Pretty much everything in life has limits. There are limits to how long we will live, the height of a skyscraper, the size of a home, and even how many refugees a compassionate America can welcome at its borders. Everything can grow, in other words, but up to a point.

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Traditionally, the one exception to this truism has been the economy. We almost take it for granted that the key metrics of our economies will continue to grow, from GDP to consumption to production to revenues. As Federica Urso and Mark John have written in Reuters, "The idea that a finite planet cannot sustain ever-increasing consumption is about the closest you can get to a heresy in economics, where growth is widely held as the best route to prosperity."

In recent years, however, a movement has gained traction arguing that we are entering an era of "limits" to growth. This movement, also known as "degrowth," has its origin in a 1970 study by an international team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology on the implications of continued worldwide growth. In a subsequent book titled, Limits to Growth, the researchers argued, "The earth's interlocking resources – the global system of nature in which we all live – probably cannot support present rates of economic and population growth much beyond the year 2100, if that long, even with advanced technology."

Today, as climate change accelerates and supply chain disruptions have introduced to many consumers a taste of scarcity, the degrowth movement has gotten a second wind. In the Reuters report, Tim Jackson, author of the 2009 book Prosperity Without Growth, argues that "the pandemic lockdowns of 2020 and this year's Western sanctions on Russia have both challenged consumption with other priorities, namely health safety or geopolitical goals."

It shouldn't surprise us, then, if the degrowth movement has infiltrated that ultimate bastion of capitalism, the World Economic Forum (WEF) at Davos, Switzerland, which is being held this week. In fact, the WEF published an article in June on the impacts of degrowth, suggesting "it might mean people in rich countries changing their diets, living in smaller houses and driving and traveling less."

Commenting on Passover, the festival of freedom, he adds that it is actually "only half a holiday. From the very moment we celebrate liberation we count the days to the holiday of Shavuot when the Jewish people stood at Mount Sinai and received the Torah. The two festivals are inextricably linked. The first speaks of freedom from; the second freedom to. We were freed from physical servitude in order to voluntarily place ourselves under the restrictions of moral rectitude."

What does this mean for the captains of industry gathered at Davos? For one thing, it means liberating ourselves from the "slavery" of our predispositions and opening our minds to new ideas and new ways of looking at the world.

Perhaps the ultimate ritual that captures a new way of looking at the world is the weekly Jewish Sabbath, a time when we disconnect in order to reconnect when we slow down in order to re-energize. Someone once remarked that if the whole world observed the Sabbath, avoiding the use of cars and technology for one day a week, the planet would heal within a few years.

This is in keeping with what some have coined the "Dayenu Principle," which uses a word from the Passover liturgy to convey the idea of sufficiency and productive limits. Rabbi Ari Kahn calls this delicate balance "working and guarding" the garden, "the mandate for all human endeavor."

Because we are partners with our Creator in this endeavor, the rabbi adds, "there is holiness in productivity as well as holiness in sustainability. 'To work' and 'to protect' are both expressions of our ongoing involvement in the partnership with the Divine."

There is a Jewish custom of affixing a mezuzah at our doorposts, both at home and in our offices. Rabbi Kahn explains that the deepest value of the mezuzah is to remind us to say "enough" – dai – of practicing self-control. "The restraint that we learn from the very act of Creation," he writes, "should be a guiding principle for our lives, an organizing principle that can help us perfect all our relationships."

When the thousands of leaders and influencers return home from Davos, they might want to take on this mezuzah custom, which is meaningful for everyone. In the meantime, this coming Friday night, they will have a chance to taste for themselves the sacred power of the Sabbath. During the conference, they will have the opportunity to use the Dayenu Principle to focus on what I see as two meta questions for our time:

In what ways can we grow our companies and institutions responsibly to satisfy shareholders, employees, and humanity? How do the "limits" of our new world offer creative opportunities to reimagine what we do and how we do it?

In a nutshell, instead of looking at a future of either growth, no growth, or degrowth, perhaps we can all rally around a "Dayenu" future of creative and responsible growth. The virtues of creativity and responsibility are two areas that have no limits.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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As much as anything, Jews are the people of the joke. In his 1981 book, Funny People, Steve Allen estimated that 80% of American comics were Jewish. That shouldn't shock anyone. As scholar Jennifer Caplan wrote about that era, "Everyone knew, or thought they knew, that American comedy was Jewish comedy and vice versa."

