Sex and business among medieval Cairo’s Jews go on display at Cambridge New exhibit showcases dozens of fragments, some newly translated, that tell the story of ordinary folks living under Islam in the Middle Ages

A child’s alphabet and doodles, circa 1000 years old, from the Cairo Geniza, part of the Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo exhibit on display from April 27, 2017 (Cambridge University)

‘Long pepper, galanga, ginger and aristolochia, an ounce of each, cinnamon and anise, two ounces of each, clove, mace and nutmeg, one quarter ounce of each.” These exotic ingredients are not only intended to spice up a dish, but also a man’s sex life.

The aphrodisiac recipe, intended for the nephew of Saladin, the Sultan Omar, was part of Judeo-Arabic draft scrawled by Maimonides in the 12th century that was found in Cairo. It’s one of several dozen fragments of texts from the Cairo Geniza featured in an exhibit opening Thursday at Cambridge University.


The university is home to the bulk of thousands of fragments found in the geniza — a depository of discarded sacred texts — at the end of the 19th century that document a millennium of Jewish life in the Egyptian metropolis. “Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo” is one of the largest collections of fragments to ever go on display, Cambridge University said, and sets out to tell the “lost history” of ordinary Jews.

The 50 or 60 fragments going on display for the next six months offer visitors a personal and first-hand glimpse of history through the lives of Jews — ordinary folks — in medieval Cairo. They deal with marriage, death, love, business, and sex.


A prenuptial contract from the Cairo Geniza, part of the Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo exhibit on display from April 27, 2017 (Cambridge University)

The collection known as the Cairo Geniza comprises an estimated 320,000 fragments of parchment and paper that were discarded over the centuries by the Jewish community, including religious texts, contracts, recipes, magic amulets, and letters. Some were translated into English for the exhibit for the first time.

According to Jewish law, documents that bear the name of God cannot be destroyed. Instead, the Jewish community stuffed papers and parchments through a hole in the wall of the women’s section of the Ben Ezra synagogue in the Fustat district. Egypt’s arid climate helped preserve the trove of documents in the small room on the other side of the hole until they came to the attention of European scholars at the turn of the 20th century.


Among the highlights of the exhibit are the scratchings of a young student first learning the Hebrew alphabet, with doodles in the margin; an 11th-century prenuptial agreement requiring an unruly would-be groom to curtail his future behavior; letters and treatises written in Maimonides’ hand; and one of the earliest known examples of an engagement deed, from the 12th century, ensuring brides-to-be wouldn’t be locked into a dormant marriage if their husband disappeared while traveling overseas.


The oldest dated medieval Hebrew manuscript, from Iran at the beginning of the 10th century, part of the Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo exhibit on display from April 27, 2017 (Cambridge University)

The aim of the exhibit was to show visitors the rich tapestry of Jewish life in the Middle Ages, when the vast majority of the world’s Jewish population lived under Islam, Ben Outhwaite, head of the Genizah Research Unit and co-curator of the exhibition, told The Times of Israel.

He said it was a challenge to select items from the “colossal material” at the university’s disposal and present it in a compelling way to a general audience.

“We didn’t want to paint either a picture of a happy interfaith utopia, where Jews lived happily under Islam and there were no problems; on the other hand we don’t want to paint the picture that is popular with some of the right wing press in this country, for instance, of dhimmi suffering under the oppression of the cruel Muslim government,” he said.

“It would be a mistake to impose a simple narrative,” Outhwaite said.

Both instances might have been true at different periods and places, but it was up to visitors to decide by seeing the life of Cairene Jews in their own words.

Discarded History: The Genizah of Medieval Cairo is open to the public at Cambridge University Library through October 28, 2017.

How Trump’s Supreme Court Could Overturn Roe v. Wade Without Overturning It Respect for precedent could slow change but probably won’t stop it.

The Supreme Court on the night of Neil Gorsuch’s nomination.


Throughout the 2016 presidential campaign, both liberals and conservatives hoped that their candidate could shift the direction of the Supreme Court by appointing justices willing to knock down high-profile decisions that have profoundly shaped social policy. Now, President Trump is aiming to do just that, nominating federal appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, a conservative straight out of Republican central casting, to fill the seat once held by Antonin Scalia. Given the age of the justices on the court’s liberal wing, Trump will likely get to appoint more than one justice, leading many observers to anticipate that historic liberal decisions such as the 1973 ruling in Roe v. Wade, which affirmed abortion rights, are facing a new and serious threat.

An outright reversal of Roe would be a dramatic move for the nation’s highest court, in no small part because the decision has been the foundation of abortion law and policy for four decades. But by sanctioning abortion restrictions that the court might have struck down in the past a strongly conservative court could gradually narrow Roe’s scope, thereby limiting access to abortion while leaving the decision technically intact.

The fate of signature liberal rulings like Roe won’t depend just on Trump’s nominees’ political ideology, but also on their judicial philosophy, especially their approach to precedent. Respect for precedent is a foundational legal concept that asks judges to take past decisions into account when they rule on related cases. In practice, this means that when the Supreme Court justices hear a case that deals with issues such as abortion or the death penalty, deference to precedent generally leads them to render a decision that’s in line with prior decisions on the issue. But adhering to precedent isn’t just a yes-or-no proposition; precedents can be narrowed or enlarged or clarified, or they can be shifted through a series of decisions that slowly change the way a ruling is applied by the lower courts.



In a legal system where judges are often unelected and can serve lifetime terms, the appeal of precedent is obvious: It promises certainty and continuity, and it guards against the whims of a handful of judges who decide they don’t like the rules. But precedent is also not, as Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed in 1991, “an inexorable command.” Since 1810, when the Supreme Court first broke with precedent, the justices have overruled their predecessors more than 250 times — that is, the justices explicitly acknowledged a change to precedent, whether in a majority opinion or a dissenting opinion.

