To My Christian Zionist Friends

Have you read the words of an Archbishop, those of Archbishop Emeritus Desmond Tutu?

According to him,

The suffering inflicted by Israel on the Palestinian people shows that it has forgotten the Jewish scriptures..."They have forgotten their own history. They have forgotten what their own prophets have said about our God," Tutu said..."God is always on the side of the oppressed. In the Holy Land, the Palestinian people are the ones suffering."

..."Those of us who are Christian have been influenced very greatly by what one might call the Jewish scriptures. The biased God of the past is the biased God of the present... and if God is to be God, watch out," he added. "This is the anguish that I bear."

I am sure you are quite well aware, besides the political bias in his statement, ignoring the historical record of the past 150 years of the modern return of Jews to the Land of Israel, continuing what Jews have done for over 1800 years (and ignored by too many of the experts on this regions), and the Arab persecution, most times violent, against the Jews in horrific form, that Tutu's theology is all wrong.

True, today, the Arabs of the former Mandate of Palestine, cliam they are living in "occupied territories" which are but areas of the original Mandate territory which were awarded to the Jewish through an act of international law in a progression of decisions taken at the Versailles Peace Conference, the San Remo Conference and the League of Nations between 1919 and 1922, following the acceptance by the nations of the world of the Balfour Declaration. The present tension is not about wrongs but rights - who owns the land. For believing Christians, unconnected to the present dispute, the Bible makes it quite clear that the land was and will be given to Abraham and his descendants through the line of his son Isaac and grandson Jacob (Israel).

In Genesis 12:7 Abraham, the father of both Jews and Arabs, was told, "Unto thy seed will I give this land". And even if you believe that Jesus will inherit that promise, a concept we Jews do not accept, the acts of today's Arabs against Christians in Bethlehem, in Gaza, in Cairo, in Baghdad and other cities throughout the Middle East, make it quite clear that the Arabs are not the proper progeny of Abraham.  There is no hope for peaceful coexistence between Christians and Mulsims the evidence makes clear.

The dispute over Jerusalem is, in addition to all the mudane issues, also a religious/spiritual one. It can be portrayed as that Ishmael cannot accept the existence of Judaism, for Judaism predicates the reality that the Land of Israel, with Jerusalem as its capital, represents the covenant God made with the people Israel. Borders are irrevelant.

As Hamas makes clear:

...Nothing in nationalism is more significant or deeper than in the case when an enemy should tread Moslem land. Resisting and quelling the enemy become the individual duty of every Moslem, male or female...(Article 12)...There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through Jihad...(Article 13)...Palestine is an Islamic land...Since this is the case, liberation of Palestine is then an individual duty for very Moslem wherever he may be. On this basis, the problem should be viewed. This should be realised by every Moslem...(Article 14)...In face of the Jews' usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised...It is necessary to instill in the minds of the Moslem generations that the Palestinian problem is a religious problem, and should be dealt with on this basis. Palestine contains Islamic holy sites...(Article 15)...The Islamic nature of Palestine is part of our religion and whoever takes his religion lightly is a loser...(Article 27)... Israel, Judaism and Jews challenge Islam and the Moslem people. "May the cowards never sleep."...(Article 28)... It is the duty of the followers of other religions to stop disputing the sovereignty of Islam in this region, because the day these followers should take over there will be nothing but carnage, displacement and terror...(Article 31)...Palestine is the navel of the globe and the crossroad of the continents. Since the dawn of history, it has been the target of expansionists. The Prophet, Allah bless him and grant him salvation, had himself pointed to this fact in the noble Hadith in which he called on his honourable companion, Ma'adh ben-Jabal, saying: O Ma'ath, Allah throw open before you, when I am gone, Syria, from Al-Arish to the Euphrates. Its men, women and slaves will stay firmly there till the Day of Judgement. Whoever of you should choose one of the Syrian shores, or the Holy Land, he will be in constant struggle till the Day of Judgement." Expansionists have more than once put their eye on Palestine which they attacked with their armies to fulfill their designs on it. Thus it was that the Crusaders came with their armies, bringing with them their creed and carrying their Cross. They were able to defeat the Moslems for a while, but the Moslems were able to retrieve the land only when they stood under the wing of their religious banner, united their word, hallowed the name of Allah and surged out fighting under the leadership of Salah ed-Din al-Ayyubi. They fought for almost twenty years and at the end the Crusaders were defeated and Palestine was liberated...(Article 34)

And do not ignore the Quran verse:

"But the Jews will not be pleased with thee, neither the Christians, until thou follow their religion; say, The direction of Allah is the true direction. And verily if thou follow their desires, after the knowledge which hath been given thee, thou shalt find no patron or protector against Allah." (The Cow - verse 120).

Jewish traditional sources also counter this claim of Arabs to assume an equal Biblical status.  For example, the Zohar explains about the verse And Abraham said, O that Ishmael might live before you (Genesis 17:18) as

even though the Holy One, blessed be He, gave him the news about Isaac, Abraham cleaved to Ishmael, until the Holy One, blessed be He, answered him, And as for Ishmael, I have heard you..." (Genesis 17:20). He was later circumcised and entered the holy covenant before Isaac came into the world.

Come and see, for four hundred years, the minister of the children of Ishmael stood and begged before the Holy One, blessed be He. He said to Him, Whoever is circumcised has a portion in Your name. [The Holy one blessed be He,] said to him, it is so. He said to Him, Behold Ishmael who is circumcised. Why does he not have a portion in You like Isaac? He said to him, It is not so, the one was circumcised well and properly, while the other was not so. Moreover, the one cleaves to Me properly at the eighth day, while the others are distanced from me for many days. [The appointed minister over Ishmael] said to Him, But still in all, since he is circumcised, would he not have a good reward for this?

Woe is the time that Ishmael was born into the world and was circumcised. What did the Holy One, blessed be He, do [Pertaining to the complaint of the minister of Ishmael?] He distanced the children of Ishmael from supernal cleaving and gave them a portion below in the Holy Land, because of their circumcision.

The children of Ishmael are destined to rule over the Holy Land for a long time when it is empty from anything, like their circumcision, which is empty and imperfect. And they will prevent the children of Yisrael from returning to their place until the reward for the merit of the children of Ishmael reaches completion.

The children of Ishmael will cause great wars in the world and the children of Edom will gather against them, and wage war against them, one on the sea, one on the dry land, and one near Jerusalem. And they will rule over each other, but the Holy Land will not be given over to the children of Edom. Zohar Vaera

A further Chassidic exegesis is here:

the Zohar speaks of another aspect of exile at the End of Days:

...The descendents of Ishmael will go up at that time [End of Days] with the nations of the world against Jerusalem... (Zohar 1:119a)


There is a tradition that Ishmael will be the final extension of the Roman Exile. It will be with his descendants that the final generation of Jews before the redemption will have to contend. This is supported by the Midrash:

Israel will say to the king of the Arabs, "Take silver and gold and leave the Temple." The king of the Arabs will say, "You have nothing to do with this Temple. However, if you want, choose a sacrifice as you did in the past, and we will also offer a sacrifice, and with the one whose sacrifice is accepted, we will all become one people." The Jewish people will offer theirs, but it will not be accepted because the Satan will lay charges against them before The Holy One, Blessed is He. The descendents of Kedar will offer theirs, and it will be accepted.... At that time, the Arabs will say to Israel, "Come and believe in our faith," but Israel will answer, "We will kill or be killed, but we will not deny our belief!" At that time, swords will be drawn, bows will be strung and arrows will be sent, and many will fall... (Sefer Eliyahu, Pirkei Mashiach, p. 236)

Furthermore, says the Zohar:

[During the Resurrection of the Dead], many camps will arise in Land of the Galilee, because that is where Mashiach is going to be revealed, since it is part of Joseph's territory. It will be the first place to be destroyed. It will begin there ahead of all other places, and then spread to the nations... (Vayakhel)

Zechariah 12:2-3 where God says:

"Behold, I will make Jerusalem a cup of trembling unto all the people round about, when they shall be in the siege both against Judah and against Jerusalem. And in that day will I make Jerusalem a burdensome stone for all people; all that burden themselves with it shall be cut in pieces, though all the people of the earth be gathered together against it."

indicates the struggle we Jews are undergoing but there is Zechariah 14, which indicates a remnant of the nation will be defending Jerusalem and God will "go forth, and fight against those nations" (verse 3).

So, if Tutu does believe in the Prophets, he is reading something which isn't found in the text.

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There's Goes A Church

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul may become mosque

Hagia Sophia in Istanbul, which was earlier a Patriarchal Orthodox Cathedral and later a mosque, and now a museum, may once again become an active mosque, the Sabah newspaper reports.

Repairs are underway. A mimbar - a platform for the imam -- is planned to be built in the museum. Earlier, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said during a visit to the museum that fundamental changes should be made in Hagia Sophia.

