Will The Israeli Govt Learn From Tisha B'Av ?

Tisha B'Av always reminds me of my Mom. When I was a kid I would cry at the drop of the hat, my mom would tell me that if I continued to cry she would give me something real to cry about. Many of my friends claim that it was their parents that invented that saying but in actuality it was God who invented it and he was talking about Tisha B'Av.

When Moses sent twelve spies into Canaan, ten of them came back with a report that the land was unconquerable. The fledgling Israeli nation could never defeat those Canaanite Giants. There were cries throughout the Children of Israel asking Moses to take them back to Egypt.

They forgot all about God, and his promise to help us conquer the land. That was the first Tisha B'Av. God's response was not only the generation that knew slavery would die out in the desert, but that Tisha B'Av will be a horrible day for the Jews, in other words God would give us something real to cry about.

From that day on horrible things have happend to the Jewish people on Tisha B'Av. Some of them include:

• The First was destroyed

• The Second Temple was destroyed

• Bar Kokhba's revolt against Rome failed

• In 1290 King Edward I expelled the Jews from England

• In 1492 the deadline for Jews to leave Spain, Convert or Die

• The beginning of WWI –which lead directly to the rise of Hitler

• 1941 Hermann Göring ordered SS general Reinhard Heydrich to make all the necessary preparations for the Final Solution.

• The first transports reached Treblinka and the extermination of the Jews of the Warsaw Ghetto began on July 23, 1942.

• In 1955 El Al Flight 402 was shot down over Bulgarian airspace on the 8th of Av.

• The AMIA Bombing (Asociación Mutua Israelita Argentina) by terrorists in Buenos Aires, Argentina, which killed 86 and wounded more than 120, was on July 18, 1994, the 10th of Av.

That first Tisha B'Av occurred because we didn't trust God and his promise to give us the land of Israel. In a way our collective ego's were too big, even if we felt that we were unworthy of God's reward, it was still an ego issue. We felt that we knew better than God. That he wouldn't keep his promise.

Thirty-five hundred years later we are still weighted down by our large egos. Israeli leaders especially its Prime Minister armed with the Hubris of ego feel they can do no wrong. When criticized for the way the Lebanon war was waged they blame others, when they see that the "disengagement" from Gaza harmed more than it helped they show no remorse, they look for even more territory to give back.

Thirty-Five hundred years ago, Israel said they could not conquer the land and were punished. Today Olmert, Peres and Livni say they can't keep the land. They show no faith in God and God's promise. On this Tisha B'Av, I pray that they wake will up before it is too late.

Tisha Be'Av tragedies
Posted by MK Benny Elon |

Tisha Be’Av is a time of fasting and mourning for the loss of both Jewish temples. It is a time of reflection and personal, as well as collective, introspection. Tisha Be’ Av is the time to open ourselves to constructive criticism, to consider how to correct our wrongs and to change our ways. Our prime minister and government were given a prime opportunity to do this last week when the state comptroller released his much anticipated report on the government’s performance during the second Lebanon war.

In it, the state comptroller gave an in-depth description of the failure of government, police, fire department, medical services and social service functions during the war. Rather than receiving the comptroller’s criticism and considering his suggestions, Prime Minister Olmert lashed out and publicly attacked the comptroller for his report.

Prime Minister Olmert’s official response to the state comptroller’s report clearly expressed his lack of accountability to the Israeli public. In a booklet entitled “Comments of the Prime Minister to the State Comptroller”, Prime Minister Olmert stated, “The Comptroller marks attractive targets and shoots in all directions in order to achieve headlines and to create public opinion.”

This reaction makes it clear that Prime Minister Olmert still does not understand the devastation that he caused during the war. He has yet to take responsibility for approving a war that lasted 34 days leaving 1/3 of Israel’s civilian population in inadequate shelters.

Prime Minister Olmert is the first in Israeli history to allow an entire war to be fought within our borders and among our civilian population. Since Ben Gurion, Israel has succeeded in pushing the frontline of every battle into the heart of enemy territory.

The disability of the Prime Minister to consider constructive criticism and to rectify his actions is not only sad but also dangerous for Israel. It displays a deep immoral sickness that has been allowed to eat away at the legitimacy of the state like a cancer.

As we approach the fast of Tisha Be’ Av, I feel that it is necessary to recall this day not only in Israel’s historical past, but in our recent past as well. Last year during the fast of Tisha Be’ Av, five people were killed by rockets fired into Israel by Hamas. The families of Shimon Zribi, his 15-year-old daughter Mazal, Albert Ben-Abu, and Aryeh and Tiran Tamam don’t need an official report from the state comptroller to remind them of the shortage of usable shelters and the lack of government preparedness during the war. The skies rained rockets on Akko last Tisha Be’ Av and claimed the lives of these innocent people.

The fast of Tisha Be’ Av in 2005 was also a terrible day in our history. That was our last Tisha Be’ Av in Gush Katif. I was in Morag, praying in the synagogue. Two days later that very synagogue was dismantled and our brothers were forcefully uprooted from their homes. Our sages teach us that the second Jewish temple was destroyed as a punishment for Sinat Hinam, unnecessary hatred among brothers.