These reversals, however, are only a tiny fraction of the thousands of cases that the Supreme Court has heard over the years. A look at the numbers from the Supreme Court Database, an online clearinghouse for data about the court, shows that although a few precedents are generally altered each term, that doesn’t mean the Supreme Court will change a precedent on a dime. Since 1953, when Earl Warren took over as chief justice, the court has altered precedents in just over two percent of cases. The court’s willingness to overturn precedent can also ebb and flow: In the 1955 term, early in Warren’s time on the court, no precedents were altered, but in the 1962 term, the justices changed precedent in just under four percent of their cases, including in a landmark decision establishing the right to an attorney for defendants who can’t afford one, overruling a 20-year-old precedent.

The relative rarity of breaks with precedent would seem to spell bad news for any court-watcher — liberal or conservative — hoping for an immediate shift in the Supreme Court’s approach. Even if Gorsuch proves open to breaking with precedents, that might not represent a significant change, because Scalia himself was quite willing to depart from precedent in his quest to deliver decisions that he felt were more closely in line with the original meaning of the Constitution. Scalia rarely dissented when precedent was changed: In the precedent-altering decisions that came down during his time on the bench, Scalia voted in the majority 82 percent of the time. Even in some cases where he agreed with the outcome — including in a 2014 decision that struck down a Massachusetts abortion-protest law — Scalia scolded his fellow justices for not attacking an underlying precedent.

It’s a little hard to know what Gorsuch’s approach to precedent would be (although he has expressed suspicion about an important precedent that requires courts to largely defer to federal agencies about how the bureaucracies’ responsibilities are defined), but it’s safe to say that he won’t be a threat to Scalia’s legacy: A group of academics and lawyers recently concluded that Gorsuch is the most Scalia-like of the three candidates who were reportedly on Trump’s short list for the job. Gorsuch’s influence could also extend beyond his own vote: He once clerked for Justice Anthony Kennedy, who often serves as the court’s swing vote, so he might be able to convince Kennedy to join more conservative majorities.

Precedents — and the court’s willingness to set them aside — can cut both ways ideologically.

Under Warren in the 1950s and 1960s, nearly all alterations of precedent resulted in a more liberal ruling, with decisions in favor of criminal defendants, environmental regulations, unions or civil rights claimants. Since then, the court has moved to the right: Despite a small spike in left-leaning precedent changes in the past few years, 63 percent of the Roberts court’s precedent-altering decisions have been conservative.

The Roberts court is already showing signs that it may be willing to rethink signature liberal rulings. Other chief justices — Warren, for example, in the lead-up to the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education school-desegregation case — worked to build large (or even unanimous) majorities to overturn established precedents. Chief Justice John Roberts also prizes unity and consensus, but on his court, the share of precedent-changing cases decided by a slim one-vote majority is higher than it has been under any other chief justice. That suggests that the current court may be more willing to start chipping away at precedent, according to Lee Epstein, a professor at Washington University and a contributor to the Supreme Court Database. “Overruling can tell you something, but not the whole story,” she said.

Still, the real threat to liberal precedent would come if Trump has the opportunity to replace a member of the aging liberal vanguard. That, more than the Gorsuch nomination, would tilt the ideological balance of the court toward the conservatives. But even then, change could be gradual, said Jeffrey Segal, another Supreme Court Database contributor and a political science professor at Stony Brook University. “They might not overturn a precedent right away, but they start chipping away at it until they can say, ‘Look, this precedent just isn’t workable and it’s time for it to go,’” he said. In the case of Roe v. Wade, this might mean upholding a series of state-level restrictions on abortion, until the original precedent is eventually overwhelmed. “It’s not overruling a decision so much as eviscerating it,” Segal said.

In other cases, the justices don’t need to formally overrule precedent to render a historic decision unusable. Barry Friedman, a professor of law and politics at New York University, argues that over the course of several decades, the court systematically undermined its landmark 1966 ruling in Miranda v. Arizona without ever formally reversing it. Friedman said justices were aware of the backlash they would face they reversed the now-iconic ruling requiring police to read defendants their rights. “My hypothesis is that the court doesn’t want to take heat where it doesn’t need to take it,” he said. In 2000, after the court heard a case designed to take down Miranda, Rehnquist wrote a majority opinion where he declared that the Miranda warnings had become “part of our national culture.” This decision, Friedman says, was followed almost immediately by cases effectively inviting police to ignore the Miranda ruling.

#OyVeyDonaldTrump's Confusing Strike on Syria.If President#OyVeyDonaldTrump broadens his aims against Assad, he will enter the very morass that Candidate #OyVeyDonaldTrump warned against.

Illustration by Tom Bachtell

On August 7, 1998, Al Qaeda suicide bombers struck two U.S. embassies in East Africa, killing two hundred and twenty-four people, most of them Africans. Two weeks later, President Bill Clinton launched Operation Infinite Reach, a fusillade of cruise missiles aimed at a reported Al Qaeda meeting in Afghanistan, and at a factory in Sudan, which was suspected of involvement with chemical weapons. “There will be no sanctuary for terrorists,” Clinton declared. The retaliation produced few tangible benefits. And yet, since then, from Kosovo to Waziristan to Libya, the United States has repeatedly threatened or carried out missile and drone attacks and air strikes for limited and sometimes imprecise purposes. In the modern Presidency, firing off missiles has become a rite of passage.

Last Thursday, his seventy-seventh day in office, President Donald Trump pressed the cruise-missile button, sending fifty-nine Tomahawks to strike an airbase in Syria. He did so after concluding from intelligence reports that President Bashar al-Assad’s Air Force had, on April 4th, killed or sickened hundreds of people in a chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun, a town held by rebels seeking Assad’s overthrow. Trump said that his strike was aimed at ending “the slaughter and bloodshed in Syria.”



The President’s decision was familiar for being both spontaneous and confusing. As has happened before, he was apparently inspired to act by what he saw on TV—in this case, distressing images of stricken women and children. Yet, despite having previously seen similarly horrifying pictures, Trump had been skeptical of military action in Syria. In 2013, Assad’s forces attacked civilians and rebels near Damascus with sarin, a banned nerve agent, killing more than a thousand people. Trump advised President Obama, via Twitter, “Do not attack Syria. There is no upside and tremendous downside.” (Obama had called Assad’s use of chemical arms crossing a “red line,” which might lead the U.S. to take military action, but he did not strike. Instead, Russia helped broker an agreement by which Assad gave up many—but evidently not all—of his chemical arms.)

