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“If there is a way Israel could assist in ending the fighting, we would be very happy to do so.”

By World Israel News Staff

Israel has offered to host ceasefire talks between warring factions in Sudan as the death toll reached several hundreds on Monday.

“Since the start of hostilities in the country, Israel has been working different channels to bring about a cease-fire and the advancement in recent days is very encouraging,” Foreign Minister Eli Cohen said on Monday.

“If there is a way Israel could assist in ending the fighting, we would be very happy to do so,” he added.

Cohen shares close ties with the embattled country, as does his ministry’s director-general, Ronen Levy.

Cohen was in the Sudanese capital of Khartoum in February with the aim of inking Israel’s normalization deal with Sudan.

“Since my visit to Khartoum three months ago, a visit whose purpose was to bring about the signing of a historic peace agreement between Israel and Sudan, we have been in contact with various parties in Sudan in order to promote relations between the countries,” Cohen said on Monday.

According to a statement from Cohen’s office, the foreign ministry was “encouraged” by the “progress made in recent days during talks” with the rival Sudanese factions.

A power struggle between Gen. Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, Sudan’s de facto military leader, and his deputy, Gen. Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo has spiraled into open violence between loyalist forces on both sides.

US National Security Council spokesperson John Kirby told reporters on Monday that Washington was also trying to reach a ceasefire.

“We have not given up on the notion that there could be a ceasefire that would come into effect,” Kirby said.

“We will keep working with close partners in pushing the two sides to try to…get a permanent cease-fire in place,” Kirby added. “We see the risk of protracted conflict but we see a possibility…that we could get to a cease-fire.”

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The court conceded that Waters use of Nazi imagery in his stage show was “tasteless,” but would not go further than that.

By Ben Cohen, Algemeiner

A previously-canceled concert in the German city of Frankfurt by the former Pink Floyd frontman Roger Waters may now go ahead, after a court ruled on Monday that the decision by local authorities to ban his performance on the grounds of his alleged antisemitism violated his artistic freedom.

The May 28 concert at the city’s Festhalle — where more than 3,000 Jews were assembled and abused by the Nazi regime in Nov. 1938 prior to their deportation to concentration camps — was canceled two months ago, after the city government, which jointly owns the venue with the state of Hesse, accused Waters of being “one of the world’s best-known antisemites,” citing his backing for the campaign to subject the State of Israel to a regime of “boycotts, divestment and sanctions” (BDS). It also highlighted the use of antisemitic imagery in Waters’ past concerts, including a balloon shaped like a pig and embossed with a Star of David and various corporate logos.

At the end of March, Waters announced that he was taking legal action to reverse the decision, claiming: “I fight for all of our human rights, including the right to free speech. We are on the road to Frankfurt. Frankfurt, here we come!”

The Frankfurt Administrative Court ruled in favor of Waters on Monday, arguing that the memory of the Jewish deportees who were forcibly gathered at the Festhalle would not be tainted by the singer exercising his “artistic freedom.” While the court conceded that Waters use of Nazi imagery in his stage show was “tasteless,” it was also the case that the singer “does not glorify or relativize the National Socialist atrocities or identify with National Socialist racial ideology,” a spokeswoman for the court told local media outlets. Post–war Germany instituted a series of laws that outlaw pro-Nazi organizations and their associated symbols as well as the denial of the Holocaust.

The decision can still be appealed at the Administrative Court for the state of Hesse.

As well as Frankfurt, Waters is scheduled to perform in Hamburg, Berlin, Cologne and Munich as part of his “This is Not A Drill 2023” tour. An attempt to ban his Munich appearance at the Olympiahalle venue failed over concerns that Waters could sue for breach of contract. The city council has urged the Olympiahalle to prepare signs, flags and other symbols on the day of the concert that would send a “clear signal for international understanding and international solidarity, against antisemitism and for the right to exist of the State of Israel and the sovereignty of Ukraine.”

Waters has established himself as one of the most visible supporters of the campaign to subject the State of Israel to a regime of “boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS)” as a prelude to its elimination as a sovereign state. As well as including antisemitic motifs in his concerns, Waters has made incendiary comments in a number of media interviews about the alleged power of the “Jewish lobby” in the US and Israel’s supposed program of “genocide” targeting the Palestinians.