Those awful days continue to trouble me because I saw soldiers in IDF uniforms carrying out the most hateful act against their brothers, evicting them from their homes and destroying their synagogues. Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, his deputy Ehud Olmert as well as the their government forced this tragedy upon us and nothing was accomplished by it other than the creation of a radical Hamas state in the middle of Israel.

I am haunted by the thought that our army was so prepared to fight against its own brothers but yet was so unprepared to defend itself and Israel’s civilian population from our enemies one year later.

This Tisha Be’Av, I pray that we as a collective state will be humble enough to learn from the tragic mistakes we have seen this prime minister and his government make, to intercede in order to correct them and heed the warnings that have come from the state comptroller.

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MIT: Massachusetts Institute of Terrorism

MIT has decided to have a contest on the future of Jerusalem, how can it be a just city shared in peace by all of its residents. Sounds very sweet doesn't it?. We can all sing Kumbaya later. If MIT was looking for a free exchange of Ideas it isn't evident by the people they have on the contest's steering committee. People with pre-conceived anti-Israel Ideas like Menachem Klein of B'tsellem, Leila Farsakh who has said even the Pre-1967 Israel was an apartheid state or John Tirman who has said that the pro Israel Lobby controls US foreign policy.

It is clear that MIT has already skewed the results of its contest, based on this gaggle of pro-Palestinian pundits that comprise its committee. It is sad that MIT, an institution that grew on the premise that all sides must be heard has become part of the terrorist propaganda team.

CAMERA has the full report:

MIT's Jerusalem Contest: A "Veneer" of Neutrality Can't Conceal Bias

The university is a place for the exchange and exploration of ideas. And so, at first glance, there is nothing especially remarkable about the Just Jerusalem competition at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). The competition, according to its executive summary, is meant "to generate new ideas and discussions about Jerusalem as it might be in the future—a just city shared in peace by all residents" and to lead to a "plurality of ideas and design visions that will make the competition a starting point for future deliberations over the city."

If that description seems straightforward enough, another comment about the contest might seem somewhat more odd. Diane Davis, director of the steering committee of Jerusalem 2050, the MIT group running the Just Jerusalem competition, stated that the competition’s affiliation with MIT brings "a veneer of neutrality because we have a reputation for using serious, scholarly methods, not political ideology, when facing difficult problems." Is it really possible for a contest about the status of Jerusalem to be free of "political ideology"? Or, rather, is the purported neutrality of the competition really just a "veneer," as Davis bizarrely asserted? (The American Heritage Dictionary defines veneer as "a deceptive, superficial show.")

It is first worth noting that Just Jerusalem literature steers potential participants — the contest is open to anyone — away from submitting certain ideas. The contest’s executive summary, for example, calls for ideas about a "shared" city and visions that "transcend nationalist discourses." Three members of the Jerusalem 2050 steering committee, including its two directors, wrote an article explaining that the competition arose from a sense that "it may be time to try a new approach to Jerusalem, one that entails envisioning this city as transcending the constraints imposed by nation-states," and more specifically, "a city that is institutionally autonomous from competing nation-states." A solution to Jerusalem’s problems, they suggested, would be one that would "emancipate" the city from "nationalist blueprints" (Common Ground News Service, "Just Jerusalem: Vision for a place of peace," 4/19/07).

These implied criteria seem to preclude, or in the very least discourage, proposals that leave even part of the city under Israeli sovereignty, including proposals along the lines of the one suggested by Bill Clinton in December 2000. The so-called Clinton Parameters, which represented the culmination of long and painstaking negotiations between Israeli and Palestinian leaders, called for what is Arab in Jerusalem to be Palestinian and what is Jewish to be Israeli. (Israel accepted the proposal and the Palestinians effectively rejected them. For details about the Clinton Parameters, see Dennis Ross’s The Missing Peace.)

By seemingly ruling out solutions that divide sovereignty in Jerusalem while calling for the city to be "institutionally autonomous from competing nation-states," the MIT competition appears instead to encourage proposals that wrest Jerusalem from Israeli sovereignty and turn the area into an international or binational "corpus separatum," or separate entity.

One might wonder, though, notwithstanding that the results of the competition appear predetermined to sever Jerusalem from Israeli sovereignty, might it still be true that the contest will be free of political ideology, as Diane Davis claimed? Can we reasonably expect it to promote solutions fair to both Israelis and Palestinians? After all, according to the contest’s executive summary, the steering committee overseeing the project "represents ... a diversity of national, religious, and political perspectives," and the competition’s jury includes both an Israeli and a Palestinian.

A closer look at the competition’s steering committee members and jurists, however, raises serious questions about the supposed neutrality of Just Jerusalem. (The list of steering committee members "past and present" and jury members can be found on the Just Jerusalem Web site. Because past members are still involved in the project — "We still contact and receive opinions from everyone listed on the past and present steering committee," member Amy Speltz explained — this article [with one exception] does not differentiate between present and former members.)

Steering Committee Members Past and Present

Although it is not especially clear what Diane Davis, director of the Jerusalem 2050 steering committee and MIT professor of political sociology, thinks about the Arab-Israeli conflict, her views on the future of Jerusalem are more apparent. In the article cited above, for example, she made clear her belief that the city should be shared and autonomous from nation-states.