This bonding between Jews and America around laughter can create awkward situations. If we're the heroes of comedy, what do we do when a comedian tells jokes that are antisemitic? Do we tolerate it in the name of comedy or do we fight it in the name of the community?

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Comedy versus community. Scolds versus enablers. Welcome to 2022.

We're no longer living in the heyday of comedy, when comics had a wide latitude as long as they were funny. Today, when there are Instagram and Twitter accounts that could spread any "wrong" word to 100 million people overnight, and when "not being offended" has become a human right, we've become a nation that walks on eggshells.

If you run an organization that fights antisemitism or simply cares for the welfare of the Jewish community, it's almost certain that you will feel obligated to respond. Many of those responses follow the usual dance of "expose, condemn and ask for an apology."

Chappelle himself poked fun at that dance at the start of his monologue: "Before I start tonight, I just wanted to read a brief statement that I prepared. I denounce antisemitism in all its forms and I stand with my friends in the Jewish community. And that, Kanye, is how you buy yourself some time."

Chappelle exposed the uneasy truth of celebrities getting caught saying something offensive and then releasing a statement that everyone knows was written by a PR handler. By revealing the goal of "buying yourself some time," he captured the phoniness of the whole exercise.

That was cutting and funny. It's when he played up antisemitic tropes around the "all-powerful" Jew that he entered dicey territory.

"I've been to Hollywood," he said. "And I don't want y'all to get mad at me, I'm just telling you this is just what I saw. It's a lot of Jews. Like a lot."

Perhaps realizing he was on sensitive ground, he called the idea that Jews run show business a "delusion," but then added: "It's not a crazy thing to think. But it's a crazy thing to say out loud in a climate like this."

In other words, it's not crazy to think that Jews run the show; just don't say it out loud.

Whether he intended it or not, that "hush-hush" vibe suggests mystery and conspiracy, precisely the ancient trope that fuels Jew hatred and makes so many Jews nervous.

Which brings us back to the "Chappelle trap." It's one thing to fight antisemitism when it comes from places like a neo-Nazi march or a BDS group or even celebrity musicians or athletes. None of those people make a living by making us laugh.

Chappelle does.

Because Chappelle plays in the very Jewish playground of comedy, it makes it that much harder to calibrate our response. How do we fight a comic without losing our sense of humor, without losing what made America love us in the first place? At what point do we say, "We can't take this joke because it goes too far?"

If the ritual of "expose, condemn and ask for an apology" is phony anyhow, is it worth losing our sense of humor? And does complaining so loudly, as much as it makes us feel good, make things better or worse?

In the classic Jewish tradition, I have more questions than answers

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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Twitter must be the epitome of hypocrisy. It bans The New York Post's reporting of Hunter Biden's laptop, or columnist Paul Sperry's recent take on the FBI's raid on Mar-a-Lago, but allowed this tweet 2019 tweet by Grand Ayatollah Ali Khamenei endorsing Iran's murderous fatwa against author Salman Rushdie:

"Imam Khomenei's verdict regarding Salman Rushdie is based on divine verses and just like divine verses it is solid and irrevocable. 1990-06-05."

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Now that Iran sympathizer Hadi Matar has been arrested for stabbing Rushdie up to 15 times at a conference in Buffalo, I wonder if Twitter will call an emergency meeting.

I wonder if the higher ups will ask things like: Are we going too far with our selective censorship? If we're cracking down on speech we dislike here in the United States, should we also crack down on Islamist speech that incites violence? Should we establish new guidelines?

They may start by actually reading the fatwa that Khamenei endorsed on Twitter's platform, calling for the heads of Rushdie and others associated with a book that offended them:

"In the name of Allah … I am informing all brave Muslims of the world that the author of The Satanic Verses, a text written, edited, and published against Islam, the Prophet of Islam, and the Qu'ran, along with all the editors and publishers aware of its contents, are condemned to death. I call on all valiant Muslims wherever they may be in the world to kill them without delay, so that no one will dare insult the sacred beliefs of Muslims henceforth. Whoever is killed in this cause will be a martyr, Allah willing. Meanwhile if someone has access to the author of the book but is incapable of carrying out the execution, he should inform the people so that [Rushdie] is punished for his actions.