The singer’s recent activities have included a Feb. 8 appearance at the UN Security Council. Invited to address the body by the Russian mission to the UN, Waters delivered a rambling speech in which he claimed to be speaking on behalf of the world’s “voiceless majority” while denouncing Ukraine’s democratic government as “provocateurs.”

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Policymakers in the Global North have mostly responded to rising inflation by raising interest rates. That’s bad for their own workers — and it’s creating a debt crisis for many countries in the Global South.

Vendors sell products in a busy street in Accra, Ghana, on March 21, 2022. (Seth / Xinhua via Getty Images)

At the end of last year, Ghana defaulted on its debt as the government suspended payments on most debts owed to foreign creditors. Earlier in 2022, Sri Lanka also entered default as inflation sent the country’s currency tumbling, exacerbating the cost-of-living crisis as imports of essential goods like food and medicine became more expensive.

This year, Pakistan finds itself on the brink of default as the combination of high inflation and climate breakdown fueled environmental disasters devastated its economy. Pakistan’s situation is particularly worrying given the fact that the country is the world’s fifth largest by population. Other countries like Zambia and Lebanon have been in default for much longer.

High inflation and slow global growth have wracked many poor economies at the same time as rising interest rates have made debt servicing more expensive. Fifteen percent of poor countries are already in debt distress — when a country is unable to fullfil its financial obligations and debt restructuring is required — while half are in danger of entering it.

In short, the world economy is already in the midst of a sovereign debt crisis. The United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) has warned that the developing world faces a “lost decade” as a result of the debt crisis, estimating that debt servicing alone will cost these states at least $800 billion.

There are, of course, notable differences in the economic and political situations of the countries currently in, or on the brink of, default. Ghana’s situation is unique in that much of its debt is owed to domestic rather than international creditors. Its default, therefore, risks creating a deep shock to the domestic financial sector, which would likely reverberate throughout the rest of its economy.

Sri Lanka, previously a golden child of international financial markets owing to its strong record of debt repayments, mismanaged its negotiations with creditors when the economic crisis became particularly acute. And countries like Pakistan and Lebanon, which is also on the verge of default, have suffered from decades of corruption and political mismanagement.

But while it is important not to insulate domestic elites from responsibility for the role they have played in exacerbating their countries’ debt crisis, it is also critical to recognize the global factors that are driving debt distress across the developing world — one of the most important being the way in which the rich word is dealing with its own economic crisis.

The inflationary crisis that began to tear through the world economy from last year is being driven by three main factors: the uneven recovery from the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and — often forgotten — climate breakdown. These are not issues that can be solved by fiddling around with the cost of borrowing. And yet this has been policymakers’ central response.

By raising interest rates, central bankers hope to slow growth and investment, increasing unemployment and disciplining workers into accepting less pay. The idea is that, even though workers did not cause the crisis, they can be made to pay for it.

Yet across most of the rich world, real wages are failing to keep pace with inflation, meaning that most workers are facing pay cuts. If policymakers really wanted to curb inflation, they would focus on profits, which in many sectors have soared even as input costs have risen. As the political economist Isabella Weber has forcefully argued, many large companies have taken advantage of inflation to raise prices higher than their costs, pocketing the difference.

So, interest rate hikes won’t solve the inflationary crisis in the rich world. They will, however, make it much more expensive for poor countries to finance their debts. The monetary policy currently being pursued in the rich world has been designed to impoverish workers domestically, with the added bonus of impoverishing poor countries globally.

We have been here before. In the 1980s, when the then chair of the Federal Reserve, Paul Volcker, sent US interest rates through the roof to discipline US workers, it led to dozens of defaults in the Global South. The so-called Volcker shock laid the foundations for neoliberalism in the United States and, conveniently, it also provided the perfect pretext for imposing neoliberal policies on the Global South.

When poor countries were forced to appeal to international financial institutions for emergency lending, they received this assistance in exchange for introducing policies like privatization, deregulation, and tax cuts. The terms of these loans — referred to as structural adjustment programs — decimated many economies and permanently increased inequality in others.

