan as a compensation prize from the British. Capitalist America was not far behind when President Franklin Roosevelt joined with the house of Saud to kick out the Hashemites and their British backers, and replace them with the cooperative and compliant fanatically Muslim Saudis making a compact to extract and sell Saudi Arabian oil.

The German Nazis were more than eager to welcome the Mufti of Jerusalem in devising the Final Solution during the Holocaust that would keep Jews out of then British controlled Palestine. The Nazis even recruited Muslims from the Balkans to create special Muslim SS battalions to fight for them. After first backing Israel for a short while,in 1948 the Soviets led by Russia switched to arming Arab client states to the teeth in order to help them destroy Israel. Many among the Arab states too, became radical Arab "socialists" such as Egypt, Syria, Iraq.

Basically it was during the twentieth century that the British, Americans, Germans, the French (especially under Vichy), and Russia, joined arms and worked in harmony with their various Arab Muslim partners and client states across North Africa and the Middle East. That is the deeper level beginning of the union of the West, that was nominally Christian and the Arabs of the East who were Muslims.

Whereas in previous centuries Christian domains and Islamic powers were constant rivals at war with each other, starting in the twentieth century they became partners instead. Predictably, this new development of cross cultural civilisational "entente" and new found "love" worked against the Jews both in Europe and in Arab countries and then against modern Israel.

Rise of radical Arabs and Islam in America

Now turn to modern America in the twenty first century, where you have the union of the ultra left wing of the American political spectrum joining forces with radical Islamists to create a united front through the DSA, not just against the traditional American Democrat party but going much further by spouting anti-Israel, anti-Zionist and anti-Semitic, and anti-American viewpoints and a willingness to take to the streets and storm the barricades to get their way.

All this in spite of the atrocities committed by fanatical radical Muslims on 9/11. America forgets and forgives succumbing to political amnesia. Coincidentally some in the American radical right wing political spectrum are also receiving Arab funding and becoming pro-Arab, anti-Israel and anti-Semitic. 

More ominously, the DSA crowd has been determined and learned how to use the very American political system itself - one that they despise - to get elected to office all over America in all branches of the government. Hence the rise of young radical left-wing Muslims, educated by American Marxists and left wing academics of all sorts and varieties. Be they of Egyptian, Pakistani, Somalian, Palestinian parentage or not, they have learned the tricks of the trade in American politics, know how to beat the American political system and get elected even though they are dyed in the wool nihilists, anarchists, radicals as well as radical Islamist, and dare one say "arsonists", openly spouting anti-American and anti-Israel points of view without any guilt.

In fact they are convinced that they are on the right side of history which empowers and emboldens them to even greater heights of nihilism, anarchism, radicalism and promoting the world outlook of radical Islam. 

Under presidents Clinton, Obama, Biden the United States admitted millions of Arab Islamic refugees from the Middle East, fleeing the collapse and instability in countries such as Iraq and Syria, who then settled mainly in the large urban centers of America and almost to a man vote for DSA-like candidates. While the mainstream of America was worried about the influx of refugees from Central and South America, in the meantime, under the radar, US presidents Clinton-Obama-Biden sneaked in millions of Arab Muslims while nobody was paying attention. Now we are reaping the whirlwinds from those misguided actions.

 

Rabbi Yitschak Rudomin was born to Holocaust survivor parents in Israel, grew up in South Africa, and lives in Brooklyn, NY. He is an alumnus of Yeshiva Rabbi Chaim Berlin and of Teachers College-Columbia University. He heads the Jewish Professionals Institute dedicated to Jewish Adult Education and Outreach - Kiruv Rechokim. He was the Director of the Belzer Chasidim's Sinai Heritage Center of Manhattan 1988-1995, a Trustee of AJOP 1994-1997 and founder of American Friends of South African Jewish Education 1995-2015. He is the author of The Second World War and Jewish Education in America: The Fall and Rise of Orthodoxy. izakrudomin@gmail.com

Pigeons trained to tell Monet from Picasso

https://scienceblog.com/m-pigeons-were-trained-to-tell-a-monet-from-a-picasso-and-then-did-something-odder-shown-paintings-they-had-never-seen-they-sorted-cezanne-with-the-monets-and-braque-with-the-picasso/

Pigeons were trained to tell a Monet from a Picasso, and then did something odder — shown paintings they had never seen, they sorted Cezanne with the Monets and Braque with the Picassos.

The birds had grasped something deeper than memorization—a visual principle that let them recognize artistic style in works they'd never encountered.