Hagia Sophia was built in Constantinople, now Istanbul, in 537. After Mehmet II conquered the city in 1453, the church turned into a mosque.

Interesting.

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New Israel Fund Apologist

Chemi (from Menachem) Shalev:

Now I’m sure that with the benefit of hindsight the NIF probably should have been more circumspect and should not have funded, even if it was only partially, some of the organizations that eventually collaborated with the Goldstone Report or spend their time monitoring IDF “war crimes”.

But these organizations comprised only a miniscule part of the NIF’s activities, as everyone knows, including, I suspect, the NIF’s accusers.

Ain't that sweet?

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Let's Update State Department Info

Let's correct State Department semantics:

Instead of this dated May 2011:

COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: The State of Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a modern economy. Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza Strip, Golan Heights, and East Jerusalem as a result of the 1967 War.

should it not be this:

COUNTRY DESCRIPTION: The State of Israel is a parliamentary democracy with a modern economy. Israel administers Judea, Samaria, Golan Heights, and the newer neighborhoods of Jerusalem as a result of the 1967 War?

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Temple Mount Closed This Week

Closed until Thursday.

It's the Muslim holiday of Id El-Adha.

So Jews can't even visit.

Oh, on Jewish holidays, the Temple Mount is usually opened for Muslims.

Is that discrimination? Religious discrimination?

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Jerusalem Birth Registration Concern

"Jerusalem".  Where is that?

As this report makes clear, if your passport does not list the country where you were born, as is the unfortunate practice of the US State Department as regards Americans born anywhere in Jerusalem, a case going before the US Supreme Court,

At least 150 people were killed in a series of gun and bomb attacks in northern Nigeria on Saturday, the Islamist Boko Haram sect claimed [Boko Haram means “Western Education Is Sin” in the regional Hausa language] .

...President Goodluck Jonathan condemned the assaults which officials said included at least five suicide bomb blasts...As corpses piled up in the morgue, a rescue agency official told AFP the body count stood at 150...

...A journalist described scenes of chaos and destruction in Damaturu. “In fact, Damaturu is looking just like Libya… burnt cars and buildings.” In a mainly Christian neighbourhood of Damaturu called Jerusalem, six churches were bombed in addition to a police station...

Now, I know Jerusalem suffered in the first decade of this century multiple terrorist attacks and suicide bombings, but the Jerusalem we are talking about is in Israel.

If the State Dep't policy continues, kids won't know where thet were born.

Government bureaucracy should clarify matters not confuse.

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Tomorrow's March

From the Supreme Court to the Knesset to save Migron, Givat Assaf and Givat HaUlpana (Bet El):

Starting at 12:30.  Dress in a blue shirt.

Let's return the ball to the court of the Knesset.

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BBC Takes Another Look At YESHA

From a BBC special report by Tim Franks with whom I am acquainted:-

A short distance north from Tel Aviv lives a man who embodies both those contradictions. Naftali Bennett is the CEO of the Yesha Council - the Settlers' Council, which represents the ideologically motivated Jews who have set up home in the occupied territories of the West Bank and East Jerusalem. But Mr Bennett does not live in the territories. Rather, this young hi-tech millionaire has just moved into a large house in Israel's expensive central plain.

He says the protests are a sign of maturity and health: "What we saw over the summer was, look, there ain't going to be peace any time soon with the Arabs. So let's fix Israel."

Naftali Bennett predicts that the next Israeli general election (in just under two years' time) will be the first in Israel's history where domestic, internal politics - rather than "the conflict" - will be what the parties scrap over.

The CEO of the Settlers' Council also sees a symbolic significance in him living, not in the West Bank, but close to Tel Aviv. The settlers are moving in to the mainstream of Israel.

Rising influence

Take the conscript army - one of the founding institutions of the state. It is not simply that there are growing numbers of the religious and the settlers performing their national service, and then rising up the professional ranks.

Amiad Cohen, the head of security at the West Bank settlement of Eli, 40km outside Jerusalem, is one of those teaching at the growing number of pre-army schools. He travels regularly to one such school, in Tel Aviv, to lead discussions, with secular teenagers.

As we walk the perimeter of his settlement, Mr Cohen gestures to the hills around. "This is our country. We will live here. The question is: 'will it be with peace, or will they force us to fight?'. So yes I'm happy that we influence. The army is a mirror of who we are. And I'm happy that the army is changing."

I guess democracy does have advantages.

What is left, though, are the other elites: the media and the cultural and academic 'those-who-are-to-be-obeyed'.

Oops. I mean what is left to be changed.


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A More Useful Map of Shiloh Area

I hope this map (thanks to Amudanan) will help you understand the Shiloh area.

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So, Is Freezing A Good Move?

Yoram Ettinger thinks not:-

Freezing Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria diverts attention away from the core cause of the conflict. Moreover, it constitutes an obstacle to peace by reflecting submission to pressure, thus fueling further pressure, radicalizing Arab demands, intensifying Arab terrorism and eroding Israel’s posture of deterrence, while the only peace that is possible is deterrence-driven peace.

...Prime Minister Ehud Barak offered to give away all Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria in October 2000. Abbas and Arafat responded with an unprecedented wave of suicide bombings...The September 2005 uprooting of 25 Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria and Gaza induced an unprecedented barrage of missiles hitting Jewish settlements in pre-1967 Israel.

If the 350,000 Jews who live among 1.6 million Arabs in Judea and Samaria constitute an obstacle to peace, are the 1.5 million Arabs living among six million Jews inside pre-1967 Israel an insurmountable obstacle to peace?

If Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria should be frozen, lest it prejudge the outcome of negotiations, then Arab construction in Judea and Samaria should be frozen as well, unless one wishes to prejudge the outcome of negotiations.

If the uprooting of Jewish communities advances peace, why would the uprooting of Arab communities undermine peace?

The uprooting of Arab communities would be immoral; so, too, would be the uprooting of Jewish communities.

...The most recent internationally recognized sovereign over Judea and Samaria was the 1922 British Mandate, which defined Judea and Samaria as part of the Jewish national homeland. Article 6 of that mandate acknowledges the right of Jews to settle in Judea and Samaria. Judge Stephen Schwebel, former president of the International Court of Justice, determined that Israel's presence in Judea and Samaria was rooted in self-defense and therefore did not constitute "occupation." Eugene Rostow, former dean of Yale Law School, former U.S. undersecretary of state and co-author of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242, asserted that this resolution entitled Jews to settle in Judea and Samaria. The Oslo Accords do not prohibit the construction of Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria...

...Peaceful coexistence and the determination to uproot Jewish or Arab communities constitute an oxymoron. The concepts of “durable peace” and "Judenrein areas" contradict each other...Jewish settlements in Judea and Samaria are not the root cause of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They are the roots of 4,000-year-old Jewish religious and national aspirations. They constitute the crux of Israel’s national security, and their land provides 40 percent of Israel’s water supply...Freezing Jewish construction in Judea and Samaria will not enhance peace, it will enhance appeasement, thus undermining the cause of peace and advancing the cause of war.

Reject any idea of "freezing".

No moratorium on construction.

And certainly no destruction of Jewish homes.

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Begin on Jerusalem and Katz on Begin

There's an article in Haaretz on Menachem Begin and Jerusalem by Shay Fogelman:

What Israeli, U.S. leaders of 1977 hoped would be Jerusalem's fate

And, it is claimed, he found a

A previously unpublished transcript of a meeting between Israeli and U.S. leaders in Washington on December 17, 1977, offers a surprising revelation: Prime Minister Begin's suggestion that autonomous international religious councils would oversee Jerusalem's holy places.

My comments on the article:

1. Fogleman writes:

At a meeting with Vance in Jerusalem on December 12, 1977, Begin surprisingly suggested that he visit Washington urgently in order to present to Carter new ideas which he had formulated as part of an Israel plan...Begin's trip to Washington was kept secret for three days, during which the prime minister held marathon meetings with cabinet ministers and advisers to formulate the Israeli blueprint for negotiations.

Shmuel Katz writes in his The Hollow Peace, p. 194, that actually the government had but one meeting on Tuesday, December 13, when the plan was first proposed in the formal session. Begin did not consult with his advisor of information affairs.

2. Fogelman writes "On the day of his departure, December 15, 1977...The plane landed first in Washington, and only afterward, very late and very close to Shabbat, proceeded to New York with the regular passengers."

Katz writes, p. 201, that the plane landed in New York on the Wednesday in the afternoon, and a meeting with all aides was conducted by Begin on the Thursday. They were in Washington on the 16th.

3. Fogelman writes "...Begin - without any preliminaries or any connection to what had been talked about - said out of the blue: "Our paper made no mention of Jerusalem but, of course, we have been considering it. We didn't overlook it at all. The matter refers to the holy shrines of the Muslim, Christian and the Jewish world. Indeed, it is of interest to the whole world.

