Hebron Pics

More here.

Tzipi Livni's View

Shas won't enter her coalition for a new government and neither will the other two Hareidi Orthodox parties.

Earlocks Swaying

Source

Hebron Cont'd

Arutz 7:-

The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court ordered the police Sunday evening to release Hevron community activist Noam Federman from custody. Federman was arrested on Sunday morning on charges of attacking and injuring policemen who were destroying his family's home on an unauthorized outpost. During the hearing, several policemen testified that Federman was hand-cuffed at the time he was accused of assaulting the officers.

Hundreds are taking part in efforts to rebuild the Federman home. The Attorney General has ordered an investigation into vocal responses by eyewitnesses to the demolition.

Haaretz:-

Settlers, for their part, argued that security forces carried out the evacuation without a preliminary order and that they did not give the outpost's residents time to pack up their belongings...

...The Yesha settlement council, for its part, also issued a condemnation of the verbal attacks, branding those responsible for them "troublemakers."

The settler leaders said: "The defamatory words that were spoken by troublemakers this morning against IDF soldiers are particularly grave, and deserve every condemnation. But there is nothing in this to lessen the gravity of the acts the government has initiated in Hebron including the evacuation of a farm in which Jews have live for two years and the insertion of Palestinian police in the city."

...Attorney General Meni Mazuz on Sunday called for an incitement investigation against right wing activists, hours after rioting by settlers in the West Bank that included the desecration of headstones at a Muslim cemetery near Kiryat Arba.

During the rioting, settlers hurled abuse at security forces personnel, and called for a "revenge attack" against them in response to the evacuation of an illegal outpost built by Right-wing activist Noam Federman near Kiryat Arba.

"We hope they will be defeated by their enemies, that they will all be [kidnapped IDF soldier] Gilad Shalit, that they will all be killed and all slaughtered because this is what they deserve," they said.

In a letter released Sunday, Mazuz said that statements made by right-wing activists during the rioting "crossed a red line", and are not protected under freedom of speech.

JPost:-

...Police in the West Bank confirmed on Sunday morning that they arrested Noam Federman - a well-known right wing activist whose family resided in the outpost - during the eviction for assaulting and injuring police officers and causing one officer a broken leg. Two minors thought to be Federman's daughters were also arrested for damaging the police vehicle which came to evacuate them from the area.

The Jerusalem Magistrate's Court on Sunday evening, however, ordered the police to release Federman from custody without preliminary terms.

The decision was made after several policemen testified that Federman was hand-cuffed at the time when he allegedly assaulted and injured their colleagues...

...Extreme right activists on Sunday afternoon began to rebuild a small unauthorized outpost which was evacuated by security forces earlier in the day. The IDF, according to reports, stood by idly as the settlers sorted through the debris on the outskirts of Hebron and Kiryat Arba...

PM Olmert Promises To Basically Shut Up

Cabinet Communiqué

(Communicated by the Cabinet Secretariat)

At the weekly Cabinet meeting today (Sunday), 26.10.08:

Prime Minister Olmert made the follow remarks: "The Knesset winter session will begin tomorrow. Such events are usually marked by a statement from the prime minister, which focuses on presenting the national agenda as the prime minister sees it ahead of the winter session, and in a normal situation this is as it ought to be. I informed Minister Livni yesterday that tomorrow, I do not intend to make such a speech. I thought that in the current circumstances, this would be incorrect. Therefore, I will make short remarks on socio-economic issues and not those which certainly stand at the base of serious disagreements among the Israeli public, which will continue to top the national agenda but which, in current circumstances, I do not think it proper for me to discuss them."

Whew.

Last time he spoke, he put both feet in his mouth.

A Kosher Exchange

Kosher Wars

Andy Kastner’s approach to kosher food is endearing on its face, but some goals of the larger movement to revise the meaning of what is kosher actually work at cross purposes with Jewish law (Oct. 12).

Take for instance the movement’s opposition to even well-studied pesticides that are safe when used as approved. This increases the chance one will eat bugs — a serious violation. Products that have not undergone basic and safe steps to avoid infestation (which can be missed by inspection and basic washing) should not be deemed more kosher; they should be considered not kosher.

