Second Printing Launch of The Eldad Haggadah

The first printing of the Eldad Haggadah was sold out last year and os another 2000 have been printed.

Yesterday, we had a brief ceremony to launch it at the office of the Knesset Speaker, MK Reuven Rivlin.

MK Arieh Eldad presenting Ruby with the book:

Ruby read out a portion of one of Eldad's articles recalling a Pessach Seder at Latrun Detention Camp in 1946:


In the red shirt is Yehudah Etzion who edited the Haggadah:

Ruby responding to a remark by Yehudah:

From left: Roni, the illustartor (and daughter of Arieh, granddaughter of Israel), Arieh's wife, Arieh, Ruby and Yehudah (back to camera):

Wife and daughter of Arieh:

MKs Uri Ariel and Yaakov Katz, National Union Faction, with faction secretary Uri Bank:

Did Joe Biden Say Anything About Construction?

Up We Go, Demographically

The West Bank settler Jewish revenant population in Judea and Samaria grew almost three times faster than that of the country as a whole in 2009. However, the 4.9 percent increase was the lowest in years, according to data posted on the Central Bureau of Statistics Web site.

According to the CBS, the Jewish population in Judea and Samaria grew from 290,400 on December 31, 2008, to 301,200 at the end of 2009.

These numbers do not include Jews living in east Jerusalem...Settlers Jews living in Judea and Samaria represented 4.1% of Israel’s population...

In 2009, the settler Jewish population grew by 10,700 people, but statistics for births in that year are not yet available on the CBS data base...

Source

Is Marijuana Kosher for Pessach?

You never know what is out there in the blogosphere:-

Marijuana

...R. Yitzhak Ya'akov Weiss (1902-1989), in Shu't Minhat Yitzhak (vol. 3 no. 138(b)), discusses cannabis on Passover. Specifically, he is dealing with two foods, cannabis and cotton-seed oil, but we will focus on cannabis. Prior to engaging in this discussion we should note that the cannabis plant produces three things: (1) hemp which is fibrous and can be used to make clothing, and was commonly used to make strong rope; (2) hemp seed, which is used in food and in some homeopathic remedies; and (3) as a narcotic referred to as marijuana. [See also Y. Felix, Marot ha-Mishna, Jerusalem: 1977, p. 131; and Z. Amar, "Hashish and the Hashishim in Eretz Yisrael and Syria During the Medieval Period," in Ariel 120 (1997), pp. 277-282.]

R. Weiss first notes that cannabis shouldn't be questionable at all for Passover as Rambam, in the laws of prohibited mixing of seeds, labels cannabis as a vegetable and not kitniyot. However, R. Weiss points out that there is an internal problem with the Rambam, one that many of commentaries on Rambam have dealt with, but not to R. Weiss's satisfaction.

It should be noted that one commentary, Radbaz (1479-1589 or 1463-1573), in his discussion of this issue makes it apparent that he is aware of cannabis's narcotic use. He explains that "in Egypt they eat [smoke?] cannabis and become high and those who do report that it makes them very happy . . . in other places they use cannabis to make clothing like linen."


Read more.

Enough Already!

Hey, let's go easy on the chumrot.

I just had lox this morning at Holy Beigel.

This:-

Bagel lovers tell rabbis: Don't pick on our lox

A group of ultra-Orthodox rabbis is waging a schmear campaign against a staple of the Jewish diet: lox. Smoked salmon should no longer be considered kosher, they say, because the fish often contain parasitic worms.

But some Jewish New Yorkers aren't taking the lox-down lightly.

"What is a bagel and cream cheese without the lox? It's nothing," kvetched Josh Loberfeld, 29, of Riverdale, a regular at the Mr. Bagel eatery near his Bronx home.

The ban was announced last month when a small group of rabbis decided that a tiny parasitic worm, called anisakis, rendered its host fish nonkosher.

Chevra Mehadrin, a group of hard- line Orthodox rabbis in Monsey, NY, released a list of newly forbidden fish.

But many Orthodox rabbis are blasting the group for hysterics.

"This issue has been resolved in Jewish law for hundreds of years already," said Rabbi Moshe Elefant of the Orthodox Union.

Wonder what my friend Yehiel has posted?

A Letter of Mine in the Irish Independent

In response to some drivel passing as historical fact, I corrected him:



Trouble reading?

Here:

Rosh Chodesh Prayer in Jericho

Shaharit Prayer on Rosh Hodesh Nissan in the Shalom Al Israel synagogue in the holy city of Jericho, where the Children of Israel crossed the Jordan, where the first Brit Mila in the Land of Israel was performed. Here the angel told Joshua "Remove your shoes from your feet, because this place is holy".

On Tuesday 1st Nissan (16th March 2010), departure from the community of "Mevo'ot Yericho" (with IDF escort) at 7:30 AM estimated return at 10:30 AM. A bus will be provided from Binynei HaUma in Jerusalem at 6:30 AM.

* Possibility of boarding the bus at Beit Hogla (near the old Beit HaArava junction – take Highway 1 from Jerusalem to the Jordan Valley, then turn north on Highway 90 and then travel 2km to the Mul Nevo army base).
* Possibility of arranging a lift with cars going to the event from central Israel via Highway 5 in the Shomron – phone Yoni.
* Cost: 50 NIS for youth and Yeshiva students: 25 NIS
* Advance booking required: Erna, tel 052-8699300, Yoni, tel 052-3527313.

The Sullying Continues

Andrew Sullivan, the not-so-crypto antisemite of The Atlantic, attacks Maureen Dowd on her perception of Israel and the conflict the Arabs have foisted upon us.

Here's an excerpt from his blog piece:-

Nothing illustrates better the total bizarreness of the US-Israel relationship. No one in Washington - apart from a few Likudniks and Palinite end-timers - actually supports more settlements or any settlements i [sic] the West Bank. At the same time, Washington exercizes a UN veto to protect Israel from international law, funnels a vast amount of foreign and military aid to the country, helped finance the pulverization of Gaza last year, provides absurd international cover for Israel's 150 nukes, has worked tirelessly to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear capacity, and on and on.

In return? Fuck you, Obama. To which the overwhelming response in Washington is: Obama screwed up.

There is something completely awry here and it has rarely been more evident than in the last twelve months.

Funny that the infamous Baker phrase of "Fuck the Jews" is now applied to the Jews who are being screwed by Obama. Andrew, while you harp on the "settlements" theme, please do not forget that east Jerusalem neighborhoods are also included in the State Department denouncements. And that has mobilized much more than Likudniks (there really are Likudniks in Washington?) and Palinites. Israel has a very strong support group which actually does view the retention of Judea and Samaria as crucial.

And using verbs like "funneling" to describe the aid Israel gets? Nasty imagery there. Do all recipients of foreign aid merit a funnel? Or maybe some of it is quite well deserved?

Israel is most definitely not "protected from international law", Andrew but from an immoral gang of dictatorships who have overtaken the functions of legality in the international community who twist those instruments in a biased and irrational way.

The Obama has "worked tirelessly" on the Iran issue? Oh, please. Are you functionally incapable of employing basic cerebral tools that you know stoop to propagandizing, shilling for your ideological heroes?

This is not punditry. Even a putz could write better.