"My idea, and I wish to emphasize that is still only an idea - I still, of course, have to discuss it with my colleagues - is to have an international religious council that would take care of the holy shrines of each of the respective religions..."

On page 212, Katz notes that the plan did include "a special proposal will be prepared and submitted, ensuring free access to all the religious communities to their holy places". Katz was "outraged" and he "protested against it". At a second meeting with Carter on the Saturday night, Begin "at least refrained from repeating the details of the plan".

I guess the full history still is to be written.

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Early Settlement

No, not what I am involved for the past four decades in one form or another but an earlier settlement time, from the Chalcolithic Period.

Chaloclithic is the name given to the period in the Near East and Europe after the Neolithic and before the Bronze Age, roughly between about 4500 and 3500 BC. This period has the earliest evidence for complex societies, the location of cemeteries outside of settlements, craft specialization in copper tool production (casting and lost wax), ivory, and ceramics. Chalcolithic is sometimes referred to as the 'Copper Age', and the word is from the Greek for copper (chalcos) and stone (lithos).

And the story is:

The 5th meeting of the Forum for the Research of the Chalcolithic
Period (Israel)

Northern Israel during the Chalcolithic Period: Ghassulian or
Independent Cultures?*

December 8th, 2011, Kinneret College, Tzemah Junction, Sea of Galilee

9.30-10.00 Registration

10.00-10.10 Greetings

10.10-11.30 Lectures. Chairman: Naama Scheftelowitz (Tel Aviv University)

-Nimrod Getzov (Israel Antiquities Authority): Settlement patterns, architecture, burials and installations

-Dina Shalem ( Insitute for Galillean Archaeology): Pottery vessels and other finds

- Ofer Marder (Israel Antiquities Authority) and Yaakov Vardi (Israel Antiquities Authority and Ben Gurion University): The flint assemblages

11;30-11.45 Coffee break

11.45-13.00 Exhibition of finds from different Chalcolithic sites in northern Israel. Chairman: Zvi Gal (Institute for Galilean Archaeology)

-Howard Smithline: H. Dobshan, Tel Turmus

-Nimrod Getzov (Israel Antiquities Authority): Beit Haemeq, Ard el-Samra

-Dina Shalem (Institute for Galilean Archaeology): Beer Tzones, Marj` Raba

-Emannuel Eisenberg (Israel Antiquities Authority): Tel Te`o

-Ianir Milevski (Israel Antiquities Authority): Stone tools from Tel Turmus

13.00-14.00 Lunch break

14.00-16.00 Lectures and general discussion. Chairman: Nimrod Getzov (Israel Antiquities Authority)

-Eli Yannai (Israel Antiquities Authority): Comparison of finds from northern Israel with the site of Assawir

-Isaac Gilead (Ben Gurion University): Comparison of the finds from northern Israel with the finds from southern Israel

Did they find any "Palestinians"?

P.S. Yes, I am aware that the Patriarch Avraham hadn't yet arrived from the area of Babylon, in Ur of the Chaldees (Genesis 11:28).

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Olive Pits Story

A letter I sent off to the Montreal Gazette after reading this story, with a great headline pun:-

Olive war pits settlers against farmers

Palestinians say Israeli soldiers are failing to protect them from vandalism - assaults they see as attempts to drive them out

Your story via Reuters regarding claimed damage to olive tress owned by local Arabs (Nov.6) asserts that the UN body for Palestinian humanitarian affairs, OCHA, says 7,500 trees were damaged.

I should wish to point out that OCHA conducts no independent investigation. Their agents do not visit sites, photographs are unavailable, testimony is not recorded. All their information comes from Arab sources, either from the media or Palestinan Authority representatives. No Israeli sources are included. As such, the numbers are unreliable and should be suspect.

If it is published, I will let you all know.

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Day of the Dead at J Street

Really.  In Sacramento:-

La Raza Galería Posada (LRGP) once again gathered 50 organizations, artists and community members at their annual Panteón de Sacramento (Sacramento’s Cemetery). The event is in commemoration of Día de los Muertos (Day of the Dead).
La Raza Galería Posada is located at 1022-1024 22nd Street. This year the event moved down the street to 1015 20th Street at J Street.

The event was held on the last Saturday and Sunday of October and had many more hands on activities for visitors. The two day and evening festivities displayed altars dedicated to family members and loved ones who have passed away....Roberto Lopez, from LRGP, served as emcee and conducted tours during the event to give more information about the meaning of altars and Día de los Muertos. For readers not familiar with the event Día de los Muertos is a traditional Meso-American holiday dedicated to ancestors honoring both death and life.

You just never know what J Street has in store for you.

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Is There Such A Thing As A "Chassidic Winter"?

My brother-in-law sent me this, a sign at the Rest Stop on the Northway North - Clifffon Park and it comes with a Yiddish explanation:

which informs religiously-observant Jews, who read Yiddish, that is, that the water fountain cannot be used for the ritual washing of hands before eating bread and that the washing sink is in the Succah.

And since we're on to linguistists, sort of, here's another poster from a Hareidi neighborhood:

It publicizes a "one-time sale" of winter coats of "Chassidic Winter Coats" which I have encircled.

But those familiar with Hebrew grammar will discern that there's a funny error, I think.

The adjective "Chassidic" which is describing, I presume, the coat, is in singular form rather than plural.  In that form, it is really describing "Winter".

Is there such a thing as a "Chassidic Winter"?

Anyone have a more intelligent thought?


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Two New Hareidi Posters Are Up

Two new posters (pashkavillim) have gone up, both dealing with feminist issues from the hareidi viewpoint.

The first one, anonymous, is here

and it gravely warns that all females wearing short or tight skirts will lose the right to live in the Messianic Age to come.  Those who violate modesty norms see Isaiah 3:

16 Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched-forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet; 17 Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the LORD will lay bare their secret parts. 18 In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their anklets, and the fillets, and the crescents; 19 the pendants, and the bracelets, and the veils; 20 the headtires, and the armlets, and the sashes, and the corselets, and the amulets; 21 the rings, and the nose-jewels; 22 the aprons, and the mantelets, and the cloaks, and the girdles; 23 and the gauze robes, and the fine linen, and the turbans, and the mantles. 24 And it shall come to pass, that instead of sweet spices there shall be rottenness; and instead of a girdle rags; and instead of curled hair baldness; and instead of a stomacher a girding of sackcloth; branding instead of beauty.

will have their legs and arms burned in boiling liquid in hell.

The second was issued by the Educational Committee of the Eidah Hareidit:

is shocked and excoriates the Moreshet Yerushalyaim girls school in Betar Illit for including the instruction of...English in its curriculum.  This despite 150 years of a Rabbinic ban by the Rabbis of Jerusalem to prohibit the study of foreign, i.e., non-Yiddish languages (Hebrew is the 'sacred tongue' to be used solely for religious studeis and prayer).

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The Children of 1993 - The New Latma Parody

In order to understand the following Latma parody, (the English captioned version is here) you need know the original song on which it was based, "Winter 1973", was written by Shmuel Hasfari (a then-acquaintance, formerly in Betar and DOV but for years gone far-left) and put to music by Uri Widislavski and first performed by an IDF educational entertainment group. It refers to the recruits of 1990-91 who were born in 1973 when, after the Yom Kippur War, a Yehoram Gaon song promised "this will be the very last war", and the lyrics are here.

I haven't the translation yet (but the translator said she'd finished and it will be up shortly). The song rips into the politicians who were interested in a Nobel Prize and left the population to die at the rate of two a day since then, after disengagement, withdrawal, suicide bombers, qassam rockets, etc.

For aficionados, the words to "Winter 1973" also know as "You promised us a dove":-

We are the children of winter 1973
You dreamt us first at dawn at the end of the battles
You were tired men that thanked their good luck
You were worried young women and you wanted so much to love
When you conceived us with love in winter 1973
You wanted to fill up with your bodies that what the war finished

And we were born the country was wounded and sad
You looked at us you hugged us you were trying to find comfort
When we were born the elders blessed with tears in their eyes
They said:" we wish those kids will not have to go to the army"
And your faces in the old picture prove
That you said it form the bottom of your hearts
When you promised to do every thing for us
To make an enemy into a loved one

You promised a dove,
an olive tree leaf,
you promised peace
You promised spring at home and blossoms
You promised to fulfill promises, you promised a dove

We are the children of winter 1973
We grew up and now in the army
with our weapon and helmet on our heads
We know how to make love to laugh and cry
We are men we are women
and we too dream about babies
This is why we will not pressure you we will demand of you
And we will not threaten you

When we were young you said promises need to be kept
We will give you strength if that is what you need
We will not hold back
We just wanted to whisper
We are the children of that winter in the year 1973

You promised a dove,
an olive tree leaf,
you promised peace
You promised spring at home and blossoms
You promised to fulfill promises,
you promised a dove

Israel's Critics Apartheidize Themselves

In response to Richard Goldstone's defense of Israel against the calumny of "apartheid", there were two letters-to-the-editor published as well as a column by Gal Beckerman.