Further, even the most modern methods of organic farming are inefficient compared with modern agriculture. Organic farming requires the use of more land and resources to produce the same amount of food at a higher cost. This violates both the law of baal tashchit (against waste) and the very notion of sustainability.

These approaches, if adopted, will make food less kosher, no healthier, more expensive and worse for the environment. The movement should be seen for what it is — a distorted “green” ideology cloaked as adherence to Jewish law.

JEFF STIER
Associate Director
American Council on Science and Health
New York



I was surprised that neither Samantha M. Shapiro nor some of the Orthodox experts she interviewed mentioned the fact that tzaar baalei hayyim, causing pain to animals, is a violation of Jewish law. In fact, the Talmud states clearly (Baba Metzia 31a-32b) that this is a biblical ordinance — not just the innovation of humans.

RABBI GILBERT S. ROSENTHAL
Director
The National Council of Synagogues
Needham, Mass.

This Is No Schlep

HH #188

Here.

First The PAL Troops; Then The Israeli Bulldozers

Israeli permitted over 500 American-trained PA policemen to roam the streets of Hebron.

To further make "peace offerings" to the PA, it seems it was deicded that last night around midnight would be a good time to destroy a Jewish-built structure at a small farm belonging to the Federman/Tor families:



Activists have sent out a message which reads, in part:

...a corrupt criminal government who in the morning on Shabbat brought 550 PLO terrorists in Hevron and in the evening rewarded those terrorists by destroying the houses of two Jewish families.

The Kiryat Arba people call upon all to come today at noon to rebuild the destroyed houses.

And Nadia Matar adds:

In addition, during the day I will forward pix of policemen who participated in the crime. We will spread their pictures. Anyone who recognizes them please get back to me with the info.

The company that brought the destruction forces to Kiryat Arba is the "Movilei Havradim" bus company from Pekiin (!). their phone number 04-9972153

YNet carries this story:

Massive police, Border Guard and IDF forces demolished an illegal outpost in the West Bank city of Hebron on Saturday night. Three people were arrested during the evacuation.

Shortly after 1:30 am, the forces arrived near the home of extreme right-wing activist Noam Federman. He was arrested for assaulting a policeman and breaking his hand, and two young girls were taken into custody after reportedly attempting to set fire to a police car. Another person was detained for questioning.

Federman's wife, Elisheva, recounted the events in a conversation with Ynet.

"It was a regular Saturday evening. We were cleaning after Shabbat. Our nine children went to sleep. I finished working on a paper for school, Noam was on the computer, when we suddenly heard dogs barking. We received a phone call that massive forces were headed towards us. Noam went out to see what was happening, and then Yasamniks ((Israel Police special patrol unit) jumped on him. I haven't seen him since.

"I saw herds of black uniform. I locked the door, but they broke into the house, smashed the windows, and all this without any warning. The children woke up and came to my room.

"They pulled out the entire contents of the house. Everything that was in the cupboards – books, clothes, money. They forcibly removed us from the house and took us to the Gush Etzion Junction. They said we were all under arrest. Me and six other children – aged one, three, nine, 14, 16 and 17.

"They destroyed the entire house and cut off its gas supply. Several hours later, they told us we were not under arrest and let me go back to the house to take the car. I saw the complete destruction in the place and they told me, 'Take what you want.'

"Eighteen years of marriage are folded under the wreckage. I didn’t even have Materna to take for the baby. The oldest daughter was taken to the police station and was arrested after her hand was broken."

The Federman family has been living in the place for two and a half years. According to the residents, the far had been manned for 11 years. Elisheva Federman said there was no legal motive for the evacuation.

"We have had right of possession on this land for 10 years. No Arab has demanded it. We launched legal proceedings and paid a lot of money. How can they do this without any warning? I hope God gives us the strength to return. We have no property now. We can build a tent there. We have nothing to lose," she said.