I Had A Bit Role Last Night in London

I was informed that at last night's discussion panel, sponsored by the New Israel Fund at the London Jewish Book Week, - which assured its balance, pluralism of opinion and fairness (not really) - whose participants were Francesca Klug, David Newman and Daniel Levy, this happened:

The meeting was not too bad...500 people there. Francesca Klug praised the Goldstone Report. [Jonathan] Freedland tried to wind them up by quoting from your blog about the meeting and saying 'Yisrael Medad - a Settler".

And what had I blogged?

Read it.

Fame.

(Just kidding. But I enjoy annoying my ideological opponents, especially when they know they are in the wrong.)

A Story About Settlers

No, not Israelis in Judea and Samaria.

Europeans in North America.

Here's how it goes:

This is Ray Freeman with the MAKING OF A NATION, a V-O-A Special English program about the history of the United States.

VOICE ONE:

Our story today is a sad one. It is the story of a clash of peoples, religions, ideas, and cultures. It is a story of strongly held ideas and a lack of compromise.

It is the story of the relations between Europeans and the natives who had lived for thousands of years in the area we now call North America.

VOICE TWO:

Many different native American groups lived on the east coast of what would become United States. They spoke many different languages. Some were farmers, some were hunters. Some fought many wars, others were peaceful.

These groups are called tribes. Their names are known to most Americans...the Senecas, the Mohawks, the Seminole, the Cherokee to name only a few.

VOICE ONE:

These tribes had developed their own cultures many years before the first European settlers arrived. Each had a kind of religion, a strong spiritual belief. Many tribes shared a similar one. The Indians on the east coast shared a highly developed system of trade. Researchers say different tribes of native Americans traded goods all across the country.

VOICE TWO:

The first recorded meetings between Europeans and the natives of the east coast took place in the Fifteen Hundreds. Fishermen from France and the Basque area of Spain crossed the Atlantic Ocean. They searched for whales along the east coast of North America. They made temporary camps along the coast. They often traded with the local Indians.

The Europeans often paid Indians to work for them. Both groups found this to be a successful relationship. Several times different groups of fishermen tried to establish a permanent settlement on the coast, but the severe winters made it impossible. These fishing camps were only temporary.

VOICE ONE:

The first permanent settlers in New England began arriving in Sixteen-Twenty. They wanted to live in peace with the Indians. They needed to trade with them for food. The settlers also knew that a battle would result in their own, quick defeat because they were so few in number.

Yet, problems began almost immediately. Perhaps the most serious was the different way the American Indians and the Europeans thought about land. This difference created problems that would not be solved during the next several hundred years...

And we get a religious clash, too:

the Indians did not understand that the settlers were going to keep the land. This idea was foreign to the Indians. It was like to trying to own the air, or the clouds.

As the years passed, more and more settlers arrived, and took more and more land. They cut down trees. They built fences to keep people and animals out. They demanded that the Indians stay off their land.

VOICE ONE:

Religion was another problem between the settlers and the Indians. The settlers in New England were very serious about their Christian religion. They thought it was the one true faith and all people should believe in it. They soon learned that the Indians were not interested in learning about it or changing their beliefs.

Many settlers came to believe that Native Americans could not be trusted because they were not Christians. The settler groups began to fear the Indians. They thought of the Indians as a people who were evil because they had no religion. The settlers told the Indians they must change and become Christians. The Indians did not understand why they should change anything.

VOICE TWO:

The European settlers failed to understand that the Native American Indians were extremely religious people with a strong belief in unseen powers. The Indians lived very close to nature. They believed that all things in the universe depend on each other. All native tribes had ceremonies that honored a creator of nature. American Indians recognized the work of the creator of the world in their everyday life...

No wonder the term "settler" is so important for those hostile to the presence of revenant Jews in their historic homeland.

New Haveil Havalim - #259

Here.

One Hundred Years Old

Last night, Sunday evening, we marked the 100gth birthday of Professor Ben-Tzion Netanyahu, scholar, historian, editor of the Encyclopedia Ivrit, essayist, publicist and activist, father of Yoni z"l, Benjamin and Ido.

The event took place at the Begin Center. Some 350 guests heard and saw Former Supreme Court President Justice Meir Shamgar, Jabotinsky Institute Director Yossi Achimeir, Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, President Shimon Peres and Professor Yirmiyahu Yuval make remarks.

Professor BZ Netanyahu and son, Iddo, entering the Center:



Justice Shamgar:



Prime Minister Netanyahu:



President Shimon Peres:



Daughter-in-law and personal friend, Dafna Netanyahu:



(Further report here)


Besides exchanging greetings over the years, I had one true BZ Netanyahu experience.

When "Pillar of Fire" came out, the multi-part TV documentary on the history of Zionism, the role of the nationalist wing, the Revisionists, Jabotinsky, Irgun and Lechi was, of course, mis- and underrepresented. Some eight professors of the Right, including Netanyahu, Joseph Nedava, Israel Eldad and others had published a letter in Hebrew and the English version was composed by me, a cross between 80% translation and 20% adaption.

I gave it in and was told that I had to obtain Prof. Netanyahu's approval. I went to his home on HaPortzim Street in Jerusalem, was shown into the enormous library/study, and gingerly placed the page and half double-spaced English before him.

I don't think it took longer than an hour or so but we finished after he went over every word, balanced various nuances and alternatives, made some corrections, altered some punctuation and added and subtracted.

All and all, a normal Netanyhau editing experience.

Wall Posters

Pizza Lahit of 44 Yirmiyahu St. is no longer under the kashrut supervision of the Eidah Hareidit as is also Pizza Shai, 1 Amos.


This one expresses extreme upsetness with the prohibiting of private cars approaching the Kotel (in other words, very important Admorim have to walk a bit):

And Where Is Sonia?

From "President Peres’ Schedule Mar. 7th-11th":-

Monday, March 8th, 2010

17:45 The President will attend the women’s basketball league championship game and will present the winning team with the trophy.

-Basketball Stadium, Rishon LeZion. Contact: Israeli Basketball Association, Moti Aksmit 054-8040084

But where's his wife, Sonia?

The Liberal Twist

Someone is angry at Marty Peretz:

The right kind of bigotry
By Glenn Greenwald

From the long-time Editor-in-Chief and owner of The New Republic, this morning:

There were moments--long moments--during the Iraq war when I had my doubts. Even deep doubts. Frankly, I couldn’t quite imagine any venture requiring trust with Arabs turning out especially well. This is, you will say, my prejudice. But some prejudices are built on real facts, and history generally proves me right. Go ahead, prove me wrong.

The point here is so obvious that it makes itself. In the bolded sentence, replace the word "Arabs" with "Jews" and ask yourself: how much time would elapse before the author of such a sentence would be vehemently scorned and shunned by all decent people, formally condemned by a litany of organizations, and have his livelihood placed in jeopardy? Or replace the word "Arabs" in that sentence with "Jews" or "blacks" or "Latinos" or even "whites" or virtually any other identifiable demographic group and ask yourself this: how many people would treat a magazine edited and owned by such a person as a remotely respectable or mainstream publication (notwithstanding the several decent journalists employed there)? Yet Marty Peretz spits out the most bigoted sentiments of this type -- and he's been doing this for years...

Reading From Left to...Left

Here is a short paragraph describing the situation of the Shimon HaTzaddik compound:

Sheikh Jarrah is a Palestinian neighborhood north of the Old City of Jerusalem. On the western side of the neighborhood, is an area of 18 dunams known as the Shimon Hatsadik compound, in name of the great high priest from the Second Temple era, who is buried there according to some traditions. A small Jewish community that settled in the late 19th century around the tomb was dispersed gradually beginning in the 1920s and 1930s and through 1948.