Yet no lessons appear to have been learned from the debt crisis of the 1980s. As countries like Ghana and Sri Lanka have appealed to international financial institutions for assistance, they have been forced to introduce austerity policies that are likely to constrain growth for years to come.

If austerity hasn’t worked in the rich world, it’s certainly not going to work in the poor world, where significant investment in infrastructure and public services is necessary for sustainable development. In fact, forcing poor countries to cut spending at a time when vast sums of money are needed for decarbonization and climate change mitigation is likely to exacerbate both the climate crisis and global inequality.

Debt cancellation is urgently needed to deal with both the global debt crisis and the climate crisis. Rather than forcing countries to implement regressive and self-defeating austerity measures in exchange for emergency lending, new lending could be directed into investment in green infrastructure and climate mitigation — as well as protecting important carbon sinks like rainforests and tundra.

But over the long run, even debt cancellation will not be enough to close the gap between the rich and poor worlds. The reason that poor countries have been forced to take on so much new debt is that they have been kept in a position of dependence in a global economy structured to enrich the wealthy and impoverish the poor.

An extractive international financial system, regressive intellectual property rules, and enforced neoliberal policies have denied many poor countries the resources required for sustainable development.

China is, of course, the major exception to this rule. It has achieved development by ignoring the rules laid down by the Global North, protecting industry and prioritizing investment. In fact, China is now the single largest lender to many poor countries, and its attitude toward debt restructuring — influenced more by geopolitical than economic considerations — will significantly impact how this crisis is resolved.

In an optimistic scenario, poor countries would be able to take advantage of the cooling of relations between China and the West to access lending on more favorable terms. As they once did through the Non-Aligned Movement, poor states could work together to resist imperialism and achieve real debt cancellation.

In a pessimistic scenario, these countries will be caught in the middle of the new Cold War. Western lenders may refuse to negotiate with Chinese ones over how to write down the debts of poor countries, leaving these states stuck in limbo. This is exactly the situation currently faced by countries like Zambia, whose creditors have failed to come to an agreement about its debt for several years now.

One thing is for certain: the world economy can’t fully recover until the Global South debt crisis is resolved. But when it comes to debt, politics always trumps economics. What happens next will be determined by what politicians and policymakers in China and the West consider to be in their interests, rather than what is most likely to promote sustainable development.

Conservatives today look like their own exaggerated caricatures of “social-justice warrior” liberals: shrill, censorious, and terrified of encountering any perspective they oppose.

A sign disparaging Bud Light beer is seen along a country road on April 21, 2023 in Arco, Idaho. Anheuser-Busch, the brewer of Bud Light, has faced backlash after the company sponsored two Instagram posts from a transgender woman. (Natalie Behring / Getty Images)

Last November, conservative commentator Ross Douthat penned a provocative column titled “How the Right Became the Left and the Left Became the Right.” “One of the master keys to understanding our era,” Douthat wrote in the opening paragraph, “is seeing all the ways in which conservatives and progressives have traded attitudes and impulses.”

The populist right’s attitude toward American institutions has the flavor of the 1970s — skeptical, pessimistic, paranoid — while the mainstream, MSNBC-watching left has a strange new respect for the F.B.I. and C.I.A. The online right likes transgression for its own sake, while cultural progressivism dabbles in censorship and worries that the First Amendment goes too far. Trumpian conservatism flirts with postmodernism and channels Michel Foucault; its progressive rivals are institutionalist, moralistic, confident in official narratives and establishment credentials.

Despite some terminological imprecision — Douthat often writes of “the Left” when he really means “liberals” — the argument speaks to something real.

While liberals of the Bush era worried about mass surveillance and government overreach, today’s liberal mainstream champions the sanctity of institutions and views the likes of courts, security agencies, and misinformation regulators as a bulwark against the Right. As Donald Trump insulted his way into the executive branch, liberals bludgeoned Bernie Sanders and his supporters with bad-faith social-justice critiques and made prudish appeals to consensus and decency. The Republican affect, by contrast, has increasingly drawn on themes of dissent and rebellion, with a politics of trolling and an aesthetic of 4chan-esque vulgarity supplanting the comparatively upright style once associated with figures like Mitt Romney and Jeb Bush.

