Opinion

 The climax of the Passover story and of the ten plagues is the visit of the Mashchit (the destroyer) to the Egyptian houses to slay their first born. This force, often attributed to the direct intervention of G-d, has occupied my mind during the past month. Starting the night after the War with Iran was initiated, we and millions of Israelis who can have been sleeping in safe rooms. Often, we are visited several times each night by the Iranian angels of death. Though sleep deprived, we are fortunate to have multilayered defenses against these forces of evil.

A tragedy of epic proportions was averted in Michigan when an armed security guard shot and killed a would-be terrorist who drove an explosives-laden truck into Temple Israel. Ayman Mohamed Ghazali, a 41-year-old Lebanese-born U.S. citizen, rammed his Ford F-150 pickup truck—loaded with fireworks, flammable liquids, and explosives—through the front entrance, drove it down a hallway toward classrooms packed with over 100 preschool children and staff, and opened fire with a rifle as the vehicle erupted in flames. The synagogue, which houses a busy early childhood program, could have become a scene of unimaginable horror. Yet, not a single child, teacher, or congregant was seriously injured or killed.

Since the loss of the New York State Senate back in 2018, New York has been under one-party rule by the Democrats. It has, without a doubt, been an unmitigated disaster. Radical regulation, hyper-spending, scandals, sky-high taxes, failing schools, a massive exodus, and a concerted effort to take all the most left-wing policies from around the country and implement them. From New York City to Albany, the leaders of this once-great state have been failing us, and voters must take the opportunity in 2026 to fix it.

The current war involving Israel and the United States against Iran is the latest in a series of battles involving the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps and its proxies. Each time Israel went to war, the desired outcome was to “finish the job” and provide the home front with extended periods of peace. Is this an achievable outcome, and what exactly does it mean?

Though not without cost, the U.S.-Israeli offensive has already made the world safer. Claims of a “quagmire” are an attempt to politicize an issue that should be bipartisan.

Leading up to the mayoral election last year, many criticisms of how Zohran Mamdani would conduct himself and his office were laid out. One of them was how a Muslim mayor would respond if an Islamist terrorist attack occurred in New York City—the home of the 9/11 attacks. Mamdani himself seemed more troubled by the backlash on Muslims than on the victims of such an attack. Barely two months into his term have passed, and Mamdani was tested on his reaction to such an event, and he failed pitifully.