================================

UPDATE


From Haaretz:

Settlers on Sunday desecrated a Muslim graveyard following the evacuation of an illegal outpost near the West Bank settlement of Kiryat Arba...Rightists came to the site and threw stones at the security forces in response to the evacuation. A of them number were arrested for attacking a police officer, and two young women were arrested after they tried to set a police car alight.

In addition to vandalizing the graves, settlers also smashed the windows of nearby Palestinian homes and punctured the tires of Palestinian vehicles.

Discriminatory Democracy

While I do think that one need not be overly "in your face", sometimes the principle is important.

As in this case:-

...activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir will return to court this week to fight for their right to hold a march in the Israeli Arab city of Umm el-Fahm. The march is opposed by police, who say they cannot provide security for the marchers...mayor Mustafa Sohel has promised to lead tens of thousands of Arabs in preventing the march.

Supreme Court justices Edmond Levy, Hanan Meltzer, and Edna Arbel ruled several weeks ago that nationalists are permitted to march in Umm el-Fahm. The march may take place within the city itself, they ruled, and not within the municipal limits but outside the city, as police had proposed.

Levy told the police they had two weeks to find a way to protect marchers. Meltzer slammed police for opposing the march, saying that prohibiting the event was discriminatory and violated nationalists' civil rights.

Now, that seems a fair ruling especially as:

leftists who oppose the presence of Jews in Hevron, where both men live, are allowed to march through the Jewish neighborhood of Hevron on a regular basis. Jews should enjoy the same freedoms in Arab towns, they say.

But what happened?

...Marzel and Ben-Gvir waited for the police's response, only to be summoned to court yet again several days ago. This time, justices Elyakim Rubinstein and Yoram Danziger will replace Meltzer and Arbel, they were told. Marzel and Ben-Gvir appealed the decision and demanded that the original panel of judges hear any further arguments.

That's a neat trick. Changing the rules in mid-game.

And how did it start?

Marzel and Ben-Gvir say they originally had not planned a march, but rather wanted to set up a stand in Umm el-Fahm where they would sell Israeli flags on Independence Day, which many Israeli Arabs commemorate as Nakba (Disaster) Day. The flag sale was meant to emphasize residents' obligation to show loyalty to the state, they said. The idea to hold a march began after police refused to grant them permission to open a kiosk in the city.

The Doubting BBC

The BBC is doubtful about an historic site in Hebron:-

Hebron has consistently been a flashpoint. A few hundred Jews live in the middle of 150,000 Palestinians, and the town is also home to the reputed burial site of the Patriarch Abraham - revered by both Jews and Muslims.

Now, I don't expect the BBC to believe in the Bible, or in Jewish or Mulsim religious traditions. But I do expect that if this is the BBC's position, then it should be expressed as regards all similar sites.

For example, here, the BBC, writing about Jerusalem's "Religious Heritage", has this to say about the Temple Mount:

The Temple Mount, in the old city in East Jerusalem, is believed by Jews to be site of the First and Second Temples in ancient times.

but the Haram Al-Sharif is described thus:-

The same area is known to Muslims as the Haram al-Sharif, or the Noble Sanctuary. The plot contains the Dome of the Rock, and the al-Aqsa Mosque - Islam's third holiest site. The Koran says that the Prophet Muhammad ascended to heaven from this spot.

You noted the difference, right? One is, well, "perhaps" but the other is "for sure".

It reminded me of another BBC viewpoint: It is a work of fiction. But only just.

And Who Is "Non Grata" Now?

What you do to others might be done to you.

Remember my tiff with Dr. Kim Howells, getting me - for all intents and purposes - declared semi-persona non grata at UK diplomatic events like the Queen's birthday party? (here and also here)

Well, yesterday a had a one-hour meeting with an official of the Foreign Office and he informed me that while I am still off-limits, Howells is...off!

He's not on the official site.

What happened?

This:-

Pontypridd MP Kim Howells is leaving government, after 11 years as a minister, in Gordon Brown's reshuffle. Dr Howells, 61, was a foreign office minister and one of the oldest members of the Labour administration.

He said the prime minister had not explained his decision to him and had told him he was "changing ministers". Dr Howells takes over from Margaret Beckett as chair of the Security and Intelligence Committee, overseeing the work of MI5 and MI6.

