JORDAN - King Abdullah will be visiting President Joe Biden at the White House on July 19. By granting the Jordanian monarch the honor of being the first Arab leader to visit the new president, the US administration is putting wind in Jordan’s sails as it seeks to fend off Saudi claims regarding custodianship of Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem. From the point of view of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other interested Muslim parties, Jerusalem is the crown jewel in what amounts to a battle for the soul of Islam.

USA - Anyone concerned about the future of American Jewish life pays attention when a new Pew Research Center report is released. While not always painting a rosy picture, the data has been helpful in stimulating discourse that focuses on Jewish relevance, inclusion, and new modes of involvement. However, the newest Pew Report offers some particularly worrisome data: “half of Orthodox Jews in the US say they have ‘not much’ (23%) or ‘nothing at all’ (26%) in common with Jews in the Reform movement,” while six-in-ten Reform Jews say they have not much (39%) or nothing at all (21%) in common with the Orthodox. This data, rarely highlighted in the glut of articles that came out after the report’s release, reveals an existential crisis facing the Jewish people: We are coming apart at the seams. As Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks put it: “We are united by a covenant of shared memory, of shared identity, of shared fate – even if we don’t share the exact same faith.” If we don’t recapture that spirit, if we don’t act now to come together, we may be facing an unraveling of the strong, proud history of the Jewish people.

ISRAEL - Europe must remember that Israel is under constant threat from Iran, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid told EU foreign ministers in Brussels on Monday. Lapid called Iran "the Number 1 exporter of terrorism in the world, which never gave up on its ambition to attain a nuclear weapon and never hid who its target is for that weapon: Us. Israel." Iran backs Hizbullah in Lebanon to the north and Hamas in Gaza to the south, he said. Israel would like "to broaden the circle of peace" to include the Palestinians, Lapid said. "Unfortunately, there is no possibility at the moment… If there will be a Palestinian state, it needs to be a peace-seeking democracy… You cannot ask us to build with our own hands another threat to our lives."

MIDDLE EAST - Palestinian movement Fatah called for the United Arab Emirates (UAE) to be expelled from the Arab League today as the Gulf state officially opened an embassy in Israel. Central committee spokesman Abbas Zaki branded Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed “a traitor” to the Palestinian cause for having normalised relations with Israel. “If the UAE’s doors are opened to naturalise the zionists, you will perish,” he said. “The people of the Emirates are free and great and we do not attribute this betrayal to them, because the only traitor is Mohammed bin Zayed,” Mr Zaki added. The opening ceremony at the new embassy in Tel Aviv was hosted by UAE ambassador to Israel Mohammad al-Khaja and attended by newly appointed Israeli President Isaac Herzog. Last month, Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid opened a new embassy in Abu Dhabi to represent his country in the UAE capital.

ISRAEL - Ron Prosor's new book, Undiplomatically Speaking (in Hebrew; English in 2022), reflects [on the characteristics of] one of Israel's outstanding diplomats: initiative, offense, standing up for Israel's national honor, and battling for the justness of Israel's path on all fronts. He explains: "A good diplomat is one who takes the initiative and thinks outside the box. Diplomatic war is being waged against Israel that no other country in the world is subject to. Every Israeli diplomatic mission is a frontline command center." "Israel is held up to a… special standard… one that is so high it can't be met. If rockets are fired at Israel, they say Israel has the right to defend itself. But then they don't really allow you to strike at the terrorists. You do everything with one hand tied behind your back, with a threat hovering overhead that your soldiers and officers will be arrested if they leave the country… I can give you a long list of things that are just unbelievable, that only Israel is subject to."

ISRAEL - Why did Israel's conflict with Hamas in Gaza, unlike any other conflict in the world, become a green light to intimidate and attack a minority community? Why are Jews and Jewish communities uniquely ascribed responsibility for actions in a decades-long, geo-political dispute thousands of miles away? In the dangerously simplistic binary world view which has gripped progressive circles, Jews are unjustifiably viewed as white and privileged, while Israelis are automatically seen as wicked oppressors, thanks to manufactured and frankly anti-Semitic stereotypes. Yet, too often, voicing concerns over anti-Semitism is treated as an affront, something of a threat to other minority groups. To express sympathy for Jews facing intimidation and attack is deemed offensive. Those concerned with equality and social justice should proudly demonstrate solidarity with any minority under threat, instead of singling out one sole minority undeserving of solidarity and protection.

MIDDLE EAST - The summer camps run by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad are terrorist training camps for children to learn to become child warriors. A PIJ political leader explained that the children were being trained in how "to remove the alien corn [ie Israel] that was planted by the West and took over Palestine." What they are really doing is teaching kids to kill and die. Pictures from PIJ camps show children learning to field-strip and clean their Kalashnikov rifles, running obstacle courses, training under simulated battle conditions of fire and smoke, and learning how to clear rooms like SWAT teams. Those signing petitions expressing solidarity with "Palestine" should contemplate the disparity of sending their own children off to camp to sing around the campfire and play "Capture the Flag," while the children of Gaza sing songs of martyrdom and play "Butcher the Jews."