Trump has said, “I’m very capable of changing to anything I want to change to.” In the case of Syria, however, he seems to have acted without a clear plan in place. During the campaign, he promised to “bomb the shit out of” isis, which holds territory in Syria, but he also said that it was foolish to become mired in the civil war, or to target Assad, who has opposed isis—at least, rhetorically. As recently as March 30th, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said that Assad’s future would be “decided by the Syrian people,” words that signalled a sharp departure from Obama’s insistence that Assad must leave office. Then, last Thursday, Tillerson seemed to shift direction, saying that “it would seem there would be no role” for Assad in Syria’s political future. But he later said, “I would not in any way attempt to extrapolate that to a change in our policy or our posture relative to our military activities in Syria today.”

Syria’s civil war is the worst geopolitical disaster of the twenty-first century. It has claimed at least four hundred and seventy thousand lives; prompted a refugee crisis that has destabilized European politics and fuelled the rise of nativist populism; and created a playing field for Russian and Iranian adventurism in the Middle East. Six years of efforts to end the war through diplomacy have failed. The interference of regional and global powers, combined with the fragmentation of militias and guerrillas on the battlefield, have made the conflict appear all but unresolvable. During the past year, the more mainstream rebels opposing Assad have suffered repeated setbacks, including the loss of Aleppo, Syria’s second-largest city.

Why, then, would the Trump Administration want to lob a few dozen cruise missiles into this splintered landscape? One limited rationale might be that Syria’s conflict has eroded global treaties banning the use of chemical arms—every time Assad gasses civilians, he increases the likelihood that another dictator or general will use them. It seems odd, though, to initiate armed intervention to prevent one sort of Syrian war crime but not others. Assad has tortured and executed thousands of his own people. Syrian and Russian forces routinely violate international law by targeting civilians, physicians, and rescue workers with bombs and artillery shells. And, if Trump has suddenly been moved to address the suffering, he might start recognizing the legitimacy of Syrians as refugees of war and welcoming them to resettle in the United States.

If President Trump broadens his aims against Assad, to establish civilian safe havens, for example, or to ground Syria’s Air Force, or to bomb Assad to the negotiating table, he will enter the very morass that Candidate Trump warned against. He would have to manage risks—military confrontation with Russia, an intensified refugee crisis, a loss of momentum against isis—that Obama studied at great length and concluded to be unmanageable, at least at a cost consistent with American interests.

Since the Cold War’s end, the United States has led or joined more than half a dozen wars or armed interventions lasting longer than a few months, including the ouster of Iraqi forces from Kuwait, in 1991; the conflicts in Somalia, Bosnia, and Kosovo; the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq after 9/11; and, in 2011, during the Arab uprisings, the removal of the Libyan dictator Muammar Qaddafi. A few of these wars achieved their aims, albeit at a cost in lives and treasure; others went sideways or turned into disasters, as in Libya, where Obama’s intervention has been followed by six years of chaos, civil war, and the rise of a branch of isis. You don’t need an advanced degree in military history to identify the main lessons: once started, even limited wars upend initial plans and assumptions, violence produces unintended consequences, and conflicts are much easier to begin or escalate than to end.

Canadian, European, and Middle Eastern allies, as well as some sections of the Washington foreign-policy establishment, applauded Trump for his strike, pointing out its narrow scope, and noting that Assad had brought it on himself. Unfortunately, Donald Trump’s continual search for approval seems to contribute to his unpredictability. Perhaps he will soon rediscover his inclination to proceed cautiously in Middle Eastern wars. Given his bombast, his inconsistency, and his preference for gut instinct over policy knowledge, he always seemed likely to be a dangerous wartime President. The worry now is that he will also be an ambitious one. ♦

Merrry de La Grey by the Bard of Bat Yam, Poet Laureate of Zion

Cats are among life's precious jewels and kinship
They are sweet, funny cute, genuine and rare,
They are what we call loyalty and friendship
And has worth far far beyond dogs to compare

Neil Gorsuch’s Supreme Court Confirmation Five Things that are now empanticall

The Senate voted Friday to confirm Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court.

It’s over. The Senate has confirmed Neil Gorsuch to the Supreme Court on a largely party-line 54-45 vote, ending a months-long process marked by partisanship and a historic rule change that could have major implications for the future of the court. Now that the fight is finished — and Congress heads home for its Easter recess — here are some takeaways from the drama surrounding Gorsuch’s confirmation.

The standard for Supreme Court nominees is now undeniably political

Throughout its history, the Supreme Court always has been a red-hot political issue for the other two branches of government (google “FDR and Supreme Court” and “Nixon and Supreme Court”). But the Gorsuch nomination shows how profoundly the standard for judging SCOTUS nominees has shifted.

For nearly 40 years, the primary test for senators has been a Supreme Court nominee’s qualifications, character and past actions. That led to bipartisan support of justices from Antonin Scalia (98-0), whose seat Gorsuch will fill on the court, to Sonia Sotomayor (68-31). Those justices represented clear sides of the judicial spectrum, but were still supported by both parties because of their qualifications. This slide into politics arguably started with Justice Samuel Alito and continued with Justice Elena Kagan, both of whom received more partisan opposition than we’d seen in the past. It accelerated last year, when Senate Republicans refused to consider Merrick Garland, former President Barack Obama’s nominee to fill Scalia’s seat. Republicans defended the move; Democrats have decried it as a political power play, and a low point for the Senate.

But now, with Gorsuch, it is clear. Supreme Court nominations have become a sport measured as much by partisan philosophy as judicial merit.

Paralysis Explained: The failed compromise attempt on Gorsuch highlights the bigger problem in Congress

Last weekend, a group of some 10 senators tried to avoid parliamentary bloodbath and find a compromise over Judge Gorsuch, senators involved in the talk told NewsHour and other media outlets.

