National

26 “political and legal war” against the Jewish state, the Israeli Security Cabinet decided, among other measures, to The Jewish Home | JANUARY 19, 2023 withhold taxes and tariffs collected on behalf of and transferred to the P.A., in an amount equal to that which Ramallah paid to terrorists and their families in 2022 under its “pay-for-slay” policy. The letter was signed by representatives of the Arab and Islamic countries, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, along with Western and other nations such as Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, Sweden, Norway, Cyprus, Japan, Brazil, Argentina and Mexico. “Regardless of each country’s position on the resolution, we reject punitive measures in response to a request for an advisory opinion by the International Court of Justice, and more broadly in response to a General Assembly resolution, and call for their immediate reversal,” the letter states. Similarly, a spokesperson for U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres said he “notes with deep concern the recent Israeli measures against the Palestinian Authority,” adding that there should “be no retaliation…in relation to the International Court of Justice.” In line with the Security Cabinet decision, Jerusalem last week transferred 138.8 million shekels ($39.5 million) of revenues collected for the P.A. to Israeli victims of terrorism and their families.

At a press conference, Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich said, “We promised to fix this, and today we are correcting an injustice. This is an important day for morality, for justice and for the fight against terrorism. There is no greater justice than offsetting the funds of the Authority, which acts to support terrorism, and transferring them to the families of the victims of terrorism.”

For his part, P.A. Prime Minister Mohammad Shtayyeh said the punitive measures would “promptly lead to [the P.A.’s] collapse.”

In an interview with Haaretz, Shtayyeh described the Security Cabinet decision as “another nail in the Palestinian Authority’s coffin, unless there is immediate intervention by the international community, namely the [Biden] administration in Washington and Arab countries.”

He added: “Previous Israeli governments worked to eliminate the two-state solution, and the current government is fighting the Palestinian Authority itself.”

U.S. State Department spokesman Ned Price described the step aimed at curbing and punishing Palestinian terrorism as a “unilateral move” that “exacerbates tensions.”

The P.A. pays monthly stipends to Palestinians, and/or their families, for carrying out terrorist attacks against Israel. In 2021, the P.A. paid out an estimated 512 million shekels ($157 million) as part of this “pay for slay” policy. (JNS)

A Decrease in the Jewish Majority

A recent surge in legal immigration has led to a decrease in Israel’s Jewish majority, according to an analysis of data from Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Channel 14 reported on Sunday.

The Israeli Immigration Policy Center, an NGO established in 2012 to promote immigration policy which serves Israel’s strategic interests, found that last year’s 23-year record in the number of new immigrants had resulted in a 0.3% decline in Israel’s Jewish majority, to 73.6% from 73.9% at the end of 2021.

This continues a 30-year trend, with the country’s Jewish majority having declined by a total of about 10% over that span, losing about one percent every three years on average.

“It shouldn’t be possible for new immigrants to lead to a decline in the Jewish majority. This is a demographic deficit that will harm the Jewish identity and character of the country,” said Attorney Yona Sherki of the Israeli Immigration Policy Center.

In the last year, 77,000 people received status in Israel, including 71,000 new immigrants who entered under the “Law of Return,” which recognizes an individual with a single Jewish grandparent as eligible for citizenship. However, such people are not considered Jewish according to halacha, Jewish religious law.

As a result of the “grandparent clause,” of the new immigrants in 2022, only 32,000 (45% of the total) were Jewish.

Of non-Jews who enter Israel, 85% on average immigrate under the Law of Return’s “grandparent clause.”

Regarding the Law of Return, thenPrime Minister David Ben-Gurion decided with the establishment of the Jewish state that “whoever was born to a Jewish mother and is not of another religion, or whoever converted according to Jewish law” will be considered a Jew.

In 1970, it was ruled that the children and grandchildren of a Jewish person could immigrate to Israel by virtue of the Law of Return. During those years, many discussions were held in order to determine who is a Jew and how to define a person who converts through a non-Orthodox conversion process, but to no avail.

The issue recently came to the fore after a wave of immigrants from Russia and Ukraine entered Israel following Moscow’s invasion of the European country, most of whom were not Jewish – only three in 10, according to mid-November data from Israel’s Population and Immigration Authority.

In November, Ashkenazi Chief Rabbi of Israel Rabbi David Lau urged the Knesset to amend the Law of Return to curb non-Jewish immigration.