...He has regularly made headlines because of his tendency for plain speaking. He once called the Royal Family "a bit bonkers" and described entries for art's Turner Prize as "cold, mechanical conceptual bullshit". He embarrassed himself addressing the Commons foreign affairs committee last year when he mistakenly referred to the Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon as being dead. Mr Sharon had been in a coma for more than a year.

Speaking on BBC Radio Wales, Dr Howells said he was "not at all" disappointed to be no longer a minister.

"I've got a new job now and one which I know something about," he said.

Writing on his blog, Newport West Labour MP Paul Flynn said: "The sacking of Kim Howells follows a long series of errors and stumbles... his habitat for years has been the last chance saloon".

You can say that again.

Poor intelligence work with such an unintelligent chairman.

Letter on the Temple Mount Situation

I have a letter in the special "In Jerusalem" section of the Jerusalem Post today:

Re: "Temple time?", Oct. 17.

David Smith quotes Rabbi Moshe Silberstein's objections to the Temple
Institute "talking about building the Third Temple" and his example of an act of a bulldozer clearing a path for that construction project being "tantamount to starting World War Three".

We'll ignore the Rabbi's dichotomic perception of that type of "talking" and implications of the content of Jewish prayers when we pray for that very rebuilding multiple times daily. But his example is quite relevant.

It just so happens that over the past decade, Arab Muslims have brought in bulldozers to the Temple Mount compound and have dug up ditches, emptied out large areas of underground soil and in doing so, not only did they flout the law (probably with the connivance of Prime Ministers and others), but they continued their goal of destroying all semblance of a Jewish past of the site.

May I ask if Rabbi Silberstein objected at any of those instances? And moreover, we all need to answer why those deeds did not start even a little war, at least one in Israel's courts?

Yisrael Medad
Secretary,
El Har Hashem Society
Jerusalem

P.S. For those new to my opinions on the Temple Mount, besides searching my blog, try this first.

Two recent visit pics from this Hebrew site:

Not A Bad Idea, Actually

The demand by Shas Chairman Eli Yishai, as he told the media, to receive a public promise from Livni, preferably signed, that she "does not intend to bring up the subject of Jerusalem in negotiations with the Palestinians," is not even worth negotiating. Livni must inform Yishai publicly, preferably in writing, that he can forget about that demand. She must tell him that if he wants a promise that Jerusalem will not be a part of the negotiations for a final status agreement, he should look for it in the Likud. It can also be suggested to him that on his way there, he should order posters proclaiming: "Livni will divide Jerusalem."

Akiva Eldar
Left-wing radical posing as a political commentator

And, poof!:

Shas Will Not Enter Coalition

(IsraelNN.com) In a politically dramatic announcement Friday, the hareidi-sephardic party, Shas, said it would not be joining a new government under Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni "under any conditions."

Shas announced that its Council of Torah Sages - headed by Rabbi Ovadia Yosef - decided, after its members were polled by telephone, that the party will be staying out of Livni's coalition. The wording – "under any conditions" – appears to rule out the possibility that this is just political brinkmanship or a part of the customary haggling in negotiations between parties.

"Throughout the coalition negotiations Shas did not ask for titles or any political upgrading, but only two things: aid for the weak layers in Israeli society and protection of Jerusalem," Shas stated.

Sternhell Has A Criminal Record

Sternhell was taken to court by Bertrand de Jouvenel, in 1983, after Sternhell published his work Ni Droite, ni gauche (Neither Right nor Left). Jouvenel sued Sternhell on nine counts, resulting in Sternhell to be convicted for defamation. In his book, Sternhell accused Jouvenel of having had Fascist sympathies. Convicted on two counts, Sternhell did not need to retract his remarks from the book however.

(Robert Wohl. French Fascism, Both Right and Left: Reflections on the Sternhell Controversy. The Journal of Modern History, Vol. 63, No. 1, (1991), pp. 91-98).

Source

French "Strong" About Antisemitism? Naw.