Further insight into her views can be gleaned from the graduate-level class she co-taught as part of the "preparatory coursework" for the Just Jerusalem competition. (The spring 2004 course was entitled "City Visions: Past and Future.") On the course’s final day, which was focused specifically on Jerusalem, Davis turned the podium over to guest lecturer Menachem Klein.

Klein, a professor of political science at Bar Ilan University in Israel, is also a board member of B’tselem, a self-described human rights organization known for its politically driven, harsh, and often specious criticism of Israel. (See, for example, here.) In a November 20, 2003 article published on the Jordan-based Jerusalem Forum Web site (jerusalemites.org), Klein accused Israel of following a "classical colonial approach" in eastern Jerusalem — a most bizarre contention considering Jerusalem’s historical and contemporary status as the political and spiritual capital of the Jewish world, and the nearly continuous presence of Jews in the city since biblical times. But, not limiting himself to accusing Israel of colonialism in Judaism’s holiest city, he also charged Israel with practicing apartheid in eastern Jerusalem — another absurd charge, not least because Israel offers full citizenship to Arabs in that part of the city. (For a rebuttal to the charge that Israel practices apartheid, see, for example, professor Gil Troy’s "On Jimmy Carter's False Apartheid Analogy," published online on George Mason University’s History News Network).

If one can infer pro-Palestinian sentiment from Diane Davis’s decision to promote Menachem Klein’s views, no such guesswork is needed with her co-director on the Jerusalem 2050 steering committee, Leila Farsakh. For the Palestinian political scientist, no accusation against Israel seems too outrageous. She accuses Israel of being colonialist — not only in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, but also within its pre-1967 boundaries — and of practicing something analogous to South African apartheid ("The Economics of Israeli Occupation: What is Colonial about it?," pre-event attachment to Feb. 26, 2006 lecture at Harvard Center for Middle East Studies conference).

Farsakh also was a signatory to a letter effectively supporting a British academic boycott of Israel ("Open Letter to MESA Members," May 20, 2005).

Moreover, judging by a piece she wrote for Le Monde Diplomatique, Farsakh has few qualms about misleading the public with blatantly pro-Palestinian spin. She wrote that

The Palestinian Liberation Organisation (PLO) had accepted by 1974 the idea of partition as the way to fulfil Palestinian rights to self-determination. Although it took 19 years more, and the Oslo process, for Israel to recognize the PLO as the only negotiation party, Israel accepted the idea of partitioning the land with the Palestinians. ("Israel: an Apartheid State?," November 2003)

But the PLO in 1974 did not agree to peacefully share the land with Israel or to accept that country’s right to exist. Its June 9, 1974 political program — widely know as the "Phased Plan" for the destruction of Israel — reaffirmed the Palestinians’ rejection of United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, which establishes the land-for-peace concept and calls for the recognition of Israel. The PLO plan further noted that the Palestinians would establish an "independent combatant national authority" to rule over any "liberated" land, but would consider that merely as a step towards "liberating" the rest of Israel. The Jews, by contrast, had accepted partition plans not only 19 years later, as Farsakh notes, but even before Israel was created (for example, the 1947 UN partition plan), and in fact forwarded their own proposal to divide the land in 1938.

Like Davis, Farsakh has preconceived notions about what the future of Jerusalem should be, stating in a press release that Jerusalem should be an international city ("University of Massachusetts Boston Political Scientist Focuses on New Civic Blueprint for Jerusalem," April 10, 2007).

Also on the list of steering committee members is Naomi Chazan, a former Israeli lawmaker. Far from being a mainstream Israeli voice that might counterbalance Farsakh’s inflexible pro-Palestinian position, Chazan, who represented the extreme-left Meretz in the Knesset, also devotes much of her energy to criticizing Israel. Her biweekly "Critical Currents" column in the Jerusalem Post, for example, is almost without exception devoted to excoriating Israel and excusing its neighbors.

The views of MIT lecturer Yosef Jabareen, another steering committee member, are also quite clear. Jabareen, in his writings, parrots the Palestinian propaganda line that dubs Israel’s security barrier — over 95 percent of which is a fence — as a "wall." He also toes the line that says Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip should not be seen as a concession to the longtime Palestinian demand that Israel withdraw troops and dismantle settlements, but rather as an act that made Gaza "the largest jail on earth." And like some of his other colleagues on the steering committee, Jabareen brands Israel colonialist — the country, he says, is guilty of "widespread colonization" and of being on a "colonial mission" (Jabareen, Arab Studies Journal, book review, Fall 2006).

Another anti-Israel member of the steering committee is former MIT student Hania Maraqa. Maraqa has promoted campus lectures by two extreme anti-Israel activists — Ali Abunimah, cofounder of the Electronic Intifada Web site, and Norman Finkelstein. And she is apparently the same Hania Maraqa who, commenting on a Lebanese blog, recently accused Israel of adopting since 1948 an "ethnic cleansing strategy" and of being a "racist state" (Nov. 17, 2006 comment on www.360east.com blog).

A sixth member of the steering committee is Jennifer Klein, the national vice president of Brit Tzedek V'Shalom, a US-based advocacy group that often adopts controversial and pro-Palestinian stances. In a March 23, 2004 press release, for example, the organization "deplored" Israel’s killing of Hamas arch-terrorist Ahmed Yassin, and the organization’s president has gone on the record promoting the revisionist position that it was not Palestinian rejection, but rather "intransigence on both sides," that doomed the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations brokered by President Clinton (Marcia Freedman, Brit Tzedek V’Shalom Web site, "Are 40 Years of Occupation Enough?"). That stance, of course, is at odds with the assessments of chief US negotiator Dennis Ross and even Clinton himself.