"May peace and blessings of Allah be upon you."

It doesn't matter if only a small percentage of Muslims are triggered by this call to kill in the name of God. Violence is violence. Whether the incitement comes from an imam or rabbi or priest or white supremacist or anyone else, it is dangerous and unacceptable.

But because Twitter is a private company, it has the right to censor or allow any speech it likes. If it decides that "misinformation" regarding Hunter Biden's laptop or COVID vaccines or election irregularities is more of a threat to society than a call to murder an author, that may be idiotic, but it's their choice.

Just as Twitter has its rights, however, we have the right to publicly condemn the company for its brazen hypocrisy – for censoring speech that provokes dissenting thought while allowing speech that incites violence from the world's No. 1 sponsor of terror.

With Rushdie in the hospital after being attacked, will Twitter finally ban the man calling for his murder? Deleting a tweet is hardly enough.

And what about the tweet by Asif Aziz, who tweeted "Don't worry you are next" to J.K. Rowling after she tweeted her reaction to the attack on Rushdie: "Horrifying news. Feeling very sick right now. Let him be ok." Does he not deserve to be banned?

Americans who champion fairness and liberty must hold Twitter's feet to the fire and call out its blatant double standard and lack of transparency regarding what it chooses to censor. If it's going to censor anything, it ought to at least target the obvious – speech that kills.

It's one thing to read something that I may violently disagree with; it's quite another to read something that encourages killing.

Rushdie has been afraid for his life since his book and the fatwa came out 33 years ago. It's unconscionable that any social media company would give terrorist leaders a global platform.

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According to reports, Rushdie suffered three stab wounds to the right side of his neck; four in the stomach; a puncture wound to his right eye, which he may lose; two puncture wounds to his chest; and a laceration to his right thigh.

Ironically, before he was attacked, he was scheduled to discuss the United States as a refuge of free expression for writers and other artists. Even more ironically, Twitter, an American company that enjoys the fruits of this refuge, is censoring free speech while enabling those who aim to destroy an author's very freedom of expression.

Twitter must be counting its blessings that Rushdie will likely survive his horrific ordeal. Until it fixes its policy, it should immediately ban those calling for violence against Rushdie and then send him flowers and an apology

 Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by Jewish Journal.

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While much of the conversation around Israel revolves around its conflict with the Palestinians, the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement against the Jewish state, Iran's nuclear threat and political elections that never end, there's a whole other story that doesn't get much attention: Israel is becoming a country for humanity.

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That thought was on my mind this week after spending time in Jerusalem with my friend Jonathan Medved, who runs an innovation investment platform called Our Crowd. Over a late afternoon coffee at the King David Hotel, Medved riffed on a country that produces innovation the way a thriving grower produces grapes.

Since the mission of his organization is to secure investment for these innovations, Medved has been at the forefront of Israel's obsession with solving universal problems. From medical care to the environment to AI to cybersecurity to green technology to food security to water generation to energy conservation to airport efficiency to countless other areas, Israeli innovations now affect all of humanity.

This is not a new idea. Since the book "Start-Up Nation" came out more than a decade ago, the word has gotten out about how tiny Israel punches above its weight—about how the country's urgent, no-nonsense culture of achievement is ideally suited for innovation.

The problem is that "Start-Up Nation" became a ubiquitous cliché that was taken for granted. Even when major innovators like Apple, Microsoft and Intel announced significant investments in Israel, it fell into a familiar narrative. Just more of the same.

It's only when the Abraham Accords were signed that "Start-Up Nation" began to get a fresh, universal face. While Israel has been exporting its innovations around the world for years, this was different. Here were Arab nations, after decades of hostility to the Jewish state, transcending that enmity for the sake of shared humanity.

You would think this overarching story would become big news. A people returning home after 1,900 years of exile, searching for refuge in the wake of the Holocaust, becoming one of the hottest innovation hubs in the world and a source of solutions for some of humanity's most pressing problems.

