How Do You Define A "Jewish" State?

From Benjamin Netanyahu's speech:

...In 1947 when the United Nations proposed the Partition Plan for a Jewish state and an Arab state, the entire Arab world rejected the proposal, while the Jewish community accepted it with great rejoicing and dancing. The Arabs refused any Jewish state whatsoever, with any borders whatsoever...

...We need courage and sincerity not only on the Israeli side: we need the Palestinian leadership to rise and say, simply "We have had enough of this conflict. We recognize the right of the Jewish People to a state its own in this Land. We will live side by side in true peace." I am looking forward to this moment...the demand to settle the Palestinian refugees inside of Israel, contradicts the continued existence of the State of Israel as the state of the Jewish People...

...I spoke tonight about the first principle - recognition. Palestinians must truly recognize Israel as the state of the Jewish people...and if the Palestinians recognize Israel as the Jewish state, we are ready to agree to a real peace agreement...

So, how to you define a "Jewish state"?

Well, one practical method is the right to dwell, reside and live in the Jewish land, the Jewish homeland.

In Shiloh, in Hebron, Bet El, Elon Moreh, etc.

Obama Needs A Brain Scan?

Burt Prelutsky's opinion:

On a more serious front, I sincerely hope that when the president goes in for his annual check-up, the doctors at Bethesda will do a brain scan. Surely something must be terribly wrong with a man who seems to be far more concerned with a Jew building a house in Israel than with Muslims building a nuclear bomb in Iran.

(Kippah tip: Marc)

Obama Is "Firm" on Iran (Not Really)

A New Upload At My JPost Blog

Here.

He Took The High Road

The View from a West Bank Hilltop

“The water is out again,” Batsie Zar shouts to her husband, Itai, from the kitchen.

He quickly gets on his cell phone, trying to get one of the other young men in this isolated hilltop—one of about 100 illegal settlement outposts across the West Bank—to turn it back on.

If it’s not the water, it’s the creaky generator for electricity that fails, Itai Zar cheerfully complains as a pitched wind whistles against the window panes of his compact home in Havat Gilad. In the winter, a fire crackles in the wood stove Zar welded together himself to cook meals for the family.

...During a quieter period, Zar walks through the outpost, past chicken coops, grazing horses and young men driving a tractor through a wheat field. He points out the new houses built here in the six years since he and his wife first came, setting up a home in a shipping container.

The army evacuated them once; they promptly returned. The outpost was built as an act of revenge, Zar said, for the shooting death of his brother, Gilad, on a nearby road in May 2001. His brother had been the head of security for Karnei Shomron, a West Bank settlement where the brothers grew up.

There is a rustic, almost Old West feeling to the outpost. Overlooking a Palestinian village, Havat Gilad is accessible only by a dirt path off the main road. At the entrance, a wooden Star of David built into a pair of wooden posts welcomes visitors. One of the posts bears a faded orange ribbon left over from the campaign in 2005 against Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza Strip.

Some of the outpost’s scattering of homes are made of wooden siding. One even boasts a front porch. Another has a bright red roof.

The settlers here say they are proud they used Jewish labor to build their homes; most Jewish houses in the West Bank are built by Palestinian laborers. Private donations paid for their generators and water tanks.

Zar says an American Jewish donor provided $30,000 for initial infrastructure costs in Havat Gilad...

Read it all

Ironic Is Not The Word

At least 43 people have died in missile strikes by a US drone aircraft in a militant stronghold of Pakistan, a Taliban spokesman has told the BBC.

The people killed in South Waziristan had been attending the funeral of a militant commander who had been killed in an earlier [drone] strike.

What's going on there?

This:

There have been more than 35 US strikes since last August - killing over 340 people - and most have landed in the North and South Waziristan tribal regions.

Pakistan has been publicly critical of drone attacks, arguing that they kill civilians and fuel support for militants like Baitullah Mehsud.

And people get upset at Israel?