Led by Sens. Susan Collins (R-Maine), and Chris Coons (D-Del), the senators from both parties generally agreed to some big terms: Democrats would move Gorsuch forward, in exchange for a promise from Republicans to hold off on changing the confirmation rules for a certain number of years.

But the deal fell apart, Coons said, in large part because Republicans wanted an exception for “extraordinary circumstances,” among other conditions. And Democrats simply did not trust Republicans to set a high enough bar for that. “We are in a moment of bad faith,” Coons said, noting that every Democrat feels Republicans acted in bad faith by blocking Garland and nearly every Republican feels the same about how Democrats almost universally have opposed Gorsuch.

Conclusion: For nearly 20 years, razor-sharp politics and ever increasing campaign money battles were the prime forces causing Washington gridlock. Now, add to that, a deep and growing mistrust.


Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., gives a thumbs up after the Senate invoked the “nuclear option” to confirm a Supreme Court justice nominee on Thursday, April 6. Photo By Tom Williams/CQ Roll Call.

Precedents still matter in the Senate. And the new key precedent is 2013

Leading up to the decision to “go nuclear” and alter how the rules work for Supreme Court nominations, we heard many lawmakers speak about what a sad day it was going to be in the Senate. But the truth is, the 2017 drama was barely a shadow of the intense emotion and electric divide of 2013, when Democrats first launched the “nuclear option” to get through a backlog of lower court and other presidential nominations.

The Senate remains a place of precedent. Which is why, technically, Republicans did not alter the words in the rules this week — they just changed the precedent for how the rules work. Now we’ll watch if any more precedents change.

The GOP has its first major accomplishment since Trump took office

It’s been a rocky first few months in power for President Donald Trump and the GOP-controlled Congress. The president’s travel bans have been blocked in court. Several high-profile investigations are underway into Russia’s interference in the 2016 election and its possible ties to Trump campaign associates. And House Republicans failed to pass a bill that aimed to repeal and replace the Affordable Care Act, dealing the party an embarrassing setback. This is not the start Republicans had hoped for in January, as they gained control of both chambers of Congress and the White House.

So Gorsuch’s confirmation was a much-needed win for the GOP, even if the confirmation process was ugly and controversial. Much of the attention now is on the “nuclear option.” That will always be a footnote to Gorsuch’s confirmation. But the focus on Senate rules will fade. What matters to Republicans and their base is getting a conservative judge on the court. Trump promised to do that if he won the election. With Gorsuch’s confirmation, Trump delivered. Whatever else happens on issues like immigration and health care — not to mention foreign policy — placing a justice (or possibly multiple justices) on the Supreme Court will be a major part of Trump’s legacy.

Gorsuch’s confirmation also brings short-term advantages. Gorsuch won’t change the balance of power on the court, but he does shore up its conservative wing. That will matter if cases on Trump’s orders on immigration and other policies come before the court in the next few years.

Republican SCOTUS strategy is working

Neil Gorsuch is 49. When Chief Justice John Roberts joined the court in 2005 he was 50. Justice Samuel Alito was 55 when he was confirmed the next year. Roberts and Alito are now in their sixties, but they could remain on the court for another two decades, if not longer. Gorsuch joins them as the court’s third relatively young conservative justice, forming a formidable group that could have a huge influence on American law for years to come.

Former President Barack Obama’s two Supreme Court appointments were also on the younger side. Justice Sotomayor was 55 when she joined the court in 2009, and Justice Kagan was 50 when she was confirmed in 2010. But with the addition of Gorsuch, the court’s conservative wing is now younger than the liberal wing. If Trump adds a fourth justice who is 60 or younger, that could tilt the balance of power for a very long time.

Neil Gorsuch's Confirmation and how it's fight changed politics

With Neil Gorsuch confirmed as a Supreme Court justice, it looks like a year of bitter partisan battles and congressional jiu jitsu has come to an end. But beneath the surface, the fight for late-Justice Antonin Scalia's seat left scars that will alter the federal government for years to come.

Newly-minted Justice Gorsuch brings the highest court in the land back to the 5-4 conservative-liberal split it had before Scalia passed away in February 2016. In many ways, he's a natural heir to Scalia: Gorsuch's core judicial philosophy and writing style are strikingly similar to the man he's replacing. Both are originalists, who interpret the Constitution based on the intent of the founders, and textualists, who look at the words of the document rather than legislative history. And both are known for their colorful language and incisive opinions.

But the path that took Gorsuch to that seat was anything but seamless.

The fight began in March 2016 when President Obama nominated Judge Merrick Garland to fill the seat. The same day, Majority Leader Mitch McConnell said the Senate wouldn’t act on the nomination and would instead wait until after the presidential election. Eight months of squabbling followed, as Democrats blasted Republicans for partisan obstruction and Republicans reminded Democrats that it was then-Sen. Joe Biden who argued in 1992 that Supreme Court vacancies in an election year shouldn’t be filled until after the election.

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SUPREME COURTWhat the Writer of a Play About Antonin Scalia Wants Neil Gorsuch to Know


Some thought there was a chance Garland, widely considered to be a moderate liberal, would be confirmed in a lame-duck session if Hillary Clinton won the election. Republican Sen. Orrin Hatch told National Journal that he privately met with Garland to tell him he’d vote for his confirmation “when Hillary won.”

But then Trump won instead, after trying to appease queasy Republicans by vowing to pick a conservative judge off a list he had circulated months before. Garland quietly returned to the bench on the Court of Appeals on the D.C. Circuit, but his ghost loomed over each fight in the next four months that ended in a Senate rule change nobody wanted.

Trump officially nominated Gorsuch at the end of January, saying he “took the task of this nomination very seriously” and that he selected a judge with “outstanding legal skills, a brilliant mind [and] tremendous discipline.” But he hadn’t even named Gorsuch yet before Democrats began saying they would filibuster anyone Trump put up. “This is a stolen seat,” Oregon Sen. Jeff Merkley said that week, fuming over Garland. “We will use every lever in our power to stop this.”