That was from Ir Amim's site.

Now you know what the problem is?

The Jews went into dispersion.

Of course, they were ethnically cleansed from the neighborhood which wasn't an Arab neighborhood other than a few houses built at about the same time the Jews began constructed there.

Lie. Deceive. Laundry your language (as the Hebrew phrase goes).

And Who Started the Temple Mount Violence This Time?

Reuters provides half the answer, as usual:-

A Reuters journalist at the al-Aqsa mosque compound, which also houses the landmark, gilded Dome of the Rock and is known to Jews as the Temple Mount, said violence began after weekly prayers when youths holding a protest against Israel threw rocks at police who had entered the walled area. Police responded with stun grenades and said they arrested five people in the clashes.

In all, 35 people were hurt -- 18 police officers, according to a police spokesman, and 17 protesters, according to medics

.

They entered only after rocks had been tossed.

Purim on Har Habayit

Here's a picture of a group leaving the Temple Mount last Monday via the Chain Gate:



More pictures of the Hebron community ascent can be found here.

Darn That Snow

Reported collateral snow damage:

The storms have knocked down portions of the ritual boundary known as an eruv in Jewish communities in Silver Spring, Md., Center City Philadelphia, the Upper West Side of Manhattan, Monsey in suburban New York, and Teaneck and Passaic in New Jersey.

Well, at least Holliswood is holding up.

Who Really Needs The Couch?

Carlo Strenger, the chairman of the clinical graduate psychology program at Tel Aviv University, the author of “The Designed Self”, has a silly op-ed piece in the New York Times on how to reach peace between Jews and Arabs.

It's message:

...it is clear to me as a psychologist that the two sides are steeped in collective trauma, for which the only prescription is diplomatic therapy.

Now, just who needs the couch?

That Temple Mount Pretext of 2000

Mr. Yousef wasn't fully activated until the outbreak of the second Intifada in September 2000. A few months before at Camp David, the late PLO chief Yasser Arafat had turned down the Israeli offer of statehood on 90% of the West Bank with East Jerusalem as the capital. According to Mr. Yousef, Arafat decided he needed another uprising to win back international attention. So he sought out Hamas's support through Sheikh Yousef, writes his son, who accompanied him to Arafat's compound. Those meetings took place before the Palestinian authorities found a pretext for the second Intifada. It came when future Prime Minister Ariel Sharon visited the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, site of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock. Mr. Yousef's account helps to set straight the historical record that the uprising was premeditated by Arafat.

Source


And here it comes again:

The Organization of the Islamic Conference on Saturday called the fighting one day earlier between Israel Police officers and Muslim worshippers on the Temple Mount "a sacrilegious act of profanation of the holy Islamic site," according to French news agency AFP. Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, secretary-general of the Jeddah-based pan-Islamic body, called for international intervention to end what he described as "Israeli aggression."

and this:

Israeli police stormed the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif plateau after Muslims who participated in Friday prayers threw stones at Jews praying at the Wailing Wall underneath the compound. Some 50 policemen entered the open-air plateau, which houses the al-Aqsa Mosque, and fired stun grenades to disperse at the crowd. Around 60 of the several hundred protesters were treated for teargas inhalation, near 15 policemen were slightly injured and five of them taken to hospital.

Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas said Friday's events could damage the chances of resuming the peace process.

Karin the Avenging Israeli Academic

Found here:

On June 25, 2010, Professor Joseph Weiler, editor of the European Journal of International Law, will stand trial in a French criminal court for running a mildly negative book review on a journal-associated website.

The book in question is The Trial Proceedings of the International Criminal Court by the Israeli law professor Dr. Karin N. Calvo-Goller. According to the reviewer the main part of the book “simply restates the…relevant parts of the ICC Statute.” This rehashing, he adds, is particularly unproductive since a large part of the volume consists of a reprint of the Statute itself.

The author, Dr. Calvo-Goller, disagrees, and has instigated a case of criminal libel against the editor, Professor Weiler. According to Dr. Calvo-Goller:

[The] review…contains false factual statements which the author of the review, a professor of criminal law, could not reasonably believe to be true. Professor Weigend’s review is libellous. It may cause harm to my professional reputation and academic promotion.

Dr. Calvo-Goller also contends that the review is an insult to those who took the time to read and comment on earlier drafts of her book. And she notes that the very same book received a positive review from Judge Kai Ambos, who, she pointedly observes, she has never met...she notes, “the extent of that freedom ends where its exercise damages the reputation of an individual.”

Professor Weiler responded at great length to Dr. Calvo-Goller’s letter, and to a follow-up letter, defending the good faith and integrity of the reviewer, rejecting the notion that a critical book review constitutes an insult to advance readers, observing that it is not uncommon for a single book to receive both negative and positive reviews, and suggesting that the question of what constitutes a “rehash” might be a matter at least partly of opinion and not of clearcut fact. He invited Dr. Calvo-Goller to respond on the website and passed on her objections to the original reviewer with an invitation to read them and modify his review, an invitation which was not accepted. A year later, Professor Weiler was summoned to appear before a French Examining Judge, and his criminal trial was set for June 25.

Ghoulish Haircutter

Gaza's Islamic Hamas government on Thursday banned men from working in women's hair salons, the latest step in its campaign to impose strict Islamic customs on Gaza's 1.5 million people...

The latest measure irked one of the victims of the ban. "Next thing you know, they will ban doctors from treating women, and will only let women treat women," said Barakat al- Ghoul, a 44-year-old hairdresser. "Tomorrow, they will ban everything."

Al-Ghoul, who has cut women's hair for 26 years, said a ban would be devastating. He said he has no other way of making a living.

Islamic tradition forbids women from showing their hair to men who are not their husbands or blood relatives. Until now, though, exceptions were made for the eight known male hairdressers in women's salons in Gaza City.

No Scotch in Scotland If In Medina

Mixed up by the title?

Well, the news is in, you can't drink a l'chayim in Medina:-

Bar slammed over 'disrespectful' name change ~ Dundee pub renamed 'Medina Bar and Grill' is criticised by Muslim groups, who say it is disrespectful to their faith.

A Scottish bar that has undergone a re-branding exercise has caused outrage among the local Muslim community who say it is disrespectful to the Islamic faith. The Dundee establishment, which was formerly known as Bar Rio, has recently reopened as Medina Bar and Grill in the city's Nethergate.

But the move has angered local adherents to the Islamic faith, which discourages the drinking of alcohol among its followers.

Medina is a city in the Hejaz region of western Saudi Arabia and is the second holiest site in the Islamic faith behind Mecca. However, it is also a term used for a market or bustling trading centre in north African cities. One senior member of Dundee's Central Mosque said the use of the Medina name in a place serving alcohol was "disrespectful".

Mohammed Bashir Chohan, chairman of the Dundee Islamic Society, said: "People are upset about it because Medina is a holy city in Islam. It does hurt when somebody misuses the name, especially if they are going to sell liquor."

The owner should have claimed the name is Hebrew, for state. Which is is.

Cool

Did you know that in T. E. Lawrence’s Seven Pillars of Wisdom, 1935, the first paragraph of the introduction to Book 1, Chapters VIII to XVI, reads:

I had believed these misfortunes of the Revolt to be due mainly to faulty leadership, or rather to the lack of leadership, Arab and English. So I went down to Arabia to see and consider its great men. The first, the Sherif of Mecca, we knew to be aged. I found Abdulla too clever, Ali too clean, Zeid too cool.

