The Neutral Objective UN(RWA)

An example of a factual (cough, cough), rational (cough, cough) and obkective (cough, cough) presentation of the situation in Hamastan:-

This brutal siege of Gaza can only breed violence

Palestinian suffering has reached new depths. Peace cannot be built by reducing 1.5m people to a state of abject destitution

Karen Koning AbuZayd, the commissioner general for Unrwa, the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East based in Gaza, pens this in The Guardian:-

Gaza is on the threshold of becoming the first territory to be intentionally reduced to a state of abject destitution, with the knowledge, acquiescence and - some would say - encouragement of the international community. An international community that professes to uphold the inherent dignity of every human being must not allow this to happen...A new hallmark of Palestinian suffering had been reached.

There have been three turns of the screw on the people of Gaza..Each turn of the screw inflicts deeper indignity on ordinary Palestinians, breeding more resentment towards the outside world.

Gaza's border closures are without precedent. Palestinians are effectively incarcerated...It is impossible to sustain our operations [does she mean the smuggling in of arms and explosives?] when the occupying power adopts an "on, off", "here today, gone tomorrow" policy towards Gaza's borders. To take one example, this week we were on the verge of suspending our food distribution programme. The reason was seemingly mundane: plastic bags. Israel blocked entry into Gaza of the plastic bags in which we package our food rations.

...No one knows how long the reprieve will last as the resumption of Qassam rocket fire, which we ourselves strongly condemn [when was that?], will lead to further closures.

The people of Gaza have been spared from reaching new depths of anguish - but only for the moment.

There has never been a more urgent need for the international community to act to restore normality in Gaza. Hungry, unhealthy, angry communities do not make good partners for peace.

More "Money, Money, Money"

International agencies asked donor countries on Tuesday for $462 million in aid to the Palestinians for 2008, to counter rising poverty and the closure of Gaza by Israel and Egypt.

The appeal came from UN aid agencies and dozens of nongovernmental organizations. If the money is granted, the Palestinians would become the third largest recipient of such aid after Sudan and Congo, according to the UN's Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.

Being a Fervent Muslim Has Its Disadvantages

And Here I Thought They Were Referring to Sderot

I received this message today from the "Heads of all Churches in Jerusalem" via:

Caritas Jerusalem Communications Department
Samuel Martin - Communications Officer
P O Box 20894
Jerusalem 97200 Israel
Phone: 972 2 628 7574 x. 103
Fax: 972 2 628 8421
Email: communication@caritasjr.org
Website: http://www.caritasjr.org

I'm not cheek turning. Tuches turning, maybe.

In the Name of God, end the siege over Gaza.

One and a half million people imprisoned and without proper food or medicine. 800,000 without electricity supply; this is illegal collective punishment, an immoral act in violation of the basic human and natural laws as well as International Law. It cannot be tolerated anymore. The siege over Gaza should end now.

Voices from our people there say "We feel the threat of being exterminated by this siege"

In the Name of God, we, the Heads of Churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land urge the International Community, President Bush and the leaders of Israel, to put an end to this suffering and call upon Israel to activate Prime Minister Salam Fayyad's initiative for Palestinian responsibility control of the boarders thus ensuring sufficient normal flow of medicine, food, fuel and goods to Gaza.

We urge the International Community and the European Union to act according to their recent pleas. There is no time to waste when Human life is endangered.

We urge the Palestinian Leadership to unite in ending their differences for the sake of their people in Gaza. Put the differences aside and deal with this crisis for the good of all human beings demonstrating that you care for your brothers and sisters who have suffered enough already. We would say to all concerned parties; while ever you persist in firing rockets into Israel you encourage public opinion outside this Land to feel there is a justification for this siege.

We urge Israel to act responsibly and to immediately end this inhuman siege. To deny children and civilians their necessary basic commodities are not the ways to security but rather throw the region into further and more dangerous deterioration. This siege will not guarantee the end to rocket firing, but will only increase the bitterness and suffering and invite more revenge, while the innocents keep dying. True Peace building is the only way to bring the desired security.

We pray for the day when the people of Gaza will be free from Occupation, from political differences, from violence and from despair. We pray for the Israelis and Palestinians to respect human life and God's love for every human life, and to take all possible measures to end this suffering. Only bold steps towards just Peace and ending the violence will protect the Human life and dignity of both People.

