aliyah, Day of the Lord, Ethiopia, France, Germany, Gog Magog
Jewish Agency Chairman Isaac Herzog: 20,000 men and women were ready to leave everything behind in this challenging year to come to Israel.
Global pandemic notwithstanding, over 20,000 Jews from 70 countries made aliyah over the course of 2020, the Jewish Agency reported this week as the year draws to a close.
With help from the aliyah and Integration Ministry, The Jewish Agency set up a special situation room to help bring the new olim to Israel as countries all over the world shut down air traffic because of the coronavirus crisis.
The Jewish Agency expects the uptick in aliyah to continue even after the COVID pandemic begins to wane and that 250,000 new immigrants will move to Israel in the next three to five years.
The biggest numbers of new immigrants arrived from Russia, Ukraine, the US, and France. As of the end of November, 10,200 new olim had arrived from the former Soviet Union. Another 3,120 immigrants from western Europe, including 2,220 from France, also made aliyah this year. About 2,850 new olim arrived from North America, most of whom (2,550) hailed from the US.
Not only did immigrants continue to arrive throughout the year, but interest in aliyah spiked as COVID wreaked its havoc on economies and families. Read More
Yet, arguably most troubling of all is the direct link of the vaccine’s lead developers to the Wellcome Trust and, in the case of Adrian Hill, the Galton Institute, two groups with longstanding ties to the UK Eugenics movement. The latter organization, named for the “father of eugenics” Francis Galton, is the re-named UK Eugenics Society, a group notorious for its promotion of racist pseudoscience and efforts to “improve racial stock” by reducing the population of those deemed inferior for over a century.
The ties of Adrian Hill to the Galton Institute should raise obvious concerns given the push to make the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine he developed with Gilbert the vaccine of choice for the developing world, particularly countries in Latin America, South and Southeast Asia and Africa, the very areas where the Galton Institute’s past members have called for reducing population growth. Read More
Bank for International Settlements (BIS), bitcoin, CBDC, Central Banks, cryptocurrencies, internet, Jamie Dimon, Ray Dalio
Former U.S. Ambassador to Japan and Sen.-elect Bill Hagerty (R-TN) is speaking out against Georgia Democrat Senate candidate Jon Ossoff over money Ossoff’s film company received from a company directly tied to the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Hagerty, who was ambassador to Japan for two years and made his experience with East Asia a centerpiece of his successful Senate campaign, said in a statement to Breitbart News that Ossoff “may be a security risk” and is “certainly not an acceptable choice for Senator.”
Ossoff, who first invested in the film company, Insight TWI, in 2013, submitted an amendment to his Senate financial statement in July indicating the company received more than $5,000 in the past two years from Hong Kong-based telecommunication company PCCW.
PCCW is owned in part by China Unicom, the CEO of which is a CCP member, and is chaired by Richard Li, who openly opposes Hong Kong independence.
While the payment alone has raised concern because of its link to the CCP, the issue has been further complicated by Ossoff’s reporting of it. This month, Ossoff’s campaign told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution he actually received only $1,000 from PCCW despite filing instructions asking for payments over $5,000.
Additionally, the payment, which was one of 11 payments that Ossoff had excluded from his May filing but included in his July amendment, was reported after he had already won his June Senate primary race in his bid to unseat Sen. David Perdue (R-GA). When confronted about the omission, his campaign attributed it to a “paperwork oversight.”
In Hagerty’s statement to Breitbart News, the senator-elect disapproved of the transaction and the handling of it and likened the issue to the recent report of Rep. Eric Swalwell’s (D-CA) relationship with suspected Chinese spy Christine Fang.
“China has proven that it will brazenly leverage any relationship they can to gain influence in our country — and Jon Ossoff is a perfect target for them,” Hagerty said. “Eric Swalwell’s relationship with a suspected Communist spy shows just how vulnerable some congressional Democrats are to Chinese influence.” Read More
The Left was never going to succeed in removing Bibi from power. But Israel’s right-wing voters might.
The Center-Left constituency in Israel was never going to overthrow Benjamin Netanyahu, no matter how much they shouted and how long they kept up their weekly nationwide demonstrations. They’d already had three chances at the polls in just the past year, and still Bibi remained on top.