A pigeon sits in a box, facing a small screen. A Monet appears, the bird pecks a key, and a pellet of food drops. A Picasso appears, the bird pecks, and nothing comes. Do that a few hundred times and the pigeon learns the rule: peck for a Monet, ignore a Picasso. That much is ordinary animal training. The strange part came later, when the birds were shown paintings nobody had ever put in front of them.

We are not psychologists or scientists, and what follows is a reading of one experiment and the debate around it, not a claim about how minds work. It’s a single study from 1995, taken seriously but not treated as the last word.

What the pigeons were trained to do

The experiment came from Keio University in Tokyo. In 1995, Shigeru Watanabe, Junko Sakamoto and Masumi Wakita published a study in which pigeons learned to tell color slides of Monet paintings from Picasso paintings. It later won a 1995 Ig Nobel Prize in psychology, the prize that goes to work that makes people laugh and then makes them think.

The setup was simple. Eight pigeons were split into two groups. One group got food for pecking at a Monet and nothing for a Picasso; the other group had it the other way around. Each artist was represented by ten paintings in training. The birds learned it fast, reaching over 90 percent accuracy.

But if that were the whole story, it would just show that a pigeon can be trained to react to a specific set of images. Neat, but not puzzling.

The part that’s genuinely odd

When the researchers showed the birds Monet and Picasso paintings that had never appeared in training, the pigeons still sorted them correctly. So they weren’t just memorizing ten pictures.

Then it went further. Shown work by painters the birds had never seen at all, the pigeons filed Cezanne and Renoir with the Monets, and Braque and Matisse with the Picassos.

That grouping isn’t random. Cezanne and Renoir belong to the broad family of Impressionism, alongside Monet; Braque helped found Cubism with Picasso. The birds put each newcomer on the side an art historian would choose, without ever being told a name or a movement.

What the birds were sorting on

Not names. Not intent. Not the story behind a French garden or a fractured guitar. A pigeon has no access to any of that. Whatever it was doing had to run entirely on what was visible on the surface of the image: edges, color, brightness, texture, how shapes were arranged.

One extra finding sharpens this. When the researchers turned Monet’s paintings upside down, the birds got worse at telling them apart. Flip a Picasso, and they didn’t care. The authors’ best guess, again cautious, was that the birds may have been picking up on recognizable objects in the Impressionist paintings, objects that look wrong upside down, while the Cubist images were already jumbled enough that orientation made no difference.

Whether any of this counts as real “categorization” is what other researchers questioned. In a 1998 response, Jos Monen, Eli Brenner and Jenny Reynaerts argued that studying categorization only makes sense if the animal could actually have the information used to define the groups. Their point: a bird sorting by color and brightness is not the same as a bird grasping a concept called “Impressionism.” You have to rule out simple visual cues, they said, before claiming the bird learned a concept. This is a live disagreement, not a settled result.

What this does and doesn’t tell us about style

It would be easy to read the study as a put-down, as if it reduces a Monet to a bundle of edges a bird can peck at. We don’t think that’s the fair reading. What the pigeons found is that the surface of a Monet and the surface of a Cezanne share something measurable, something steady enough to carry over to a painter they’d never seen. That shared signal is real. It’s in the paint. The birds found it without any of the meaning we attach to it.

The same trainability later turned to a serious use. In 2015, a team including Richard Levenson and Edward Wasserman trained pigeons to tell harmless breast tissue images from cancerous ones. According to the University of Iowa, individual birds reached nearly 85 percent accuracy, and a group of four pooled together did even better. A bird that can spot the visual signature of a cancer cell is running the same basic trick as a bird that files Braque with Picasso: pulling a pattern out of images and applying it to new ones.

Which leaves a good question open. When we say two paintings share a “style,” part of what we mean is a pattern in the image itself, a fingerprint of color, edge and texture that repeats from one canvas to the next. A pigeon can find that fingerprint. What it can’t find is everything else we mean by style: the intent, the history, the argument a painter is having with the painters before them. The experiment didn’t shrink the art. It showed how much of style sits right there on the surface, available to any eye careful enough to look, even one that will never know whose name is in the corner.

https://scienceblog.com/m-pigeons-were-trained-to-tell-a-monet-from-a-picasso-and-then-did-something-odder-shown-paintings-they-had-never-seen-they-sorted-cezanne-with-the-monets-and-braque-with-the-picasso/

     Monet

     Picasso

     Cezanne

                              Renoir

                       Braque

                             Matisse