"Alleged"

I found At Al Jazeera, here, that a report by the heads of the European missions in the Palestinian territories issued on May 5th stated that Israel is in the process of systematically eradicating the Arab presence from occupied Jerusalem.

The report said that

occupation authorities have begun building a synagogue near al-Aqsa Mosque, which has increased Palestinian fears of a long-term plan promoted by some settler groups to take over al-Haram al-Sharif (The Temple Mount).

It explained that the settlement activity being implemented around the Old City of Jerusalem is part of a plan by the occupation aimed at linking up the settlements built in East Jerusalem with those in the Old City.

Islamic Antiquities Theft and Falsification of History In a related development, the occupation authorities placed stones stolen from sites near the southern wall of al-Aqsa Mosque on display in the garden of the newly opened building of the Israeli Knesset. This is consistent with Zionist plans to turn Jerusalem into a Jewish city and obscure its landmarks, according to Palestinian institutions concerned with heritage and charitable endowments.

The most prominent of those relics is a large stone weighing five tons stolen from a site close to the south-east of al-Aqsa Mosque below the Marwani prayer hall. A sign near the stone identifies it as being from the Temple Mount, and the accompanying explanation says that the stone is from the era of the alleged Second Temple.

Well, the original report is here. The "alleged" appears in this excerpt:

The most prominent case is that of the Al-Kurd family in Sheikh Jarrah, that has been evicted on 9 November 2008 from its home, which it had been allocated by UNRWA in 1956, after the Israeli High Court issued an eviction order. Settlers, claiming property to the land on the basis of alleged pre-1948 ownership, took over the house immediately.

I guess that Al-Jazeera is a bit propagandistic, eh?

As for the worth of the whole report itself, Nadav Shragai took it apart:

The European Union Report on Jerusalem: Distortions and Omissions - 2 April 2009

* An imbalanced EU position paper on Jerusalem written in December 2008, and recently leaked to the media, completely ignores Israel's historical and legal rights to its capital. The EU attack refers primarily to the City of David, located just beyond Jerusalem's Old City walls, an area identified by archaeologists and historians as the location of King David's capital some 3,000 years ago. Archaeological excavations took place there during Ottoman rule, as well as under the ensuing British Mandatory rule, and they have continued under Israeli rule as well.

* About 20 years ago a wave of new, illegal construction by Palestinians began on the site, causing significant and sometimes irreversible damage to the antiquities there. The Jerusalem municipality intends to offer the delinquent residents generous compensation and alternative land in the city.

* Jerusalem has had a Jewish majority for the last 150 years - at least since 1864. Israel's position in Jerusalem under international law derives from the Palestine Mandate, where the League of Nations recognized "the historical tie between the Jewish people and Palestine," and called "for the establishment of a national home for the Jewish people in Palestine."

* The 1949 Armistice Agreement between Israel and Jordan did not fix the final boundaries between the parties, but only the lines of military separation at the close of the 1948 war. At the demand of the Arab side, the Armistice Agreement stipulated that it did not serve to predetermine the rights of any party in the final resolution of conflict. In other words, upon the outbreak of the Six-Day War, the 1967 lines enjoyed no diplomatic status.

* In 1967, Israel agreed to allow the Muslim Waqf to manage the Temple Mount area, with a view toward preventing inter-religious conflict at one of the world's most sensitive sites. This was a huge concession on Israel's part that has never been properly recognized. By doing so, Israel has underscored its intention to assure freedom of access to members of all faiths at all of the holy sites in Jerusalem.

Bibi's First Big Mistake

Reported:

During a heated Likud faction meeting Monday, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu made it clear that Israel will soon have to remove the illegal West Bank outposts as demanded by the US – and then focus its attention on the Iranian nuclear threat.

"These are unusual times, and the threat is heading towards us. The most dangerous thing for a living organism is not recognizing the danger. My job is to secure the State of Israel's future. This takes precedence over everything else," Netanyahu said.

The PM added "during the election campaign I also said that we are a law abiding country, and we will have to deal with the illegal outposts – hopefully by way of dialogue," the PM told the faction meeting.

Not only because it's wrong but because it will begin to undercut his political base of a coalition.

And Obama Said...

On issue after issue, Obama tells us that he is not naïve. Then, on issue after issue, he tacks Bushward before his naiveté causes irreversible damage. I suppose we should be thankful for the “hasty” nature of the president’s mistakes. For the sooner he puts his naiveté to the test the sooner we can return to what works.