And yet, the world still yawns.

How is that possible? Why haven't Israel's stunning accomplishments become big news? For one thing, because good news and Israel don't go well together. Among the left, nothing must interfere with Israel's failure to make peace with the Palestinians. Among liberal Zionists, good news about Israel tends to be dismissed as "hasbara"—just another tool to build good PR.

Among the Jew-hating BDS crowd, the notion that a country they demonize is crucial to humanity is a nightmare scenario. That very idea must be suppressed and boycotted at all cost.

Among media outlets that are routinely biased against Israel, a transcendent story of the Jewish state helping humanity disrupts the familiar narrative of a big, bad and guilty Israel.

At the United Nations, where Israel is condemned more than any other country, how can it also be celebrated as the world's most useful nation? Talk about cognitive dissonance.

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In short, if you're someone who's used to putting down Israel, extraordinary news about Israel can really mess with your head.

I wonder if Israeli innovators worry about any of this stuff. I'm guessing they're not spending too much time agonizing over BDS or the biased coverage of Israel or how Israel is treated at the United Nations. In their labs and tech centers, they're agonizing instead over finding cures for chronic diseases or creating green technologies that will heal the planet.

I'm guessing they're so busy solving problems that make the world a better place they're oblivious to the fact that much of the world hasn't noticed.

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Is it possible that our fight against antisemitism has become so loud and alarmist that it could backfire and become counterproductive? We rarely ask this question, perhaps because the imperative of fighting Jew-hatred seems so obvious. Why would anyone question it?

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Indeed, I receive endless emails from multiple Jewish organizations urging me to "join the fight" against the rise of antisemitism. This fight has become so ubiquitous that it has begun to define, in many ways, Jewish identity in America. More and more, what really pumps up Jews is not their Jewishness, but the fight against the haters.

I love a good fight as much as anyone, in particular when it means defending my people. But to be effective, what should this fight look like? I'd like to suggest that rather than being loud and alarmist, our fight against Jew-hatred should be less noisy and more strategic.

Acting quietly, of course, doesn't fit the American way. In America, when we see something we don't like, our reflex is to cry out, condemn, demonstrate, make noise, fight back. Jews fighting antisemitism do the same thing – we raise hell.

This may make us feel good, but it doesn't really work. No matter what the slogans say about "ending" this or that evil, the world's oldest hatred is not going away until the Messiah shows up. That doesn't mean we abandon the fight; it means we pivot to fight from a position of strength.

A position of strength means being more quiet, strategic and legal.

Why quiet? Because the louder we get and the more we make a fuss, the weaker we look. We remind the haters they have the power to scare us and rile us up. Jews are not losers. Carping and protesting about people hating us undermines our winning qualities. We lose our mojo, our confidence, our sense of humor – all those admirable traits that have helped Jews contribute so much to the world.

Let's face it – American Jews will never win the Victim Olympics. Since the world already sees us as successful, high-achieving winners, why not make it work to our advantage? If people won't give us the sympathy they give to victims, how about the respect they give to winners?

Why strategic? Because we can't lose sight of the big picture – to reinforce Jewish identity and nurture Jewish pride. A strong identity is rooted in what we are for, not what we are against. It's true that activists can raise more money by fighting against something, but we can't allow our enemies to define our Jewish identities.

Physically protecting ourselves and our Jewish spaces is strategic, and it must continue. But it won't build Jewish identity. All the protective measures and loud demonstrations can't nurture our identity as well as one enlightening and inspirational Shabbat experience.

Why legal? Because if we're going to fight, we might as well aim for impact. Have you noticed how no matter how many millions we pour into fighting antisemitism through traditional methods, things only seem to get worse? My favorite fighters are the legal minds – they fight in clear, precise ways, with legal consequences that are enforced by a system of laws.

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Initiatives like the Lawfare Project, Shurat HaDin and the StandWithUs Saidoff Legal Department, among many others, are good examples of a quiet and strategic approach. Or the Deborah Project, a non-profit law firm that has launched a lawsuit to combat and expose the anti-Jewish and anti-Israel elements of the curriculum, and how these elements are stealthily infiltrating our schools.