In the NYTimes, John Dugard claims he knows

"the West Bank better than Mr. Goldstone, as from 2001 to 2008, I was special rapporteur to the Human Rights Council, a United Nations body, on human rights in the Palestinian territories and visited there regularly". 

He is sure that

"there are distinctive similarities between apartheid in South Africa and Israel’s practices in the West Bank. Israel discriminates against Palestinians in favor of settlers. Its restrictions on freedom of movement resemble the pass laws of apartheid South Africa...there are more political prisoners in Israeli jails than there were in South Africa under apartheid...There are sufficient similarities between the two systems to justify an investigation into whether or not Israel commits the crime of apartheid in the Palestinian territories.

Many things can be "similar" but that is not being the "same", the exact same.  The only thing the amount of prisoners (why "political"?  either the killed, tried to, stole, threw stones or otherwise engaged in murderous or riotous behavior) can mean is that there are a lot more Arabs engaged in terror and security offenses thatn there were in South Africa.  How stupid does Dugrad think we are (alright, that was a bad question because I really don't know what he thinks about us).  But we do know what he thinks about Israel and it is bad and evil, if only because he is a South African and does know better.  His ideology twists his faculties.

And one David Markowitz of Pound Ridge, N.Y., pounds away;

Richard J. Goldstone’s article splits hairs to rob us of language that accurately describes the Palestinians’ repression...the most appalling insult to logic is the claim that there can be no apartheid because Israel has no “intention of maintaining” its regime of “domination by one racial group.”  It’s a fact on the ground, but we can’t call it by its name because Israel means well?

But it isn't a "fact on the ground".  Plain and simple.
 
In Beckerman's Another Goldstone Inaccuracy in the backward Forward, while he agrees that "apartheid...should not be thrown around as lightly as it has been", nevertheless, decides to use another inaccurate definition of the term:

preferential treatment of a minority at the expense of a majority (in other words, apartheid)

He is upset that in his piece, Goldstone

does not account for the settlers and their settlements...Goldstone does not mention...the word “settlement,”...nowhere in his piece.

And he continues,

Goldstone...ignores completely the settlement archipelago and the preferential Jewish roads that connect them; he ignores the daily experience of occupation that Palestinians encounter at checkpoints while Jewish cars zoom past; he ignores the fact that in the West Bank there is water reserved exclusively for Jewish settlers...

There is so much wrong with Gal's thinking and portrayal.

Has he asked himself how many (alive) Jews reside in Arab villages, on both sides of the Green Line? Abbas and PLO diplomat Maen Rashid Areikat have stated that "absolutely" no Jews could remain in a future Palestinian state. That is apartheid. Gal's political ideology blinds him and perverts his ability to perceive the reality as it is and not as he would wish and all that makes his thesis inaccurate.

He writes of "water reserved exclusively for Jewish settlers".

???

If it weren't for Israel's technology, Arabs would have been dying of thirst long ago. And if they would stop stealing water from both their own pipes and the water supply infrastructure that Israel inserted (and would fix their leaky pipes), there would be no problem at all. Israel created the drip-drop irriagation system and hothouse-in-the-field agriculture that Arabs use, somewhat succesfully, and still Gal is upset that Jews are living in their national homeland.

Is he upset that Jews are living in pre-67 Israel? I would guess not. Is he upset that Arabs are living in pre-67 Israel? Same. Is he upset that Arabs are living in Judea and Samaria? I think not. So why has he set his sights on the Jews there? Is that an apartheid approach to politics, perhaps? Jews cannot live in "Palestine"?

Or if we are not 'repressive' (actually, we are not), we can? Is our 'repression' the result of some insane and fanatic desire to hurt Arabs or is the situation one that developed out of Arab wishes and actions of ethnic cleansing of Jews from anywhere in "their Palestine" (which they called Southern Syria until the Jews and British came to rule them) plus a great deal of terror 99.9% directed at civilians?

Who sabotaged peace? Who walked away from the negotiating table - ask Condi Rice, she knows (from the WashPost: “It’s one of the best deals I think you’re going to see,” Rice said of the deal on the table during the waning months of the Bush administration. The deal died when the Palestinians rejected it weeks before Bush left office, she wrote...). Of course, security can't be the panacea for all the reality we face, but Gal, how many Arabs live in kibbutzim, those castles of socialist liberal progressivism?

Gal, so innacurate.

Three critics who have apartheidize themselves.


_____

Is apartheidize a word?

^

Democratic and Less-than-Secular

The motto "In God We Trust" reaffirmed.

In America.

Israel still strictly non-religious.

The House of Representatives voted this week on a resolution “reaffirming ‘In God We Trust’ as the official motto of the United States.” It went through a speeded-up process and passed 396 to 9, with all but one of the no votes coming from Democrats; two members voted “present.” The Senate had passed a similar measure in 2006 when Republicans controlled that chamber.

Imagine if we attempted legislation here on that theme. Last time was over 60 years ago in the dispute over mentioning the divinity in Israel's Declaration of Independence.

^

Who Is Hugging Erdogan Now?

Who, you ask?

Who would hug Turkey's Islamist anti-Israel saber-rattling leader?

Well, take a look:-

Story here.

Give us a hug, Barack?

^

'Palestine' Agonistes or, Bring Down A Doom Temple

Bringing down the temple:

Ban Ki-moon: Palestinian membership of UN agencies is 'not beneficial'

Millions of people could be affected if UN agencies see their funding cut as a result of the Palestinian bids, he says

The UN secretary general, Ban Ki-moon, has said Palestinian efforts to join other United Nations agencies beyond its cultural arm are "not beneficial for Palestine and not beneficial for anybody".

Millions of people could be affected if UN agencies see their funding cut as a result of the Palestinian bids, he said in an interview on Thursday at the sidelines of the G20 summit in Cannes. The US and Canada have cut off funding for Unesco since the Paris-based UN cultural agency approved a Palestinian membership bid – stripping it of about one-quarter of its total funding.

Ban said the Palestinian Authority's foreign minister had indicated that it would apply for membership of the 16 other UN agencies.

The Pals. don't really care much for their own refugees so why should they care about anyone else in trouble?

Such a tragedy.

(k/t=IMRA)

^

1.1%

Anbody have this photograph?

an aerial photograph provided by European sources shows that settlements have been built on approximately 1.1% of the West Bank

^

On Uri Tzvi Greenberg and Jesus Affinity

Hamutal Bar-Yosef on Uriz Tvi Greenberg in this academic article:

Jewish-Christian Relations in Modern Hebrew and Yiddish Literature: A Preliminary Sketch

…The Yiddish and early Hebrew poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg (1894-1981) radicalised the complex Jewish attitude towards Christianity.[52] In Albatros, a Yiddish literary almanac edited by Greenberg himself, he published long poems which expressed his attitude toward Christ with such force and audacity that the editorial office had to stop publication. Greenberg was a frontline soldier in the Austrian Army during the First World War, but deserted it and lived in hiding. After experiencing a pogrom in his hometown of Lemberg (L’vov, L’viv), he became an ardent Zionist.

In his early poems Greenberg often refers to Jesus as “my brother” or “our brother”.[53] In this context Jesus is a symbol of universal human suffering. In his long poem, “The Mystery Man”, published in 1922 in Warsaw in Albatros, Greenberg expressed his universalism with the words:

A man, Uri Zvi, or Ivan or Mustafa
with Shadai in his blood,
or with the cross in the head
or with half a crescent
at the trembling temple.[54]

In the poem “In the Kingdom of the Cross” (1923) Greenberg writes:

“At the churches/ Hangs my brother/ Crucified (…) Brother Jesus, a Jewish skin and bones shrinks”.

Greenberg identified himself with the historical Jesus, whom he – like Klausner – saw as a Jewish nationalist, who had been tortured and killed by the Romans because he was a leader of an anti-Roman revolt. But he detested historical Christianity, which had gone far away from Golgotha. He described Christ as being emptied from his humanity by two thousand years of distance from Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Galilee. Jesus, who for Greenberg was a symbol of Jewish suffering, had been crucified by Christianity, and he was still being crucified in the Christian churches and cathedrals.

He gives vent to his attitude toward institutionalised Christianity with the words:

Oh Christ’s bald priests!
No man has cut the veins of your hands
And no one has driven his nails in your throats
No one has brought one of you to Golgotha
And hanged him naked on a blossoming tree.
Whose is the lament?
Not yours! It is our pain, the pain of the Jewish redeemer!
Not your agonies! It is our wound.[55]
In 1922 Greenberg published in his Albatros a “concrete” poem in the form of a cross, which was entitled Uri Zvi Before the Cross/ INRI (Jesus the Nazarene King of the Jews).[56] In this poem the poet turned to Jesus, saying:

You have become inanimate, my brother Jesus. You have two thousand years on the cross. Around you the world stopped. But you have forgotten everything. Your frozen brain does not reflect…You have become inanimate, you have tranquillity on your cross. I do not have it. Not me.[57]

The poet sees the Christian cross, a symbol of sympathy with suffering, as an empty, meaningless symbol. For him Jesus became the representative of the Jewish fate: “Ancient Jewish distress, Golgotha, my brother, don’t you see, Golgotha is here: all around.” Pilate places phylacteries on Jesus’ head, which are “a new crown of thorns”.