Reflections on Blogging: To Avoid 'Nothing'

“I sometimes feel I have nothing to say, [and] I often want to communicate this”

– Gordon Burn quotes his friend Damien Hirst as saying (in Sex & Violence, Death & Silence, reviewed by Nancy Campbell, January 29).

“I have nothing to say / and I am saying it / and that is poetry / as I need it”

- (John Cage, Lecture on Nothing, 1959).

Source

Is Netanyahu Doomed to Repeat History?

Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the Cabinet meeting today and said:

I welcome the developments that, I hope, will lead to the start of talks upon [former] Senator George Mitchell's visit to Israel next week. He is doing very important work, which we appreciate. We welcome the start of talks, even if they are proximity talks.

In the end, our goal is to try and reach a peace agreement with our Palestinian neighbors via direct talks, but we have always said that we do not necessarily insist on this format. If this is what is necessary to start the process – Israel is ready. I think that there is international recognition that this Government wants to start a peace process and I tell you that we also want to complete it."

"Proximity talks"?

As we can readily recall,

...the British called for a conference of Arabs and Jews to discuss various scenarios. The St. James Conference, also known as the Round Table Conference of February 7 - March 17, 1939, brought together Arab and Jewish delegations, each with their own internal differences.

On the Jewish side, both Zionist and non-Zionist groups within the Jewish Agency organized under the leadership of Chaim Weizmann. The Arabs were led by the mufti Hajj Amin al-Husseini, and included the more moderate party of the well-known al-Nashashibi family. In addition to the Arabs of Palestine, the Arabs of Egypt, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Transjordan, and Yemen were also represented.

From the start, the conference was fraught with difficulties. The Arab delegates refused to meet directly and formally with the Jewish representatives, since they did not recognize the legitimacy of the Jewish Agency. As a result, the British were forced to negotiate with each delegation individually.

British proposals at the conference were met with resistance on both sides. Since no agreement was reached, the British formed its own policy. As they had suggested at the conference, only 75,000 Jews would be allowed to immigrate over a period of five years. This quota would be filled to capacity only if economic conditions permitted it. Another provision authorized the regulation of further land purchases in Palestine by Jews.

These policies were stated formally in the White Paper of 1939, resulting in a storm of protests by Zionists throughout the world.

There were even some who think that the conference was no more that a calculated plan to enable Britain to present itself as an "honest broker" -- sound familiar? -- although she was in fact already committed to a conciliatory policy towards the Arabs, in face of the upcoming Second World War. Specifically, Britain knew the Arabs would reject the idea of partition -- and needed a forum to demonstrate that it was an unworkable option before officially relinquishing the option.

If you open Shmuel Dothan's "A Land in the Balance" to pages 254-259, you'll learn that as early as September 1938 the Zionist leadership was sliding into despondency as they realized that the British had "decided against the Zionist cause". Weizmann, having met with the Colonial Secretary Malcolm MacDonald fiver time over the summer, realized that

Britain could not have the Arabs turning to the Germans and Italians in protest over its pro-Zionist policy.

Simply put, the British had decided to establish an Arab state. And today, the Americans haveve decided again to do that, something to be called "Palestine". A Jewish national home in the area was to be evaded.

Today, Israel is in the territory originally assigned by international law to become the reconstituted Jewish national home and again, as 71 years ago, we have a "friend' that wishes to eject us from that land. Then what was to be be halted was Jewish immigration and now, it's the residency of Jews in the Land of Israel that is to be stopped.

The Arabs that came to St. James Palace simply refused to engage in face-to-face negotiations and their delegation included as we saw, politicians from five other Arab countries just as today, it was the Arab foreign minsters council that allowed Abbas to go 'forward'.

If Netanyahu yields on this issue, will he find himself in the position of Weizmann - crying over the failure to achieve a basic Zionist goal?

Clouds and Hills

Hot Light Rail

Social Media Failure for IDF

Israeli Raid Canceled After Facebook Leak
By ROBERT MACKEY

Updated | 4:12 p.m. Israel’s Army Radio reported on Wednesday that a raid on suspected militants in the West Bank planned for Wednesday was called off by the country’s military because a soldier posted details of the operation on Facebook.

The Israeli newspaper Haaretz explained that the soldier posted a status update letting friends know that his unit was preparing to go to a West Bank village near Ramallah: “On Wednesday we clean up Qatanah, and on Thursday, god willing, we come home,” the soldier wrote.

Haaretz added that the soldier, who has been relieved of combat duty, “also disclosed the name of the combat unit, the place of the operation and the time it will take place.” After noticing his indiscretion, Haaretz reports, “Facebook friends then reported him to military authorities.”

According an Associated Press report from Jerusalem, “the soldier was court-martialed and sentenced to 10 days in prison.” The A.P. adds:

A military statement added that it is cracking down on soldiers’ use of social networking Web sites and has launched a campaign warning of the dangers of sharing military information online. “Uploading classified information to social networks or any Web site exposes the information to anyone who wishes to view it, including foreign and hostile intelligence services,” the military statement read. “Hostile intelligence agents scan the Internet with an eye toward collecting information on the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), which may undermine operational success and imperil IDF forces.” [...]

What an idiot.

Dowdy Dowd Does Israel

Maureen Dowd, arch-progressive columnist of the NYTimes, takes on the Middle East and religion.

She starts off alright:-

The Middle Eastern foreign minister was talking about enlightened “liberal” trends in his country, contrasting that with the benighted “extreme” conservative religious movement in a neighboring state.

But the wild thing was that the minister was Prince Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia — an absolute Muslim monarchy ruling over one of the most religiously and socially intolerant places on earth — and the country he deemed too “religiously determined” and regressive was the democracy of Israel.

but then allows the Saudi prince to prattle:

“We are breaking away from the shackles of the past,” the prince said...What is happening in Israel is the opposite; you are moving into a more religiously oriented culture and into a more religiously determined politics and to a very extreme sense of nationhood,”...“The religious institutions in Israel are stymieing every effort at peace,” said the prince, wearing a black-and-gold robe and tinted glasses.

and then assumes a position of perceptive punditry:-

Israel is a secular society that some say is growing less secular with religious militants and the chief rabbinate that would like to impose a harsh and exclusive interpretation of Judaism upon the entire society. Ultra-Orthodox rabbis are fighting off the Jewish women who want to conduct their own prayer services at the Western Wall. (In Orthodox synagogues, some men still say a morning prayer thanking God for not making them women.)

The word progressive, of course, is highly relative when it comes to Saudi Arabia. (Wahhabism, anyone?) But after spending 10 days here, I can confirm that, at their own galactically glacial pace, they are chipping away at gender apartheid and cultural repression.

Well, the Women of the Wall must be happy.

As Saudi Arabia.

Would That Israel Receive The Sympathy That This BBC Presenter Did

Kristian Digby, a BBC presenter, is dead.

Friends and colleagues of his paid tribute to him:-

Dominic Littlewood, who was Mr Digby's co-presenter on To Buy or Not to Buy, said: "There's not a bad word I can say about Kristian. "He was a lovely fun, nice, jolly, decent person."

His agent and friend Jo Wander said: "I am devastated by the loss. He was a lovely guy and a very talented presenter and director. I will miss him hugely and my thoughts at this time are with his family and his many friends. He will be sorely missed."