With the Prophet we keep praying and hoping;
" A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out.
In faithfulness he will bring forth justice;
he will not falter or be discouraged till he establishes justice on earth.
In his law the islands will put their hope" (Isaiah 42:3-4)

Heads of Churches in Jerusalem and the Holy Land

To quote from Alice in the Looking-Glass:

"off with their heads!"

They Also Shoot At Journalists

A Channel Two news crew draws sniper fire a few hours after the Ecuadorian volunteer is killed at the Gaza Strip.

Mocking Gideon Levy

This appeared in, yes, Haaretz, on the satire page written by Yedidyah Meir, "Eppes"-:

Caption reads -

"Excuse me, but all this story about a volunteer who was murdered at

the Ein Shlosha kibbutz seems all too weird to me.

After all, who volunteers to get murdered" - Gideon Levy

Poster More Readable

I think I put this poster up here earlier but too small to read.

So, we'll repeat.

It is a statement to preserve Jerusalem's integrity by the Chief Rabbinate:-

Quite Symbolic These Cracks

Cracks - just like what Galut life is all about.

More than half the concrete pillars making up Berlin's sombre Holocaust Memorial have cracked, a news report said Monday, and municipal officials said that repairs could not begin till the spring. The sea of 2,711 pillars or stelae, suggest to the visitor the vast number of Jewish lives wiped out by the Nazis.

The magazine Cicero said a check completed this month found damage in 1,361 of the stelae, up from fewer than 450 a year ago.

Designed by US architect Peter Eisenman, Germany's national monument to the Holocaust victims was completed in May 2005.

The exact cause of the cracks, some only hairline and others more than 2 millimetres across, is under dispute. The row about blame prevented work beginning before the winter to fix the damage. Cicero said the latest check was conducted by a concrete expert, Joachim Schulz, who warned that rainwater in wintertime could turn to ice in the gaps and make them worse. Some stelae might have to be completely replaced, a logistical nightmare for those at the centre.

Another Point of View - of Greg Sheridan

But I also sought out the controversial images of Israel, in particular those of the Jewish settlements in the West Bank. A word on definitions. After the 1967 war, when Israel was attacked by a coalition of its Arab neighbours, Israel took territory in East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza. Some of this, Israelis argue, is necessary for security.

It has since left Gaza. Israel is constantly urged to go back to its 1967 borders, but the two places where it has done that, in southern Lebanon and Gaza, the result has been disastrous. It was subject to thousands of rocket attacks from southern Lebanon until it went to war with Hezbollah and now every day Qassam rockets are fired from Gaza at nearby Israeli civilian towns, especially Sderot.

The final borders between Israel and a putative Palestinian state have yet to be worked out. Every inch of territory with a Jewish inhabitant beyond the 1967 borders is commonly referred to as a Jewish settlement. I spent days driving up and down the West Bank and visited as many Jewish settlements as I could. These included suburbs of Jerusalem such as Gilot and Har Homa, big settlements just outside Jerusalem such as Gush Etzion and Ma'ale Adumin, and the biggest, distant settlement, the town of Ariel.

Although I think Israel will be prepared to give up numerous settlements in the West Bank, I don't think any of those named above will be given up under any circumstances. The stereotype of the Jewish settler, as columnist and author Hillel Halkin has written, is of "a belligerently bearded Jew with a knit skullcap on his head, a Bible in one hand and a rifle in the other". It's a stereotype I didn't meet at all in any of these settlements, and not for want of trying, although of course I met only a fraction of the nearly 400,000 Jews who live beyond the 1967 lines.

There are certainly ideologically militant and intolerant settlers, but they are a minority. While committed to Israel like virtually all its citizens, the settlers I met lived where they did for a variety of reasons, mainly the lower cost of housing, the communal lifestyle and educational opportunities, and sometimes because of a desire to be connected to biblical lands.

The status of the different communities routinely lumped into the single category of settlements varies enormously. Israel officially annexed some parts of East Jerusalem straight after 1967. Although there may one day be a compromise on Jerusalem, no Israeli government will give up central suburbs such as Har Homa and Gilot.

For an Australian it is almost impossible to imagine the smallness of the distances involved. Gilot was routinely fired on by snipers in Bethlehem several years ago, and so, well before the security fence was put up, Gilot had its own system of walls and shields, especially for children's playgrounds. For Gilot to be fired on from Bethlehem is like Sydney's Surry Hills being fired on from Redfern, or Richmond being fired on from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. Jerusalem, in the view of many Israelis, becomes indefensible without its Jewish suburbs developed since 1967.

