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From InfoWars to CustodyWars – Covering the Alex Jones Trial

By / November 30, 2020

“Which one of y’all tweeted about the cookies?” The attorney posing the question looked down the corridor where I was sitting on a bench at the Travis County Courthouse in Austin working on my laptop. I raised my hand and apologetically took credit for the tweet. Jury deliberations had stretched for hours and the legal teams had left for dinner. The legal team for Alex Jones’ ex-wife Kelly had left cookies and brownies in some Tupperware on a bench and I’d tweeted – …

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Longhorns, pass by

By / November 30, 2020

It was at a shitty pizza place in south Austin that I first realized sports dreams come true sometimes. I was 17 that afternoon in 1996, sitting at Double Dave’s on South Lamar with my best friend and his cousin, watching the unranked Longhorns beat #3 Nebraska in the first-ever Big XII championship. The 8-4 Horns were three touchdown underdogs against a Nebraska team that was undefeated in the peak of the Tom Osborne era, when they were every bit what …

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My Gaza War

By / November 30, 2020

I rear-ended some settlers in a mini-van in the West Bank that afternoon, just before pulling into the settlement of Talmon for the funeral. There was no damage and we parted ways with a smile, joining the convoy snaking up to the ceremony. Hundreds of people were waiting in Talmon to bury 16-year-old Gil-Ad Shaer, murdered 18 days earlier on June 12th along with teenagers Naftali Frenkel and Eyal Yifrah, after they were kidnapped at a hitchhiking post in the West …

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What’s heroism in the face of terror?

By / November 30, 2020

The quiet that Israel had experienced for over a week was shattered by an attack on Sunday that was more pathetic than terrifying. Video of the attack in Rosh Ayin shows a 23-year-old Arab woman from Kafr Qassem awkwardly flailing around with a knife in hand, trying to find a victim before she is overcome by a group of bystanders. She did manage to lightly wound a woman from Kfar Saba who she stabbed in the shoulder, but her victim was …

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My father in the Marines

By / December 1, 2020

A bugler played Taps for my father a few minutes before he was lowered into the ground on a Friday afternoon last August. I hadn’t seen the bugler, standing at attention near the overpass on Hancock Lane, just beyond the tree line that separates the Jews from the Gentiles at the Austin Memorial Cemetery. It startled me when he began to play – maybe the most searing, beautiful tune I know – and all I could do was smile. That moment …

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After the knives are put away

By / December 1, 2020

The uniforms and pistols make them look like police, but they aren’t cops. They’re members of the Tel Aviv municipal public order patrol – set up by the city this past year to deal with public disturbances, noise ordinance violations, and petty quality of life issues. After a terror attack in the city earlier this month and as the daily attacks known as the “Knife Intifada” continue across the country, the patrol members are now receiving firearms, to be force multipliers …

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They came to watch the bridge explode

By / December 1, 2020

Judging by the pre-game hype in the national press, something akin to the moon landing or the planting of the US flag on Iwo Jima took place in Tel Aviv on Friday morning, as hundreds gathered in the center of town to see the iconic Ma’ariv Bridge blown up and brought to Earth.   The situation on the ground at judgment hour didn’t live up to the hype, but it was a carnival of sorts nonetheless.   Ori Benaim was sober …

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Looking for a quick fix to ‘price-tag’ attacks, human rights be damned

By / December 1, 2020

These days, Israel’s leaders are desperate, or at least at a loss on how to stop a fringe element of Jewish extremists that has long figured out how to dictate the path of this country, no matter how few they are.   Desperation was the message put out Sunday by the diplomatic-security cabinet when it approved the use of administrative detention for Jewish extremists suspected of involvement in acts of terrorism directed at Palestinians.   A controversial practice, administrative detention involves …

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Meek Mill vs Drake – Good for the Jews?

By / December 1, 2020

(In light of the terrible, awful events in Israel/Palestine in the past few days, it was decided that a temporary departure for this blog may be in order) The latest hip hop feud has certainly been good for one Jewish Canadian (Drake), and very, very bad for Meek Mill, (not Jewish, and a native of Philadelphia, which is not in Canada). Now that I have your attention with that ridiculous headline (I worked at a Jewish/Israeli news site where we would …

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Beyond the public eye, a new mafia killing season may be brewing

By / December 1, 2020

On Saturday night in Ashkelon, locals were evacuated from their homes in fear – for the first time since the end of Operation Protective Edge in late August. The reason wasn’t a long-range rocket fired from Gaza, but an improvised explosive device found inside a city apartment building. The bomb was left outside the house of the daughter of Eli Elezra, a powerful local businessman and contractor. No stranger to threats and extortion attempts by organized crime figures, his home was …

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