French Police Break Up Attack on Two Orthodox Jews

French police arrested five youths, ages 16 to 21, for attacking two young boys wearing kippot [skullcaps] in the Paris suburb of Vitry-sur-Seine Wednesday night. A 40-year-old man and his 18-year-old son were also beaten, as they tried to defend their two nephews against the gang.

The attackers shouted anti-Semitic insults, according to the French umbrella organization CRIF, but French police said only that there is a "strong suspicion" of anti-Semitism in the attack. The victims were treated in a local hospital for light wounds.

The CRIF communique added:-

Police detained five youths aged between 16 and 21 after the aggression which took place in Vitry-sur-seine, southeast of Paris.

After they came in defense of their two nephews hunted down by a band of 10 youths, a 40-year-old man and his 18-year-old son were severely beaten. According to CRIF, the aggressors have shouted anti-Semitic insults.

“When police arrived on the spot, the aggressors threatened the two teenagers and shouted anti-Semitic slogans,” CRIF said in a communiqué.

The Jewish body said it was clear that the incident "had nothing to do with conflict between rival bands."

That bit about "bands" is a reference to an earlier report of Steven Erglander of the New York Times (where else?), formerly its chief correspondent in Israel, which tried to disguise the French antisemitism:-

On Saturdays, during the Jewish Sabbath, youth gangs, including gangs of young Jews, migrate to the park of Buttes Chaumont and squabble over territory. Sometimes the insults and battles that begin there are finished later on the Rue Petit, Morad Chahrine said, who directs the J2P social and cultural center.

"It's less about anti-Semitism than fights among gangs of youths, who create alliances of one district against another," Chahrine said, noting the influence of American movies on the styles and habits of the gangs. "This idea of identity of territory starts with economic reasons. This is the youngest and poorest arrondissement in Paris, with a lot of unemployment, and that explains a lot."

Dominique Sopo, president of the group SOS-Racisme, which works against discrimination, said, "We're faced with a layer cake, a logic of territorialization."

.

And next, we'll hear that Hitler was a frustrated painter whose work was savaged by Jewish art critics.

Surprise! New Yesha PR Campaign Does Not Surprise Peace Now

You remember the new Yesha PR campaign?

It "more than doubled the number of Israelis who visited West Bank settlements during the holidays, according to organisers."


But, not everyone was excited about its success.

And not everyone who opposed it wrote about it in blogs, as the JC reports:-

However, the response was not entirely positive. Viral emails circulated in response to the campaign showed spoof adverts featuring images of the abuse of Palestinians - including a photo showing alleged settler abuse near Susia - in place of the smiling pictures of children dressed as biblical characters.

Elsewhere, billboard posters were vandalised with anti-occupation graffiti.

And left-wing groups were also critical of the initiative. "I would have been surprised if following the huge amount of money that was invested in the campaign, the settlers would not have succeeded in bringing more visitors to the West Bank," said Yariv Oppenheimer, the head of Peace Now.

"But I don't feel that any great breakthrough in public opinion was achieved."

Mr Oppenheimer, who received death threats in Tel Aviv earlier this week, noted that "the campaign tries to present the settlers' pleasant side, and it's a shame that its initiators were not able to deal with these severe domestic problems they have."

Yariv, with all the money you people have been spending for the last 30 years, where's your success?

Nemirovsky Was No "Jewish Holocaust Author"

I had a letter published in last week's Jerusalem Post Friday Magazine but it hasn't made it to their Internet site:-

Marilyn Henry ("'Woman of Letters'", Oct. 10) takes up the cause of Irene Nemirovsky who has been termed a "self-hating Jew". She asks "who are we...to judge Nemirovsky?" following up the literary affair surrounding the post-Holocaust fame the authoress has gained. For Nemirovsky denied her Judaism. But how did she do that?

Born in 1903, she married a Jew at age 23 but three years later published her first novel with negative Jewish stereotype: the Jewish banker. Denied French citizenship in 1938, she converted to Catholicism the next year and published stories in two anti-Semitic magazines, most probably to hide her family's Jewish origins. As Ruth Franklin pointed out in The New Republic in its January 30, 2008 issue, quite a politically liberal forum, Nemirovsky pandered "to the forces of reaction, to the fascist right [with] stories of corrupt Jews" and even saw herself as so un-Jewish that she considered it proper to write a personal plea to Marshal Pétain to avoid deportation.