Flynt Leverett and Hillary Mann Leverett’s profoundly wrongheaded op-ed in the Sunday New York Times did contain this valuable nugget:

Why has President Obama put himself in a position from which he cannot deliver on his own professed interest in improving relations with the Islamic Republic? Some diplomatic veterans who have spoken with him have told us that the president said that he did not realize, when he came to office, how “hard” the Iran problem would be.

Source

And he thinks he knows a thing or two about the Arab-Israel conflict?

Nice To See I'm Noted

Wow.

In this report, my three-part second BBC Hardtalk appearance is highlighted.

Quick Visit To Shiloh Antiquities

I was at the Tel today with a very old friend.

An overview of Shiloh before we Jews returned:



And here's another overview, from 1920:



This is a steel engraving drawn by W. H. Bartlett, engraved by C. Cousen. ca 1850 of a site we refer to as Qubat A-Shakinah (Dome of the Divine Presence) or Jam'a A-Seitin ('Group of the Sixty', referring to 60 warriors in the Persian-Arab battle here in 638):



(found here)

And here you can see in the lower center of this picture, the original lintel which appears in the engraving above:



Here's a 1920 photograph (it's actually a double as it's from the old stereoscopy style where two pictures were presented just a bit different to each eye which allowed a 3-D effect. My Uncle Arthur has a whole set from "Palestine" from over 100 years ago. Here are some others. And here are others.)



a view from several decades ago:



and this is what that structure looks like today:


----------------------------

and here is another structure, closer to the Tel, Wali Yeitin (you are looking from the north towards the south-west with the Muslim building at the extreme left with the famous fig tree to its right. Under that building, we discovered a very large Byzantine basilica from about 400 CE, one of the first to be built in Eretz-Yisrael):



and this is what it looked like in 1920 from the north where the Tel is:

Each To Her Own

and then, I found this:

Today's Odd Post

What's Bibimbap?

No, it has nothing to do with Israel's current Prime Minister.

And yes, that's the correct spelling.


Here:

Pronounced pibimp͈ap, it is a popular Korean dish. The word literally means "mixed rice" or "mixed meal."

Bibimbap is served as a bowl of warm white rice topped with namul (sautéed and seasoned vegetables) and gochujang (chili pepper paste). A raw or fried egg and sliced meat (usually beef) are common additions. The ingredients are stirred together thoroughly just before eating. It can be served either cold or hot.

Really:





(Kippah tip: NYT)

"Illegal Settlements" Perhaps Spotted

Out-of-court settlements called for at village level

The Supreme Court has encouraged out-of-court settlements to resolve disputes at village level. Chief Justice Harifin Tumpa said people in villages tended to choose dispute settlement through mediation rather than disputes in court.

Source: The Jakarta Post

Arab-Israel Conflict and Tamil Reflections

Truth told, I haven't the faintest idea what that Sri Lanks/Ceylon battle is all about.

Even visiting the major Tamil web site hasn't enlightened me.

So I checked here but again, I just couldn't comprehend the problem:

The Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam...waged a violent secessionist campaign that sought to create an independent Tamil state in the north and east of Sri Lanka...The Tamil Tigers claimed to be fighting to protect the country's Tamil minority from discrimination at the hands of the successive Sinhalese majority governments that have ruled the country since independence...Most Tamil Sri-Lankans are Orthodox Hindu by faith. In contrast, most of the ethnic Sinhalese are Buddhist by faith.

I then found this:

The Tamils are an ethnic group that lives in southern India (mainly in the state of Tamil Nadu) and on Sri Lanka, an island of 21 million people off the southern tip of India. Most Tamils live in northern and eastern Sri Lanka, and they comprise approximately 10 percent of the island's population, according to a 2001 government census. Their religion (most are Hindu) and Tamil language set them apart from the four-fifths of Sri Lankans who are Sinhalese—members of a largely Buddhist, Sinhala-speaking ethnic group. When Sri Lanka was ruled as Ceylon by the British, most Sri Lankans regarded the Tamil minority as collaborators with imperial rule and resented the Tamil's perceived preferential treatment. But since Sri Lanka became independent in 1948, the Sinhalese majority has dominated the country. The remainder of Sri Lanka's population includes ethnic Muslims, as well as Tamil and Sinhalese Christians.

That's it?

Wow, imagine how outsiders view our local conflict.

Er, Is This "Illegal Arab Settler-ment"?

Al Jazeera has discovered that Palestinian-Israelis have bought houses in settlements in East Jerusalem.