In the poem “A World on a Slope” (1922) the poet expressed his nihilistic loss of his former faith in Christian ideals. In this poem Jesus is fiercely attacked by a band of invalids and madmen who curse him and mock at him. They demand that he should get down from his heavenly cross to earth and join them, the real sufferes. They cry:

Get down from the cross,
you man, in our image!
Get down! The world has chimed: thirteen![58]

In this poem Christ is described as being emptied from his humanity by two thousand years of distance from Jerusalem, Bethlehem and the Galilee. Never before did any Jewish writer dare to directly attack and caricaturise the image of Christ.

At a time when many European intellectuals believed in a pacifist future, Greenberg prophesied the destruction of Europe together with the Jews. He wrote:

But I am telling you the prophecy – the black prophecy:
From our valleys a pillar of cloud will rise
From our dark breaths, woe to us how bitter they are!
And you will not realize the terror in your flesh.
And will go on prattling from burning palates
The Jews!
The Jews!
While poisonous gases will enter into palaces
And suddenly icons will scream in Yiddish.[59]
The Jews have nochance to survive in Europe. “Ten will remain, ten pain-stricken Jews … in order to prove: there was such a nation, on the Christian earth of distress”, he wrote in his “In the Kingdom of the Cross” (1923).

Greenberg describes the metamorphosis he went through:

I have been long meditating in the inwardness: is it possible
That those who kneel in Europe toward Bethlehem
And sanctify the bible – are those, these barbarians,
Whose dream is to annihilate the Jews completely?
Now he must admit that what the elders used to say about gentiles is true:
Oh, true-true-true is what my elders say:
The dead in the kloister is not my brother, he is Jezus.[60]

In 1925 Greenberg had written scathingly, “The land of enlightened Europe is not enlightened for the Jews. We are the most contemptible of humanity, as is well known”[61].

Now Greenberg perceived Christianity to be one element of a suspicious anti-Jewish world: “We [the Jews] are the only lonely ones in the world”, he wrote.
When aleady in Palestine, Greenberg wrote in a Hebrew essay (in his characteristic expressionistic style):

Hey, it should be said once and for all: the pain of the pure Christianity is the pain of the stabbed Judaism. The wound is in our flesh under the skin, not theirs. The problem: Jesus of Nazareth, who was crossed when he was thirty-three years old – this is our problem, from us it arose.[62]

His fierce attacks on Christian Europe reach their climax in his post-Shoah collection of poetry in Hebrew Streets of the River (1951). Greenberg’s emotional attitude toward the gentile world represents the psychological disastrous results of the Jewish experience in antisemitic Europe. The memory of this cruel experience is still active in the collective psychology and in political decisions in Israel and outside it.

[52] In the 1910s and early 1920s Greenberg wrote expressionist poetry mostly in Yiddish, and edited the avant-guard Yiddish almanach Albatros (Warsaw 1922- Berlin 1923). He began writing in Hebrew after his emigration to Palestine in 1924. On Greenberg’s attitude to Christ, Christians and Christianity see Noah H. Rosenblum, “Ha-Antitetiut Ha-te’ologit-Historit Shebanatsrut Beshirat Uri Zvi Greenberg” (The Theological-Historical Christian Antithesis in Uri Zvi Greenber’s Poetry), Prakim 4 (New York, 1966), pp. 263-320; S. Lindbaum, Shirat Uri Zvi Greenberg: Kavei Mit’ar [The Poetry of Uri Zvi Greenberg: Contours], (Tel-Aviv: Hadar, 1984), pp. 117-159.
[53] Lindbaum, ibid., p. 118.
[54] “Di misterie mentsch”, trans. by H. Bar-Yosef, Albatros 2 (1922), p. 14.
[55] Ibid..
[56] This poem might have been the inspiration for Chagall’s The White Crucifixion (1938) where the same letters, INRI, appear above the cross).
[57] “Uri Zvi Greenberg faren Tslav INRI”, Albatros, 2 (1922), pp. 3-4.
[58] “Velt Borg-Arop”, Kholiastre, (Warsaw 1922), p. 17.
[59] English translation quoted from Baal-Teshuva, chagall: A Retrospective (New York 1995), pp. 301-302.
[60] Here Greenberg uses the Polish pronounceation of the word “Jesus” (in contrast to the Hebrew “Yeshu”), to emphasize Jesus’ otherness.
[61] “Etsleinu ba-olam” [At our place in the world), sadan 4 (August 1925), p. 5.
[62] Editorial column of Sadan, edited by U.Z. Greenberg, 1-2 (Jerusalem, 1935), p. 2, trans. By H. Bar-Yosef.

an do you read Polish?

^

Yikes! Nigeria?

Now we're really in trouble.

Nigeria has a West Bank: -

Nigeria: West Bank Urges FG to Develop Framework On Climate Change

Or was that a simple spelling error?

The Federal Government has been called upon to develop a strategic framework for tackling climate change challenges.

Country Representative of the World Bank in Nigeria, Marie Francoise Marie-Nelly, said a strategic framework would enable Nigeria address climate change issues like water shed management.

^

Jerusalem vs. Bowling Green, Kentucky

Have you read about the Conservative Movement's initiative via the Kehillat Ohr synagogue to combat feminine discrimination in the defacing of bus stop ads that picture women?

Well, welcome to Bowling Green, Kentucky:-

Controversial bra display for cancer awareness set ablaze

BOWLING GREEN, Ky. — A public display of bras outside a Bowling Green business has been set ablaze.

The cancer-awareness display at Western Kentucky Diagnostic Imaging Center had created some controversy in the south-central Kentucky town, prompting calls to the business and letters to the paper.

On Monday night, vandals set fire to the display, burning some of the bras, according to WBKO-TV.

Any Hareidim down south?

^

Can't Wait for Julie's Memoir

To be called Memoir of Philosemitism, Unchosen.

Background here; and here; and here.
^

Lipman Seethes Wrongly

Some persons just do not know the facts.

Take this lady, Jennifer Lipman, who writes:

...As always, my shul's mid-afternoon Question and Answer session was packed with hungry but engaged congregants. One query in particular prompted a lengthy response from the rabbi. In it, he referred to British Mandate Palestine and those Jews whose fight for statehood saw them join the militant Irgun group. "They weren't terrorists," went his argument. "It was a different time and they were fighting for their freedom."

Really? I thought, my blood boiling (never good on a fast day). Oh yes, I'm sure their cause and the context would have been of great comfort to the families of the 91 people who died in 1946 when the Irgun bombed the King David Hotel.

More to the point, doesn't that argument sound familiar? Isn't it essentially the defence used today by extremist groups after a blast on a bus in Israel or a random attack in the West Bank? If we condemn it now, we cannot excuse it in history.

I left the session seething with anger and disbelief but, most of all, with disappointment. Was it intentional moral relativism or just a short memory? I can't speak for the rabbi - perhaps he simply said the first thing that came to mind- but it makes little difference. It is irresponsible, not to mention dangerous and counter-productive, to use the bully pulpit to spread a limited or even false view of events. That is always true, but it is especially so with a subject as sensitive as the Israeli-Arab conflict...

Since any simple Google-search could have provided the lady with the facts, allow me to be short and to the point as this issue comes up a dozen times a year if not more and it is so terrible that Jews fall for Arab propaganda when they should know better (unless, of course, they are radical leftwing bolshie progressives who are anti-Zionist to begin with - no pun there - which I do not think the lady is).

1. The King David Hotel operation was initiated by Moshe Sneh of the Hagana following a May 15th meeting of the Joint Operations Committee of the United Resistance Movement when the plan was authorized in principle and following the 'Black Sabbath' search & arrest action by the British. Due to Sneh's resignation because of pressure from the more moderate wing, delays were requested but left unexplained for Begin.

2. The "Hotel" was not attacked. What was targeted was the southern wing which had been expropriated by the Bristish Mandatory regime as early as 1938. By 1946, the entire wing housed the Mandatory secretariat offices, in other words, the government, as well as the HQ of the British Army, then numbering almost 100,000 troops, in the country. It was a legitimate target for an urban guerrilla liberation group. It was surrounded by a barbed-wire fence and a platoon of Paras.

3. All possible attempts to warn those inside were made including: a 30 minute delay of the fuses; the throwing of petards and setting alight two firewalls on the street in front of the Hotel on both approaches; three phboe calls were made to the French Consulate, the editorial offices of the Palestine Post and the Hotel itself. They were received. Why the British did not act is a mystery.