Harvard professor Everett Mendelsohn is also on the steering committee and — is the pattern becoming clear yet? — also has a history of controversial positions on the Middle East that skew toward the Palestinian perspective. Mendelsohn is affiliated with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), an organization that "is considered by many in the Jewish community as leaning consistently toward a pro-Palestinian perspective" (Tom Tugend, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, Oct. 7, 2005). Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, has described the organization as being biased against Israel (The Forward, Rebecca Spence, Oct. 13, 2006). Indeed, in a 1989 book published by the AFSC, Mendelsohn accused Israel of state terrorism ("A Compassionate Peace: A Future for Israel, Palestine, and the Middle East"). And in 1982, while the PLO still openly called for the violent destruction of Israel, Mendelsohn called for the US to engage with the terror organization. (Barry Schweid, Associated Press, March 22, 1982).

Steering committee member and MIT student Zeina Saab, who was born in Lebanon, has expressed her disagreement with American support for Israel’s retaliation against Hezbollah’s rocket attacks and deadly cross border assault in the summer of 2006, and equated Israel and Hezbollah as both being sources of "hate, violence, extremism, and fanaticism" (Beirut-Los Angeles Web site, July 18, 2006).

Committee member Richard Sennett was one of the signatories to a letter that comments on Israel’s "brutal occupation" and the "violations [by Israel] of academic freedom in Palestine," and explains that, even if they question the effectiveness of an academic boycott of Israel, the signers "do not oppose a boycott in principle" of Israeli academia. (So much for the university being a place for the exchange and exploration of ideas.) While the letter urges British academics to "think carefully before developing research links and exchanges with Israelis," and first to "[ascertain] whether they are part of the military machine or work to sustain the occupation; whether they are prepared to address and criticise infringements of Palestinian rights and willing/able to work with Palestinians," it says not one word about Palestinian terrorism, incitement, violations of human rights, and other activities that undermine peace, and not a word about the responsibility of Palestinian academics to stop supporting these terrible acts. (The Guardian, April 19, 2005)

Although committee member John Tirman claims to be a "strong supporter of Israel," he also calls on the US to engage with Hamas, a group responsible for scores of suicide bombings and sworn to the destruction of Israel, lends his support to the hypothesis that the "pro-Israel lobby" acts against American interests, blames Israel for "overreact[ing]" to Hezbollah’s attacks, and blames American support of this so-called overreaction for stimulating Muslim rage. Moreover, he recommends turn to extremist Israel-basher Juan Cole for information about the Middle East ("The New War in the Gulf," Sidney-Pacific Lecture, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, December 7, 2006; "Muslim Rage": A Problem, Not a War," John Tirman’s Web site, Sept. 23, 2006; "References for 100 Ways America is Screwing Up the World," John Tirman’s Web site).

Finally, there is MIT professor Philip Khoury, who though not on the online list is a member of the steering committee. Middle East scholar Martin Kramer had the following to say about Khoury and a journal with which he is associated:

MIT [has] the historian Philip Khoury, a star of Arab-American academe, chronicler of modern Syria, and dean of humanities, arts, and social sciences. ...

In the spring [of 2001], the MIT Electronic Journal for Middle Eastern Studies made its first appearance. Khoury chairs the advisory board, a who's who of the Middle Eastern studies establishment. The editor is a graduate student of architecture.

According to the "statement of purpose" of the e-journal, its editorial board "is committed to non-partisanship." To judge from the first issue, this claim is utterly false. As the editor puts it, the journal's "alternative" approach "is directly connected to issues of justice—of acknowledging the repressions, physical and psychological, which accompanied the creation of the state of Israel in 1948." And she means it: the first issue is comprised almost entirely of indictments of Israel. (The Middle East Quarterly, Winter 2002)

Something similar might be said about the Just Jerusalem contest. Many will find the views held by members of the Jerusalem 2050 steering committee to be false or unfair. Others might agree with some of those views. But regardless of what one believes, it should be clear that the diversity of perspectives and political neutrality said to apply to the MIT competition does not exist in reality. Of the 20 members of the steering committee, 11 have shown themselves to be at best critical of and at worst extremely hostile toward Israel, while having little, if any, public criticism of the Palestinians.

By contrast, only one person on the MIT’s online list of committee members past and present has unequivocally pointed to Palestinian violence rather than Israel’s response to that violence as the key obstacle to peace. The main theme of poet and journalist Daniel E. Levenson’s Oct. 20, 2006 column in the Jewish Advocate is that in order to "demonstrate to the region and beyond that the [Palestinian Authority] can be a real partner for peace and that it has finally learned to put the value of the security of people (both its own and those in Israel) above its previously violent political agenda," the Palestinian president must openly confront Hamas’s refusal to recognize Israel and work for secure boundaries between Palestinian areas and Israel. (Jewish Advocate, "Better Borders, Better Peace," Oct. 20, 2006). Interestingly, Levenson — the one person who clearly laid the onus of change primarily with the Palestinians — is among those who are past members of the committee.