In the following weeks, Gorsuch met with more than 70 senators, trying to charm them with his general geniality and even distancing himself from Trump in certain areas. He largely avoided drama during his confirmation hearings at the end of March, using circumspect evasions and folksy humility to leave Senate Judiciary Committee Democrats without much to push against. But their anger over Garland was palpable. Nearly every Democratic member of the committee mentioned Garland in his or her questioning, with Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy even asking Gorsuch directly if he thought Garland had been treated fairly.

“I can’t get involved in politics,” Gorsuch responded.

“I can express an opinion,” Leahy shot back. “I think it was shameful.”

Meanwhile, the Democrats were making a serious effort to filibuster Gorsuch’s nomination. Sixty votes are needed for cloture, which ends debate in the Senate. A filibuster is to deny cloture, thereby preventing a measure from ever getting an up-or-down vote. Republicans said they would change Senate rules in response, triggering the so-called nuclear option which would allow them to confirm Gorsuch without needing 60 bipartisan votes for cloture.

"The answer isn’t to change the rules, it’s to change the nominee,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer warned of the high-stakes game of chicken shaping up in the Senate.

Many Republicans didn’t want to go nuclear. "I believe our actions will haunt us," Arizona Sen. John McCain of Arizona said on the Senate floor Wednesday. "We will see more and more nominees from the extremes of both left and right." But they felt their hands were forced by the Democrats, who first invoked the nuclear option in 2013 for lower court nominees and were now set to pull off the first-ever partisan filibuster of a Supreme Court nominee.

“I have no choice,” McCain said. “Because we need to confirm Gorsuch.”

Thus the stakes were set for the final showdown in the first week of April. Democrats resented Republicans for holding open a Supreme Court seat for a record-breaking amount of time. Republicans were furious at Democrats for mounting an unprecedented political filibuster of a qualified nominee. Both sides were sliding towards an outcome they didn’t want.

On Thursday, they did it. Democrats denied the 60 votes needed to end debate, and Republicans changed the rules in response. It was a moment marked more by resignation than anger.

“There was a lividness that was on the floor,” Republican Sen. Bob Corker said of when Democrats went nuclear in 2013. “This time it was very sanitary. Unemotional. Telegraphed in advance, planned in advance.”

Scuttling the filibuster for Supreme Court nominees will give more power to the president in future nominations if his party also controls the Senate, because the nominee can be confirmed on a simple majority. And it means the Supreme Court could eventually become populated with more ideologically extreme judges, since there will be less incentive to nominate people who would get bipartisan support.

“The dark deed is done,” Merkley tweeted ominously Thursday. It was "one of my saddest days in the Senate," Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal said.

Trump said that if future vacancies come up during his term, he won’t let the events of this week affect his choice. “I don't think the nuclear option has anything to do with it at all,” he told reporters Thursday of his next pick.

At the very least, using the nuclear option to confirm Gorsuch cemented a conservative majority on the Supreme Court for the foreseeable future. There are still four more years before a Democratic president could potentially nominate a justice, and there are some aging members and retirement rumors on the liberal and swing-vote wings of the court.

The events of the past year have only increased the rage on both sides, and the steps each party took have changed this process forever.

“The truth is,” Schumer said wearily Thursday, “over the long history of partisan combat over judicial nominations, there is blame on both sides.”

נאום הבכורה של ח"כ שרן השכלSharren Haskel Inaugural Speech at the Knesset

Sharren Haskel
Date of birth	4 March 1984 (age 33)
Place of birth	Toronto, Canada
Year of aliyah	1985
Knessets	20
Faction represented in Knesset
2015–	Likud

Sharren Haskel (Hebrew: שרן השכל‎‎, born 4 March 1984) is an Israeli member of the Knesset for Likud. She is the youngest member of Likud and the second youngest member of the 20th Knesset. She speaks fluent French, English, and Hebrew.

Early life

Haskel was born in Toronto, Canada to a jewish family. Her family immigrated to Israel a year after her birth. She was raised in Kfar Saba and studied theatre at Katznelson high school where she was a leader in scouts, and later transferred to Ankori high school where she studied Cinema. At the age of 18, Haskel served in the Israel Defense Forces where she was a combat soldier at the Israel Border Police during the time of the second intifada.

Haskel being promoted to sergeant after completing her commander's course

Education

Sharren Haskel Graduated from AVT Australia program for veterinary nursing. Haskel completed her bachelor's degree in political science and international relations at the Open University of Israel, where she was active in the debate team. In 2014, Haskel won the Israeli National Champion Debate for Juniors. She also an alumnus of the Jewish Statesmanship Center in Public Policy.

Social activism[

Haskel lived in Australia for six years where she worked as a veterinary nurse in Bondi Vet animal hospital, and volunteered most of her time to WIRES, an organization that rescue wild animals, treat them and release them back into the wild. She is active on environmental and animal rights issues, with a particular focus on water pollution coming out of areas under the control of the Palestinian Authority.Haskel supports de-criminalization of cannabis, and is an advocate for medical cannabis usage.

Political career

In 2013, Haskel tried to win a seat in Kfar Saba city hall. Although she lost, She continued to volunteer her time as an activist in the environmental committee in the Kfar Saba city hall. Prior to the 2015 Knesset elections she was placed 31st on the Likud list. Although she failed to enter the Knesset when Likud won 30 seats, she became an MK in 2015 as a replacement for Danny Danon following his appointment as Israel's envoy to the United Nations on August 14, 2015.

Haskel speaks at the European Summit in November 2015

Recognition

Sharren Haskel has been labeled by Liberal and Libertarian organizations, think tanks and media as the most active and influential MP for civil freedom, individual rights and economical freedom in Israel for 2016. She was also labeled as the "Israeli Margaret Thatcher" in Haaretz newspaper. On May 2016 MP Haskel was recognized by the "Jewish Journal" the United States as a leader of new generation of woman in politics, mainly for her extensive work around the world to defend Israel’s policy and government.