4. In summation, any comparison between this operation, and hundreds of others with any Arab terror group killing Israeli civilians is horrific, immoral and insensible as well as displaying a woeful lack of knowledge.

Any anger or disbelief directed at Lipman would be quite in order.  Any seething as well.  Memory?  She has none.  Relativism of morality?  Biased.

There is no excuse for her outlook and presentation of opinion.  All wrong.

Of course, if we review the actions of the British, and I suggest to her Bernard Wasserstein's book, Gt. Britian and the Jews of Europe, not only because of the book's content damning British officialdom in indriect collaboration with the Nazis in allowing millions to die in Nazi Europe, but because Wasserstein is far left in his politics so I presume he would be kosher enough for Ms. Lipman.

Has she now learned her lesson and is controlling her anger?

^

This Week's Media Comment Column

It's up over at the Jerusalem Post:

Media Comment: A second-rate Second Authority
By NILI BEN-GIGI AND YISRAEL MEDAD

The Second Authority for Television and Radio's work is often sloppy, lacks attention to detail and shows mercy in cases that could be considered criminal.

^

Barr Bares Mandate History

A new book, A Line in the Sand, retells the story of French and English involvement in the bringing too an end of the Ottoman Empire.

Curtesy of the author's site, here are some extracts from the first chapter on the issue of "Palestine to who?", to be followed by a comment on "Zionist terror" and the Jewish war for liberation from the oppressive Mandatory regime.

On the early history:

Late in the morning of 16 December 1915, a promising young politician named Sir Mark Sykes hurried into Downing Street for a meeting. The prime minister had summoned the thirty-six-year-old baronet to advise him and his war cabinet on how they might resolve a row about the future of the Ottoman Empire

- - -

‘I feel we ought to settle with France as soon as possible, and get a definite understanding about Syria,’ Sykes proposed.

‘What sort of an arrangement would you like to have with the French?’ asked Balfour.

‘I should like to retain for ourselves such country south of Haifa,’ replied Sykes, gesturing to his map.

...‘What do you mean to give exactly?’ pressed Balfour, referring to the French.

Sykes sliced his finger across the map that lay before them on the table. ‘I should like to draw a line from the “e” in Acre to the last “k” in Kirkuk,’ he said.

- - -

It was 25 April 1915. Constantinople, and victory, were just one hundred and fifty miles away.

The French and British both anticipated the division of the spoils. In France a small but thick-skinned group of imperialists, the Comité de l’Asie Française, began to put pressure on Delcassé to lay claim to Syria and Palestine...the Comité’s secretary-general, an aristocratic diplomat named Robert de Caix, reached for the history books to make his case. He argued that France had a ‘hereditary’ right to Syria and Palestine because it was ‘the land of the Crusades...where Western activity has been so French-dominated since the beginning of the Middle Ages that all the Europeans who live there are still called “Franks”’.

- - -

My understanding, it was obvious too all that Palestine was not going to be an independent Arab state. As here

The Sykes-Picot agreement drew a line east-west from north of Acre across to the Iranian border, ‘giving’ some of modern Turkey, all of Syria and Lebanon and some of Iraq to the French, while what became Jordan, the bulk of Iraq and Israel ‘went’ to Britain.

And now, as for Barr's treatment of the period of 1946-1948, we learn that

a)

Barr suggests that the climax of the struggle between the two, which lasted right up to the establishment of Israel in 1948, was French support (at what level is not clear) for acts of Jewish terrorism against the British.

His most striking piece of evidence came from a report written in 1945 by an MI5 officer and never before published (and not sourced here). It was at the time when the Yishuv was struggling to get the first pitiful remnants of the concentration camps into Palestine, and Britain was resisting both Jewish and Arab unrest with tough, even brutal, measures.

Barr quotes the MI5 man as reporting, from top-secret sources, that it was known that "French officials in the Levant have been clandestinely selling arms to the Hagana and we have received recent reports of their intention to stir up strife in Palestine."

Barr, a newspaperman by profession, adds his own gloss to this suggestion: "In other words, while the British were fighting and dying to liberate France, their supposed allies the French were secretly backing Jewish efforts to kill British soldiers and officials in Palestine."

b)

Barr even argues, not very convincingly, that the reason Zionist terrorists such as the Stern Gang and the Irgun were able to get some weapons and financing from France, to enable them to carry out the devastating attacks which eventually forced Britain out of Palestine, was because the French wanted to get even for the way Britain had helped Syria and Lebanon secure their independence. This might be stretching the story of Anglo-French rivalry in the Levant a shade too far. But it makes for enjoyable reading.

c)

Violence carried on and it seems that the French were rather encouraging it ; they might even have backed it up. James Barr argues that Zionist groups like the Stern Gang received weapons and finances from France who wanted to destabilise Palestine as much as possible to force the British into a difficult position. The reason behind all this ? Revenge. "It was the French who played a vital part in the creation of the state of Israel, by helping the Jews organise the large-scale immigration and devastating terrorism that finally engulfed the bankrupt British mandate in 1948".

d)

one of his original contributions, based on declassified documents, is the extraordinary discovery that the French secretly provided arms and financial support to the Zionist terrorist groups the Stern gang and the Irgun, as well as the Hagana. This was their revenge for British encouragement of Lebanese and Syrian independence. The Zionist gangs made havoc of London's plans for Palestine. It was two members of the Stern gang who, in 1944, ambushed and murdered Lord Moyne, resident minister of state in Cairo, member of the British cabinet and leading advocate for a Greater Syria.

And he doesn't mention the Altalena?

Consider this:-

The ship Altalena...brought arms and ammunition provided to the Irgun Tzvai Leumi underground militia by the French army. Documents revealed here for the first time attest that France's Foreign Ministry believed that helping the Irgun (the National Military Organization, known also by its acronym Etzel), would prevent Jerusalem from falling into Jordanian hands, which would strengthen the position of France's rival in the region: Britain...

...One of the most important documents is testimony the French deputy chief of staff, General Henri Coudraux, gave to France's Defense Ministry during an internal inquiry into the affair. Coudraux, who had played a key role in transfering the arms to the Irgun in June 1948, said in his testimony on November 15, 1949, that France "reached a secret agreement with the Irgun, which promised it advantages if it were to come into power (in Israel)."...Ariel testified, confirming that the Irgun signed a secret agreement with the French government whereby the latter would "provide arms to the Irgun to fight the Arabs."
...The writer of these lines recently discovered in a French archive the report written about 60 years ago by France's Ministry of Defense and the testimonies used in it. The documents cast light on the French motives in the affair, and indicate that a secret agreement concerning the arms supply included stipulations which, Coudraux said, were aimed at the provisional government in Israel. The Irgun representative said the targets of these political provisos were the Arabs.

The written agreement has not been found, but from the documents one concludes that foreign minister Georges Bidault deeply feared occupation of Jerusalem by the Jordanian Arab Legion, with British support; in the second half of May 1948, the Legion had damaged French Catholic institutions and France's consulate in Jerusalem. Years later Ben-Gurion hinted that the French gave the Irgun the arms in return for a commitment to protect the Catholic institutions in the city. On May 24 the French Foreign Ministry sent communiques to Jordan's King Abdullah, Israel's government and British and Arab legations in Paris, demanding that they avoid attacking religious and diplomatic institutions in Jerusalem. Irgun representatives in Paris received a similar notice...

Bidault decided to provide arms to the Irgun, an organization that opposed the interim government, and which was receiving clandestine aid from France, not only to protect French institutions in Jerusalem from the Arab Legion. He also knew this move would anger the British Foreign Office, which was closely following the Altalena's course...he may have had another to thwart a British-Jordanian move to control Jerusalem.

In the summer of 1944, French intelligence succeeded to recruit an agent in the Syrian government, who subsequently provided information about clandestine British activity in Syria and other Arab countries. As foreign minister in Charles de Gaulle's provisional government, Bidault witnessed the efficiency of the British secret services, which played a major role in expelling the French from Syria in 1945. Bidault, a devout Catholic, attributed great importance to maintaining Jerusalem's status as an international city, and saw a vital French interest in the creation of the state.

According to the French documents, Paris suspected that Britain had adopted a "double policy," which it used effectively in Syria: Alongside the declared policy about ending the Mandate and evacuating British forces from Palestine on May 15, 1948, the French believed that Britain's secret services sought to prevent establishment of a Jewish state, or at least to limit its size.

History is such an intersting subject.

Is the Altalena in Barr's book?

^

A Religious Nut

From The New Yorker

^

Yes, They Were Ordered To Flee Their Own Homes

From "Reclaiming a historical truth" by Efraim Karsh published in Haaretz, June 10, 2011

...the tragedy befalling the Palestinian Arabs in 1948 was exclusively of their own making, and that there is therefore "a grave moral defect in the Nakba discourse."

I am surprised, however, by his assertion that "despite decades of research, to this day no document or broadcast has been found confirming ... [any order] by the Arab leadership for the population to leave." This claim couldn't be further from the truth.