A firm majority of Israelis are right-wing. This is evidenced by repeated election results in which the right-wing and ultra-Orthodox blocs consistently come out with far more mandates than the Left. Similarly, public opinion polls regularly show that most Israelis want a right-wing government.
But that doesn’t mean everyone wants Netanyahu, even on the Right.
The Chinese economy is set to overtake the U.S. faster than previously anticipated after weathering the coronavirus pandemic better than the West, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
The world’s biggest and second-biggest economies are on course to trade places in dollar terms in 2028, five years earlier than expected a year ago, it said on Saturday.
In its World Economic League Table, the consultancy also calculated that China could become a high-income economy as soon as 2023. Further cementing Asia’s growing might, India is set to move up the rankings to become the No. 3 economy at the end of the decade.
The Chinese economy is set to overtake the U.S. faster than previously anticipated after weathering the coronavirus pandemic better than the West, according to the Centre for Economics and Business Research.
The world’s biggest and second-biggest economies are on course to trade places in dollar terms in 2028, five years earlier than expected a year ago, it said on Saturday.
In its World Economic League Table, the consultancy also calculated that China could become a high-income economy as soon as 2023. Further cementing Asia’s growing might, India is set to move up the rankings to become the No. 3 economy at the end of the decade. Read More
Aircraft and fighter jets attacked targets belonging to the Hamas Islamic organization in the Gaza Strip, the IDF Spokesman said. The planes attacked a weapons production site, underground infrastructure, and a military position.
The attack was carried out in response to rocket fire from the south earlier on Friday evening, when air defense fighters intercepted two launches aimed at Ashkelon.
The IDF said “the IDF takes all terror activity against Israel very seriously and is prepared and willing to act as resolutely as necessary, against attempts to harm Israeli citizens and its sovereignty. The Hamas terror organization bears responsibility for what happens in and out of the Gaza Strip, and it will bear the consequences of the terror acts against the citizens of Israel. Read More
Red Color sirens were heard on Friday evening, around 8:00 p.m., in the Ashkelon area and in communities located near the Gaza Strip.
Residents of the area reported hearing explosions, likely as a result of the Iron Dome intercepting rockets.
The IDF confirmed that that two rockets were fired from Gaza towards southern Israel and were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
אזעקת הצבע האדום באשקלון ובעוטף עזה: שני יירוטים נצפו בשמיים@Itsik_zuarets
(צילום: יגאל חדד) pic.twitter.com/VB61U3hiTg— כאן חדשות (@kann_news) December 25, 2020
Four years after voting to leave the 27-nation European Union, Britain clinched a Brexit trade deal with the European Union on Dec. 24. Next Thursday, the UK is set to exit EU trading rules, a year after officially leave the bloc, thereby marking a historic global shift. At stake is around $900 billion in annual trade – half in goods, the rest in services, the lion’s share of Britain’s economy.
At a Downing Street press conference, British PM Boris Johnson announced: “We have taken back control of our laws and our destiny.” The text of the agreement has yet to be released, but the PM claimed it was a “good deal for the whole of Europe.”
The statement issued by his government said: “The deal … guarantees that we are no longer in the lunar pull of the EU, we are not bound by EU rules, there is no role for the European Court of Justice and all of our key red lines about returning sovereignty have been achieved. It means that we will have full political and economic independence on 1st January 2021.”
Britain’s exit from the European union, mandated by a narrow majority of 52 to 48, in a nation referendum on June 23, 2016, proclaimed UK independence while also trashing the political careers of two of Johnson’s Conservative predecessors along the tortuous journey to a deal: David Cameron stepped down after losing his campaign to halt Brexit; Theresa May lost three parliament votes against the exit plan she negotiated with Brussels before giving up and leaving. Meanwhile, the British economy sank into suspended chaos and limped from crisis to crisis.
In this sense, the deal is a huge relief. Read More
California’s proposed wealth tax, Bill 2028, would apply for a decade to anyone who spends 60 days in the state in a single year.
Here are the details.