Committee Assignments

MK Haskel currently serves on these committees for the 20th Knesset:

• Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee
• special committee for internal and environmental affair
• Special Committee on Drugs and Alcohol Abuse
• Science and Technology Committee

Arrow Intercepts a Syrian Missile: Technological, Operational, and Political Aspects By Uzi Rubin

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BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 437, April 2, 2017

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: Israel’s Arrow recently made its combat debut with the interception of a Syrian anti-aircraft missile. Remarkably, the 1991 vintage Arrow missile defense system managed to track, engage, and destroy a type of target never envisaged during its design. This sent a powerful message that Israel's missile shield is reaching maturity. The political repercussions of the interception raised questions about its advisability, but the repercussions of a non-interception might have been even more severe.

On March 17, 2017, the Israeli public learned that the previous night, the Arrow missile defense system had successfully intercepted a Syrian antiaircraft missile that had been fired against Israel Air Force aircraft engaged in a deep penetration mission inside Syria. This was the operational debut of the Arrow weapon system.

The somewhat laconic announcement by the IDF left unanswered questions. How could Arrow – originally designed to down ballistic missiles – engage an antiaircraft missile? Was the Syrian missile in fact destroyed? Was this an intended interception? What exactly was intercepted? The absence of details was grist to the rumor mill. So was speculation by a leading defense publication that the intercepted weapon was a Syrian SCUD ballistic missile fired in retaliation against the Israeli air attack.

The IDF's disclosure was also an admission. For the first time since the onset of the Syrian civil war, Israel conceded that its Air Force had attacked targets deep within Syria. All previous reports of such attacks had come from international sources.

The admission raised questions about the wisdom of having intercepted the Syrian missile. Former Prime Minister and Minister of Defense Ehud Barak was quick to comment the next day that, "Upon reflection, perhaps it was not wise to launch an Arrow missile against an antiaircraft missile" because this "forced us to admit the (Israel Air Force) operation in Syria, due to the fall of the Arrow debris in Jordan." At the same time, Barak said the event "demonstrated our awesome capability."

The event had immediate political repercussions. Israel's ambassador in Moscow was summoned by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs to explain Israel's action. Syria's ambassador to the UN observed that the Israel's freedom of action in Syria was no more, and many Israeli commentators agreed. At the same time, Prime Minister Netanyahu declared that all previous agreements with Russia where still in force.

Three days later, the IDF clarified some of Friday's mysteries. At a press conference, General Zvi Haimovitz, commander of the Israel Air Defense Command, disclosed that Israel's air and missile defense system had designated the Syrian missile – which he identified as a Syrian SA-5 antiaircraft missile – as a threat that was expected to hit Israel in the central Jordan valley district. "There was no question mark or hesitation" about the need to neutralize this threat, and the decision to intercept was taken "in seconds" by the local commander. Haimovitz’s statements confirmed that this was had not been an "accidental interception" but a deliberate act that neutralized an imminent danger.

The full-scale development of Arrow started in 1991, and the system achieved initial operational capability in late 2000. It is optimized against medium and long range (in Israeli terms) ballistic missiles. The system comprises early warning and fire control "Green Pine" radars, the "Golden Citron" battle management system, launchers, and two types of interceptor missiles: Arrow 2 for high atmosphere interceptions and Arrow 3 for space interceptions.

The system was extensively tested but did not feature in any of the last decade's wars (the 2006 Lebanon War, Operation Cast Lead in 2009, Operation Pillar of Defense in 2012, and Operation Defensive Shield in 2014). The March 17 interception was thus its first-ever reported combat action.

A video clip recorded from a passing vehicle appears to show that only a single interceptor was launched from somewhere in central Israel. Images released in Jordan the next day showed an object resembling an Arrow missile rocket motor, much damaged by ground impact. From this evidence, it can be deduced that the Arrow system succeeded in destroying a long-range threat arriving from Syria by a single shot – an impressive feat.

But even more impressive is the fact that the destroyed threat was not a ballistic missile but an antiaircraft missile, which was not envisaged as a threat when the system was designed in the early 1990s.

Ballistic and antiaircraft missiles differ in this way: the former are designed to hit stationary targets on the ground, while the latter are designed to hit rapidly moving targets in the air. The disparate missions elicit disparate technical features, not least in their trajectories; hence the difference in the achievability of intercepting them.

While missile defense systems can now be found around the world, no missile defense system dedicated to the interception of antiaircraft missiles has yet been developed. That is because it is more feasible to neutralize them through "soft" defenses like electronic warfare and decoys. The March 17 firing of antiaircraft missiles against IAF planes was not the first such occasion: a previous incident took place in January 2017. In neither case was the Israeli plane hit, indicating that they carried sufficient "soft" defenses to thwart the Syrian missiles.

The air defense system that launched the Syrian missile is dubbed SA-5 by the West and S-200 Vega by Russia. The specific missile used against the IAF was probably the E (for Export) version, which carries a 217 kg warhead.

The S-200 system was developed in the 1960s and became operational in the USSR and among its allies and clients during the 1970s. The system is venerable and by no means ineffective. Its lethality was tragically demonstrated in October 2001 when a Ukrainian SA-5, launched during military exercises, destroyed a Russian airliner over the Black Sea, killing all 78 aboard.

Syria, Iran, and Libya were the Middle Eastern recipients of this weapon. Syria, which received it after the 1982 Lebanon War when its air defenses were largely destroyed by the IAF, was the first country outside the Soviet bloc to possess it. The USSR supplied three batteries that were deployed to permanent bases near Damascus and other priority targets in Syria.

Following the outbreak of the Syrian Civil War in 2011, the SA-5 sites were either abandoned or overrun by insurgents. With the Russian intervention in late 2015, however, a renovation of the Syrian SA-5 batteries was initiated (as conceded by the Russian Minister of Defense in October 2016). The SA-5 battery east of Homs became operational in July 2016, while the SA-5 site in Ghouta, east of Damascus, was retaken from the insurgents three months ago. This explains why no SA-5 missiles were fired at IAF incursions into Syria prior to January 2017.

