Still Stuck in Chutz LaAretz?

The previous post has you in Zion Square with a Lulav.

Well, here's a "shake" for you who prefer Chutz LaAretz.

Miss Being in Zion Square for Succot?

Well, here's a video clip of the "Lulav Shake" (okay, these people call it the Succot Shake but I see a Lulav).

Sorry but Here are the Anna Nicole Smith Pics

As I had some problems uploading, I decided to try my luck and place the pictures here in an all-new posting and it seems to have worked.

Anyway, here is the lady displaying her cross (and her baby, even if the father seems to be not quite scientifically identified:



And here is what may appear to some as an attempt by her Jewish husband to have her commit a mikveh dip, perhaps as a sop for conversion?

And What About Plans for the Temple?

Haaretz reports:-

Jordan's King Abdullah II has donated a huge carpet to the Al-Aqsa mosque and is launching an architectural competition for a fifth minaret for the building, which stands in Jerusalem on the third holiest site in Islam, the palace said Monday.

The carpet will cover 2,000 square meters, the statement said.

"I want the carpet to be placed under the dome of the mosque before Laylet al-Qadr," Abdullah was quoted as telling the meeting, adding that it would be provided at his expense.

The king also announced a competition to design a fifth minaret for Al-Aqsa, which is expected to cost 400,000 to 500,000 Jordanian dinars ($600,000 to 700,000).

The vice chairman of the committee running the project, Raef Nijem, said the king decided the new minaret should be "near the eastern wall of Al-Aqsa Mosque because there is no minaret there, and the area overlooks agricultural land."

The construction would requires the approval of Israel, which controls the site, but this is expected to be granted.

I presume then that architectural planning for the third temple will get under way in tandem.

Only natural, right?

The Shiksa Story

I have nothing against shiksas. Unlike many of my co-religionists and Yiddishsists, I don't consider shiksa necessarily a derogatory term. It depends on the person.

Anyway, this introduction is proper becuase I came across this story about one of today's most ultimate shiksas: Anna Nicole Smith (*) and her new, Jewish, husband. This gets complicated, so let's walk this through slowly.

First,

Howard K. Stern, the lawyer for Anna Nicole Smith, said Tuesday that he's the "proud father" of her baby girl, who was born just days before her 20-year-old son Daniel died in the Bahamas.

Stern, who was with the family in the hospital the night Daniel died, told CNN's Larry King that the newborn, named Dannielynn Hope, has been Smith's "one ray of hope" following the tragedy.

The child, he said, is "the one thing that is really keeping her going. And through it all, even with all the pain, she has been a great mom, a very attentive mom."

Next,

...the former Playboy playmate and her latest love one, Howard Stern had a spiritual wedding ceremony, it seems that no official marriage certificate has been issued yet for the happy couple.

"They had a quiet ceremony and declared how much they love each other in front of God. They vowed they would be there for each other," Smith's best friend, Alex Goen declared.

The fancy ceremony took place onboard a catamaran off Nassau in the Bahamas,

and

Star reports that an eyewitness said that Anna, 38, and Howard, 37, tied the knot shortly before 10:30 am in the morning, while sailing on a white catamaran off of Nassau. "There was heavy security around the yacht, plus extra speedboats to deliver more supplies as needed (including unlimited Dom Perignon champagne) from the mainland to the catamaran," says the eyewitness, who adds that the wedding party celebrated the union afterwards by having a swim party around the yacht — "and Anna was wearing a pink bikini!"

Star also goes on to say that two days before, on September 26, Stern appeared live on the Larry King Show via satellite from the Bahamas, to announce that he was the father of Anna's newborn daughter Danilynne Hope, that he and Anna "love each other" — and that the duo would get married "at some point."