The status of Gush Etzion, a little distance to the southwest of Jerusalem, is also intriguing. It was a Jewish area before 1948, when the UN divided the land of Israel into Jewish and Palestinian states, which the Palestinians and their surrounding Arab neighbours declined to accept, so that several Arab nations launched a war on Israel. The Jordanian army took control of Gush Etzion at that time.

After 1967 it was re-established as a Jewish settlement. Gush Etzion as a Jewish settlement has a 20th-century history long pre-dating 1967. Before the intifada, to get to Gush Etzion you would drive through Bethlehem. Israelis in those days commonly went to dentists in Ramallah, because it was cheaper. Hundreds of thousands of Palestinians earned a good living working in Israel.

The need to prevent terrorism has compromised everyone's quality of life. Now, to get to Gush Etzion from Jerusalem, you drive through a tunnel road. When you emerge from the tunnel, a good deal of the subsequent road is behind walls. The road is Israeli, the land on either side is Palestinian territory, and of course there are checkpoints to get back into Jerusalem as well as armed guards at the entrance to Gush Etzion.

And yet life in Gush Etzion is normal. Behind the gates people hitchhike routinely (as they do in much of Israel) because they all trust each other. On the day I visit, a group of American Jewish teenagers are there as part of a program to acquaint diaspora Jewish youth with their cultural heritage. They are the normal loud-mouthed, good natured, overbearing American kids.

The only odd thing about them is that they are accompanied by two security guards, in this case Israeli girls who look barely older than the teenagers they are guarding and carry rifles as tall as themselves.

The mayor of Gush Etzion, Shaul Goldstein, tells me that many people live there because of the availability of quality housing. They can buy a good apartment for $US200,000 ($228,000) and for a little more, a house with a garden. That's impossible in Jerusalem proper. And the settlement has renowned schools. Says Goldstein: "We thought during the intifada that people would leave. But people didn't leave. Instead they kept coming, even from Australia, even from Bondi Beach.

"One reason is the community lifestyle. People's children can walk safely from house to house. People also feel they are part of history. I'm driving to work through the path of King David. It's important to me as a religious man."

The most emphatic settlement I visited was Ariel. It's a Jewish town of about 30,000 people, deep in the West Bank. Ariel University College has about 10,000 students, 3000 of them doing pre-undergraduate courses. The student population is racially diverse, as is Israel. The Ethiopian presence is noticeable. But Ariel officials tell me some local Palestinians attend as well, although of course they are under pressure not to.

Ariel is a small but substantial city. It is a beautiful place, full of public gardens and garden homes, and it has a distinctly European air and style. People don't like to use the back road to Jerusalem because even in these relatively calm days there is the danger of attacks. Just a few days before I visit, a Jewish settler, not from Ariel but from nearby, was killed on the road, as it turns out by two Palestinian Authority policemen who simply waited for a victim to come along.

I attend a seminar at Ariel on the international media's treatment of Israel. Leonard Asper, the Canadian part-owner of Network Ten in Australia, delivers an alternately witty and fiery denunciation of the media's bias and hostility against Israel. Later Asper, former Israeli defence minister Moshe Arens and I tour the university. It is doing remarkable, cutting-edge work on laser technology. It is able to do this because of the one million Russian Jewish immigrants who have come to Israel in the past 15 years.

Among them were many brilliant scientists and intellectuals. Some Israeli universities were cautious about hiring them, unsure whether their budgets could sustain rapid academic expansion. Ariel went ahead and hired the best Russians it could get, and the research funds have followed.

I comment to Arens that it is a good time, a calm time, in Israel. He replies: "It is calm only because of the efforts of the Israeli Defence Forces, not for any other reason."

Of course the settlements and their future are endlessly debated in Israel, as is everything else. I left Israel profoundly optimistic about the morale of the society and the resolve of the people, but profoundly pessimistic about the peace process. If there were peace, any compromise on borders might be possible. But too many Arab leaders, and too many Palestinian leaders, are playing for the very long term and still believe that in time they will wipe Israel off the map.

Follow-up on Bush at Yad VaShem

From my good friend Dr. Rafael Medoff, director of The David S. Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies:-

On the morning of August 20, 1944, a group 127 U.S. bombers, called Flying Fortresses, approached Auschwitz. They were escorted by 100 Mustang fighter planes. Most of the Mustangs were piloted by Tuskegee Airmen of the 332nd Fighter Group. The attacking force dropped more than one thousand 500-pound bombs on oil targets less than five miles from the gas chambers. Despite German anti-aircraft fire and a squadron of German fighter planes, none of the Mustangs were hit and only one of the U.S. planes was shot down. All of the units reported successfully hitting their targets.