...tens of thousands of Arabs were ordered or bullied into leaving the city of Haifa (on April 21-22 ) on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee, the effective "government" of the Palestinian Arabs. Only days earlier, Tiberias' 6,000-strong Arab community had been similarly forced out by its own leaders, against local Jewish wishes...In Jaffa, Palestine's largest Arab city, the municipality organized the transfer of thousands of residents by land and sea; in Jerusalem, the AHC ordered the transfer of women and children, and local gang leaders pushed out residents of several neighborhoods, while in Beisan the women and children were ordered out as Transjordan's Arab Legion dug in.

...Some Arab residents [of Haifa] received written threats that, unless they left town, they would be branded as traitors deserving of death. Others were told they could expect no mercy from the Jews.

In the words of a British intelligence report: "After the Jews had gained control of the town, and in spite of a subsequent food shortage, many would not have responded to the call for a complete evacuation but for the rumors and propaganda spread by the National Committee members remaining in the town..."

...The deliberate depopulation of Arab villages too, and their transformation into military strongholds was a hallmark of the Arab campaign from the onset of hostilities. As early as December 1947, villagers in the Tul Karm sub-district were ordered out by their local leaders, and in mid-January Haganah intelligence briefs reported the evacuation of villages in the Hula Valley to accommodate local gangs and newly arrived ALA forces....In early May, as fighting intensified in the eastern Galilee, local Arabs were ordered to transfer all women and children from the Rosh Pina area, while in the Jerusalem sub-district, Transjordan's Arab Legion ordered the emptying of scores of villages.

^

And Where Is "Palestine's Jerusalem Desert"?

In The Guardian, of course.

Here, Gail Simmon's 'Letter from the West Bank': having sweet tea and coffee.

But Gail does -

gaze through the opening at the sun settling over the Judean mountains

And she is enthralled with one Sheikh Ishmael Ali al-Rashayda

So much dust sand in her eyes.

^

Jabotinsky and the Question of Restraint

I attended the event to mark the publication of the 11th volume in the series The Letters of Ze’ev Jabotinsky, newly published by the Jabotinsky Institute and the Zionist Library of the World Zionist Organization.  It contains 360 letters written by Ze’ev Jabotinsky in the year 1936. The letters document Jabotinsky’s intensive labors, carried out against the backdrop of the dramatic turmoil in Eretz Yisrael and the world at large which greatly influenced the Zionist enterprise.

Although a few months have gone by, I haven't forgotten something I wanted to write about and now have the opportunity, as I did not take notes at the time but the recent bulletin of the JI, #50, provides a resource.

One of the major beliefs of the period of the Arab Revolt ("Disturbances") that began in 1936 was that Jabotinsky held back the Irgun from engaging in an offensive reprisal campaign in response to Arab terror.  The assumption has been that after a few attacks in April, it wasn't until late 1937, and even then supposedly begrudgingly, that Jabotinsky agreed that the Irgun should break the "restraint" policy the Yishuv had demanded [see here, in Hebrew].  The operational details, in any case, are different but I am referring to the overall political position.

In his remarks, Prof. Aryeh Naor notes that already in 1905, Jabotinsky had written that "there is no shame like the shame and quivering before the whip" which he had published in his introduction to his Russian translation of Bialik's "In the City of Slaughter" on the Kishinev pogrom.  See Naor's other article.

Jabotinsky opined that the use of armed force, which he promoted in general (see his 1933 article, "Learn to Shoot!" included as "At the Fireside" in Writings: The Way to the State, p. 94 and see the last paragraph in this 1910 article), was quite proper and correct.  However, it needed to be subservient to the political needs at a given time.  He desired to pressure the British to raise a Jewish militia and thought that attacks were not serve the goal.  He telegraphed to the Revisionist newspaper, HaYarden to explain his stance which is incldued in the volume.

Naor clarifies that already in July it became clear to Jabotinsky that the British were not to be persuaded and sent two encrypted telegrams urging active defense response but, as he complained in an August letter to Haskel, they were not understood by the Irgun.  Naor thinks that Jabotinsky was opposed by the then-Irgun commander, Avraham Tehomi, who was closer to the Mapai/Histadrut milieu.  Naor rebuts the claim that the Eretz-Yisrael born and/or bred Irgunists and Betarim were demanding an activist policy while Jabotinsky held them back.  Just the opposite is what he discovered.

In the fall of 1936, Eri Jabotinsky, the son of Jabotinsky, was seeking to unseat Tehomi but his father didn't want to change horses in midstream.  It was only when Jabotinsky could appoint a Betari as commander, after Tehomi returned to the folds of the Hagana in April 1937 could the anti-restraint forces achieve the upper hand.

^

A Grave Matter

How much was that burial plot?

Found in last week's Torah Tidbits.

^

And the Borders of "Palestine" Are...

Well, according to Mahmoud al-Zahar, who supports Palestinian Authority (PA) Mahmoud Abbas's UN membership bid and establishment of a Palestinian State within the 1967 borders, they are "well known".

Do you know what those borders are?

No?  Here:-

"But, the occupying regime should not be recognized and even a span of Palestine's soil should not be ignored," Zahar noted.

"If efforts are directed towards establishment of a Palestinian state based on 1967 borders, we should unify our efforts. Of course this is not our borders, our borders are well known and cover the entire Palestine and even more than Palestine," Zahar stated.

In in other words, no borders for Jews.

And more land for Arabs.  I presume he means...Jordan.

Abdallah, "Jordan is Palestine" indicates Hamas?


(k/t=IMRA)

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Do Pledge, Properly

Did you read the translation of the Foxman-Harris declaration of grovelling?

At the National Conference on Jewish Affairs?

Well, it starts so:

We at the National Conference on Jewish Affairs offer for your viewing pleasure what we think is an accurate translation of their pledge, followed by our own pledge, which we think is pretty clear.
THE ADL/AJC UNITY PLEDGE, IN TRANSLATION
1. We shall be silent.
2. We shall be weak.
3. We shall be beholden to one political party.
4. We shall appease.
5. We shall approve of negotiating away the rights of the Jewish People to our Homeland because we fear being called obstinate more than we fear diminishing our rights.
6. We shall "dialogue" with people who hate Israel.
7. We shall invite Jew-haters and Islamists into our synagogues and Jewish centers, but not invite Jews whose opinions we don't like...

and continues, so read it all.

Also provided is another pledge:

THE NCJA UNITY PLEDGE:
1. We will never be silenced when speaking the truth regarding the Jewish People, anti-Semitism, Israel or America.
2. We shall speak clearly and without hesitation when our elected officials or others take positions or actions that we believe are harmful to the safety and security of the Jewish State and the Rights of the Jewish People.
3. We will not be fooled by manipulative language used to shepherd Jews into signing on to pledges and statements intended to encourage self-censorship or shut down the free exchange of responsible ideas in our community. So-called "Pledges of Unity" and "Civility Statements" are nothing more than attempts to silence us.
4. We will not allow ourselves and our opinions to be controlled by organizations or officials who do not represent us.
5. We will not financially or morally support Jewish organizations or individuals that attempt to silence us or our opinions.
6. We will not sit silently by as Jewish officials attempt to mischaracterize us or our ideas as "extremist" or "intolerant," "inflammatory" or "hateful."
7. We will stand up against anti-Semitism, anti-Americanism and anti-Israel rhetoric.
8. We will not pressured into "outreach" with known bashers of the Jewish People, Israel, or America. We shall, however, enthusiastically reach out to and interact with sincere players and spokespeople.
9. We will not be told by Jewish officials what to do, what to say, where to say it, how to say it, and to whom to say it.
10. We shall publicly challenge organizations and individuals that are attempting to undermine the security and safety of Israel or America.

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Did A Graphologist See This?

Below is a scan from the story in Yedioth Ahronot on October 4, 2011 that reported the mosque-torching at the Beduin village Tuba-Zanarieh:

I've encirlced the Hebrew graffiti which supposedly reads "Tag Policy - Revenge". Actually, the middle word is Palmer, for the latest terror victim near Hebron. I can't see if the word מחיר appears.

I am going to going out on a limb here but nevertheless, unless a police graphologist has reviewed the material, I am thinking that that handwriting could be the work of a non-Hebrew native.

The gimmel is the word תג is odd. So, too, the lamed in פלמר a the reish as well there. And the mem in נקמה also.

Raising a doubt as to whether the police really know what they are doing as all the suspects arrested, detained and interrogated go free.

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US Peace Now Engaged in Subversion

Can this be true?

Americans for Peace Now, the U.S. partner of Israel’s leftist Peace Now organization, has filed an amicus brief with the United States Supreme Court in order to oppose listing “Israel” as home country in the passports of those born in Jerusalem.

We know they don't like Israel to be in Jerusalem's newer neighborhoods.