And then, two more decided to claim paternity:-

While a court in Los Angeles, CA, convened yesterday on a paternity suit for baby Smith, 2 more men surfaced to claim title while another claimed to have been asked to father the child. TRIMSPA’s first media inquiry regarding the ‘new prospects’ was thought to be a bad joke, but the topic resurfaced throughout the day by multiple media outlets. “By day’s end,” said a company representative, “we were prepared to hear that every eligible bachelor was stepping up for the job.” As ridiculous as it sounds, the media coverage given the recent events in Anna Nicole Smith’s life almost guarantees anyone with something to say 15 minutes of fame – whether true or not.

Oh, well.

And here two pictures:

One Note the Cross

Two Is That a Mikveh Dip?


[I am having trouble uploading the pics. Stay tuned]

-----
(*)


Anna Nicole Smith (name at birth: Vicky Lynn Hogan) is a blonde bombshell with a history of heavy exposure: she was the Playboy's Playmate of the Year in 1993 and then increased her public presence with a series of glossy ads for Guess? clothing. Her busting-out-all-over appeal made her a popular pinup in the early days of the Internet. She became the stuff of talk show one-liners in 1994 when she married 89-year-old oil tycoon J. Howard Marshall. He died the next year, leaving Smith to battle his family for control of his fortune.

Kaporos Ceremony Photo Gallery in Village Voice

Here's the gallery.

Heard of Bassam Tibi?

No? Well, he has a thing or two, or three to say in an interview in Germany's Der Spiegel:-

Spiegel: When something insults Muslims, we often tend to just back off — doesn’t this help defuse the conflict?

Tibi (*) : No. That is simply giving up. And the weaker the partner is viewed by the Muslims, then the greater the anger which they express. And this anger is often carefully staged...The accusation of cultural insensitivity is a weapon. And we have to neutralize it...

Muslims have to give up three things if they want to become Europeans:

They have to bid farewell to the idea of converting others, and renounce the Jihad. The Jihad is not just a way of testing yourself but also means using violence to spread Islam. The third thing they need to give up is the Shariah, which is the Islamic legal system… Pluralism and tolerance are pillars of modern society. That has to be accepted. But pluralism doesn’t just mean diversity. It means that we share the same rules and values, and are still nevertheless different. Islam doesn’t have this idea. And Islam also has no tradition of tolerance. In Islam tolerance means that Christians and Jews are allowed to live under the protection of Muslims but never as citizens with the same rights. What Muslims call tolerance is nothing other than discrimination.

(Kippah tip: Melanie Phillips)


(*)
Bassam Tibi, 62, was born in Damascus, Syria and came to Germany when he was 18 to study in Frankfurt. He has been a German citizen since 1967.

Moon Over Shiloh

Okay, the camera could not reach all the way out to the full October moon over Shiloh but I did my best.

Festering Fisk

From Robert Fisk's essay in today's Independent:-

It may well be that journalists in the "West" should feel a burden of guilt for much that has happened because they have, with their gullibility, helped to sell US actions much more effectively than Karen Hughes.

Their constant references to a "fence" instead of a wall, to "settlements" or "neighbourhoods" instead of colonies, their description of the West Bank as "disputed" rather than occupied, has a bred a kind of slackness in reporting the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Not "fence" but "security barrier".

Not "settlements" but "communities".

Not "occupied" but "administered".

Not "settlers" but "revenants".

See, Robert, how easy it is?

He Doesn't Get It

Steve Erlanger's book review of Rashid Khalidi's "The Iron Cage" (see below for excerpts), is adequate enough to tell the potential reader what is in the book but he is either too weak or too unwilling to deal with the claims the book makes regarding actual history.

What is lacking is the fundamental dividing line between Jews and Muslims, Zionists and Palestinians: do Jews have a primary claim to the land based on history, residence, culture, religion, judicial and other elements?

When Balfour refused to recognize any nationalist rights of Arabs, did he do so becuase he was anti-Arab or did not know what rights the Arabs could claim or was it because he knew that the Jews had a better claim in that area of the Middle East - as simple as that.

And was the collapse of the Pal. war and communal effort as result of overwhelming Jewish strength or, again simply, becuase Pal. society was a fiction and it fell apart because it wasn't really there in the first place?

Erlanger just doesn't get it or know it.

My opinion you know by now.