There’s a certain elegance in seeing contemporary politics like this: censorious and oversensitive Brahmins sermonizing about institutional authority in one corner and a newly irreverent right pursuing a frenzied and paranoid style in the other. It isn’t entirely wrong, but it’s not exactly right either. In its tidiness, such a narrative elides the important ways that the Right now engages in its own version of the very politics it claims to deplore. Conservatism, in this sense, has not so much traded places with liberalism as converged with some of its shallowest and most illiberal instincts.

Recently, conservatives launched a crusade against brewing company Anheuser-Busch in response to an innocuous advertising collaboration with transgender influencer Dylan Mulvaney. Breweries have reportedly been targeted with bomb threats, and one right-leaning company has seized upon the situation to launch a service called “Woke Alerts” that will warn consumers “when companies cave to the woke mob.” The episode is instructive for several reasons, among them that the campaign so obviously mirrors the very sensibility it purports to be resisting. In effect, the Right’s go-to reaction to what it imagines are woke mobs is to create woke mobs of its own.

The incident is merely one example of a wider zeitgeist currently reflected in mass campaigns to get books with black or LGBTQ themes pulled from library shelves, draconian legislation to discipline academics who teach particular subjects, heavy-handed regulation of free expression in public-school classrooms, and sinister directives to state agencies targeting transgender children and their parents. “Woke capitalism” has, meanwhile, become conservatism’s favorite bête noire, inspiring absurd freakouts about everything from Disney’s ostensible promotion of socialism to Pride-themed Oreo packaging. The related concept of “ESG” (Environmental and Social Governance) is set to be the subject of congressional hearings that will, like Woke Alerts, target investors thought to be undermining profits in pursuit of a “woke” agenda.

Conservatives, in effect, have recognized the socially liberal bent of modern America — and they absolutely hate it. The result is a politics increasingly indistinguishable from the most exaggerated right-wing caricature of censorious social-justice warrior liberalism.

Another irony of this posture is that it has seen conservatives embrace a key premise of the shallow social-justice ethos that now pervades the upper echelons of some large corporations. True, they may hate it when leviathans like Amazon and Nike issue statements in support of Black Lives Matter or partner with transgender TikTok stars. But, in lockstep with the marketing teams at these very companies, conservatives accept the corporate alignment with various social-justice causes as something genuine rather than a branding exercise. On this, they agree with an influential section of American liberals: “woke capitalism” exists.

Yet the whole idea of so-called woke capitalism is absurd on its face. Large profitable corporations are, by definition, driven by cold-market calculus, not the pursuit of social justice in anything but the hollowest sense. Insofar as some corporations bend toward social liberalism, it’s mostly because there’s a greater market share to be found there — on major issues like trans rights and abortion, conservatism is very much a minority proposition in today’s America — and because it can be an effective inoculant when their owners and bosses are caught union busting, running exploitative workplaces, or contributing to climate change. It’s a cynical and often nakedly hypocritical branding exercise undertaken by people thinking about their bottom lines and little more. If the Right is wrong to attack woke capital, liberals are wrong to celebrate it.

It’s one thing to find fault with the moralism that pervades some liberal milieus, or to roll one’s eyes in the direction of Wall Street banks or entertainment conglomerates trying to cash in on social-justice branding. The fact remains, however, that it is not oversensitive liberals who are crusading against Bud Light, trying to get books banned en masse, or enforcing parochial ideas about gender and sexuality through state legislation. In the narcotic haze of the culture war, it is all too easy to overlook the extent to which America’s conservative minority has become a mirror image of the very thing it purports to deplore: a shrill and inflexible mass that not only mistakes consumption for politics but demands protection, at all times, from facts, people, and ideas that make it uncomfortable.

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Rabbi Leo Dee, who lost his wife Lucy, and daughters, Maia, 20, and Rina, 15, in a Palestinian terrorist attack earlier this month, appeals for unity out of respect of the fallen soldiers and the victims of terror.

The post WATCH – Rabbi Leo Dee Memorial Day appeal: Don’t protest at cemeteries appeared first on World Israel News.

“The demographics are changing,” said Irving Lebovics, co-chairman of the Agudah-affiliated Am Echad. “I’m not even sure who the federation represents today.”