To me, Waziristan rhymes with Hamastan.



News source

A Correction Has Been Made

My good friend and fellow Soviet Jewry activist, Michael Sherbourne, has written me about a text in my "About Me" profile:

"I and my family . . . "
You may say "I, together with my family,..."
but if you use the word "and", you must write:-
"My family and I . . ."
The first person does not come first !
There is a famous story about Cardinal Wolsey
in which this High Priest wrote (in Latin):-
"Ego et Rex meus" and he was ticked off (most severely) by Henry VIII who said "Your King always comes first !"

Please forgive me for correcting your English but even at this late stage in my life I am still as pedantic a teacher as I always have been. Michael Sh.

Gays To Go Behind The Black Screen

Jerusalem's Gay community (here) is having a parade tomorrow. It'll kick off from the Liberty Bell Park.

Jerusalem Pride will take place on June 25th (thursday)
Assembly at Gan HaPa´amon – 4PM
Beginning of march – 5PM
Rally at Gan HaAtzmaut- 6PM
Please note that this year´s route will be inverted
Map and traffic arrangements can be found here

Here are snapshots of the park, along King David Street towards Emeq Refaim Street. As you'll notice, the area is blocked off by black canvass material.







See no evil???

Jabbing Judt

Tony Judt has generated some letters in response to his op-ed:

A Heated Argument About Israel

To the Editor:

“Fictions on the Ground,” by Tony Judt (Op-Ed, June 22), is the real work of fiction, past, present and future.

Israelis settled in the West Bank because it was deemed part of the historic home of the Jewish people and because the Arabs and the Palestinians rejected opportunities for peace with Israel after the Six-Day War in 1967. The territory in legal terms was undecided because the Palestinians from 1947 rejected the United Nations resolution dividing the land into Arab and Jewish states.

Saying — as Mr. Judt does — that Israel will never give up the settlements ignores the fact that former Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to dismantle 80 percent of the settlements at Camp David; that his successor, Ariel Sharon, dismantled all of the settlements in Gaza; and that Israeli leaders have repeatedly indicated that most of the settlements will go if there is peace, and those held will be part of a swap for Israeli territory.

Settlements are not an obstacle to peace if there is serious peacemaking, peace-teaching and compromise from the other side. As for fictions — as Mr. Judt has made clear in his writings, his problem is not with Israeli settlements, but with Israel’s very existence as a Jewish state.

Abraham H. Foxman
National Director
Anti-Defamation League
New York, June 22, 2009
•


To the Editor:

Tony Judt casts the road map for peace in the Middle East exclusively in terms of his lament for the disappearance of the idealistic kibbutzim of his youth and his fury with the policies of the right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet oddly, in the article, the outside world, including the Palestinians, doesn’t seem to exist.

In these difficult times the United States will have enough difficulty brokering a peace between Israel and the Palestinians — it can’t referee internal Israeli politics. That there are both idealistic and corrupt Israelis and Palestinians is a given. The real issue is how do we pragmatically get to a two-state solution.

Barbara Probst Solomon
New York, June 22, 2009

•

To the Editor:

Tony Judt misleads in many ways, among them by implying that the West Bank was captured by Israel in 1967 from some Palestinian country and not Jordan (which does not seek its return), and contending that Yigal Amir was inspired to assassinate Yitzhak Rabin by “rabbinical” influence at Bar-Ilan University (Mr. Amir has stated clearly otherwise).

Most egregious, though, is Mr. Judt’s amazing objection to demilitarizing any Palestinian state established in the West Bank, because it would “have no means of defending itself against aggression.” Considering how the Palestinians in a militarized Gaza responded to Israel’s withdrawal from that territory, raining thousands of rockets onto Israeli cities, for Israel to help establish a weaponized Arab country in its very heart, within range of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, would be to commit national suicide.