The remaining seven committee members (plus another one who isn’t on the online list) have said very little publicly about the Arab-Israeli conflict.

A Biased Jury

With pro-Palestinian views dominating the steering committee, it is little surprise that the competition’s jury includes similar partisans. Most telling are the positions held by the Palestinian and the Israeli members of the Jury.

Mirroring the views of many of the steering committee members, Palestinian jury member Salim Tamari, who is the director the Institute of Jerusalem Studies and professor of sociology at Birzeit University, accuses Israel of racism, refers to Israeli settlements as "colonies," and argues that the Palestinians are living in an apartheid situation (Online Newshour interview with Salim Tamari, PBS Web site, February 2004; PBS Newshour, Feb. 9, 2004).

On the other hand, as with the Israelis on the steering committee, the Israeli jury member does not represent Israeli mainstream. In fact, political scientist Meron Benvenisti advocates a position more extreme than that of his Palestinian counterpart. Israel’s current status, he argues, is that of an "occupier of Palestinian territories and oppressor of nearly 4 million people." The Israeli security fence is not so much about security, but rather is "built to conceal the Palestinians and erase them from awareness." Benvenisti even suggests that Israelis are not truly victims of Arab violence, asserting that "Jewish immigrants settled on the lands of Arab natives, met with violent resistance and responded as if they were the victims and the natives the aggressors" (The Nation, June 18, 2007). In the August 7, 2003 Ha’aretz, he summed up his argument this way: "... the basic story here is not one of two national movements that are confronting each other; the basic story is that of natives and settlers." (Benvenisti uses the word "settlers" here to refer to all Israelis, not just those living in the West Bank.)

But Benvenisti goes even farther. He compares Israel and apartheid South Africa and concludes that the two are dissimilar — not because the comparison is outrageous, as anti-Apartheid activist Benjamin Pogrund has argued, but because he believes that in a number of respects Israel is even worse than the bygone South African regime. And he argues for a single binational state over the entirety of Israel, the West Bank and Gaza Strip — a solution that most of his fellow countrymen would not even begin to consider, and that is shunned even by fellow jurist Salim Tamari.

The point here isn’t that a handful of individuals hold pro-Palestinian and often extreme anti-Israel points of view. It is that the Just Jerusalem contest, which bills itself as neutral and non-partisan, is institutionally dominated by such views.

The effect of this partisanship is already apparent. A section on the Just Jerusalem Web site about "The Political Geography of the City" refers to Jews living in east Jerusalem as "settlers" living in "settlements," thus clearly endorsing the Palestinian viewpoint while rejecting the Israeli view that Jews in east Jerusalem, including in the Jewish Quarter, are not "settlers." And the Web site’s section on "The Socio-Economic Geography of the City" misleadingly claims that "Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem are considered residents of Israel, not citizens" and that "they don’t have Israeli passports and cannot vote in national elections." In fact, Israel offers citizenship to all Arab citizens of eastern Jerusalem. Although most have chosen not to accept this citizenship, those who do hold Israeli passports can vote in national elections.

Whether the anti-Israel tilt of the steering committee and jury will influence the contest’s results in the same way it influenced the Just Jerusalem Web site remains to be seen. The winning entries will be announced on April 2008, four months after the Dec. 31, 2007 submission deadline.

Support Yisrael Medad-Threatend by Wonkette Editor

Ken Layne of Wonkette threatens a Yisrael Medad with legal action for criticizing Wonkette’s antisemitic posts: See My Right Word: Wonkette Threatens Me With Legal Action.

Yisrael is a good writer and a special person (he was the first person to pick up one of my posts from yidwithlid)

Please read that post and others on his site...I read him everyday


As for Mr. Layne he is at best flippant and insensitive about Jews
Like when he suggested that the Jews create a homeland in Mexico

It's the digital era, after all. Movies and DNA and books and music can all be perfectly copied. How about Israel? You think God cares about what chunk of dirt you call home? Sure, the Torah says otherwise, but the Torah also says you should sacrifice your son if a voice in your head gets too loud. Jesus Christ lived and died around one little piece of ground in modern-day Israel, yet the Catholic Church is based in Italy. Come to Baja, Israel.

Or when he calls the NY Times the JEW York Times...Which isn't too smart considering the fact that the NY Times is one of the most Anti-Jewish newspapers in the World.

Do I think the guy is an Anti-Semite...no, I think he is an idiot whose statements sometimes cross the line into anti-Jewish bigotry

Richard Branson's Four Monkeys of the Apocalypse

You put Jimmy Carter, Desmond Tutu, Nelson Mandela, Mary Robinson and Koffi Annan a room what do you get ? Well if you answered a committee to build a float for the Israel Day parade you were wrong. Nor are they on a speakers list for the Yom HaShoah service at my shul. You won't even find them at a rally for Israel's MIA's.

These four people have many things in common, they are "Lets talk around a campfire and make peace by giving away everything to people who don't really want peace" types. All four hate Israel, they don't feel much better about Jews ,and they were all just appointed to Richard Branson's (the Virgin guy) new "save the world group" called the Elders.

All four of these bigots would like nothing better than overseeing the destruction of Israel--and have devoted much of their careers to that end. They are not a group dedicated to peace they are more like Four Monkeys of the Apocalypse.