The SA-5 interceptor is a rather hefty missile. It is initially accelerated by four large, solid rocket boosters, which are discarded three to five seconds after takeoff. Once the boosters are thrown away, the remaining core missile is dimensionally very similar to a SCUD. This core missile is powered by a large liquid propellant rocket motor that accelerates it to 2.5 km per second (nearly eight times the speed of sound).

Western antiaircraft missiles self-destruct automatically if they miss their targets to prevent the falling of live warheads into friendly territory. It is not clear whether the SA-5 has a self-destruct function, and if so, whether it is automatic or is activated by manual command from the ground.

If no self-destruct is activated after a miss, the SA-5 interceptor may well continue its flight in a stable, ballistic trajectory. It will hit the ground at a distance that is determined by its speed and inclination at the moment of rocket motor burnout. At a speed of 2.5 km per second, this distance could be more than 500 km. It stands to reason, though, that the actual range would be shorter, due to the peculiar trajectory and inclination of an antiaircraft missile. Even at a shorter range, the spent missile will be seen by missile defense radars as a ballistic threat.

It appears that what happened in the early hours of Friday, March 17, 2017 was this. An antiaircraft missile fired in a southwesterly direction from one of the renovated Syrian SA-5 sites missed its target, did not self-destruct, and continued to fly in a stable ballistic trajectory towards Israel. It was picked up at a distance by the "Green Pine" radars, its predicted impact point was seen to be within Israeli territory, and it was classified as an imminent threat. The decision to engage it was taken by the local commander as per his orders and the rules of engagement.

The Arrow system functioned properly and engaged the target by a single interceptor that shed its own rocket motor once its fuel was spent, as it was designed to do. The detached motor continued in its own trajectory and hit the ground near the Jordanian city of Irbid. The Arrow then continued its flight and neutralized the threat.

In brief: the Arrow weapons system detected, locked onto, and neutralized a threatening missile of a type never envisaged during its original design. This was a remarkable performance that verified Ehud Barak's "awesome capability" assessment, and broadcast the powerful message that Israel's missile shield has reached maturity.

The interception caused a political stir, which prompted Barak to question its wisdom. It must be recalled that the timeframe for decisions by the local commander whether or not to engage is measured in the tens of seconds. This leaves no time for dialogue with superior officers about the engagement’s advisability. The local commander must make a snap decision based on standing orders and established rules of engagement.

Thus, the question of the wisdom of the March 17 decision to engage is irrelevant. Even if, somehow, time had allowed for a more protracted decision-making process, it is not clear that any other decision would have been taken. The impact of a Syrian-fired, heavy SA-5 warhead might have caused damage and casualties in Israel, with consequences no less significant than – and possibly worse than – those actually incurred.

Once the decision to engage had been made, it became impossible to maintain official silence due to the high visibility of the interception and its capture by the video recording devices of civilians, both here and in Jordan. Still, one wonders why it was necessary to include the IAF attack in Syria in Israel's admission.


Uzi Rubin was founding Director of the Israel Missile Defense Organization, which managed the Arrow program. He is now a senior research associate at the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

BESA Center Perspectives Papers are published through the generosity of the Greg Rosshandler Family

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Ivanka Trump PoorLittle Rich Girl: Documents reveal Ivanka, Jared have fortune worth over $740M

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner Still Benefiting From Business Empire, Filings Show



President Trump’s daughter, Ivanka, and her husband, Jared Kushner, leaving the Oval Office in February.CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times

Ivanka Trump and Jared Kushner, President Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, will remain the beneficiaries of a sprawling real estate and investment business still worth as much as $740 million, despite their new government responsibilities, according to ethics filings released by the White House Friday night.

Ms. Trump will also maintain a stake in the Trump International Hotel in Washington, D.C. The hotel, just down the street from the White House, has drawn protests from ethics experts who worry that foreign governments or special interests could stay there in order to curry favor with the administration.

It is unclear how Ms. Trump would earn income from that stake. Mr. Kushner’s financial disclosures said that Ms. Trump earned between $1 million and $5 million from the hotel between January 2016 and March 2017, and put the value of her stake at between $5 million and $25 million.

The disclosures were part of a broad, Friday-night document release by the White House that exposed the assets of as many as 180 senior officials to public scrutiny. The reports showed the assets and wealth of senior staff members at the time they entered government service.

This is just more testament to the stupidity and ignorance of at least half of the US electorate.

It is important, for the future edification and need for closure of the American tax payer/voter, that Trump's solitary confinement in a...

The word "earned" with regard to the second-generation beneficiaries of Fred Trump's lucre may be taken with a grain of salt. 

Those disclosures included the assets of Gary D. Cohn, the former president of Goldman Sachs who now leads the National Economic Council, Kellyanne Conway, the pollster and counsel to Mr. Trump and Stephen K. Bannon, the chief strategist to the president.

Mr. Bannon disclosed $191,000 in consulting fees he earned from Breitbart News Network, the conservative media organization, $125,333 from Cambridge Analytica, a data firm that worked for the Trump campaign, and $61,539 in salary from the Government Accountability Institute, a conservative nonprofit organization. All three are backed by Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, financiers and major Republican donors.

Mr. Bannon’s most valuable asset was Bannon Strategic Advisors Inc., a privately held consulting firm into which income from his other investments appeared to flow. It was valued at between $5 million and $25 million. He also held bank accounts valued at up to $2.25 million, and rental real estate worth as much as $10.5 million.

Ms. Conway earned at least $842,614 last year, and perhaps slightly more, the filings show. Her assets are valued at between $11 million and at least $44.2 million.

Mr. Cohn is far wealthier, with assets valued between $253 million and $611 million, and income last year as high as $77 million. Another White House official, Reed Cordish, who heads up technology initiatives, accumulated assets as a Maryland developer valued as high as $424 million.

Mr. Trump’s administration is considered the most wealthy in American history, with members of his senior staff and cabinet worth an estimated $12 billion, according to a tally by Bloomberg. The Friday filings will add voluminous detail to that top-line figure. The White house chief of staff, Reince Priebus, for example, earned at least $1.18 million — nearly half of which came from the Republican National Committee, which he formerly led. His assets totaled between $604,008 and at least $1.26 million.