Speaking of schools, I attended this week the annual Jewish Education Awards, sponsored by the Milken Family Foundation and Builders of Jewish Education. Every Jewish denomination was present. Speaker after speaker spoke about the power of Jewish education, about instilling pride and knowledge of our heritage, about the miracle of Jewish peoplehood.

Since I was working on this column at the time, I couldn't help notice that, despite the incessant exterior noise about antisemitism, no one brought up the need to fight it. They didn't have to. Jewish educators fight antisemitism in their own way, by championing pro-Semitism.

We all want to prevail against the plague of Jew-hatred. We'll have better odds if we fight like proud winners rather than defensive victims.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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How many times have we heard Western voices call terror acts "senseless"? We heard it again last week after a Palestinian terrorist murdered three Israelis and injured several others on trendy Dizengoff Street in Tel Aviv.

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After saying that "Americans are, once again, grieving with the Israeli people in the wake of another deadly terrorist attack," Secretary of State Antony Blinken added that the US "stands resolutely in the face of senseless terrorism and violence."

But is the violence really senseless, Mr. Blinken?

It may be for you, but it's not for the terrorists. They think their terror has a purpose. If you despise Jews and think they don't belong in the Middle East, killing them gives you purpose. If it makes you sick to see Jews you hate having fun in a cool city like Tel Aviv, killing them gives you purpose. And if you fall for the propaganda from your corrupt leaders that Jews will soon take over your holy Temple Mount in Jerusalem, killing Jews is anything but senseless.

Since the birth of Israel 74 years ago, virtually every act of violence against the Jewish state has been connected to an overarching belief among Palestinians that Jews don't belong in this region, regardless of any legitimate claims of a Jewish connection to the land.

In spreading the propaganda of Jews as foreigners and land thieves, Palestinian leaders know that nothing fires up the masses like Jerusalem, Israel's biblical heartbeat.

"We welcome every drop of blood spilled in Jerusalem. This is pure blood, clean blood, blood on its way to Allah. With the help of Allah, every martyr will be in heaven, and every wounded will get his reward."

Those fighting words were uttered on Sept. 26, 2015 by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whom many consider Israel's "peace partner."

Two weeks later, on Oct. 1, Palestinian terrorists murdered an Israeli couple, Eitam and Naama Henkin, in cold blood in front of their four children, who ranged in age from nine years old to four months.

Did these terrorists believe the murders were senseless? I doubt it.

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The fundamental problem with characterizing terror as senseless is that it lets you off the hook. By depersonalizing the violence, by ignoring its root, you turn it into a terrible but generic crime where everyone is treated the same.

But Palestinian terror against Israelis is no generic crime. It is intentional violence rooted in a deep, singular hatred. This truth may make sophisticated diplomats like Secretary Blinken uncomfortable, but that won't make it go away. Until Western leaders have the courage to connect Palestinian terror to the anti-Jewish and anti-Zionist propaganda that emanates from every nook and cranny of Palestinian society, peace and reconciliation will remain delusional pipe dreams.

If the United States is serious, in other words, about "standing resolutely" against Palestinian terror, it will have to connect the dots of terror and Jew-hatred.

Until then, we'll be left with empty reactions like, "This has to stop!" That tweet came from US Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides, who added after the Tel Aviv attacks that he was "horrified to see another cowardly terror attack on innocent civilians."

I can assure you, Mr. Nides, that the large crowds in Gaza and the West Bank who celebrated the Tel Aviv attacks did not consider the terrorist a coward, and they certainly didn't see the murders as "senseless."

It is the treating of intentional terror as senseless that is really senseless.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Jewish Journal.

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I've long felt that Joe Biden passed the "kishkes" test when it came to his support for Israel. Since meeting Golda Meir as a junior senator in 1973, the man has met every Israeli prime minister. Like many others in our community, I took for granted that he'd always have Israel's back, in a world obsessed with maligning the world's only Jewish state.

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I wish I still felt that way.

Whether Biden realizes it or not, the terrible deal he's about to make with the terror regime in Iran endangers Israel and the rest of the region.

It's widely accepted by now that in his zeal to get Iran to sign a nuclear deal – any nuclear deal, apparently – Biden has squandered America's enormous leverage and caved to virtually every Iranian demand.