On the ground below, Jewish slave laborers, including 15 year-old Elie Wiesel, cheered the bombing. In his bestselling memoir, Night, Wiesel described their reaction: “We were not afraid. And yet, if a bomb had fallen on the blocks [the prisoners’ barracks], it alone would have claimed hundreds of victims on the spot. But we were no longer afraid of death; at any rate, not of that death. Every bomb that exploded filled us with joy and gave us new confidence in life. The raid lasted over an hour. If it could only have lasted ten times ten hours!”

But it did not. Even though there were additional U.S. bombing raids on German industrial sites in that region in the weeks and month to follow, the gas chambers and crematoria were never targeted.

The Roosevelt administration knew about the mass murder going on in Auschwitz, and even possessed diagrams of the camp that were prepared by two escapees. But when Jewish organizations asked the Roosevelt administration to order the bombing of the camp and the railways leading to it, the requests were rejected. U.S. officials claimed such raids were “impracticable” because they would require “considerable diversion” of planes needed for the war effort.

But the Tuskegee veterans know that claim was false. They were right there in the skies above Auschwitz. No “diversion” was necessary to drop a few bombs on the mass-murder machinery or the railways leading into the camp. Sadly, those orders were never gone.

The decision to refrain from bombing Auschwitz was part of a broader policy by the Roosevelt administration to refrain from taking action to rescue Jews from the Nazis or provide havens for them. The U.S. did not want to deal with the burden of caring for large numbers of refugees. And its ally, Great Britain, would not open the doors to Palestine to the Jews, for fear of angering Arab opinion. The result was that the Allies failed to confront one of history’s most compelling moral challenges.

Tell It To the Goyim

A.B. Yehoshua: Bush should recall ambassador until outposts dismantled

In a scathing op-ed published in the Italian daily La Stampa, Israeli novelist A. B. Yehoshua said George W. Bush should recall the US ambassador to Israel until the Jewish state dismantles all illegal outposts in the West Bank, Yedioth Ahronoth reported Sunday.

"If the American president would have really wanted Israel to disassemble the illegal outposts, he would have done better to stay in the White House and tend to his citizens' medical insurance," Yehoshua wrote in response to Bush's recent visit to the Middle East. "He should have recalled his ambassador to Tel Aviv (Richard Jones) for an indefinite period until the outposts were evacuated.

"I can guarantee you that had he acted in this manner, Israel would have promptly dismantled the outposts, and the US administration would thus cement the faith of the Israelis and the Palestinians in the peace process," he said in the op-ed.

Yehoshua added that Israel was deceiving the international community into focusing solely on the illegal outposts.

"Instead of dealing with (all) of the illegal settlements (in the West Bank), only the illegal outposts are being discussed – this legitimizes the status of (the other) settlements, in which 250,000 Israelis reside," he said.

First of all, seems he likes La Stampa. Here's an op-ed from November agianst Annapolis.

But secondly, the La Stampa site isn't carrying the article at this moment.

Shiloh Resident in Palestine

Palestine, Texas, that is:-

Rubin to speak Thursday

David Rubin, former Mayor of Shiloh, Israel, and victim of terrorism, is scheduled to speak at 7 p.m. Thursday at Evangelistic Temple in Palestine. His topic is “On the Front Lines in the Biblical Heartland.”

In 2001, while driving in his car with his 3-year-old son Ruby, he and his son were brutally attacked by terrorists. As a result of the devastating trauma that he and his son experienced, Rubin worked with friends of Israel in the United States to establish the Shiloh Israel Children's Fund. The Fund supports therapeutic, educational, and recreational projects for children, particularly those in the Shiloh bloc of communities where the children have suffered for years from rampant terrorism.

Visit www.hatikvayisrael.org for more information and for directions to Evangelistic Temple.

NK Family Experience

MA Friedman, children and wife get greeted, kissed, patted and welcomed by Ahmanidijad (or however one spells it) when he spoke at the UN General Assembly:-



Found here

HH150

Here.

Foreman vs. Medad

Here's David Foreman's version of events:-

It was one of David Ben-Gurion's most difficult decisions. After the establishment of the state, the provisional government resolved to unite all pre-state military factions into the newly formed Israel Defense Forces. On June 1, an agreement was signed whereby Menachem Begin's Irgun would be absorbed into the IDF and, as a result, would cease all independent arms acquisitions.