(Rabbi) Avi Shafran
Director of Public Affairs
Agudath Israel of America
New York, June 22, 2009

•

To the Editor:

Tony Judt didn’t answer my most basic question: Why does a future Palestinian state have to be free of Jews? If Arabs can live in Israel, why can’t Jews live in Palestine?

By refusing to answer this question, he and all the proponents of a settlement freeze turn the settlement argument into a facade. Because if the settlements don’t have to be removed, then why waste time arguing about what is a settlement, where are the boundaries, what is natural growth?

Making Jews, and only Jews, leave their homes is ethnic cleansing. Isn’t this exactly what Israel’s critics accuse it of?

Jonathan D. Reich
Lakeland, Fla., June 23, 2009

•

To the Editor:

Among the many fictions in Tony Judt’s article was his portrayal of Bar-Ilan University. In his remark about the university, Mr. Judt ignored the tremendous diversity of political opinion and religious observance at Bar-Ilan, Israel’s fastest-growing and largest university, with an academic community of 33,000 students.

Bar-Ilan is a leading force in unifying Israel’s religious and secular communities. More than 60 percent of its students identify as primarily secular. They are attracted by the university’s commitment to a first-class education in the sciences, humanities, law, engineering, business and the arts — all within a learning environment that fosters Jewish values and promotes dialogue among Israelis from different backgrounds.

Bar-Ilan University stresses the Jewish people’s ties to Israel for more than 3,000 years — a point that was emphasized in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s speech. He wanted to speak at a university that is grounded in the Zionist enterprise.

It is the respect that Israelis have for Bar-Ilan University and its efforts to unify Israeli society that led to Prime Minister Netanyahu’s decision to give his recent address at the university’s Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies.

Mark D. Medin
New York, June 22, 2009

The writer is executive vice president and chief executive, American Friends of Bar-Ilan University.

The Freeze Is Getting Colder

This story has me making two comments.

First:

The United States is among those monitoring settlement activity. The U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem said its officials regularly visit settlements and take photographs. A foreman at one construction project in Maaleh Adumim said Monday that U.S. officials had been there recently, walking around and taking pictures.

They have always been doing so. They use precious intelligence satellite time too.

Secondly:

Migrants boost Jewish settler numbers in West Bank

From "settlers" to "migrants".

And one observation:

Nearly 300,000 Israelis currently live in the West Bank and 180,000 in east Jerusalem, whose annexation by Israel in 1967 is not internationally recognized. That's more than double from 116,300 at the end of 1993, the year Israel and the Palestinians signed their landmark accord...

...Jerusalem-born Yaffa Shkibai, who has lived in Maaleh Adumim for 26 of her 50 years, has bought apartments for each of her four children here. "They should continue building and not be afraid of the U.S.," she said. "If we bend, they'll kick us out of here."

Such a stiff-necked people.

Who's On First? Or, Is That Last?

I'm breaking this story up, or is that I'm deconstructing it?

1)

Special US envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell has called off a meeting scheduled for Thursday in Paris with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the backdrop of the ongoing dispute over West Bank settlements.

2)

Defense Minister Ehud Barak is expected to leave for Washington for an unplanned meeting with Mitchell on Monday in order to mediate.

3)

The Prime Minister's Office. however, clarified Wednesday morning that Israel was the one to cancel the meeting.

According to a senior official on Netanyahu's entourage to Rome, "Israel is the one that called off the meeting with Mitchell due to the need to collect data and present them to him in an organized manner. The claim that the Americans canceled the meeting due to a disagreement is unfounded."

4)

According to the official, "The French confirmed this yesterday in a preparation talk ahead of the prime minister's arrival, and said that the Americans informed them that Mitchell would not arrive following an Israeli request."

5)

US State Department Spokesman Ian Kelly said that Mitchell's meeting with Netanyahu had been cancelled in order to give the special envoy an opportunity to meet with Barak. He added that Washington hoped to advance discussions on a variety of issues during Monday's meeting.

Does it make sense?