No word on whether Branson modeled this group after the Oregonian Council of Elders who made peace between the Klingons and the Federation in Star Trek. I hope not since the Star Trek Elders were FICTION, they were also wise. Branson's Elders are just anti-Semitic bigots. But when it comes to the British and Foriegn Policy that is their way.

The Elders' Protocols

By Joseph Klein
FrontPageMagazine.com | July 23, 2007
They call themselves the “Elders,” a group of self-described "wise men and women" that former South African President Nelson Mandela launched last week on the occasion of his 89^th birthday. Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan and Mary Robinson (former Irish President and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights) are joining Mandela and a bevy of other has-beens to offer their services as roaming freelance diplomats. They are being financed in part by British tycoon Richard Branson and Ted Turner’s UN Foundation.

“The Elders won’t get involved delivering bed nets for malaria prevention,” said Jimmy Carter. “The issue is to fill vacuums – to address major issues that aren’t being adequately addressed.”

Translated, this means that the Elders won’t be doing anything useful for suffering human beings. Instead, they will continue their legacy of wrong-headed solutions to problems they do not understand. Individually, they were bad enough. Together, they have formed a club that no clear-thinking person would want to join or consult.

Jimmy Carter himself is the most glaring example of a walking vacuum, bereft of any sensible ideas or understanding of what is at stake in our fight against global terrorism. His fellow “Elders” are no improvement.

Carter’s presidency was the antithesis of effective world leadership. During his watch, Iran’s terror-sponsoring theocracy took power and brazenly held Americans hostage for more than a year without paying any price. Islamic terrorists were watching. The Soviet Union expanded its empire by force culminating in its invasion of Afghanistan, which led in turn to the birth of Osama bin Laden's terrorist organization. Carter did nothing except administer a slap on the wrist by keeping our athletes away from the

1980 Moscow Olympics.

Since his sound defeat by Ronald Reagan, Carter has continued to make a fool of himself and embarrass his country. Learning nothing from his fruitless attempts to negotiate the release of the hostages when he was President, Carter now demands that we enter into fruitless negotiations with Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad who has vowed to wipe Israel off the face of the earth. This madman reportedly participated in the 1979 taking of American hostages and has now presided over the recent arbitrary imprisonment of Iranian-American citizens while they were visiting Iran.

Carter has never had an unkind word to say about Ahmadinejad, Saddam Hussein, Castro, Hugo Chavez, or any other dictator. Their atrocious human rights records have not attracted any attention from this self-described human rights advocate. They can all be reasoned with, Carter believes.

Likewise, Carter is an apologist for terrorists. He has gone out of his way to praise the Iranian-armed terrorist group Hamas and said recently that it was “criminal” for the U.S., Israel, the European Union, and the Arab League to shun these murderers of their own people who continue to vow the destruction of Israel.

Of course, Carter has no interest in the survival of the only true democracy in the Middle East. Indeed, his recent inflammatory book, Palestine: Peace, Not Apartheid, compared Israel with apartheid era South Africa. Carter the Elder wrote a worthy sequel to the notorious “Protocol of the Elders of Zion.”

Fourteen officials of his own Carter Center resigned in protest against the lies and distortions in Carter’s propaganda screed. In a joint letter to Carter they declared, “We can no longer endorse your strident and uncompromising position. This is not the Carter Center or the Jimmy Carter we came to respect and support.” One Carter Center board member went even further, stating that Carter has “abandoned his traditional position of honest broker and mediator,” and “goes so far as to condone terrorism until such a time a Palestinian state is achieved.”

Actually, Jimmy Carter has not changed at all – unfortunately it took some of his supporters more than twenty years to see what was there all along. The late Democratic Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan understood. He put it best when he described Carter this way back in 1980: "Unable to distinguish between our friends and our enemies, he has adopted our enemies' view of the world."

Then there is Carter’s fellow-Elder, former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. During his tenure, Annan appeased some of the world’s worst dictators and state sponsors of terrorism. He conferred what he called the UN’s “unique legitimacy” on them in order to show how ‘even-handed’ he was.

For example, Annan declared that Saddam Hussein was someone “I think I can do business with” (which, in a sense, the UN did via the looting of the Oil-for-Food program in which Annan’s staff participated). And he referred to the Islamic-fascist regime in Iran as a “partner” in negotiations. Annan preferred shaking hands and being photographed with Iran’s thugs rather than standing up to them in the name of human rights. Back in 2003, during one of his visits to Iran, student dissidents criticized Annan for being “deaf to the screams of the demonstrators down the street while elements of the regime, brandishing clubs and chains, were smashing the bones of Iranian workers, mothers and students.”

Annan’s “partner” in negotiations, Iran, is also a state sponsor of terrorist organizations. Iran’s leaders have outsourced the killing of innocent people to Hamas and Hezbollah. Denying all sense of reality, the United Nations under Kofi Annan refused to acknowledge even that Hamas or Hezbollah were part of a dangerous global terrorist network whose common denominator is Islamic fascism, let alone Iran’s connection to them.

Here is a revealing exchange with Kofi Annan’s press spokesperson at a daily press briefing in January 2006 regarding Hamas:

Question: Does the Secretary-General consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization? Spokesman: The Secretary-General has denounced in clear terms every time any organization has done a terrorist act, including when those acts were claimed by Hamas. Question: But that doesn’t answer my question. Spokesman: There is no United Nations label that I know of, of a terrorist organization.