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

October 7, 2006
Books of The Times
Assessing the Role Palestinians Have Played in the Failed Bid for Statehood
By STEVEN ERLANGER

Rashid Khalidi’s latest book, “The Iron Cage,” is at heart a historical essay, an effort to decide why the Palestinians, unlike so many other peoples and tribes, have failed to achieve an independent state. To Mr. Khalidi’s credit, the answers are not very comforting to Palestinians, whose leaders have often made the wrong choices and have not yet built the institutional structures for statehood.

He often contrasts the weakness of Palestinian decision-making, especially before 1948, with the more organized behavior of the Jewish population of British Palestine, known as the yishuv.

At the heart of the book is his anguished question about what the Palestinians call al nakba, the catastrophe — “why Palestinian society crumbled so rapidly in 1948, why there was not more concerted resistance to the process of dispossession, and why 750,000 people fled their homes in a few months.”

Mr. Khalidi has his own set of external culprits: British colonial masters like Lord Balfour, who refused to recognize the national rights of non-Jews; lavish financial support for Jewish immigration; the romanticism and cynicism of Arab leaders, themselves newly hatched from the colonial incubator.

Like Britain before it, he argues, the United States “consistently privileged the interests of the country’s Jewish population over those of its Arab residents,” helping Israel to push “Palestinians into an impossible corner, into an iron cage” from which, he suggests, a viable Palestinian state may not, in the end, emerge.

But he has plenty of blame for the Palestinians, too — for the rivalries among rich Palestinian families who competed to serve their colonial masters, for leaders who failed to see the impact of Hitler on Jewish immigration to Mandate Palestine, for those who mismanaged the 1936-39 Palestinian revolt against the British and especially for Yasir Arafat, who, along with his colleagues in Fatah and the Palestine Liberation Organization, has a special place in Mr. Khalidi’s pantheon of Palestinian failure.

...Whatever the justice of history — if the notion of justice can be applied to history at all — it is useful for Americans to understand that at the beginning of the 1930’s, Jews made up only 17.8 percent of the population of British Palestine, and annual Jewish immigration was declining to only a few thousand a year...Even in 1948 there were 600,000 Jews to 1.4 million Arabs in British Palestine, and Arabs owned nearly 90 percent of all private land.

Jews did not begin the fighting, but from March to October 1948, slightly more than half the Arab population — 750,000 people, Mr. Khalidi estimates (and his footnote on the topic is well worth reading) — fled, were forced to flee or were expelled from areas that became part of the new state of Israel.

...In a long introductory essay, “Writing Middle Eastern History in a Time of Historical Amnesia,” he insists that at almost every stage, Palestinians “were the weakest of all the parties engaged in the prolonged struggle to determine the fate of Palestine” and “remain considerably less powerful by any measure than the forces that stand in the way of their achieving independent statehood.”

He is overly defensive about choosing to analyze Palestinian failures, but his book represents a brave response to Palestinians who see themselves only as victims...

Thus Spake Adonis

"The Muslims today - forgive me for saying this - with their accepted interpretation [of the religious text], are the first to destroy Islam, whereas those who criticize the Muslims - the non-believers, the infidels, as they call them - are the ones who perceive in Islam the vitality that could adapt it to life. These infidels serve Islam better than the believers."

Found here.

A "Dear Sam" Letter

This op-ed appeared in the New York Times today:-

We Can’t Go Home Again
By SAM BAHOUR
Published: October 7, 2006
Ramallah, West Bank

THIRTEEN years ago, I left a comfortable life in the United States for an uncertain future in the West Bank. Israel and the Palestinian Liberation Organization had just signed the Oslo Accords. Like many others, I saw an opportunity for Palestinians to finally build a society and economy that would lead to freedom — to a thriving Palestine alongside Israel.

As a Palestinian-American businessman, I was determined to do my part. So I moved to the West Bank city of El Bireh, where my family has lived for centuries. There I helped create a $100 million telecommunications company, which today employs more than 2,000 Palestinians. I earned an M.B.A. through Tel Aviv University. Then I developed a $10 million shopping center — the first of its kind in the Palestinian territories, employing more than 220 Palestinians. I married and had two beautiful daughters.