The conclusion, as Henry suggests, of purging of our bookshelves is ridiculous. All one needs to do is to ignore Nemirovsky's Jewishness quotient and simply read her posthomous works as literature, her Jewish origin notwhithstanding.

I have also previously related to her "Jewish quotient" here.

And now TLS adds this:-

...The anti-Semitic laws of October 3, 1940 caused the newspaper to renege on Némirovsky’s contract. She then appealed to the Société des Gens de Lettres, who upheld her rights, only to be met by the editor’s [refusal]...In her desperation to be published, to earn much-needed money and sustain herself as a creative writer, Némirovsky turned to the collaborator Horace de Carbuccia, who published her work in his weekly newspaper Gringoire, alongside anti-Semitic diatribes and propaganda cartoons. Les Biens de ce monde, appeared in instalments from April 1941 until June and was attributed simply to “a young woman”.

And now, there are those who wish to identify this "young woman" as a Jewish heroine of the Holocaust. And her biographers, Philipponnat and Lienhardt, call her “a lacemaker among savages”.

As I wrote in my letter, one need not read Nemirovsky's novels as "Jewish" literature to appreciate them. Her personal tragedy melded with that of the Jewish cdollective. Nevertheless, a posthumous crowning of her as a Jewish Holocaust author is not only wrong factually but unnecessary. Those who champion her in this role are in error and are contributing to a watering down of the true courage of Jews who went to the aktions in tallit and tefillin. For they were proud Jews. Unlike Nemirovsky.

Jerusalem is Not on the State Department's Map

Israel National News has reported that a US Court Hears Passport Case on Jerusalem as Capital

The details:-

A United States court is hearing an appeal by an American family living in Jerusalem that the State Department be required to allow their son's passport to list Jerusalem as part of Israel. The American government has refused to do so because it argues that the post-1967 areas of the city are disputed under international law.

Lawyers for Ari and Naomi Zivotofsky told the federal court in Washington, D.C. that the a 2003 law signed by American President George W. Bush states that American citizens born in Jerusalem can demand that "Israel" be stamped next to the city's name. The State Department has maintained that the law is "advisory."...

The family's son Menachem was born in Jerusalem's Sha'arei Tzedek Hospital shortly after the law was signed.

“This is not about where the capital is, it’s about our legal rights,” Brooklyn-born Zivotofsky told the New York Jewish Week. He and his wife have lived in Israel since 1999 and he is a neuroscience professor at Bar-Ilan University.

...Zivotofsky said he is pursuing the case because “it’s philosophically important to us that western Jerusalem be treated as any other part of Israel. Their son Menachem was six-years-old when the State Department refused to stamp his passport with Jerusalem as being part of Israel

The NY Jewish Weeks adds:-

...the Lewins [Nat and Alyza], a father-daughter team who specialize in Jewish legal issues, argued that the law was mandatory, not advisory, and that the current practice discriminates against supporters of Israel.
“This is not about where the capital is, it’s about our legal rights,” said Ari Zivotofsky, 45, a Brooklyn native who teaches neuroscience at Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan. The Zivotofskys have lived in Israel since 1999. Menachem is the only one of his four children born in Israel.

District Court Judge Gladys Kessler dismissed an initial complaint in 2003 because the designation had no bearing on the validity of the passport. But in February 2006, the Court of Appeals reversed the decision, only to have it dismissed by Kessler again in September 2007.

Jewish, Out; East European, In

Shhhh.

Don't mention the word "Jewish" too often in the NYTimes, Mark Bittman.

Not even in recipes:-

in fact the very qualities of kasha that make it unappealing elsewhere — its grassiness, its too-soft texture — are the same ones that vault kasha varnishkes to the highest ranks of Eastern European cooking.

But in Bitten's blog (here), he writes:

Today’s Minimalist column and video, about kasha varnishkes, the Eastern European Jewish thing I grew up eating

Viva la difference!