Coalition deals signed between Netanyahu’s Likud Party and the Religious Zionist and ultra-Orthodox parties call for a change to the “grandparent clause.” (JNS)

A Shaky Aviation System

Tens of thousands of flights were delayed or canceled around the holidays in December when frigid weather and storms made travel treacherous. But the weather was mostly fine last Wednesday morning when flights across the country were halted because the Federal Aviation Administration’s system to alert pilots to safety issues went down.

The FAA said Wednesday night that it had traced the outage to a damaged database file and that there was no evidence that it was caused by a cyberattack. The disruption was the latest example of serious problems in the aviation system and at the FAA, the agency responsible for safely managing all commercial air traffic that critics say has long been overworked and underfunded.

The pause on flights across the country highlighted what aviation experts say are glaring weaknesses at the agency, long considered the world’s premier aviation regulator. The FAA has struggled to quickly update systems and processes, many of which were put in place decades ago, to keep up with technological advancements and a sharp increase in the number of flights and passengers.

28 Problems with the system used to notify pilots of hazards in the air and ground began Tuesday night, forcing offiThe Jewish Home | JANUARY 19, 2023 cials to reboot the system early Wednesday morning. To fix the problem, the FAA ordered airlines to delay all departing flights just before 7:30 a.m. That pause was lifted at about 9 a.m., but the disruption was far from over as airlines struggled to get back to normal throughout the day. Delays cascaded throughout the system, and, by the afternoon, about 9,000 flights had been delayed and 1,300 had been canceled. Just two weeks earlier, hundreds of thousands of travelers were stranded by an operational meltdown at Southwest Airlines, the country’s largest carrier by number of passengers. Taken together, the two episodes underscore the fragility of the nation’s aviation system. A big part of the problem, aviation experts said, is that Congress has not given the FAA enough money to do its many jobs properly, and the agency has sometimes been slow to make change even when it had enough resources. The agency’s budget was about $18.5 billion in 2022 — less than it was in 2004 after adjusting for inflation. (© The New York Times)

New Dress Code for Female Lawmakers in Missouri

Women who work in the House of Representatives in the State of Missouri are now required to cover their shoulders. The new dress code is part of a larger rules package that was passed this week with a vote of 105-51.

The dress code immediately drew criticism from local Missouri politicians, who took to Twitter to express their frustrations. The new dress code even has its own hashtag: #Sweatergate.

“I never thought my first national interview would be about what I can and cannot wear as a female lawmaker,” said Democratic Missouri Representative Ashley Aune.

The Missouri House has 116 men and 43 women. The House majority is held by Republicans, with 111 Republicans to 52 Democrats.

In the Missouri state Senate, there is no rule requiring women to wear blazers or jackets.

Rep. Ann Kelley, the Republican Congresswoman who sponsored the bill, wrote on Facebook, “How is encouraging professionalism wrong? If there is ever a time to honor traditions and be professional, it is on the House Chamber Floor in the Missouri House of Representatives; I will not apologize for standing up for these things.”

Under the prior existing dress code, women were required to wear “dresses or skirts or slacks worn with a blazer or sweater and appropriate dress shoes or boots” without a required second layer, reported the Associated Press.

California Soaked

A fresh wave of storms inundated California again Saturday, swelling rivers, downing power lines, and imperiling travelers during yet another holiday weekend as a procession of atmospheric rivers continued to wallop the state.

At least 19 people have died since late December, with the toll expected to increase, in a series of powerful storms that unleashed destructive downpours.

The state’s northern and central regions have sustained the most damage: Levees have broken, thousands of trees have toppled, towering waves have shattered piers, and mudslides have blocked highways. Flash flooding has shut down critical roads in the valleys and coastal areas, and heavy snow has blocked passages east over mountain ranges.

As of Saturday evening, millions of residents were under flood advisories. Across the state, emergency officials said, more than 75,000 people were under evacuation orders and warnings. More than 23,000 utility customers were without power statewide. A federal emergency declaration covered much of the state, with the cost of damage expected to reach hundreds of millions, if not billions, of dollars.

The repeated lashings have left the ground beyond saturated in much of California, and the arrival of still more rain has threatened to compound the risk of flooding and mudslides. None of the current storms would be considered catastrophic individually, meteorologists say, but the cumulative impact of almost relentless precipitation and wind has posed a formidable challenge.

State authorities said the storms, taken together, had claimed more lives than the entirety of the past two wildfire seasons. Nancy Ward, director of the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services, described the onslaught as “among the most deadly natural disasters in the modern history of our state.”

Some 1 to 5 more inches of rain was expected to fall by Monday morning, with 2 to 3 more feet of snow in the Sierra Nevada and up to 6 feet in some places. State, federal and local officials implored motorists to stay off roads.