I've read countless analyses from experts across the political spectrum, and they're pretty consistent with this conclusion from a former intelligence officer specializing on Iranian terrorism, Michael Pregent, writing in Newsweek: "If the Biden administration jumps back into the Iran nuclear deal without addressing undeclared sites, sunset clauses, ballistic missiles, regional behavior, terrorism and human rights, then it will have entered a worse deal than even the one in 2015."

Anti-Defamation League head Jonathan Greenblatt, who can hardly be called an extremist, also cautioned that Biden's deal is "far from adequate to confront the full range of threats generated by this regime."

What kind of regime? Greenblatt spells it out: "The largest state sponsor of antisemitism on the planet, constantly churning out genocidal memes and disseminating hostile propaganda against Jews," one whose "stated desire to annihilate the Jewish state must be taken seriously."

Beyond this genocidal threat to Israel, Greenblatt adds the broader "danger that Iran poses to the region and the world through its support of proxy militias and employment of terror as statecraft," with "activities [that] span nearly every continent [as] they have left death and debris in their wake in countries such as Argentina, Lebanon, Turkey, Bulgaria and even in the US."

Biden's own Central Command General Kenneth McKenzie has called Iran's 3,000 ballistic missiles "the greatest threat to the region's security." Nothing in the deal addresses that threat.

It's perplexing why Biden would think that freeing up billions in sanctions relief to such a terror regime in return for dubious promises from a cheating and deceitful country would be such a good idea.

I've heard several explanations: He views the deal as upholding his and former President Barack Obama's legacy; he wants to undo anything that former President Donald Trump did; he's desperate for any kind of "win" after the disastrous exit from Afghanistan; he needs to lower gas prices to boost his approval numbers, and removing the sanctions against oil-wealthy Iran will help do that; he's just following the advice of his overeager negotiators in Vienna (which would mean, of course, ignoring the three members of his Iran team who quit last month because Biden was being too soft.)

The truth, however, is that it doesn't really matter why Biden has caved to Iran. What matters is that he seems determined to push a deal through no matter what, and the Jewish world must not remain silent.

Should we be grateful that the Russians, reeling from global sanctions, have introduced last-minute demands that may scuttle the deal? Not necessarily. Just like we saw with his former boss, Obama, when the most powerful man in the world decides he wants a deal – and that intention has been conveyed loud and clear to the wily Mullahs in Tehran – he gets his way, regardless of the obstacles, and regardless of how lousy the final deal is.

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From what I hear from sources, the real stumbling block is the Iranian insistence (not unreasonable, I may add) that a future administration won't just cancel the deal, as the Trump administration did. Because it's so hard to offer such guarantees, if anything kills the deal that will be it.

But because Iran desperately needs the sanctions lifted, some kind of compromise is likely. The perverted irony is that the most hated country on the planet right now, Russia, may be asked to play a role to overcome that final hurdle.

As the final hour approaches, the Jewish world must not wait until the deal is sealed to express its outrage. President Biden has every right to sign a deal that may well endanger Israel and the region, and we have every right to let him know that we feel betrayed by a friend.

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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The conventional wisdom is that Vladimir Putin's naked aggression toward Ukraine is taking us back to more primitive times. Indeed, for most of human history, it was raw power that ruled. If a tyrant wanted something, he just took it.

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The establishment of international norms and institutions in the wake of World War II was an attempt to regulate and minimize this gratuitous application of power. It didn't always work, of course, but at least there was a sense that the world was headed in a more civilized direction.

Now we come to a critical juncture: If Putin prevails in his brutal land grab of Ukraine, it clearly will set us back. But if he doesn't, the outcome may well be a reaffirmation of civilized norms.

Here's the encouraging news: The reaction to Putin's aggression has been so severe and brutal he may, in fact, not prevail.

First, in terms of the military campaign, Putin has already been humbled by the ferocious response of the Ukrainian people and its army. If Putin assumed he would march into Ukraine and depose its rulers within days, he's been hijacked by reality. However this invasion ends, he's already lost some of his winning mystique.

Second, his global isolation is stunning. We're not hearing about intense debates and disagreements among Western powers on how to respond to Putin's aggression. The Russian strongman may have assumed he could easily withstand any sanctions, as he has in the past. The problem is that he's never seen sanctions like these.