By Menachem Wecker, JNS

The 3,000 North American Jewish leaders who are convening in Israel for the Jewish Federations of North America’s 2023 General Assembly were supposed to reflect their “eternal love for Israel that transcends any difference of opinion or political discussion,” stated Eric Fingerhut, CEO of the umbrella group, which represents 146 Federations and 300 smaller communities.

Controversy has brewed for some time at JNFA ahead of the four-day GA, which is to culminate on Israel’s 75th birthday on Wednesday on Yom Ha’atzmaut, with critics saying that the group is meddling in domestic Israeli politics.

Last month, 30 federation leaders expressed concern about judicial policy in Israel after a 24-hour Israel “fly-in.” In February, JFNA sent a letter to Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and opposite leader Yair Lapid with very specific policy prescriptions, including that Israel “make clear that a majority of just 61 votes of the Knesset is not sufficient to override a decision of the Supreme Court.”

Earlier this month, JFNA hosted Lapid in New York for an off-the-record meeting. Some of the opposition leader’s statements drew a public statement of “grave concern” from Am Echad, an affiliate of Agudath Israel of America, which represents Orthodox Jews. “We see these comments as sowing discord and delegitimizing not just the current Israeli government, but Israel itself in the eyes of the world, both Jewish and not,” stated Am Echad.

“The demographics are changing. I’m not even sure who the Federation represents today,” Irving Lebovics, co-chairman of Am Echad, told JNS. According to Pew Research Center data, 17% of Jews aged 18 to 29 identify as Orthodox, which is 70% more than Orthodoxy’s proportion of U.S. Jewry overall.

At the GA, Netanyahu canceled his speech ahead of expected protests on Sunday night, and on Monday, representatives of the Jewish Agency for Israel—a JFNA partner—were reportedly among those who repeatedly protested and heckled Simcha Rothman, a Knesset member who is a key figure in the government’s judicial reforms.

Lebovics had told JNS ahead of the GA that he was very concerned about what might happen. “My guess is that there will be a left wing that will try to co-opt that whole event and try to get the Federation to take a stance strongly supporting one side,” he said. Sunday evening New York time, he told JNS: “There is certainly a strong attempt being made to make that happen.”

When North American Jewish leaders meet with the Israeli opposition leader and publicly tell Israel what to do politically, they appear to muddy one of the contemporary examples appended to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism: “holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel.”

If American Jewish leaders—whose websites tout the billions of dollars they collectively raise and distribute annually, including in Israel—dictate to Israel what to do, why is it antisemitic to hold world Jewry accountable for Israeli decisions?

“This is sort of unprecedented that an opposition leader from Israel comes to the United States to lobby the Jewish community to undermine an existing government, and at the same time, goes to the United States government and involves them in undermining an elected government,” Lebovics told JNS.

“It’s not healthy. It never worked in Jewish history for the last thousands of years when we try to involve foreign governments in our internal issues. It’s inappropriate,” he added.

He noted that Rashad Hussain, U.S. ambassador at large for international religious freedom, tweeted on April 16 that he met Shmuel Rabinowitz, rabbi of the Western Wall (Kotel), and “reiterated U.S. support for implementation of the 2016 Western Wall agreement to expand the egalitarian space at the wall.”

“What does this have to do with the United States government? Are we opining about how the mosque be set up for men and women, or about how the National Cathedral should conduct a service?” posed Lebovics.

‘Always working on a bipartisan basis’

Fingerhut, the JFNA executive, told JNS that his organization seeks the Jewish community’s “broad center.”

“We don’t dress alike. We don’t eat alike. We don’t pray alike. And yet, we have to care for each other,” he said. “We are very practiced at working across the broad center, and encouraging dialogue and discussion when we engage in any issues that are governmental. We always are working on a bipartisan basis in North America, so we carry that over to our work with Israel.”

Other public JFNA statements suggest otherwise.

Rather than stating that many of its members had one perspective and a minority held a different view, JFNA recently tweeted that it was “deeply troubled” by a federal judge’s ruling on the abortion drug mifepristone. Last year, JFNA stated that it was “extremely concerned about the medical risks” posed by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Roe v. Wade.