However, prior to acceptance of this agreement, the Altalena, a ship carrying arms and fighters for the Irgun, was scheduled to land at the Tel Aviv port on May 15, 1948. For fear of it being sabotaged en route, no cables were sent to the Irgun headquarters in Paris, which would have included information of the agreement.

After a delay in the scheduled departure, Begin informed Ben-Gurion that the ship had set sail on June 11 without his knowledge and was scheduled to dock on June 20. Ben-Gurion gave his consent to allow 20 percent of the arms to be transferred to the Irgun's Jerusalem Brigade, which was still engaged in combat. However, this decision was conditioned on Begin's commitment to first turn over all arms aboard the vessel to the IDF for distribution.

When the ship anchored off the coast of Kfar Vitkin, Brigade Commander Dan Even ordered Begin to surrender the ship's cargo. In the meantime, Ben-Gurion commanded acting chief of General Staff Yigael Yadin to mass troops and heavy armor off the Mediterranean shore to force Begin's hand. Begin refused to respond to the ultimatum, making a clash inevitable; whereupon Ben-Gurion issued the order to open fire on the Altalena.

While there is much debate as to whether the confrontation could have been avoided, Ben-Gurion's decision not to tolerate a militia operating independently of a unified army was courageous. He understood that a paramilitary group acting on its own would have a devastatingly destabilizing effect on the new nation and its future as a democracy.

This historical backdrop has served Israel's public relations campaign well when it singles out the inability of the Palestinian Authority to disarm its paramilitary forces - Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigades, Tanzim, Izadin al-Kassam Brigade, Islamic Jihad and a host of other private armies.

Here's my version:-

David Foreman's history of the Altalena affair is a bit off-the-mark ("Counterpoint: Israel's fifth column", Jan. 17). His chronology is skimpy, misleading and ignores certain elements.

Already on May 15 after midnight, Menachem Begin informed Yisrael Galili, of the new Defense Ministry, of the existence of the ship Altalena and even suggested the Hagan purchase it. On May 17th, Mossad agent Z. Schind informed Galili that they were aware of the ship's existence for some time and suspected the British were aware of its existence. Whereas Foreman's chain of events would imply David Ben-Gurion being surprised only on June 11, that is not the case.

But more important, Foreman writes that "Begin refused to respond to the ultimatum, making a clash inevitable; whereupon Ben-Gurion issued the order to open fire on the Altalena". It would be more correct to have written that faced with an ultimatum that contradicted the terms of the agreement Begin had concluded with Galili to land the boat at Kfar Vitkin, Begin sought to communicate with Ben-Gurion. IDF troops then opened fire at Kfar Vitkin beach, killing two Irgun men whereupon the Altalena upped anchor and set sail for Tel Aviv. There, Palmach men opened murderous fire on the ship and at men swimming in the water. Fourteen more Irgun men were killed at that location by small-arms fire. Ben-Gurion then order a cannon to fire on the Altalena even though Begin had withheld return fire from the boat.

In writing "While there is much debate as to whether the confrontation could have been avoided", Foreman avoids the main question: if Begin initiated informing the new government of the ship, had agreed to a major compromise over the distribution of the weapons, had agreed to land at Kfar Vitkin, a Mapai moshav, and that almost 90% of the arrivals disembarked and had set off already for Netanya, why did Ben-Gurion need to use military force when Begin proved that in deliberations he was willing to seek national unity?

Could it have been that he was seeking to destroy Begin and the Irgun as a political force or even eliminate Begin altogether?

Enderlin Does a Dirty al-Dura

Asked about al-Dura, Charles Enderlin recently said:-

Al-Dura was killed before a live correspondent, the day after Israelis opened fire on demonstrators on the Temple Mount. My journalist filmed this kid dying in front of the camera. The video is authentic, we had other witnesses, we had an Israeli military reaction that admitted it was probably them. We broadcast all the relevant reactions from the Israeli army. In November I suddenly heard that an Israeli general was reconstructing the events. The video rushes don’t show you exactly what is happening. So in November a general said that the probability was higher that he was killed by a Palestinian bullet than an Israeli bullet. Then in Septemer 2002, a campaign started. People started saying that the event has been staged. It has not been staged; it is authentic; it has a time code; and if it has been staged, then the father is not injured and the doctors in the chief hospital are staging the events, and then when the father was brought to a military hospital in Amman where King Abdullah visited him, so King Abdullah is part of the conspiracy, and then the Israeli journalists interviewed the father. We sued for libel, and we won, and on appeal we were told to hand over the rushes. It was thought that there were 24 minutes, but we discovered that the rushes had been recorded on a film that already had something on it. So we presented to the court the 18 minutes of the original cassette, and now the story is that the kid is alive, and the father is inviting anyone to go and check the remains in the child’s grave. Today there are generals who say they believe it is fake, but at the time they believed it because they saw the images. Well, does anybody believe that Israeli generals learn things by looking at images on the television? So, we have several libel suits going on. We have won 2. Someone accused me of encouraging the assassination of Israeli children, and if that’s not libel then I don’t know what is.