My first thought?

Silly Al Jazeera.

There are no "settlements" in East Jerusalem.

There are neighborhoods in the city.

Even the NYTimes refers to them as "developments".

Psst! Wanna See Some "Natural Growth Settlement Development Expansion"?

Here, at a location that shall remain fairly incognito, although I do suspect too precious satellite picture-taking time of the United States is being used for tracking down housing construction out here rather than chasing down either terrorists or Iran's nuclear program of very unnatural growth, is a photographic record of ongoing natural growth development:





Is this the cause of a major international crisis and diplomatic rupture with the new US administration?

What Happened to the Democratic Process?

Obama rejects unwritten deal struck prior to Gaza disengagement which allows for growth in settlements that Israel hopes to keep in any peace deal with Palestinians...Settlement issue complicated by Bush-Sharon agreement

reports Ynet basing itself on this Washington Post item:

...In blunt comments on the Qatar-based news channel al-Jazeera on Tuesday, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said: "We want to see a stop to settlement construction, additions, natural growth -- any kind of settlement activity. That is what the president has called for."

"Natural growth" refers to population expansion as a result of births, adoptions and the like -- a position successive Israeli governments have rejected, though it is an Israeli obligation in the 2003 peace plan known as the "road map." The Bush administration accommodated Israeli concerns with a secret understanding that allowed for growth in settlements that Israel hopes to keep in any peace deal with the Palestinians.

...Netanyahu spokesman Mark Regev said there are no plans for a full settlement freeze. "The issue of settlements is a final status issue, and until there are final status arrangements, it would not be fair to kill normal life inside existing communities," he said.

Regev said the Israeli government is relying on "understandings" between former president George W. Bush and former prime minister Ariel Sharon that some of the larger settlements in the occupied West Bank would ultimately become part of Israel, codified in a letter that Bush gave to Sharon in 2004. In an interview with The Washington Post last year, Sharon aide Dov Weissglas said that in 2005, when Sharon was poised to remove settlers from Gaza, the Bush administration arrived at a secret agreement -- not disclosed to the Palestinians -- that Israel could add homes in settlements it expected to keep, as long as the construction was dictated by market demand, not subsidies.

Elliott Abrams, a former deputy national security adviser who negotiated the arrangement with Weissglas, confirmed the deal in an interview last week. "At the time of the Gaza withdrawal, there were lengthy discussions about how settlement activity might be constrained, and in fact it was constrained in the later part of the Sharon years and the Olmert years in accordance with the ideas that were discussed," he said. "There was something of an understanding realized on these questions, but it was never a written agreement."

Regev said Israeli and U.S. negotiators are discussing the degree to which the terms of the 2004 letter will apply under the new administration, but U.S. officials indicated that Obama wants to move beyond the 2004 letter and hold Israel to its commitments under the road map. "The bottom line is we expect all the parties in the region to honor their commitments, and for the Israelis, that means a stop to settlements, as the president said," a senior administration official said.

We'll continue life, have no fear or apprehension.

Babies, houses, industry, agriculture, education, social welfare.

Jews have returned home. And home means a lot.

Will You Be Attending?

Just received this:

1070 days Gilad Shalit in captivity

1070 students to protest outside the offices of the International Committee for the Red Cross on May 27 2009. 1070 students will be joined by hundreds of other protesters to draw attention to the 1070 days that Gilad Shalit has been held in captivity by Hamas terrorists.

The International Committee for the Red Cross (ICRC) has not visited Gilad Shalit, in order to ascertain his physical and emotional wellbeing,

The protesters will be demanding that the International Red Cross do everything in its power to pressure Hamas to allow a humanitarian visit to Gilad.

We want Gilad free!!" said Dr. Chagit Hadar, international coordinator of the efforts to free Gilad Shalit.

Protesters will assemble at 12 noon on May 27, 2009 outside the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross at 801 2nd Ave, Manhattan.

Members of the United States Congress, New York State Assembly and New York City Council will join the protesters and speak at the rally.

FOR MORE DETAILS OR TO ANNOUNCE THAT YOU WILL BE ATTENDING CALL;

DR HAGIT HADAR 01 5168492533

Please make very effort to come.


Finally, adopting an activist approach.

What's Black, Female and Reformed?

Here's the answer:

When Alysa Stanton officially becomes a rabbi next month, she'll be walking into history. Alysa Stanton, 45, will become the first African-American woman to be ordained as a rabbi next month.