According to the Pew Research Center’s Religious Landscape Study—conducted in 2007 and 2014, with responses from 35,000 Americans—83% of Jews said that abortion should be legal in all or most cases, while 15% said it should be illegal in all or most cases. That may sound like a strong mandate for JFNA to comment as it did, but in its letter to Netanyahu and Lapid, it stressed: “The essence of democracy is both majority rule and protection of minority rights.”

Fingerhut told JNS that JFNA balances questions of majority and minority “with great care and great intentionality.”

“We are always aware of the differing opinions in our community. It is an absolute requirement of our work that we listen to all of those opinions,” he said.

Israel ought to conduct its own political debates, but when the Jewish state’s actions “deeply affect” North American Jews, JFNA has a responsibility to communicate that, according to Fingerhut.

“It is impossible to overstate how important Israel’s fundamental democratic nature is to American Jews, and to our ability to build support for Israel in our community and in the broader community,” he said. “We could not see how we could square that provision with our description of Israel as the robust democracy, the model democracy it ought to be.”

Asked if JFNA’s role as financial patron looms in the background of its conversations with Israeli officials, Fingerhut denied that money was a factor. “If the implication is, does the fact of funding or not funding something—is that what’s driving this—the answer is not at all,” he said. “I’ve never heard it at all.”

He wouldn’t name participants in private meetings, but Fingerhut claimed that “a number” of officials in the coalition told him they realized that they went too far or made mistakes. “I think we’ve been enormously judicious and only going to those things that matter,” he said.

‘A very partisan time’

U.S. politics has gone through “a very partisan time,” stated Fingerhut.

“There’s no question that certainly the four years that President [Donald] Trump was in office, and frankly, much of the time, I’m sure our friends on the right would say that during the Obama administration, they felt similarly,” he said. “The rhetoric has been ratcheted up very high in America. I’m afraid that some of that has spilled over also into Israel now. And I think it’s not a very good trend.”

Fingerhut would not confirm whether Agudah was invited to the event with Lapid, citing its off-the-record nature. “I have a great, wonderful relationship with Agudah,” he said. “Certainly with the OU.” (The Orthodox Union has been named as an attendee.)

Agudah, which was not invited to the meeting, referred JNS to Lebovics, who said Am Echad was also not invited. Lebovics thinks if Am Echad had been invited, the organization probably would have declined, following consultation with rabbinic authorities.

Of the relationship between JFNA and Agudah, Lebovics said: “The leadership has a cordial relationship.”

Agudah had tried to get JFNA and other Jewish organizations to sign a statement with it about the importance of dialogue, according to Lebovics. Eric Goldstein, CEO of UJA-Federation of New York, who edited the document, and Fingerhut were ready to sign, noted Lebovics. “That was what I was told. All of a sudden, they put out a statement—I don’t think they meant it maliciously—but they put out a statement saying basically that the demonstrators have a right to demonstrate in Israel,” he said.

“That basically undermined the entire concept that we were trying to create. We put our statement out alone. It was, in my mind, a tremendously lost opportunity,” he said.

“You have a group of leadership, both in America and Israel, on the left that sees the vulnerability of this government and is going in for the kill. They’re basically trying to get the government out,” said Lebovics. “What they couldn’t do in the election, they are trying to do in the street.”

With U.S. Jewish demographics changing and a continued strong Orthodox Jewish commitment to Israel, Lebovics again raised the question of JFNA’s constituency.

“Forty percent of the Jewish population is unaffiliated,” he said. “Who exactly are you representing when you say, ‘We talk for the majority?’ ”

The post Facing criticism of partisanship, head of Jewish Federations defends its legitimacy appeared first on World Israel News.

Lemon said he was “stunned” at the news, which came hours after he presented his show. 

By World Israel News Staff

Longtime CNN host Don Lemon has lashed out at the cable news network two months after apologizing to viewers for misogynistic comments about Republican presidential candidate Nikki Haley.

“I am stunned,” Mr Lemon wrote on Twitter, noting that he was told by his agent that he had been let go.

CNN itself published that the announcement “came without explanation and astonished the media industry.”