Alistair Appleton, a fellow BBC presenter who is also openly gay, said: "Kristian was a fine, charming, complex, rather dazzling man. TV is duller and straighter and drearier without him. I was proud to have met him, hung out with him, known him a little. "It’s desperately, desperately sad."

A BBC spokesman paid tribute and said: "Kristian was a much-loved and talented presenter for BBC Daytime. He brought a real sense of energy and warmth to all the shows he presented for us and will be sorely missed. Our thoughts are with his family at this very difficult time."

Ah. Would that Israel receive the same sympathy and understanding that Digby has, for after all, Digby's death is being investigated by the police, who are concerned about some "unexplained circumstances".

"Unexplained"?

The post mortem is expected to answer the question whether he died of suffocation after deliberately restricting his supply of oxygen. Mr Digby, who was the host of daytime property shows including To Buy or Not to Buy, died at his home in east London on Monday.

Ambulance crews were unable to revive the 32-year old at the flat in Newnham at 7.45am. According to reports a belt and a bag were removed from the property for forensic tests.

Okay, let me be more specific:-

Kristian Digby, the BBC presenter found dead at his home, may have died as the result of a sex game that went wrong. Auto-erotic asphyxiation, which has been condemned by police and medical experts as a dangerous practise, is said to heighten sexual arousal.

Doesn't Israel deserve a similar attitude of respect, it being a lot less than a homosexual who perhaps engaged in activity that might lead to a decision of death by accident?

Prize Undeserved

If you want to understand the frustration some of us have with the Israeli academic and cultural elite, and for example, the selection of Avishai Margalit as an Israel Prize winner, go here, and read some of this on the Gaza Cast Lead Operation:-

...Kasher and Yadlin are simply assuming that the war against the enemy is a just war. Their claim, crudely put, is that in such a war the safety of "our" soldiers takes precedence over the safety of "their" civilians. Our main contention is that this claim is wrong and dangerous. It erodes the distinction between combatants and noncombatants, which is critical to the theory of justice in war (jus in bello). No good reasons are given for the erosion.

... The war cannot be a war of extermination or ethnic cleansing. And what is true
for states is also true for state-like political bodies such as Hamas and Hezbollah, whether they practice terrorism or not. The people they represent or claim to represent are a people like any other.

The main attribute of a state is its monopoly on the legitimate use of violence. Fighting against a state is fighting against the human instruments of that monopoly — and not against anyone else. It might be a morally nicer world if states would agree to limit their wars even more and to be represented by champions like David and Goliath....The crucial means for limiting the scope of warfare is to draw a sharp line between combatants and noncombatants. This is the only morally relevant distinction that all those involved in a war can agree on. We should think of terrorism as a concerted effort to blur this distinction so as to turn civilians into legitimate targets. When fighting against terrorism, we should not imitate it.

...The two senses of just war, jus ad bellum, the justice of the decision to go to war, and jus in bello, the justice of the conduct of war, have to be kept separate. Heads of states should be mainly accountable for the first, soldiers and their officers for the second. Blurring this line of separation undermines the categorical distinction between combatants and noncombatants, and it puts noncombatants (on whichever is taken to be the wrong side) at risk in new and dangerous ways.

The presumption of subjective justification applies to the combatants of Hamas and Hezbollah. They should, of course, be accountable for their conduct in war, especially when they make civilians the primary targets of their attack—and also when they deliberately use civilians as human shields. But neither of these crimes allows their enemies to give up their own obligation to avoid or minimize civilian
injuries and deaths.

...On many occasions, the public cares more for the life of its soldiers than for the life of its civilians. It is this understandable but morally misguided sentiment that creeps into the Kasher-Yadlin paper when they write: "A combatant is a citizen in uniform"—so as to convince us that we should not ask our soldiers to take risks to save the lives of noncombatants on the other side. This isn't the same as saying that a diplomat is a citizen in the uniform of a head waiter. A uniform in the case of combatants is not merely conventional; it is the crucial sign of the distinction
between combatants and noncombatants—the distinction that guerrillas and terrorists try to obscure by not wearing uniforms...How do Kasher and Yadlin blur the distinction between combatants and noncombatants? By enabling "our" combatants to jump the queue for their own safety—so that their safety comes before the safety of civilians (whoever they are). For Kasher and Yadlin, there no longer is a categorical distinction between combatants and noncombatants. But the distinction should be categorical, since its whole point is to limit wars to those—only those—who have the capacity to injure (or who provide the means to injure).

...What degree of risk should Israeli soldiers assume [in a first scenario]? We can't answer that question with any precision. They don't have to take suicidal risks, certainly; nor do they have to take risks that make the recapture of Manara impossibly difficult. They are fighting against enemies who try to kill Israeli civilians and intentionally put civilians at risk by using them as cover. Israel condemns those practices; at the same time, however, it kills far more civilians than its enemies do, though without intending the deaths as a matter of policy. (Thirteen Israelis died in the Gaza fighting, some of them from friendly fire; between 1,200 and 1,400 Gazans were killed, half or more of them civilians.) But merely "not intending" the civilian deaths, while knowing that they will occur, is not a position that can be vindicated by Israel's condemnation of terrorism. So how can Israel prove its opposition to the practices of its enemies? Its soldiers must, by contrast with its enemies, intend not to kill civilians, and that active intention can be made manifest only through the risks the soldiers themselves accept in order to reduce the risks to civilians...We don't see how Kasher and Yadlin can avoid providing justification for a practice that Israel officially condemns and that we believe they believe is despicable: the use of noncombatants as human shields for combatants...

More of the same.


(Kippah TipL MD)

Let's Have A Contest

Here's my idea for a contest:

Read the following and list all the lies, falsehoods, misrepresentations, half-truths and propaganda techiniques employed -

Saturday, March 6, 2010

Boycott Action: Non-violent Protest in Front of American Apparel Store

Sponsored by Voices of Palestine (voicesofpalestine.org)
Co-sponsored by the Greater Seattle Chapter of Veterans for Peace (vfp92.org)


TELL AMERICAN APPAREL TO DISAVOW ITS LINKS TO APARTHEID AND CLOSE ITS STORES IN ISRAEL
HELP BUILD AWARENESS OF THE GLOBAL PALESTINIAN BOYCOTT, DIVESTMENT, AND SANCTIONS (BDS) CAMPAIGN

Media Contact: Shelley Day, shelleymday@gmail.com
When: Saturday, March 6, 2010 from 12 noon until 2 PM
Where: American Apparel, NE 45th St. & University Way NE, Seattle (map)

Why: American Apparel (AA) bills itself as a socially conscious producer and vendor of "hip" clothing but there's nothing progressive or admirable about supporting Israeli apartheid. On AA's web site it is proudly asserted that AA "is part Israeli, literally." When a pro-Israel blogger produced a parody "Zionist Apparel" ad, AA's webmaster thought it was great and added it to their web site.

More importantly, contrary to the 2005 call of Palestinian civil society for "broad boycotts ... against Israel," AA has opened two stores in that country, one in Tel Aviv and another in al-Quds (Jerusalem) with plans to open another in Haifa. As the authors of the 2009 Toronto Declaration noted: "Tel Aviv is built on destroyed Palestinian villages, and ... the city of Jaffa, Palestine's main cultural hub until 1948, was annexed to Tel Aviv after the mass exiling of the Palestinian population." The Tel Aviv store is in the Dizengoff Center, named after Meir Dizengoff, the first mayor of Tel Aviv. Dizengoff, who was born in Imperial Russia, first traveled to Palestine under the auspices of Baron Edmond de Rothschild's colonization scheme.