Forecasts promised an incoming respite. “We are nearing the end of this active cycle,” said Daniel Swain, a climate scientist at UCLA, noting that at least one more large storm system was expected to hit Sunday before a shift in weather patterns brings drier conditions. (© The New York Times)

Go Green

Taking a walk in the park may help you reduce the need for medication, a new study found.

“Physical activity is thought to be the key mediating factor in the health benefits of green spaces when availability or active use of green space are considered,” study coauthor Anu Turunen, a senior researcher at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, noted.

The study found that visiting nature three to four times a week – taking a walk in the park, jogging around a lake – was associated with 36% lower odds of using blood pressure pills, 33% lower odds of using mental health medications, and 26% lower odds of using asthma medications.

Still, it’s not a perfect correlation between green space and lowering meds.

“The analysis can reveal key associations, but we can’t say for certain whether it was the greenspace proximity or use that led to reduced use of medications,” said Lincoln Larson, an associate professor in the College of Natural Resources at North Carolina State University in Raleigh, who was not involved in the study.

“Perhaps people who were healthier to begin with (and less likely to take prescription drugs) were more likely to get outdoors in the first place,” Larson said via email.

The study, published on Monday in the journal Occupational & Environmental Medicine, interviewed approximately 6,000 random people in three of the largest cities in Finland about their use of green and blue spaces within a kilometer of their homes. Green spaces included forests, gardens, parks, cemeteries, moors, natural grasslands, wetlands, and zoos. Blue spaces included lakes, rivers, and the sea.

This is not the first time scientists have found that going blue and going green is the way to go.

A 2016 study compared the amount of plant life and vegetation near the homes of almost 100,000 women. After eight years, the researchers found having access to the most green space reduced the women’s death rate by 12% — and improved their mental health.

A 2019 study of green spaces around the globe found people who live near them are less likely to die prematurely.

Grocery Prices Up 11.8%

You’re not overbuying – prices in the grocery have been rising steadily over the past year, leaving consumers staggering upon seeing their grocery receipts.

Prices are now at nearly double the rate of overall inflation, at 11.8% year over year, according to data released last Thursday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

What could be causing these overwhelming increases? Blame Russia, the weather, disease, and a host of other factors.

Eggs are now up 59.9% year over year, a rate not seen since 1973, when high feed costs, shortages, and price freezes caused certain agricultural products to soar in price. Since early last year, a deadly avian flu has devastated poultry flocks, especially turkeys and egg-laying hens. That was compounded by increasing demand and higher input costs, such as feed.

The cost of food is hard to swallow, but the latest Consumer Price Index shows that those price increases — by and large — are at least growing at slower rates.

In December, “food at home” prices increased 0.2% from the month before. That’s the smallest monthly increase since March 2021.

The expectations are for food price increases to continue to moderate.

Dangerous Fish?

When can fish be harmful to your health? When they’re filled with forever chemicals, scientists say.

According to a study of data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, fish caught in the fresh waters of the nation’s streams and rivers and the Great Lakes contain dangerously high levels of PFOS, also known as perfluorooctane sulfonic acid, a known synthetic toxin phased out by the federal government.

The chemical PFOS is part of a family of manufactured additives known as perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, widely used since the 1950s to make consumer products nonstick and resistant to stains, water and grease damage.

Called “forever chemicals” because they fail to break down easily in the environment, PFAS has leached into the nation’s drinking water via public water systems and private wells. The chemicals then accumulate in the bodies of fish, shellfish, livestock, dairy, and game animals that people eat.

“The levels of PFOS found in freshwater fish often exceeded an astounding 8,000 parts per trillion,” noted study coauthor David Andrews, a senior scientist at Environmental Working Group, the nonprofit environmental health organization that analyzed the data. The report was published on Wednesday in the journal Environmental Research.

In comparison, the EPA has allowed only 70 parts per trillion of PFOS in the nation’s drinking water. Due to growing health concerns, in 2022, the EPA recommended the allowable level of PFOS in drinking water be lowered from 70 to 0.02 parts per trillion.

“You’d have to drink an incredible amount of water – we estimate a month of contaminated water – to get the same exposure as you would from a single serving of freshwater fish,” Andrews said.

“Consuming even a single [locally caught freshwater] fish per year can measurably and significantly change the levels of PFOS in your blood,” Andrews said.

Chemicals in the PFAS family are linked to high cholesterol, cancer, and various chronic diseases, as well as a limited antibody response to vaccines in both adults and children, according to a report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

It’s nearly impossible to avoid PFAS.