“I think one of the really interesting things that people are going to see today — and I think it’s something that should be celebrated — is that the president has brought a lot of people into this administration, and this White House in particular, who have been very blessed and very successful,” said Sean Spicer, the White House press secretary. The officials “have given up a lot to come into government by setting aside a lot of assets,” he said.

Until January, Mr. Kushner was the chief executive of Kushner Companies, a family-run real estate investment firm with holdings across the country. It is a growing business that has taken part in at least $7 billion of acquisitions over the past decade.

Late Friday, the White House released details of the plan devised by his advisers to avoid conflicts of interest between Mr. Kushner’s government role and the wide-ranging business empire he ran with his father. That business depends on foreign investment from undisclosed sources, as well as billions of dollars in loans from the world’s biggest financial services firms.

Although Mr. Kushner has stepped down from his management positions at the more than 200 entities that operated aspects of the family real estate business, he will remain a beneficiary of a vast majority of the business he ran for the past decade, through a series of trusts that already owned the various real estate companies.

The plan laid out on Friday “is not sufficient,” said Larry Noble, a former general counsel and chief ethics officer for the Federal Election Commission. “While removing himself from the management of the businesses is an important step, he is still financially benefiting from how the businesses do. This presents potential for a conflict of interest. Given his level in the White House and broad portfolio, it’s hard to see how he will recuse himself from everything that may impact his financial interest.”

While the filing discloses Mr. Kushner’s personal lenders, it does not provide information on his business partners or lenders to his projects.

His real estate firm has borrowed money from the likes of Goldman Sachs, the Blackstone Group, Deutsche Bank and the French bank Natixis. It also received loans from Israel’s largest bank, Bank Hapoalim, which is the subject of a United States Justice Department investigation into allegations that it helped wealthy Americans evade taxes using undeclared accounts.

Most recently, his firm’s flagship property at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan was the subject of controversy: Around the time his father-in-law received the Republican nomination last spring, Mr. Kushner’s firm began conversations with a Chinese company with ties to some of the Communist Party’s leading families about a plan to invest billions of dollars in the troubled office tower.

Mr. Kushner’s company and the firm, Anbang Insurance Group, agreed to end the talks on Wednesday after weeks of negative publicity about the deal, criticized as a bailout of the Kushners. The building had already been rescued by a number of prominent firms, including the private equity giant Carlyle Group, and Zara, the Spanish fashion retailer founded and owned by Amancio Ortega, one of the world’s wealthiest men.

Mr. Kushner has divested his stakes in any businesses connected to that property.

The disclosures do not reveal the names of investors and lenders to ventures that Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in. For example, the form shows Mr. Kushner is retaining a stake in a limited liability corporation that owns a Trump-branded luxury rental high-rise building in Jersey City worth as much as $5 million. That project was financed with tens of millions of dollars from wealthy Chinese investors through a controversial visa-for-sale program called EB-5.

However, the filing does not disclose the names of any of those investors — or partners in any of his other projects.

“We don’t know who the business partners are in many of these investments,” Mr. Noble said, “and those business partners may also have interests that will be affected by how he advises the government. And that’s a concern.”

“He could have foreign business partners who have a real interest in policy, and he may be advising the president on those policies,” Mr. Noble added. “This is a dark area where we just don’t know what’s going on.”

In all, the Kushner company owns more than 20,000 apartments and approximately 14 million square feet of office space.

Previous disclosures by the United States Office of Government Ethics showed that Mr. Kushner had divested his interests in several entities, mostly partnerships connected to a venture capital firm run by his brother, Joshua, called Thrive Capital, that invests in technology firms like Instagram.

He also shed his interests in funds run by the private equity giant Blackstone Group — whose chief executive, Stephen A. Schwarzman, is an economic adviser to Mr. Trump — as well as BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager.

Over all, he has shed his stakes in 58 businesses.

He is still the sole primary beneficiary of a majority of the trusts that will retain assets, with his children as the secondary beneficiaries.

Mr. Kushner was required to submit some limited financial information for his wife, Ms. Trump, who will continue to receive payments from the Trump Organization as well as her fashion brand.

Ms. Trump, who now serves as an assistant to the president, resigned from her leadership roles at both companies. Instead of performance-based payments, Ms. Trump will receive fixed payments from T International Realty, the family’s luxury brokerage agency, as well as fixed fees from two entities related to real estate projects, the documents show.

Ms. Trump had previously rolled her fashion brand into the Ivanka M. Trump Business Trust, which is overseen by her brother-in-law, Josh Kushner, and sister-in-law, Nicole Meyer. The documents released on Friday valued the trust at more than $50 million.

The brand is largely a licensing operation, meaning that it sells the use of Ms. Trump’s name to partners who manufacture her clothes, shoes and other accessories. Since it is privately held, little is known about the company’s financials, but The New York Times has previously reported that revenues were roughly between $4 million and $6 million in 2013, before the debut of a major partnership.

The disclosure forms released Friday for less senior White House staff members were not reviewed by the federal Office of Government Ethics. Only the White House Counsel’s Office examines their assets to determine if there are potential conflicts, and to decide what steps employees must take to sell assets, resign positions or recuse themselves from decisions.

Already, a complaint has been filed against at least one White House staff member for taking actions that might benefit his own financial interests. Christopher P. Liddell, an assistant to the president and the director of strategic initiatives, had been the chief financial officer of companies including Microsoft, International Paper and General Motors before taking his White House job. Until recently, he also owned stock in General Motors, according to disclosure forms, among more than 750 other companies.

But in late January and early February, according to a complaint filed by Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, Mr. Liddell participated in meetings that involved several of the companies in which he still owned a total of about $2 million in stock, including International Paper and General Motors. Mr. Liddell, according to disclosures, sold these stock holdings by mid-February.273COMMENTS

“It is Ethics 101 — the most basic thing you are not supposed to do: using your official capacity to benefit your financial interest,” said Norman Eisen, who served as a White House ethics lawyer during the Obama administration and now is a co-chairman of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

The White House did not respond Friday when asked about the complaint.