As The New York Times reported on Monday about repercussions in Russia, "The ruble cratered, the stock market froze and the public rushed to withdraw cash on Monday as Western sanctions kicked in and Russia awoke to uncertainty and fear over the rapidly spreading repercussions of President Vladimir V. Putin's invasion of Ukraine."

These unprecedented sanctions, which represent a kind of financial war against Russia, have given Putin a taste of his own medicine: You like aggression, we'll give you aggression, only ours will be through banks, not tanks.

He's been so enraged by this financial aggression that he declared on Sunday that he was putting his nuclear forces into "special combat readiness"—a heightened alert status that harked back to some of the most dangerous moments of the Cold War.

There's another reason why this war has not gone swimmingly for Putin: He underestimated the extent of domestic opposition. His people have not bought the propaganda that Ukraine is a violent regime that has aggressed Russia and needs to be "de-Nazified." No one but his closest cronies believe that, as he told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett, he had "no choice" but to invade.

His old-school, KGB-era propaganda tactics are no match for the liberating universe of social media. As internal opposition grows, Putin will have no choice but to smother it with brute force, which will further alienate him from a public that never wanted this war against their Ukrainian cousins.

If Ukraine continues to resist and Putin calculates that a decisive victory is no longer realistic, we should watch for any effort by Putin to create an impression of "victory." He knows he can't afford to lose face.

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His problem is that even if he "conquers" Kyiv and deposes Zelensky, he'll be too hated and isolated to reap the fruits of that battle. Ukrainians will be sufficiently enraged to make any Russian presence in Ukraine living hell for years.

My hunch is that if the financial pain inflicted on Russia keeps increasing, Putin will use the "negotiations" in Belarus as a way to retreat while saving face. That retreat, however, will be hard to camouflage.

It will signify not just a defeat for tyrants everywhere, but a victory for history.

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There comes a time in the life of an organization when it becomes so rotten that the only way forward is to root out the poison. Amnesty International has reached that stage.

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The organization, founded in 1961, calls itself a "people's movement" whose vision is "a world in which every person enjoys all of the human rights enshrined in the Universal Declaration of Human Rights." If you Google "top human rights violators in the world," you'll see countries such as Syria, Yemen, China, Iran, Egypt, North Korea, Central African Republic, Burundi, Congo, Burma, Libya, Venezuela, Eritrea, Russia and Nigeria.

One country you won't see on these lists is Israel, the world's only Jewish state and the only free democracy in the Middle East.

And yet, this was the one country Amnesty chose to deliver a scathing report on, accusing it of being an "apartheid state" with a "cruel system of domination," that was committing "crimes against humanity."

"We found that Israel's cruel policies of segregation, dispossession and exclusion across all territories under its control clearly amount to apartheid," Amnesty International Secretary-General Agnès Callamard declared at a press conference in Jerusalem.

The outrage against this latest international assault on Israel has been widespread. Elliot Abrams called it "a shockingly dishonest document whose biases against the Jewish state leap off each of its 280 pages." The ADL called the report "an effort to demonize Israel and undermine its legitimacy as a Jewish and democratic state. In an environment of rising anti-Jewish hate, this type of report is not only inaccurate but also irresponsible and likely will lead to intensified antisemitism around the world."

We've gotten so used to these brazen and discriminatory attacks against Israel it just feels like Groundhog Day. But we can't allow ourselves to slip into outrage fatigue. We should instead increase the level of our response.

Condemnations are no longer enough. The world needs an organization, call it "Justice International," to investigate so-called human rights groups that consistently single out and discriminate against the world's only Jewish state.

We must investigate the investigators.

I assure you they will be very busy, not only with this latest insult from Amnesty International but with the recent insult from the U.N. Human Rights Council, which made Israel the first-ever country to be under permanent investigation.

The best way to defend is to go on the offense. These vicious attacks poison Israel, fuel anti-Semitism around the world and endanger the lives of Jews everywhere.

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These international groups that have a pathological obsession with Israel have knowingly treated the Jewish state a lot worse than they've treated the world's greatest human rights violators. That is pure anti-Semitism. The only way they'll stop is if they know there is a price to pay for such blatant discrimination.

