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The Israel Defense Forces launched a limited military operation earlier this week in the Jenin refugee camp. In addition to airstrikes, over 1,000 IDF troops were involved in the campaign, the largest in the West Bank in some 20 years according to reports. The Times of Israel reported:

The military operation began shortly after 1 a.m. on Monday with a series of airstrikes against multiple targets in the city, including a joint war room shared by various armed groups in the city.

Throughout the campaign, the IDF said, troops located and demolished weapon storage sites, explosives labs with hundreds of primed devices, war rooms used by Palestinian gunmen to observe Israeli forces, and other “terror infrastructure.”

Another Times of Israel report noted:

The Israel Defense Forces on Tuesday accused Palestinian gunmen in the West Bank city of Jenin of turning a mosque into a "fortified" hideout, complete with an underground tunnel and a cache of weapons.

…On the ground floor, troops found two tunnel openings that the army said were connected. Explosives, weapons, and other military equipment were found inside the holes and scattered across the mosque.

Further reading: See the Short Takes section below for some important commentary on the Israeli operation in Jenin.

Liz Peek, in an opinion piece for The Hill late last week, provides a review of the Biden administration policies holding our economy down. She writes:

Joe Biden is hitting the campaign trail, talking up "Bidenomics." What is that, you ask?

Bidenomics is the embrace of Big Government, Big Labor and Big Spending. No wonder Americans are on edge; we’ve learned those are not the best ingredients for healthy, productive growth. (See: Obama and the worst-ever recovery from a recession.)

Here is the truth about the Biden economy: it is barely growing (real growth in the last quarter was 1.1 percent) despite massive federal stimulus. Trillions in spending have thrust our nation’s debt and deficits into the red zone and kicked off inflation, driving real wages lower for 26 consecutive months. Inflation hitting a 40-year high required one of the largest-ever increases in interest rates, which in turned caused three of the biggest bank failures in our nation’s history.

In addition to huge spending, any number of Biden policies, including the intentional squashing of our fossil fuels industries, the "Buy American at any price" union favoritism and the crushing ramp-up in business regulations, have spurred inflation. That is the nut of Bidenomics.

Further reading: Biden misleads on deficit reduction
Jack Elbaum writes that Biden’s boasts about reducing the US deficit are empty words: "He made no actual cuts to spending in order to make the deficit come down. It was just a return to the baseline when there were no more COVID-19 relief packages."

Last week, the Supreme Court handed down two particularly notable decisions of interest to the American Jewish community.

One is Groff v DeJoy in which the Court ruled 9-0 in favor of an evangelical Christian postal worker who was unwilling, for religious reasons, to work on Sundays as his job required. JNS reports:

Associate Justice Samuel Alito, who wrote the court’s opinion, clarified that employers must accommodate employees’ religious needs unless there is an "undue hardship" under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act.

A previous standard, under the court’s 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v Hardison held that employers could refuse workers’ requests to avoid working on their Sabbath since that posed more than a much lower, de minimis burden.

… "Forcing American Jews, or Americans of any faith, to choose between their career and their conscience is fundamentally at odds with the principle of religious freedom that is the foundation of the United States and our Constitution,” [Orthodox Union Executive Director for Public Policy Nathan] Diament added. “We regret that it has taken so long, but we are grateful that the Supreme Court has finally righted the wrong of Hardison and has reinstated the full right of religious accommodation in the workplace."

The Supreme Court last week also struck down the use of racial preferences in college admissions. The Hill reports:

The Supreme Court in a pair of cases Thursday severely limited the use of race as a factor in college admissions, upending decades of affirmative action programs that US institutions have used to select students from their applicant pools.

In rulings that broke along ideological lines, the court’s six conservative justices invalidated Harvard’s and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) admissions practices by ruling they did not comply with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

"Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points," Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.

… "In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race," Roberts wrote. "Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice."

Five Details You May Have Missed in Media Coverage of Jenin

David M. Litman provides important context for the reports on the limited military operation that the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) launched earlier this week against terrorist organizations operating in the town of Jenin, located in the northern area of the West Bank. He looks at the Palestinian Authority’s failures, the role of Iran, the growing threat of improvised explosive devices (IEDs), the use of mosques and other civilian facilities by terrorists, and the IDF’s efforts to minimize civilian casualties.

Iran Carries Out 354 Executions in First Six Months of 2023: Report

The Norway-based NGO Iran Human Rights (IHRNGO) on Monday reported that Iran has carried out at least 354 executions so far in 2023, including six women and five protesters.

Assad Returns to the Arab League—US Diplomacy Stumbles

Eric Rozenman of the Jewish Policy Center writes: "Bashar al-Assad appears to have won Syria’s devasting 12-year civil war. The 21-nation Arab League (22 with the inclusion of the notional entity of "Palestine"), which suspended Syria early in the fighting, welcomed it back in May. The turn-about indicates that not only have Assad and his minority Alawite-led dictatorship survived, but also that their Russian and Iranian backers have gained."

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