While scouting locations for the al-Quds store, an AA employee took time out to mug for the camera with two armed soldiers from North America serving in an Israeli combat unit. The al-Quds store is located in/near the historic Mamilla district, "one of seven mixed or mainly Arab neighborhoods" that was "emptied of its Arab inhabitants" during the 1948 war (Bernard Wasserstein, Divided Jerusalem, p. 163). Today, despite protests and lawsuits a branch of the Museum of Tolerance is being built in an historic Muslim cemetery a couple of hundred meters south of AA's al-Quds store (see mamillacampaign.org).

The planned location of AA's third store is Haifa, one of the largest cities of Palestine to be ethnically cleansed during the Nakba--"Out of the 61,000 Palestinian Arabs who used to call Haifa home, only 3,566 Palestinians were allowed to stay."

Too daunting a task?

Rav Yoel Bin-Nun on the Torah Portion

Although his and my politics don't always converge, and they certainly do at times, I present Rav Yoel Bin-Nun if for no other reason than to listen to his beautifully pronounced Hebrew:

Didn't I Write "Construct We Must"?

I did, actually.

And now:

The number of housing starts in the settlements rose in the fourth quarter of 2009, precisely when the government-ordered freeze on such activity should have pushed the numbers down.

Work was begun on 593 Jewish West Bank homes from October through December, a 73.3-percent jump over the first three months of 2009, when ground was broken on 342 homes, according to numbers released this week by the Central Bureau of Statistics.

The increase is even more dramatic – 84.7% – when the fourth quarter of last year is compared with the second, when work was commenced on 321 homes.

The tide, however, turned sharply in the third quarter, when work was started on 447 homes.

The numbers continued to rise in the fourth quarter, even though Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the cabinet imposed a 10-month moratorium on new settlement construction that took effect on November 29, which should have prevented any housing starts in December, and thus kept the fourth quarter tally down.

Source

The Rotberg Letter on Free Speech

From: Howard Rotberg
Date: Tue, Mar 2, 2010 at 7:50 AM
Subject: Israel Apartheid Week
To: president@utoronto.ca

I am a graduate of University College (1973) at which time I had the honour of standing first among the students in the Department of History. I received an excellent education, specializing in the history of values and ideologies. Then I attended, and graduated from, the Faculty of Law, in 1976.

I have tried to live a life of ethics, respect for individual human rights and social justice, and service to my profession and the community. I have won awards for my service to my municipality in volunteering on municipal committees and for my development of affordable rental housing for low income working people. I have a record of writing about race relations and participating in conferences meant to accomplish respect for diversity in the context of adherence to foundational Canadian values.

I am ashamed that University of Toronto hosted the first Israel Apartheid Week, and continues to make its facilities available to this distortion of “free speech and respect for diversity”. I read your February 24 remarks on freedom of expression and diversity, and sadly, I feel that you misstate the basic issues. My university is now known as the birthplace of this vile hatefest.

The University would never allow an “Islamic Apartheid Week” because of course the speakers would be violently attacked by mobs of illiberals who have brought with them to the University no respect for free speech but only a respect for their upbringings where they were taught that Jews and the Jewish State are evil, and inferior.

I am disgusted that in a time of war against our liberal values, University of Toronto chooses to support one side, and that is the side that supports the war against our freedoms and our civilians from Sderot to Manhattan, from London to Madrid, and from Buenos Aires to Mumbai.

I myself have had my lectures shouted down and my books effectively banned. [See here]

I know that freedom loving writers like myself no longer have the freedoms that you are so proud of extending to people who support the murder of Jewish children, less than a century after the Holocaust.

I do not advocate censoring them, unless they pass into hate crimes, and even then I am not supportive of use of the criminal law, in all but the clearest of cases. But the notion of feeling compelled to have such an event in effect sanctioned by the University is clearly wrong. If they want to speak such words, there are, I am sure, other facilities that would welcome them.

I hereby adopt the positions taken in the following two essays: here and here.

We have now reached a stage where Jewish students and others identifiably Jewish fear for their safety at various universities in North America and Europe, and where various Jewish speakers are denied permission to speak because of Islamist intimidation. We have now reached a situation where various student groups, such as the Muslim Students Association are being funded by radical Islamist groups, and where various University departments across the “free world” are becoming beholden to radical Islam due to financial funding from Saudi Arabia and the Emirates.

I am sure you have read how young Muslim students are being “radicalized” at universities in England, and such was the case with the attempted terror attacker on the Delta airlines jet on Christmas Day.

The situation at English universities and even at York University has gotten out of hand. To the extent that your views are infused with cultural and moral relativism, I suggest that the University of Toronto is poised to eventually join those institutions where Jewish students will be viewed as “offensive” per se to Muslim students and other illiberal antagonists who apply double standards and factually incorrect legal and historical judgments against the Jewish State, and interpret Islam as holding Jews and Christians to be second class citizens, which is the real apartheid that your University will not allow to be discussed. Moral equivalency is not appropriate between liberal democrats and terror supporting illiberals.

I feel such shame to have been associated with a University that feels that its facilities must be given to those who would destroy our freedoms, and one which fails to understand that tolerance is a two-way concept. Your moral equivalency is misplaced. Israel is the first front in a war that has already come to our shores. That war has nothing to do with “sharing” land, but is about an attempt to enforce Western submission to Islamic values, including Sharia Law.

I have recently written a book called TOLERism: The Ideology Revealed. You might be interested in reading it, although I must warn you that while Chapters Indigo carries 8 different titles by or about Noam Chomsky, my works have been banned by Canada’s monopoly book retailer because they are “offensive” to illiberals.

My grandparents and aunt were gassed to death in the gas chambers of Auschwitz and my father was slave labour there and barely survived. For years, I felt that it was possible as a Jew to attend the University of Toronto and still publically adhere to the biblical value of justice. Unfortunately, in your quest for “tolerance” you have abnegated the historical values of our country, based on Justice being a more important value than Tolerance.

My father and his family were certainly not helped by “Tolerance” and I dare say that a continuation of the trends at your university will make it impossible for my grandchildren to attend there. My daughter has two degrees from University of Toronto and my son-in-law has three degrees from U. of T. I believe that if present trends continue, no further members of my family will be able to attend University of Toronto. By abnegating all standards in the name of freedom and tolerance, and by failing to stand for Justice over Tolerance, you are party to the decline of a once-great university.

Please take me off all mailing lists for University of Toronto, University College, and the Faculty of Law, whether it be for financial solicitations, reports or magazines.

I am removing from my office wall my two degrees from University of Toronto. I shall be mailing them back to you.

Shame on you.

S. Howard Rotberg B.A., LL.B

Rotberg Development Group
Brantcord Group of Companies
Southern Ontario Affordable Housing Inc.
www.howardrotberg.ca

Get Ready for the Next Arab Stonethrowing Day - March 16

International Temple Mount Awareness Day

Please send out announcements of this event on both your English lists this week before Shabbat and next week as well. Urge people to contact their rabbanim and leaders ASAP and urge for everyone to converge on Har HaBayit this March 16th - Rosh Chodesh Nisan, in a peaceful and law abiding manner.


UPDATE

I spoke too soon:

Found in

Jewish calls to storm Al-Aqsa on Sunday and Monday during the Hebrew “Purim holiday”

25/02/2010 22:49

Sheikh Kamal Khatib, the declaration of the Israelis to annex the Ibrahimi Mosque- in Hebron is a tryout to the next step that they are planning to, namely the destruction of Al Aqsa Mosque and the build of the so called third temple on the expense of the Aqsa mosque.