Looking North From Tel Shiloh

That's Eli is the distance and that's Highway 60 on the left:



With appreciation to my wife, the photographer.

Circumcision: The Difference

There's an article on female circumcision in the NYTimes Sunday Magazine today. Also a slide show.

Some people might get the idea that female and male circumcison are the same and if one is bad, so is the other.

Well, read carefully, there in the article:-

Any distinction between injuring the clitoris or the clitoral hood is irrelevant, says Laura Guarenti, an obstetrician and WHO’s medical officer for child and maternal health in Jakarta. “The fact is there is absolutely no medical value in circumcising girls,” she says. “It is 100 percent the wrong thing to be doing.” The circumcision of boys, she adds, has demonstrated health benefits, namely reduced risk of infection and some protection against H.I.V.

This Should Be Interesting: Saying Psalms

Found in Current Anthropology Volume 48, Number 6, December 2007

Psalms for Safety: Magico-Religious Responses to Threats of Terror

Richard Sosis, Department of Anthropology, U-2176, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT 06269-2176, U.S.A. (richard.sosis@uconn.edu). 4 VII 07

Examination of the extent to which women in the northern Israeli town of Tzfat recited psalms to cope with the stress of the Second Palestinian Intifada reveals that knowing someone who was killed in the Intifada, experiencing an income loss, and believing that Tzfat would be attacked by terrorists were strong predictors of psalm recitation among self-identified secular but not religious interviewees. Among secular interviewees who believed that Tzfat would be attacked, psalm recitation was negatively correlated with short- and long-term precautionary behavioral strategies such as caution after an attack and avoiding buses, restaurants, and large crowds. No such relationship was found among religious interviewees, although they were less likely to make precautionary behavioral changes. These findings underscore the importance of magico-religious practices as coping mechanisms that may reduce anxiety and provide perceptions of control under conditions of high stress and uncertainty.

Can't Believe That Nati Could Be Intimidated

Was sent here by Jameel:-

R. Nati, a contributor to this blog, was summoned to the (Israeli) police station today. When he arrived, he was escorted to a room. The police were not waiting, instead the Israeli Internal Security (Shabak, or Shin Bet, the Israeli counter-intelligence and internal security service) was waiting for him.

He was interrogated as a right-wing activist (he's not), for possible involvement in planning anti-public activities (he's not involved in any way), and for publishing a Violent (?) Anti-Government (?) & Anti-Homosexual (???) Blog - Mystical Paths.

Well, he doesn't publish it. He does contribute religious and emunah oriented articles somewhat regularly. However, lets address the other points:

Violent - All I can say is ?????. Mystical Paths has never recommended or suggested any violent action against anyone, nor have any writers on Mystical Paths performed any such actions. Anyone who thinks otherwise has misread or excerpted items out of context.

Anti-Government - Mystical Paths does not espouse the overthrow of any Western government. Chaos and revolution is not the friend of the Jewish people. Rather, in cases where we disagree with current government policy, either of Israel or the United States, we recommend democratic actions be taken to replace the current _administration and elected officials_ with leaders that would head in a different direction. Democratic actions means, votes, protests, political organizing, and getting a message out.

Anti-Homosexual - ???? What in the world? The human drive in this area is probably the most prone area for the Yetzer Hara to attack a person. Those challenged with complete misdirection of their drives have perhaps one of the greatest challenges there is. Like people with challenges in any area, people with challenges in this area should be recommended to and given opportunities to improve. Mystical Paths does not agree with, and does recommend _peacefully_ protesting against, those who would flaunt their challenges, especially those who would do it specifically in religious and holy places, and this includes Jerusalem.

Disagreeing with the _administration and elected officials_ positions is not a crime in a Western democracy. Not even in Israel.

I'd like to say we will not be intimidated. But honestly, we just have been.

(Kippah tip: Muqata aka Jameel)

Welcome to the democratic state of Israel.