During last year’s war between Israel and Hezbollah, which Hezbollah precipitated, Kofi Annan focused his criticism on Israel. He falsely proclaimed to the world that Israel was guilty of “apparently deliberate targeting” of a UN observation post, killing four observers. Even after it came to light that the Hezbollah terrorists had positioned themselves all around the UN observation post and drew fire on it, which led to the tragic accidental deaths of the UN observers, Kofi Annan did not apologize for his rash accusations against Israel.

Mary Robinson, another of the ‘distinguished’ Elders, was Kofi Annan’s choice as the United Nation's High Commissioner for Human Rights. Like Annan and Carter, she indulged dictators while condemning Western democracies.

For example, Robinson presided over the "World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" that turned into a non-stop hatefest against Jews and Israel. She remained silent while her commission was deciding to condone suicide bombings as a legitimate means to establish Palestinian statehood. She has since lamented that the U.S. was not continuing to embrace Jimmy Carter’s failed foreign policy and criticized our wise decision to oppose the new UN Human Rights Council travesty.

Nelson Mandela, the leading “Elder,” has squandered any moral authority that he had garnered while ushering in South Africa’s post-apartheid pluralistic democracy. He has voiced strong support for such dictators as Fidel Castro, and Libya's Moammar Qaddafi, while declaring that “[I]f there is a country that has committed unspeakable atrocities in the world, it is the United States of America.”

Mandela accused both President Bush and Tony Blair of undermining the United Nations during Kofi Annan’s tenure, asking rhetorically whether this is “because the secretary general of the United Nations [Ghanaian Kofi Annan] is now a black man? They never did that when secretary generals were white.”

Mandela has remained strangely silent on the brutality occurring daily on his own continent against black Africans. For example, he has chosen not to condemn the Mugabe dictatorship in Zimbabwe for the suffering that it has caused its own people and has opposed any sanctions against Mugabe. Adotei Akwei, Africa advocacy director of Amnesty International USA, was quoted as saying about the silence of Mandela that "[I]f Mandela would speak out that would be a big breakthrough. But in addition to his disinclination to attack Mugabe, the 'liberator' of Zimbabwe, in the past, Mandela is a very loyal person, and he has known Mugabe a long time.”

In other words, Mandela’s blind loyalty to a brutal dictator trumps speaking out against the horrible violations of human rights taking place today in Mandela’s own backyard. This is not a legacy to be proud of. He certainly has no business telling us how to behave in the world.

Nelson Mandela, Jimmy Carter, Kofi Annan, Mary Robinson, and their club of fools all share one fundamental flaw. Each of them demonstrated time and again a willingness to accommodate the enemies of freedom at all cost in order to pursue an illusory peace. It is time for these “Elders” to disband before they can do even more harm in unison.

Proof That the Temple Mount is Jewish

I Originally wrote this in March--I though it was worth reposting as we neared the somber day of Tisha B' Av.

Everyday there are more stories, more protests about Israel trying to "Judaicise" the area around the Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem. The Sheiks, the Waqf all are trying to politicize what was originally the place of the two Jewish Holy Temples. I have even read with curiosity how European Foreign Ministers and press reporter's with Christian backgrounds describe the site as "what the Jewish people SAY was the location of the Holy Temples. I wonder when those folks go to church on Sunday do they argue with their Priests and Ministers to change the gospels because the man that they believe was the son of G-d went to that Temple Mount 3x a year.

But folks I am not here to argue history or tradition, no jokes about the Muslims mooning the Temple Mount when they pray (although it’s true). No discussion about how Moshe Dayan was the villain of the mount etc. I don't have to argue about ownership because I have been there. And as corny as it may sound to anyone who has never been there, I felt the presence of G-d at the Temple Mount

All my life I had this overwhelming desire to go to the mount. I never understood that urge until I stood in its presence until about two years ago when my family and I finally took a trip to Israel. My wife had been before but it was the first time for the rest of us.

As soon as we drove through the hills and I got my my first look at Jerusalem for the first time in my life I felt comfortable in my surroundings. To me Jerusalem felt like home, despite the fact that I had never been there in my life. I knew where to go and how to get around without looking at a map. There were times that I would say I had a shortcut to where we needed to go, and my wife who had been there before would tell me I was crazy (true but irrelevant). I was always correct. Everywhere I went, I knew where we were and its relation to the Temple Mount. And to be honest the lure of the Temple Site was stronger in Israel than ever before.

Now at this point, anyone Jewish reading this who has never been to Israel is probably calling for the guy with the straight jackets to take me away. But ask someone who has been there, someone who believes in HaShem and see if feel any different.

On our second day in Jerusalem, we were finally going to the Kotel and the Temple Mount. The whole family got up early, I packed up my Tallit and T'fillin and took off with our guide into the Old City. Yossi, our wonderful guide took us all over the Old City, He knew how important the going to the Kotel was to me, yet rather than go directly to it he teased me with ...Its right over that wall, we will see this movie first, lets go to the burnt house etc. I was getting very frustrated, but he was masterfully building up my expectations. Finally we walked down the wooden stairway and walked through the gate of the Kotel Plaza, I was overwhelmed by emotions that I had never felt before.