USA - Wheat farmers across the country are facing lower yields as 98% of the country’s wheat crop is in areas experiencing drought. In the Northern Plains, the Department of Agriculture said Monday that farmers were projected to harvest their smallest crop of spring wheat — crops planted in the spring and harvested in the autumn — in 33 years. This week, the North Dakota Wheat Commission noted in its weekly update that some farmers saw rain and lowered temperatures following last week’s searing heat, but conditions are still worrisome. The region is hardly alone; the USDA also said this week that 68% of the Pacific Northwest’s spring wheat was in “poor or very poor” condition. At this time last year, only 6% of the region’s wheat crop was in this state. All told, the USDA found that 98% of the US wheat crop is growing in areas hit by drought. June is when the wheat planted in the spring flowers, and is “a critical period” for the crop, said Ariel Ortiz-Bobea, an associate professor of applied economics at Cornell. “It’s getting hit very hard right now, the conditions being reported are pretty bad.”

USA - New Research Shows We’re on Schedule. A 1972 MIT study predicted that rapid economic growth would lead to societal collapse in the mid 21st century. A new paper shows we’re unfortunately right on schedule. A remarkable new study by a director at one of the largest accounting firms in the world has found that a famous, decades-old warning from MIT about the risk of industrial civilization collapsing appears to be accurate based on new empirical data. In 1972, a team of MIT scientists got together to study the risks of civilizational collapse. Their system dynamics model published by the Club of Rome identified impending ‘limits to growth’ (LtG) that meant industrial civilization was on track to collapse sometime within the 21st century, due to overexploitation of planetary resources. The controversial MIT analysis generated heated debate, and was widely derided at the time by pundits who misrepresented its findings and methods. But the analysis has now received stunning vindication from a study written by a senior director at professional services giant KPMG, one of the 'Big Four' accounting firms as measured by global revenue.

GERMANY - The German military has announced the creation of a separate command dedicated to space, becoming the latest of a handful of nations prioritizing more resources and missions among the stars. The Ministry of Defence introduced the new space command in a July 13 ceremony at the German Space Situational Awareness Centre in Uedem, located in the country’s North Rhine-Westphalia region. Defence Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer provided a keynote speech for the event. The military is “responding to the increasing significance of space for our state’s ability to function, the prosperity of our population, and the increasing dependency of the armed forces on space-supported data, services and products,” the ministry said in a statement.

GERMANY - As Germany prepares for its federal elections in September, many are wondering what will come next. Under outgoing Chancellor Angela Merkel, Germany has become an “indispensable nation” in Europe and within the broader rules-based international order. The consensus is that she will be succeeded by someone offering more of the same. Her own anointed successor as leader of the Christian Democratic Union, Armin Laschet, is indeed running on a continuity platform.

USA - Wildfires are once again ravaging the Western United States of America. Currently there are over 70 burning in multiple states – including one that has already burned over 200,000 acres in Oregon. The fires are a consequence of a deadly heatwave engulfing much of the west coast and has set a succession of record breaking temperatures. Last week, the temperature in Death Valley, California, topped 54 degrees celsius.

USA - Amid political division and constant culture wars, two-thirds of Republicans in the southern United States and almost half of West Coast Democrats want to secede from the country and form their own nation, according to a new poll. A poll released on Wednesday by Bright Line Watch and YouGov reveals that a large portion of Americans from across the US want their regional area to secede from the union, with southern Republicans and West Coast Democrats apparently the most dissatisfied with the status quo. Bright Line Watch described the numbers as “distressingly high,” while data journalist Christopher Ingraham called it the “most disturbing datapoint I’ve seen in a while.” The most notable secession in US history took place in the 1860s, when the southern states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Texas, Alabama, Virginia, Louisiana, Georgia, Tennessee, Arkansas, and North Carolina broke off from the union and formed the Confederate States of America – sparking the American Civil War.

CANADA - Terrorists are attacking and burning down churches across Canada with impunity. It’s a reality most Canadians only thought possible for Middle Eastern countries like Syria, where ISIS has bombarded and razed dozens of Christian heritage sites in the name of Islam. Now, after nearly six years of Liberals calling Canadians racist and fanning the flames of hatred, hate crimes are becoming commonplace against Christians in Canada. Things have gotten so bad that even our American neighbours are beginning to worry. Rightly so. The Counter Signal has kept a close eye on these terrorist attacks, reporting on the scene just hours after a fire in a refugee church. Our information shows that since June, there have been 45 attacks on Christian and mainly Roman Catholic congregations. Of those, 17 of them have been scorched or burnt to a crisp in suspicious circumstances. The fires and vandalism span six provinces and the Northwest Territories, some of which have been in the heartland of First Nations’ territory. This unprecedented anti-Catholic assault began soon after the unveiling of a residential school burial site in Kamloops, BC which was then followed by more unmarked grave discoveries at a former residential school site in Saskatchewan and elsewhere.

USA - How does it feel to live in a country with double-digit inflation? On Tuesday, the Bureau of Labor Statistics told us that the consumer price index has risen 5.4 percent over the past 12 months, and such a high number shocked a lot of people. But in order to make a fair comparison to the past, we have to account for the fact that the way inflation is calculated has been changed literally dozens of times over the past several decades. According to John Williams of shadowstats.com, if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1990, the official rate of inflation over the past 12 months would be about 9 percent. And if inflation was still calculated the way that it was back in 1980, the official rate of inflation over the past 12 months would be well into double-digits.