She'll become the first African-American woman ever to be ordained as a rabbi and the first African-American rabbi to lead a majority white congregation, according to the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion.

Stanton, 45, will be ordained June 6 in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she received her master's degree from the HUC-JIR, which is the rabbinical school of the Reform movement. Then in August, she will begin her new job at Congregation Bayt Shalom in Greenville, North Carolina -- long a Conservative synagogue and now affiliated with both the Reform and Conservative movements.

Our answer to him.

Yenta

From a wedding story of two lesbians:

COFFEE was all Kate Adamick had in mind for her blind date with Kay Diaz. So Ms. Adamick did not anticipate proposing marriage. Especially not before their second date. The two women were introduced Feb. 4, 2008, via an e-mail message from their mutual friend, Jim Rogers, the New York State deputy attorney general in the social justice division, for which Ms. Diaz, 45, is a senior trial counsel.

“I’m no yenta, but I think this is going to work,” Ms. Adamick said Mr. Rogers told her in a phone call.

And what's a yenta?

Read on:

On Valentine’s Day the women exchanged photographs. “It’s an absolute bonus she is as beautiful as she is,” Ms. Adamick said. They scheduled their first phone call four days later. Lengthy, nightly conversations ensued.

“We’re both ranters,” Ms. Adamick said of their three-hour marathons that ran the gamut from political prognostications to romantic reveries.

Ranters will fit the bill.

The Memorial Ceremony for Avshalom Feinberg

Last week, I attended a ceremony of the planting of a palm tree shoot at the grave of Avshalom Feinberg.

On Avshalom:

Avshalom Feinberg (23 October 1889 – 20 January 1917) was one of the leaders of Nili, a Jewish spy network in Ottoman Palestine helping the British fight the Ottoman Empire during World War I.

Feinberg was born in Gedera, Palestine, then part of the Ottoman Empire, and studied in France. He returned to work with Aaron Aaronsohn at the agronomy research station in Atlit. Soon after the beginning of war, Aaronson founded the Nili underground along with his sister Sarah Aaronsohn, Feinberg and Yosef Lishansky. In 1915 Feinberg travelled to Egypt and made contact with British Naval Intelligence. In 1917, Feinberg again journeyed to Egypt, on foot. He was apparently killed by a Bedouin near the British front in Sinai, close to Rafah. His fate was unknown until after the 1967 Six-Day War when his remains were found under a palm tree that had grown from date seeds in his pocket to mark the spot where he lay.

Here are some photos:

Geula Cohen:

Education Minister Gidon Saar:

Jerusalem Meir Nir Barkat:

Chief Sefaradi Rabbi Shlomo Amar:

Have You Met Rebecca Rubin?

Rebecca is a brown-haired doll with hazel eyes.

The story:

Ms. Rubin, all of 18 inches tall, is the newest historical character doll to be released by American Girl, the company in Middleton, Wis., whose products have a rabidly devoted following among the female 7- to 12-year-old set. She is a 9-year-old girl living on the Lower East Side in 1914 with her Russian-Jewish immigrant parents, siblings and a grandmother known only as Bubbie...While other dolls represented ethnic backgrounds with distinctive visual characteristics, what constitutes a Jewish girl’s appearance is much more open for debate.

The goal is that no one be offended and that Jewish and non-Jewish little girls alike will want to play tenement house with their new toy, which costs $95 — plus more for accessories like a sideboard with a challah resting on it.

The preliminary research that led to Rebecca’s development started in 2000, said Shawn Dennis, the senior vice president for marketing. American Girl had wanted to do a doll focused on the immigrant experience. After work by two in-house historical researchers, and interviews with focus groups, it was decided to make the character Jewish.

“Russian-Jewish immigration, that group has an effect on the labor movement, that group has an effect on the burgeoning Hollywood entertainment business,” Ms. Dennis said. “We thought it would have the makings of what would be a relatable story to tell.”

My mother, and her two sisters, were born on the Lower East Side in 1919.

Diplomats Are Engaged in Foreign Affairs

Diplomats’ Same-Sex Partners to Get Benefits

WASHINGTON — The State Department will offer equal benefits and protections to same-sex partners of American diplomats, according to an internal memorandum Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton sent last week to an association of gay and lesbian Foreign Service officers.

Mrs. Clinton said the policy change addressed an inequity in the treatment of domestic partners and would help the State Department recruit diplomats, since many international employers already offered such benefits.

Here Come The Grapes

The Medad grapes are beginning:

Yonatan Razel At The Moskowitz Zionism Prize Ceremony