But to actively, in America, join a court procedure when their basis is political/ideological?

Yes, true:

APN argues in the brief, "this case represents a direct challenge to more than six decades of United States foreign policy on one of the most sensitive foreign policy questions facing the United States - recognition of sovereignty in Jerusalem."...APN's President and CEO Debra DeLee said: "APN has taken a position in this case because we recognize what is at stake here: preserving the very possibility of peace and the two-state solution,...

P.S.

PM Netanyahu Orders that Construction in the Jerusalem Area be Accelerated
(Communicated by the Prime Minister’s Media Adviser)

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu today (Tuesday), 1.11.11, directed that the construction of apartments in Jerusalem, in the Etzion Bloc and in Maaleh Adumim, be accelerated. These are thousands of residential units, in areas that will, under any future agreement, remain part of Israel.

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Torching Suspect Released; Police Burnt

Reported:

For the third time in less than a month, a court has ordered police to release a suspect in the October 3 arson of a mosque in northern Israel. The Petach Tikva Magistrates' Court ordered the suspect sent to house arrest for five days before he is completely free. Police wanted to keep him in jail.

Police also asked to remand another suspect to ten days' incarceration. The court rejected this demand and extended his remand by only two days.

Are the police so ineffective that they can't pursue a judicial process?

or, are they looking in the wrong direction?

Remember in 2009?

UPDATE

Magazine's editoial offices torched...in Paris.

Who's responsible?

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Eyes Over Gaza

Israel's observation balloon peeking into Gaza:

Judges 16 inspiration.


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Going Contentious

The Atlantic published a report "Is Peace Possible?" and in a follow-up interview, there was this question:

In your presentation on Borders, you mention Ariel as one of the most difficult settlements to resolve, because it is so populous but it is so deep into the West Bank. What are some of the other contentious settlements? Why are Maaleh Adumim and Efrat so controversial if they are so close to the 1967 lines?

And his answer is:

The Ariel bloc actually consists of more than just the settlement of Ariel...the Ariel bloc stretches far to the east, and includes a lengthy northern "finger" that stretches over Karnei Shomron, Immanuel, and all the way up to Kedumim; a central "finger" all the way to Ariel; and a southern "finger" that includes Beit Arie-Ofarim. In total, the areas of the Ariel bloc that are not immediately adjacent to the 1967 lines host about 40,000 settlers and have been one of the most contentious points in negotiations.

What more contentiousness?

Well, you then would need to include the greater Jerusalem area which "includes a few neighborhoods that are not as intrusive as the further settlements in the Ariel bloc, but are still extremely contentious", and Giv'at Ze'ev (pop. roughly 12,000) is located northwest of Jerusalem, between Ramallah and Jerusalem, and Ma'ale Adumim (pop. roughly 38,000) is located east of Jerusalem and Har Homa (pop. roughly 12,000, and growing rapidly) is located inside Israel's self-declared municipal boundary of Jerusalem and also Efrat (pop. roughly 9,000) is located east of the Etzion bloc.

Over 70,000 contentious Jews.

Are there no contentious Arabs?

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It's 1930 All Over Again

There's a big storm on the horizon.

We've been suffering from Islamic Temple Mount Denial for years (see here, too) which I thought had come to an end.

Then there was Rachel's Tomb about which PM Netanyahu got upset.

And now, it's all coming to a head:

West Bank religious sites first for world heritage request

Significant religious sites throughout the West Bank, including the Church of Nativity in Bethlehem and Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, will be among the first to be pushed forward for world heritage status now Palestine has been granted membership of UNESCO.

A Palestinian Authority spokesman there were many sites and shrines in the West Bank and the Gaza Strip that until now had been unprotected because of a lack of recognition and funding.

''Now we will be able to protect them and make sure they are known around the world,'' he said. ''We believe that becoming a member of the UNESCO is an overdue right for a country that has such a significant amount of heritage sites.''

...The authority claims agreements such as the 1994 Paris Protocol severely restrict tourism and therefore economic development in the Palestinian territories.  Joseph's Tomb in Nablus - a site important to Christians, Jews and Muslims - has been at the centre of deep sectarian conflict. With UNESCO membership, the Palestinian Authority would now be responsible for ensuring the site was protected, the official said.

This reminds me of the dispute over to who the rights of the Western Wall back in 1930.

The Jewish case is contained in this memorandum. A review is here. And I have gone into this here where I write:

I mentioned the International Commission of Inquiry established by the British Mandatory authorities in 1930 which issued a report that resulted, in May 1931, in unjust restrictions on Jews by the Western Wall in addition to awarding to the Muslim Waqf the ownership of the Wall and the small courtyard which served as the worship site.

This is a matter of identity theft. See here for what appears to be an article translated from the Arabic to comprehend their thinking.

If this is the culture UNESCO will be promoting at the initiative of its new member, there will be two outcomes.

The first is a reframing of the Arab-Israel conflict in terms of religion and national ethos.

The second is the reorientation of Jewish concerns on our rights to Eretz-Yisrael.

It may be difficult at the outset but good will come out of it in the form of a strengthened Jewish national character.

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Dimi Rieder: Not A Fact

Dimi Reider, of the extreme leftwing progressive online +972 Magazine, has been provided, as a matter of course, with op-ed space in the New York Times and published a piece attacking the Anat Kamm verdict:-

In Israel, Press Freedom Is Under AttackBy DIMI REIDER
Tel Aviv

It's "chilling message" for the journalist is:

know your place; cover what we tell you to cover, print our news releases, and keep within your bounds.

Rieder introduces the "ordinary patriot" as his hero, when there is no such thing.

His "ordinary patriots"

are sometimes moved to make shocking revelations about their country’s inner workings. They act out of civic duty and a belief that their compatriots need to know the truth, regardless of what official institutions think the public should know.

But, as the court made clear, Kamm is not ordinary. her motives were political ideology.

As even Haaretz reported:

"The systematic way in which she operated points to planning and awareness of her actions, which were goal-directed. She devoted time, planning and preparation to these actions, and even used the services of others to bring things to fruition," the judges wrote in their ruling.

And not ordinary was the nature of her crime. She stole documents that included

plans for military operations, information on troop deployments, summaries of various internal discussions, military targets and intelligence assessments. Of the 2,085 documents she copied, some 700 were classified as "Secret" or "Top Secret." In September 2008, Kamm met with Haaretz journalist Uri Blau, and gave him a disk-on-key on which she had copied 1,500 documents, of which 150 were classified "Top Secret" and 330 were "Secret."

Dimi, meet Thomas Drake who, like Kamm, has been prosecuted for the same crime. And Shammai Leibowitz. And Julian Assange.

Yet again, the NYT publishes someone who hasn't the facts, perverts the facts and seeks to persuade the public of a false
"fact".

And that's a fact.

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The "Apartheid" Claimers Retard

Here:

While “apartheid” can have broader meaning, its use is meant to evoke the situation in pre-1994 South Africa. It is an unfair and inaccurate slander against Israel, calculated to retard rather than advance peace negotiations.

That was from the pen of Richard J. Goldstone, a former justice of the South African Constitutional Court, led the United Nations fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict of 2008-9.

More:

...In Israel, there is no apartheid. Nothing there comes close to the definition of apartheid under the 1998 Rome Statute: “Inhumane acts ... committed in the context of an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group over any other racial group or groups and committed with the intention of maintaining that regime.” Israeli Arabs — 20 percent of Israel’s population — vote, have political parties and representatives in the Knesset and occupy positions of acclaim, including on its Supreme Court. Arab patients lie alongside Jewish patients in Israeli hospitals, receiving identical treatment.

To be sure, there is more de facto separation between Jewish and Arab populations than Israelis should accept...Some results from discrimination. But it is not apartheid, which consciously enshrines separation as an ideal. In Israel, equal rights are the law, the aspiration and the ideal; inequities are often successfully challenged in court.

The situation in the West Bank is more complex. But here too there is no intent to maintain “an institutionalized regime of systematic oppression and domination by one racial group.” This is a critical distinction...Israel has agreed in concept to the existence of a Palestinian state in Gaza and almost all of the West Bank, and is calling for the Palestinians to negotiate the parameters.

...claims and counterclaims are only hardened when the offensive analogy of “apartheid” is invoked.

Those seeking to promote the myth of Israeli apartheid often point to clashes between heavily armed Israeli soldiers and stone-throwing Palestinians in the West Bank, or the building of what they call an “apartheid wall” and disparate treatment on West Bank roads. While such images may appear to invite a superficial comparison, it is disingenuous to use them to distort the reality. The security barrier was built to stop unrelenting terrorist attacks...Road restrictions get more intrusive after violent attacks and are ameliorated when the threat is reduced...those who conflate the situations in Israel and the West Bank and liken both to the old South Africa do a disservice to all who hope for justice and peace.

...The charge that Israel is an apartheid state is a false and malicious one that precludes, rather than promotes, peace and harmony.

Well, now.

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