If this means Amnesty International will spend more time going after the world's most evil regimes, then Justice International will mean justice for Jews and justice for the world.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Jewish Journal.

The post Time to investigate Amnesty International appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.

While tens of millions of poor souls are dying and starving under brutal regimes in places like Yemen, Afghanistan, Syria, Sudan, Congo and Somalia, among others, the United Nations decided last Thursday that only one country merits an open-ended investigation.

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If you haven't been living on Mars the past few decades, you've already guessed the name of that country – Israel – the recipient of more UN condemnations than all other countries combined.

So, what did the world's only Jewish state do this time to deserve such a staggering level of discrimination from a world body that claims to champion justice, fairness and human rights?

Oh, the usual. Last May, Israel decided it didn't want to see thousands of its citizens – Jews and non-Jews alike – killed by Hamas rockets. As Hamas was launching 4,000 rockets at Israeli civilians, Israel defended itself with everything it had, including the Iron Dome, civilian bomb shelters and targeted airstrikes.

Israel's defense of its people triggered Jew-haters everywhere, including at the UN's Human Rights Council, the world's anti-Israel headquarters, which voted to investigate Israel for possible "war crimes."

Thursday's vote in the General Assembly makes this investigation official and open-ended. The resolution, which Israel's UN envoy Gilad Erdan called "despicable and biased," called for the creation of a permanent "Commission of Inquiry" to monitor and report on rights violations in Israel, the Gaza Strip and the West Bank.

True to form, this is the first such commission of inquiry with an "ongoing" mandate, unwrapped exclusively for the Jewish state as a holiday present.

The irony of ironies is that on the same day the United Nations accentuated its maniacal singling-out of Israel, a poll came out showing that Palestinians blame their own leaders for their misery. The Palestinian Atlas Center for Studies and Research found that 45 percent of respondents hold the Palestinian Authority responsible for the perennial crises in the Gaza Strip, with 25 percent saying they hold Hamas responsible. Only 15 percent of Palestinians blamed Israel.

Maybe, after all these years, more and more Palestinians are realizing that their leaders have used hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid not to build schools and hospitals but tunnels and bomb factories.

Maybe they've stopped ignoring that Hamas terrorists hide behind women and children when they launch rockets at Israel so that Israel will be blamed for any Palestinian casualties.

Maybe they read somewhere that the Israeli army has the lowest wartime civilian casualty ratio of any army in the world.

Maybe they saw a YouTube video of fellow Arabs in Israel who are grateful that Israel defends them and their families from indiscriminate terror rockets launched by Hamas, whose charter calls for the destruction of Israel.

Or maybe they've been seeing news reports of their Arab brethren from the Gulf States and Morocco saying the exact opposite to what they've been hearing for years about Israel from their leaders – instead of being a demonic state, Israel is actually a vibrant and productive nation that can benefit all the people of the region.

None of that mattered, of course, to the United Nations, which understands the number one rule of international diplomacy: No one ever gets punished for discriminating against Israel. Quite the contrary – targeting Israel may even get you promoted.

There's a special irony in the United Nations targeting a country already marinating in internal criticism and dissent thanks to its free press. The way the United Nations treats Israel significantly worse than the most murderous and evil regimes on earth is itself a crime. Not only does this gross singling-out undermine the UN's credibility, it adds fuel to Jew-hatred everywhere.

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In the spirit of looking for silver linings, we can hope that time will be on Israel's side, if only because facts on the ground are on its side. Eventually, many of the countries that automatically vote against Israel may realize that it is in their best interest to be friendly with Israel. The Abraham Accords are Exhibit "A."

I wonder if those countries read another announcement that came out on Thursday: A phase two trial showed that an Israeli drug prevents 100 percent of COVID patients from deteriorating. Imagine that. The country most maligned at the United Nations is doing all it can to save lives in the countries that keep voting against it.

Maybe we should set up a Commission of Inquiry to investigate the United Nations.

Featured on JNS.org, this article was first published by the Jewish Journal.

The post Why does the UN think Israel is the most evil country on Earth? appeared first on www.israelhayom.com.