Attorney Zahi Nujidat: "We are with the Aqsa and we are inside the Aqsa throughout the day, whatever the circumstances are.

Al-Aqsa Foundation for the Endowment and heritage called the people of Jerusalem and the Palestinian people who live inside the Green Line area to stay permanently in the Aqsa mosque since early morning, as well as, the Aqsa guards called to take caution against any intrusion of the mosque by settlers and Jewish groups.

...Meanwhile, the Aqsa Foundation confirmed that a number of Jewish groups such as, the Temple Institute; the Movement for the establishment of the Temple; Jewish leadership; Sanhedrin; the Heritage Fund of the Temple Mount "and" the Organization for Human Rights on the Temple Mount, "began to publish ad specifying the 16.3.2010 as the World Day for the alleged Third Temple. The ad confirm that in the same day Jews will inaugurate the so called the Hurbah synagogue in the so called Jewish quarter, which was built on the expense of Al-Sharaf Islamic neighborhood. it is to mention that Jewish prophecies claim that the next day after inaugurating the Hurbah synagogue will mark the day of building the so called third temple on the expense of the Aqsa mosque.

Last Purim Humor This Year

Persian disguise

NIF's Paid Political Advertisement at the Jewish Book Week

I commented on a Jewish Book Week panel (here) and now have seen how it is advertised:-

A Way Forward?

The relationship between Israel and the Diaspora has never been as complex. While a peaceful solution remains as elusive as ever, the debate rages on, polarised between those offering unconditional support and those labelled ‘self-hating Jews’ for their criticism of Israeli government policy whether abroad or in Israel itself.Into this landscape of dogma and unshifting political realities, a new American organisation, J Street, has emerged to offer a third way - supportive but not sycophantic.

Daniel Levy, one of its advisors, will be in conversation with Francesca Klug, LSE professor and Director of the Human Rights Futures project, which explores and analyses the future direction of human rights discourse and with David Newman, Professor of Political Geography at Ben-Gurion University. He has been involved in peace-related activities and played a major role in the defence of Israeli universities faced with academic boycott. They share with us their assessment of the present situation and their thoughts on what lies ahead.

Francesca Klug OBE is a Professorial Research Fellow at the LSE and Director of the Human Rights Futures Project. She is based in the Centre for the Study of Global Governance and is a Senior Research Associate at the Centre for the Study of Human Rights. She is a trustee of the Campaign for Freedom of Information. Francesca is a frequent broadcaster and has written widely on human rights, including Values for a Godless Age: the story of the UK Bill of Rights.

Daniel Levy is a Senior Fellow and Director of the Prospects for Peace Initiative at The Century Foundation and a Senior Fellow and Director of theMiddle East Initiative at the New America Foundation. He is on the Advisory Board of J Street.

David Newman is Professor of Political Geography at Ben-Gurion University and editor of the International Journal of Geopolitics. Originally from London, Newman has lived in Israel for the past 30 years. Newman was the founder and first chairperson of the Department of Politics at Ben Gurion University and was also instrumental in the setting up of the Centre for the Study of European Politics and Society at that University. He writes a regular political column in the Jerusalem Post.

In association with New Israel Fund

New Israel Fund?

No wonder they didn't invite any pluralism of opinion.

This session is a paid political advertisement.

It's Now "Emanuel as 'Jew'"

In the Washington Post.

The Nahal Shiloh Clip

And, further to the pics, here is a short clip of Nahal Shiloh near the area of Peduel, as far as I can make out (until corrected):

Meet The Jewish Sarkozy - Solal

French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s first grandson, Solal, was circumcised according to Jewish tradition. Solal, the son of Jean Sarkozy and Jessica Sebaoun, was born January 13 in the western Paris suburb of Neuilly-sur-Seine. "It happened like all circumcisions, with a rabbi and a mohel," Jean Balkany, the president’s friend, who was present at the brit for Solal, told Jewish radio Radio J.

President Sarkozy did not attend the brit, apparently because of work-related obligations, but Balkany said the president’s entire family was present, including his parents and brother. Jessica Sebaoun is "a very observant Sephardic" Jew and the French president "sees no problem with that," said Balkany, a member of the French parliament and mayor of Levallois-Perret, a town northwest of Paris.

And to think I missed it when first reported.


(Kippah tip: CR)

Meet A "Palestinian Settlement"

They have actually used the word "settlement" to describe a location of Arab residency.

'They' being the BBC.

Well well. My gosh.

Oh, it's here:-

Building the first 'Palestinian settlement' in modern history

The lead-in:

The biggest construction project in modern Palestinian history is under way in the hills of Rawabi, north of Ramallah on the West Bank. The developers say it will eventually house more than 40,000 people and will take more than five years to build.

And here it is in another BBC item:-

Some have called Rawabi the first "Palestinian settlement". Indeed when you look at the developer's slick promotional video with computer-generated images of the eventual city, it does actually look very much like a classic Jewish settlement, with neat rows of white houses spiralling round a hilltop.

Will that term's application last?

If you will recall, I had suggested that we begin referring to Arab localities in Israel within the pre-1967 border as "settlements" to balance out, as it were, the use of that pejorative term to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria.

Now what?

Your Understated Headline of the Week

Recent Israeli films are less political
Oscar nominee 'Ajami' is the latest in a crop of movies

that are about other topics

That was a LATimes headline and sub-headline.

And what does Eran Riklis, director of super-charged political/ideological films "The Lemon Tree" and "The Syrian Bride" say?

"There is a dangerous tendency in Israel to say there's so much trouble, don't worry, just worry about your family and your house and your jeep. And I do think in a country like Israel you have to be a socially conscious filmmaker."

Now, to illustrate why the reporter, Steven Zeitchik, is a bit lost in this film business being, ahem, non-political, here's what he writes on Riklis' next movie:-

"The Mission of the Human Resources Manager"...[is]...a dramatic comedy about a man who works for an industrial bakery, with few of the political concerns that informs his previous work. Was it difficult to move away from tensions between Jews and Arabs? "A little bit," he says, then, after a pause, adds, "but it's also kind of a relief, actually."

That movie is based on A.B. Yehoshua's novel of the same name. It's content? Well, Yulia Ragayev, a Slavic immigrant to Israel, has been killed in a terrorist bombing and whose corpse lies unidentified in a morgue for a week. The human resources manager at the commercial bakery where Yulia worked as a cleaning woman is forced to discover her identity and take action to restore her dignity by returning her body to her son and mother in her native land for burial.

Here is a review that shows, ahem, the book's non-political nature:-

A Woman in Jerusalem (dedicated to the memory of Dafna, a friend of the Yehoshuas who was killed by a suicide bomber on Mount Scopus in 2002), is divided into three parts: The Manager; The Mission, and The Journey. And if in the first two parts the manager is identified in variations of "the human resources manager," by the third part he has earned the honor of "Emissary," for he is now a man transformed by his love for the dead woman. Traveling with her coffin to a distant, cold land, he is perhaps an Emissary of God, an angel, an angel who may sometimes be the Angel of Death. This emissary, like most Israeli men, served in the army. He followed orders, and he gave orders, and, in this sense, he is part of a system that is responsible for the death of a woman like Yulia (or Dafna). Yulia is the preternatural Female, who may be dead to the living, but is, in fact, "a sleeping angel" (in the words of the morgue's lab technician). The giver of life, she is helpless against tanks and bullets, but is also indestructible.