Divine Coincidence

Going around the grapevine:

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton fell and broke her right elbow, earlier this week. This, just after telling Israel that the US includes "East" Jerusalem as part of the "settlement freeze".

Doesn't that remind you of Psalms 135:5 -

"If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand be forgotten"?



P.S.

Bill already knows what the next verse is.

Remember Carter in Gush Etzion?

I blogged about his visit here.

The photographic proof:



Shaul Goldstein, Gush Etzion
Jimmy Carter, Atlanta

Flash: Flashpoint Flashed by Jewish Minister

Flash:

Israeli Public Security Minister Yitzhak Aharonovitch visited the flashpoint Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif compound in Jerusalem's old city Tuesday, setting off a storm of protest among Muslims, who called the tour a 'provocation.'

Sheikh Azzam Khatib, the director of the Jerusalem Waqf authority, which administers the compound, said the visit was carried out without coordination with his office.

Arab-Israeli legislator Taleb a-Sanaa said the two-hour visit was 'a dangerous, pathetic provocation' whose purpose was to 'inflame the area.'

A spokesman for Aharonvitch was quoted by the Jerusalem Post as saying that the tour was 'completely professional' and there was 'no special reason for the timing, nothing unusual.'

Aharonovitch, a member of the ultra-nationalist Yisrael B'teinu party and whose ministerial responsibilities include policing, was accompanied on his visit by Police Commissioner David Cohen and Jerusalem Police Chief Aharon Franco.

and this addition:

Knesset Member Michael Ben Ari (National Union) said in response, "The hooligan behavior of the Waqf members and Knesset Member El-Sana, and the incitement against the internal security minister, threaten the rule of law in Israel. Those who try to keep the minister away from the Temple Mount plan to keep Israel away from it."

And despite all this "provocation" and "lack of coordination", nothing happened. And why should anything have happened? Don't Jews have rights?

More:

During the 90-minute visit, Aharonovitch entered the mosque, which sits in a complex in the Old City known to Muslims as al-Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) and to Jews as the Temple Mount. The area also houses the gilded Dome of the Rock shrine.

..."The intention of the visit was to see how the police would deploy in case of an emergency," Aharonovitch's spokesman Tal Harel said. He said the visit was coordinated with Muslim custodians of the site, known as the Waqf, or endowment.

"We went everywhere. We were accompanied by the Waqf, who were fully aware of our presence, and this was planned in coordination with them well ahead of the visit," Harel added.

The Palestinian-appointed Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, Mohammed Hussein, said the visit was not coordinated in advance.

"He does not have the right to visit al-Aqsa because it is an Islamic site and not a Jewish site, and it could ignite violence because the visit provokes the feelings of Muslims... It is an assault on an Islamic place," Hussein said.

By the way:

According to Ben-Ami, Israel tried to find a solution for Jerusalem that would be “a division in practice...that didn't look like a division;” that is, Israel was willing to compromise on the issue, but needed a face-saving formula. The Palestinians, however, had no interest in helping the Israelis; to the contrary, they wanted to humiliate them.” Nevertheless, Ben-Ami said Israel dropped its refusal to divide Jerusalem and accepted “full Palestinian sovereignty” on the Temple Mount and asked the Palestinians only to recognize the site was also sacred to Jews.[1a]

- - -
[1a] Saul Singer, ”Camp David, Real and Invented,“ Middle East Quarterly, (Spring 2002).

Sullivan Sullies

Andrew Sullivan has an opinion on Jewish residential communities, like the one in which I live:

I can't see any conceivable peace in the region without an end to Israel's occupation of the West Bank and dismantling of the settlements. But it remains quite clear that Israel has absolutely no intention of doing this.

An end?

Andrew, sir, how did it begin?

Did Jewish "settlements" exist in Judea and Samaria between 1948 and 1967?

Could they have been the cause of the Six Days War?

Could they have been the cause of the fedayeen raids and infiltrations between 1949 and 1956?

