See Part 1 of our 2023 Year in Review.
1) January 2023 – “Exiled Moscow Chief Rabbi: Jews Should Leave Russia Before They Are Scapegoated” by Ash Obel (Times of Israel): Moscow’s exiled former chief rabbi, Pinchas Goldschmidt, has warned Russian Jews that they may become scapegoats for hardships brought on by Moscow’s sputtering war in Ukraine, and encouraged them to leave the country. Read more.
2) January 2023 – “Federal Judge Finds West Virginia Law Barring Transgenders From Girls’ Sports Constitutional” by Michael Tennant (New American): A federal judge upheld a West Virginia law requiring student athletes to compete with other members of their biological sex, dealing a blow to both the transgender movement and the Biden administration, which had supported the lawsuit challenging the statute. Read more.
3) February 2023 – “Asbury Students, Professor Join Tony Campolo’s Pro-gay, Progressive Protégé, Shane Claiborne, to Discuss ‘Revival’ in Viral Video” by Michael Marcavage (Christian News Network): In an online interview that has been now viewed close to 80,000 times in just a few days, several Asbury students and an adjunct professor joined false teacher Tony Campolo’s pro-gay, progressive protégé, Shane Claiborne, to discuss what many are calling a “revival” at Asbury University on the YouTube channel for “Red Letter Christians”—a group headed by Campolo and Claiborne. Read more.
4) June 2023 – “An AI Program Is Pretending to Be Jesus and Thousands of Lost Young People Are Flocking to It” by Rachael Emmanuel (The Western Journal): There’s an event recorded in the Gospel of Matthew in which Jesus was sitting on the Mount of Olives, and his disciples asked him what the sign of the end of the age would be. Jesus replied, “See that no one leads you astray. For many will come in my name, saying, ‘I am the Christ,’ and they will lead many astray.” At least one of those deceivers is turning out to be an AI called “ask_jesus.” Read more.
5) July 2023 – “Ailing Pope Francis Hurries to Bolster His Progressive Legacy” by asFrances X. Rocca
(The Wall Street Journal): Pope Francis is moving to shore up his progressive legacy as his health problems increase, making key appointments that could shape the Catholic Church well past the end of his pontificate. Following hospitalizations in March and June, the pope named a new Vatican doctrinal chief, members of a Vatican synod that could consider major changes to church governance and teaching, and additional members of the body that will elect his successor, all in a little more than a week. Read more.
6) July 2023 – “We Are Totally Awash in Pseudoscience”: Nobel Prize-Winning Physicist on Climate Agenda by Nathan Worcester (The Epoch Times): Nobel Prize-winning physicist John Clauser is not afraid to go against the flow. . . . The physicist, who also won a third of the Wolf Prize for his quantum mechanics contributions, shared some of his views on climate during a recent talk in South Korea soon after his election to the CO2 Coalition’s board of directors. “I believe that climate change is not a crisis,” Mr. Clauser told the audience at Quantum Korea 2023. Read more.
7) September 2023 – “Sarah Young, 77, Dies; Created an Empire Around a Christian Devotional” by Clay Risen (The New York Times): Sarah Young, whose book “Jesus Calling,” composed of devotional readings written in the voice of Jesus Christ, sold tens of millions of copies and spawned an evangelical empire of sequels, television shows and podcasts, died on Aug. 31 at her home in Brentwood, Tenn., a suburb of Nashville. . . . . The book’s success can be attributed in part to Mrs. Young’s unique technique. “I have written from the perspective of Jesus speaking, to help readers feel more personally connected with Him,” she wrote in the introduction. “So the first person singular (‘I,’ ‘Me,’ ‘My,’ ‘Mine’) always refers to Christ; ‘you’ refers to you, the reader.” . . . Read more.
8) October 2023 – “None Were Spared: Women, Children, Elderly, Peace Activists, Holocaust Survivor — Victims of Hamas Attacks Faced ‘Evil Not Created Even by the Devil’” by Joshua Klein (Breitbart News): As the world sets its sights on the unprecedented surprise Hamas attack against Israel, emerging details of just how gruesome their tactics were have left many in the international community in complete shock over the “unimaginable horror” perpetrated against hundreds of innocent civilians, each with their own harrowing ordeal. On Saturday, Hamas’ multiple-pronged attack saw the Gaza-based terror group resorting to abuse, executions, and kidnappings of men, women, children and, at times, full families and even an elderly Holocaust survivor. None were spared. Read more.
9) November 2023 – “Slouching Toward Kristallnacht—Right Before Our Eyes” by Scott Hogenson (Front Page Magazine): Something sinister is happening before our eyes. An alarming number of Americans blame Israel for the murder of civilians by Hamas terrorists October 7, and violence against Jews is rising precipitously. It began before the dead were buried, when a group of Harvard students issued a statement proclaiming they “hold the Israeli regime entirely responsible for all unfolding violence.” Days later, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres cribbed a line from that statement, saying the killing of Israeli civilians “did not occur in a vacuum.” In cities across the nation, Americans chant for Palestine to seize the land “from the river to the sea,” promoting the annihilation of Israel and the Jews living there. Read more.
10) December 2023 – “How Dangerous Are the Anti-Israel Conservatives?” by Jonathan S. Tobin (Jewish News Syndicate): On the main stage of American politics, the lines of debate about Israel and the Hamas atrocities of Oct. 7 have been clear. Almost all Republicans and most Democratic officeholders support the Jewish state in its necessary war of self-defense against Islamist terrorists who seek its destruction and the genocide of the Jewish people. Much of the Democrats’ left-wing base disagrees with progressives being the loudest voices raised against Israel. They also have supplied the ideological foundation and the activist passion behind the surge in antisemitism that has been on display on the streets of America’s cities and college campuses in the past six weeks. The political left has become the primary engine of the spike in Jew-hatred, while most of the political right has become even more closely aligned with support for Israel during this crisis. It would be untrue, however, to claim that there are no exceptions to that rule. Read more.