All my life I felt this longing to go to the Kotel to and I finally knew why. You see, everywhere else you go in Israel, you feel the presence of all that has gone on before you, David Hamelech, Avraham, the tribes, the two kingdoms and on and on. That is about culture and history. When you visit the Kotel it is about G-d. It is about being able to feel the lingering presence of the Shekhinah that has been gone for two thousand years.

That's when I learned that the dispute over the Temple Mount was all political, all about delegitimizing the Jewish presence in Jerusalem. Because I was there. And with my ten year old son holding my bag, I celebrated my life long dream, I wrapped the T'fillin around my arm, placed it on my head wrapped my tallit around my son and me and prayed to G-d. But it wasn't just praying at the Kotel, Those words of Hebrew seemed to have meaning like never before. I was it was connecting. Connecting with the G-d of Avraham, Yitzchak, and Yakov. That "urge" I had felt all my life, was more like an invitation from my Maker, "Come Visit so we can talk."And while G-d is everywhere for some reason only a Rabbi can explain, I could feel his presence much stronger at the temple mount.

That's it, that's my proof. Nothing scientific, nothing that will work in a court of law, or in an international dispute, I felt this strong connection to the Lord at the Kotel. There is not another place in the entire would that has even come close. Now, if kneeling on a prayer mat, and facing Mecca was the correct way to pray at the temple mount. Why did I feel the connection?

If ANYONE doubts me, I urge you to pack up your prayer tools and take a trip to Israel. When you arrive go to the Kotel put on your tallit and t'fillin and feel that connection for yourself. I guarantee it will change you forever.

Syria Planning Missle War

Two weeks ago Major-General Wolfgang Jilke, an oxymoron (without the oxy part) declared that Israel was the aggressor in prepping for a war with Syria:

"On the Syrian side I do not notice any unusual preparations," he says. "On the Israeli side, however, we see intensive activity… Israel's right to defend itself is self-understood, but its current activities do not contribute to the efforts to diminish the tensions in the region… The actions on Israel's side are not very helpful when it comes to calming the Syrians down."

"We must remember that the antitank and antiaircraft missiles Syria is purchasing are not offensive weapons. Syria is renewing its weapon inventory like any other army in the world. I do not view this as something unusual," he says.

In light of the balance of power, Jilke estimates that "the chances the Syrians will surprise Israel are very low, and in any case, the Israelis have prepared and positioned themselves in a way that guarantees their advantage and deny the Syrians any gains." (Ynet)

Today Syria announced that it is not preparing for a "traditional" war. It is preparing for the kind of war that Hezbollah waged against Israel last summer. A few terrorists and lots of missiles. Because it now owns new "souped up" missiles courtesy of their BFF President Putin. They don't need to mass along the border. I guess Mr. Jilke was wrong. I just pray that Olmert and his gang are prepared for what Iran and Syria claim is coming.

Syria continues to ramp up for war
Syrian Official: War with Israel will be Ballistic
by Gil Ronen

(IsraelNN.com) Syria sees the next war with Israel as involving missile attacks on civilian infrastructure and front-line guerilla warfare, an anonymous senior official in the Syrian Ministry of Defense told Defense News Weekly, in an interview appearing Monday. Syria prefers to avoid a direct, "classic" confrontation with Israel, he said. Instead, the next war will involve Katyusha rocket and ballistic missiles that will target strategic points in Israel, especially civilian infrastructure.

The official said that the war will not be limited to a single strike, but will be protracted in nature. "This will be a war of attrition, which the Israelis are not good at," he explained. The conflict, he said, "will be more like a war between cities than a war on the battlefield."

According to Arab affairs expert Dr. Guy Bechor, the Syrian assessment is a result of the Second Lebanon War. After that war the Syrians understood that they do not need a large ground force to defeat Israel, but rather missiles aimed at dense Israeli population centers. For the past two years the Syrians have been engaged in massive acquisitions from Russia, after an $11 billion debt was partially forgiven by Russia in 2005, and partially covered by Iran.

Following the unimpressive performance by the IDF in last year’s war, Bechor explains, g The conflict, he said, will be more like a war between cities than a war on the battlefield.
an equipping itself with advanced anti-aircraft missiles, anti-tank missiles and cruise missiles.

The Syrian army numbers 650,000 soldiers, including 354,000 reservists, according to Defense News. Its tanks are outdated Soviet models, however, and its air force is inferior to Israel's.

The London-based daily Al-Sharq al-Awsat recently reported that Syria has deployed Chinese C-802 cruise missiles, which it acquired from Iran. In addition, Russia has expressed its willingness to sell the Syrians its Iskander missile, which has a range of 280 kilometers, more than enough to strike at any destination in Israel. The missile features an optical GPS navigational system that allows operators to guide it to their targets.

Al-Sharq al-Awsat also reported Saturday that Iran secretly promised Syria it would provide $1 billion for buying advanced weapons and assist it with nuclear research and the development of chemical weapons, in exchange for a Syrian promise not to negotiate peace with Israel. However, Iran's foreign ministry spokesman dismissed the report as a "media game" and asked how the media could know about the deal if it was confidential.

Arab affairs experts also questioned the veracity of the report, noting that it was written by an exiled Iranian who may simply have wanted to portray Iran's leadership in a bad light.