“CNN and Don have parted ways,” CNN chair and CEO Chris Licht said in a memo to staff. “Don will forever be a part of the CNN family, and we thank him for his contributions over the past 17 years. We wish him well and will be cheering him on in his future endeavors.”

Lemon had appeared on his show on Monday morning and said the news came as a total shock.

“I was informed this morning by my agent that I have been terminated by CNN. I am stunned,” he wrote on Twitter. “After 17 years at CNN, I would have thought that someone in management would have the decency to tell me directly. At no time was I ever given any indication that I would not be able to continue to do the work I have loved at the network.”

The controversial anchor had come under fire in February for an episode of “CNN This Morning” in which he remarked that 51-year-old Haley was not “in her prime.” A woman, Lemon said, was considered in her prime “in her 20s, 30s, and maybe her 40s.”

“It is clear that there are larger issues at play.”

Moments before Lemon’s announcement, Fox News announced it was parting ways with anchor Tucker Carlson.

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The annual Memorial Day opening ceremony began at the Western Wall plaza with President Herzog calling for unity at a time of discord.

By World Israel News Staff

Israel drew to a standstill on Monday evening as Israelis ushered in Memorial Day with a minute-long silence in honor of the country’s 28,468 fallen soldiers and terror victims.

Fifty-nine soldiers were killed during active military service since Israel’s last Memorial Day, with another 86 dying from complications from injuries sustained prior to that, bringing the total number of fallen soldiers to 24,213, according to Defense Ministry numbers.

The somber day also marked the deaths of 4,255 victims of terror.

The annual Memorial Day opening ceremony began at the Western Wall plaza at 8 pm on Monday, in the presence of President Isaac Herzog and IDF Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi.

Herzog, reflecting on the siren marking the one-minute silence, called for unity at a time of “discord.”

“I ask myself, I ask us: what other country in the world has such a special sound? It is the sound of pain and of hope, of grief, and of pride. It is the sound of the State of Israel,” he said.

“A sound that calls on us to pause for a moment, to lock in the sanctity, to remember and to connect — together. This year, in the throes of these days of discord, this sound is more powerful, more forceful, more pained and more painful than ever.”

“This year, more than ever before, this sound calls on us, all of us, together! Their sacrifice has not been in vain – it shall not have been in vain.”

“I appeal to you, my brothers and sisters, citizens of Israel, at this holy moment, from here, the wailing wall, from which the Divine Presence has never shifted, and I ask us to mourn and grieve — together. May we let that feeling of yearning envelop us, together. May we let that sound of our collective pain ring loudly on this Memorial Day, without discord, as we cry for our sons and daughters. Even as we refuse to find comfort, for they are no more.”

Halevi, who, as a religiously observant Jew, is a rarity among IDF chiefs of staff, delivered a message laced with Talmudic references while calling on would-be protesters to respect the bereaved families.

“Tomorrow, we will stand by the side of the families in the cemeteries. I hope that on this day… we will adhere to our heritage and devote ourselves exclusively to solidarity with the memory of the fallen and with our pain over their passing. Above all, and beyond all controversy,” Halevi says.

“Controversy is, perhaps, the most beautiful gift the Jewish people gave to humanity. The people of Israel have been carrying Hillel and Shammai for about 2,000 years,” Halevi went on.

“In the Gemara, it is said that although Beit Shammai and Beit Hillel were divided, they did not refrain from marrying each other. To teach you, that affection and deep friendship are needed to fulfill the saying: ‘Truth and peace loved.’”

“Out of our responsibility to protect the memory of the fallen, tomorrow we will keep the affairs of the hour outside the cemeteries,” Halevi said, in a veiled reference to the judicial reform controversy. “We will allow families, commanders, and soldiers to… honor the memory of the fallen.”

Ordinarily, hundreds of thousands of Israelis gather in military cemeteries across the country to commemorate soldiers who have fallen in Israel’s wars and military operations.

But this year, numerous government ministers and MKs have declined to participate in the ceremonies, citing concerns that their presence may ignite protests from bereaved families who are vehemently opposed to judicial reform.

Some families have demanded that lawmakers who did not serve in the IDF not attend ceremonies. They’ve also argued that politicians who criticized reservists for their refusal to serve, as part of a protest against the reforms, should be excluded from official events.

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