Could they have been the reason Arafat set up the Palestine Liberation Organization in 1964?

No, I don't think so. They simply didn't exist.

The last Jewish villages in that area were wiped out and ethnically cleansed - by Arabs. Neveh Yaakov, Atarot, Jewish Quarter in Old Jerusalem, Bet HaAravah, Kfar Etzion, Masu'ot Yitzhak, Revadim and Ein Tzurim, to mention a few. So, it couldn't have been "settlements" that caused the war.

And, maybe it was the Israeli "occupation" of the "West Bank"? Of Gaza?

Nope. The "West Bank" was illegally annexed by Jordan in April 1950, thereby, incidentally, screwing the Arabs calling themselves "Palestinians" royally, if you'll excuse the pun. And Gaza was ruled by an Egyptian military governship, thus denying those Arabs any independence.

And Israel?

Israel was suffering from Arab terror against its civilians without planting down "settlements" or being an "occupier".

So, Sully, why is there no peace?

Why did the Arabs riot, pogrom, kill, rampage and rape in 1920, 1921, 1929, 1936-1939?

Why did they reject the 1947 UN Partition Decision?

Could it be that no Jew anywhere was to be tolerated?

Could it be that no peace is possible?

Could it be that dismantling the Jewish communities is no solution to the real problem the Arabs have we Jews seeking their rights to reconstitute their National Home? That your solution does not match the problem?

Mr. Sullivan, I'd like to hear from you, if only because I and my family are directly in the line of fire, living as I do in Shiloh.

The Real Right Word

I guess I didn't name my blog MyRightWord for nothing:

Research shows that people prefer to be addressed in their right ear as they will find it easier to process the information and are therefore more likely to perform a task.

Known as the "right ear advantage", scientists believe it is because information received through the right ear is processed by the left hand side of the brain which is more logical and better at deciphering verbal information than the right side of the brain.

What do you know?

Attention Irgun and Lehi Veterans

Reported:

A group of elderly Kenyans allegedly tortured and assaulted during the repression of their country's independence movement in the 1950s is to present a letter to No 10 tomorrow morning calling on the British government to launch an investigation into their treatment.

Today three men and two women, who say they were variously beaten, raped and castrated during the Kenyan "emergency" from 1952 to 1960, lodged a claim for compensation against the government at the high court and demanded an official apology. Tomorrow, they will ask Gordon Brown for a meeting to discuss their position.

The five are veterans of the Mau Mau movement, which rose up against the British colonial administration. Their lawyer, Martin Day, said he believed they had a good chance of success.

And

The Foreign Office said: "It is, of course, right that those who feel they have a case are free to take it to the courts. But as we have previously indicated to the solicitors, we expect to contest the cases on questions around liability and limitations...

No Fashion Comment

Britain has ordered the expulsion of two Iranian diplomats, in a tit-for-tat response to the expulsion of two British diplomats from Tehran.

How can you be sure it's tit-for-tat is they're dressed like this?



Or like this?




Of course, Muslim women can make another fashion statement like this past week:





Qatari Princess, Mozah bint Nasser Al-Missned, who wore a turban to cover her hair, with France's Carla Bruni Sarkozy

and



Queen Rania of Jordan with Sarah Brown

Just vs. Unjust

US President Barack Obama has strongly condemned the "unjust actions" of Iran in clamping down on election protests.

Hmmm.

So just violence is okay.

And who decides what's just?

Obama or Ahmadinejad?

Shiloh Recently

Photographs taken by my cousin-in-law, Chaim Fischgrund, last Friday, on the occasion of my wife's 60th birthday:

a) looking south from the Tel towards the renewed community village of Shiloh:


b) looking south-east at the "Yeshiva Hill":


c) yours truly at the Tel, deconstructing the text of I Samuel 4:

d) yours truly talking about a Second Temple period burial site:


e) looking east towards the eastern neighborhood of Qaryut, a nearby Arab village: