Labour won a huge victory in Thursday's elections in the UK, taking nearly two-thirds of the seats in the House of Commons. A resounding victory for the left, perhaps? Well, they will certainly have a mandate, and the power to govern.
But Labour actually lost votes compared to the previous election, which had been a bad year for them. What happened was that the Conservatives lost support because the Conservatives were no longer conservative in any way.
The Conservative leadership could never fully get behind Brexit; then the party went for "green energy" fiascos that raised energy prices; and finally it proved itself totally incapable of standing up to the ongoing problem of mass migration.
Labour certainly won't do anything about that, either. It is a weak party with bad ideas -- which is why it is already being eclipsed in places by Muslim candidates who ran campaigns focused on opposing Israel's war against Hamas terrorists.
The upshot is that Nigel Farage, the man behind Brexit, is now in Parliament, albeit with a tiny party. And from that perch, he will continue to provide ideas and criticism that will expose the rot in both mainstream British parties.
So -- while Labour's victory looks like a step to the left for a major democracy, moving against the overall trend, it is really just a reminder that there is a limit to how much left-wing policy voters will tolerate from a conservative party.
This week's show will be slightly different from the norm: we'll focus on clips and topics, rather than guests -- and that, hopefully, will mean more input from the callers (unless you are all watching football on opening weekend).
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This week's Torah portion includes several laws about conduct in civic and personal life, the common theme of which is boundaries -- setting bounds to what one may do at home, at work, and even in the battlefield.
One noteworthy passage concerns Amalek, the evil nation that attacked the Children of Israel as they made their Exodus from slavery to freedom. Deuteronomy 25:17-19 commands Jews to obliterate Amalek's memory.
The South African government accused Israel of genocide on the basis of a story about Amalek in the Book of Samuel, in which King Saul was commanded to wipe out the entire evil Amalekite nation.
Because Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu quoted this week's portion -- "Remember what Amalek did to you" (25:17), the South African government claimed he was commanding soldiers to commit genocide.
It was an absurd and malevolent misreading of the Bible and of Jewish tradition. The commandment, as observed by Jews today, is to remember the evil of Amalek and fight ...