And now let's return to Zeitchik's non-political perspective of Ajami and read what Ha-Ha-Haaretz published:-

while "Ajami" is a sophisticated detective story, it also manages to contain, in the terse way characteristic of great art, not "only" the complexity of life in Jaffa's hardscrabble streets among Arabs between themselves and Arabs from other places, but also the complexity of the loaded encounter between Jews and Arabs, Muslims and Christians, and Arabs from Israel and their relatives in the territories. All are shown multidimensionally.

"Ajami" is a courageous film. It is neither obsequious nor ingratiating, arrogant nor cynical. It is merciless and painful, but at the same time, and perhaps because of this, it is human and full of compassion. Therefore the viewer's heart goes out equally to the mother of the Arab hero from Jaffa, to the "illegal resident" boy from Nablus who gets into trouble because of his dying mother, and to the tough Jewish cop who appears to take pleasure in hating Arabs.

Make no mistake: the film is not apolitical. In fact, it is very political, but deals with a much deeper question than "who is right, Jews or Arabs?"

Its political power is in daringly revealing - never before seen in an Israeli film, and perhaps in no other Israeli art form - the mud into which all of Israeli society is sinking: Jews and Arabs alike, but Arabs more so, and poor Arabs most of all.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict flows, as in reality, through the plotlines, but the directors do not use it even for a moment in the usual boring way.

What crazy dissonance. On the one hand Israel will be represented in the world with a superior Jewish-Arab film, with Arabic dialogue and Arabic music, created in Jaffa only 62 years after the Jaffa elite left, followed by the flight and expulsion of many others, leaving the city bereft of its splendor. Yet the film was chosen precisely at a time when an evil spirit is growing stronger, bearing on its wings the Netanyahu-Lieberman government in whose name Israel's Arab citizens are being shoved aside into a shadowy corner.

Poor poor readers of the LATimes.

Welcome to "Just-the-Opposite Facts" Theater, Temple Mount Chapter

IMRA's Aaron Lerner pointed me to this news item which informs us that Jordan has condemned what they call a "raid on holy Jerusalem site" and they further term it, but of course, a "provocation".

According the the official press agency version "Israeli forces...stormed Al Aqsa Mosque" [stormtroopers, got that?]. And what 'started' it all? Well, "Israeli police opened the Bab Al Maghareba Gate early today for the entry of zionist extremists" [but they do that every day, to everyone. it's called freedom of access and it is a fundamental legal tenet].

Don't these Arabs understand pluralistic democratic society existence?

Further, we learn that

"Jordan rejects any attempt by Israeli occupation forces to harm holy sites in the Palestinian territories," State Minister for Media Affairs and Communication Nabil Sharif told Petra. "Storming Al Aqsa is an affront to the will of the international community and such action will impede efforts to kickstart the peace process to achieve stability in the region and set up an independent, sovereign and viable Palestinian state," Sharif added.

But the ironic aspect of this blowhard minister is this:

The minister said that repeated Israeli assaults on the compound in the old city of Jerusalem were designed to provoke millions of Arabs and Muslims. Condemnation of the latest attack on worshippers also came from a number of officials and academics, who said it was a further evidence that Israel is in violations of international laws and conventions.

There were no 'worshippers' there other than perhaps some Christians who might have had Bibles with them for the stonethrowers, sorry, defenders of the Holy Sanctuary were there all night waiting in ambush for any non-Muslim.

When someone is constantly fed with just-the-opposite facts, well, I can't make peace with someone like that.

And I don't presume that Israel can, either.

The Purim Rains Flowing in Nahal Shiloh

Nahal Shiloh, which eventually reaches Rosh HaAyin (when driving from Tel Aviv to Ariel, you'll see a sign on the highway noting that you are passing over Nahgal Shiloh just east of the Kesem Junction), begins in the valley under Shiloh. And when it ours and snows, the overflow is quite apparent.

These were pictures taken by Era Rappaport who ventured down for a nature hike.






From us it flows out towards Luban A-Sharaki'a and then down towards Peduel on westward.


And these are photographs I snapped of Shiloh Valley, where the rainwaters collect before turning into Nahal Shiloh:







and here are more from Era:

A Supreme Court Ruling That May Aid Jonathan Pollard

Today's NYTimes editorial applies very much to Jonathan Pollard who als was shafted by his first lawyer, Hilbey, who failed him.

Extract:

...the Constitution guarantees people accused of serious crimes the right to counsel. If a lawyer turns out to be negligent, the system must do all it can to protect the individual’s rights.

The Supreme Court has a chance to reinforce that fundamental protection in the case of Albert Holland...Mr. Holland was given a new lawyer, who argued that due to the first lawyer’s extreme negligence, the failure should be excused under “equitable tolling,” which allows for deadlines to be excused in the
broader interests of justice.

The United States Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit rejected the argument, ruling that even gross negligence by a lawyer does not provide a basis for equitable tolling. Unless there was “bad faith, dishonesty, divided loyalty, mental impairment,” or something of that magnitude, the court said, the deadline would stand.

It is a shameful ruling. Mr. Holland’s lawyer’s conduct was not merely negligent. It was, as legal ethics professors and practitioners say in a brief, “intolerable, thoroughly unacceptable behavior.” The legal system cannot take away Mr. Holland’s right to challenge his conviction on the basis of inexcusably awful lawyering.

Underlying all of the law is the principle of “equity,” meaning rules must be interpreted in ways that advance fundamental fairness. The Supreme Court, which hears Mr. Holland’s case on Monday, should not allow this to continue. It should reverse the 11th Circuit’s deeply unfair ruling and allow Mr. Holland’s habeas petition to be heard.

Working in An Islamic Nation Can Be Dangerous

This is an extreme case, of course.

But if her impression was such that it drove her to suicide, then something is very wrong somewhere:

Teacher Drank Poison Over Facebook Pics

A British teacher fearing jail in the Middle East after her ex-lover posted naked pictures of her on Facebook drank cleaning fluid and died, an inquest has heard.

Emma Jones was working in Abu Dhabi when one of her colleagues spotted the explicit images on the networking website, the Cardiff hearing was told.

The 24-year-old was frightened of being jailed in the strict Muslim country after the male co-worker accused her of being a prostitute, her mother claimed.

Mum Louise Rowlands, quoted by The Daily Telegraph, said Miss Jones was packing to return home to Britain before she swallowed the corrosive fluid at her home in Khalifa City.

The 41-year-old care worker from Caerphilly, South Wales, told the inquest: "She (Miss Jones) said she had to get away.

"She was crying, she was breaking her heart. I said 'Emma, whatever it is can't be that bad. Just come home'."

But her daughter exclaimed: "I can't leave the country - they will throw me in jail," Mrs Rowlands said...The mum said: "She was one of the most sane people I know, very vibrant and bubbly… She was a real go-getter, full of life.

"She had received a better job offer for more money working for the same company and it was all about the money for Emma because she wanted to buy a house."

Purim Humor, More

Received via BT:

(1) How many assassins does it take to hold down a pillow? Isn't this overkill (pun intended)? Did they all fit into that hotel room?

(2) The guy was electrocuted, strangled, and suffocated to get the job done...everyone must have had a turn at him.

(3) Does Dubai do Purim?

How Great The Animus

Richard Silverstein hates Israel.

How much?

Try this example over at Aussie Dave.