Now the Israeli authorities have decided that my life here has come to an end.

Even after the Oslo Accords were signed and the Palestinian Authority established, Israel retained control of all borders and of the Palestinian Population Registry. Nothing or no one gets into or out of the West Bank and Gaza without Israeli permission. For a dozen years I have waited for Israel to approve my application for Palestinian residency.

American Jews, indeed Jews from anywhere in the world, can come to Israel and be granted automatic citizenship. Thousands of American Jews freely enter and exit Israel to live in illegal Israeli settlements in the middle of the West Bank. But Palestinians whose families have lived here continually for centuries do not enjoy the same right. I need a residency card from Israel to live with my Palestinian family in my grandfather’s home in the Palestinian West Bank.

For 13 years, I’ve lived here by renewing my tourist visa every three months. Last month, an Israeli soldier stamped my American passport with a one-month visa and wrote “last permit” on it in Arabic, Hebrew and English. Now I am faced with a terrible choice. I can leave, uprooting my family and abandoning the businesses I’ve worked hard to build. I can leave alone and be separated from my wife and daughters. Or I can remain here “illegally,” risking deportation at any time.

My situation is not unique. Thousands of Palestinians are in a similar limbo. Most have less desirable options than mine. My children are American citizens. We can return to the United States. But I came here with a vision, and I remain determined to play a role in developing an economy, nonviolently ending Israel’s military occupation and building a Palestinian state.

Israeli policies effectively discourage people like me. According to the Israeli human rights group B’Tselem, it has been official Israeli policy since 1983 to “reduce, as much as possible, the approval of requests for family unification” of Palestinians. B’Tselem reports that in the last six years alone, more than 70,000 people have applied for permission to immigrate to the West Bank and Gaza to join family. Their applications have either been denied or, like mine, languish.

Each Palestinian who leaves lessens what Israelis openly call the “demographic threat” of a growing Palestinian population. But Israel needs to understand that the real threat comes not from demographics. It comes from controlling an entire population, breaking families apart and placing obstacles in the path of economic development.

Israelis and Palestinians are destined to be neighbors. One neighbor cannot ensure its security by condemning the other to hardship and despair. Many people like me — business owners, educators, artists and others — whom Israel is denying entry came to build bridges, not walls. We came to invest in a better life to follow this occupation — a bright, joint future for Palestinian and Israeli children alike.

Here's the letter I sent to the paper:-

In a parallel to Sam Bahour ("We Can’t Go Home Again", Oct. 7), I also left life in the United States, eventually for a future in the West Bank, or Samaria as it has been known for three millenia. In 1981, my family and I returned to Israel's ancient capital of Shiloh.

Unlike Sam who graduated Tel Aviv University, I couldn't have even enrolled in a Palestinian academic institution, places where too many learn chemistry to make bombs, become enamoured with celestial virgins and carry out suicide missions on Israeli buses and in restaurants. Rocks, firebombs, grenades and bullets have been our lot as the expression of Arab lack of acceptance rather than a stamp in a passport. Death is a much more final act than that of an administrative procedure.

I, too, face deportation and evacuation at the hands of Israel's current government. Despite it being taken off his agenda, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert still harbors a desire to fulfill his vision of "convergence" and "realignment". He is "tired", as reported in this paper (July 11, 2005), tired of winning, tired of defeating our enemies. They are not.

Despite his enmity, I have no objection to Sam Bahour's presence as a neighbor. Would only that he not object to me.

Didn't We Tell You So?

So many of Israel's critics insist that it is possible to find accommodation even with the most implacable of our enemies. Even Hamas.

So, it might come as no surptise to you that I am intellectually delighted to bring you the words of the Hamas PM of "Palestine":-

In a defiant speech delivered to a teeming crowd of Hamas supporters, the Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniya, insisted on Friday that his Hamas movement would not recognize Israel despite the cutoff in Western aid that has strangled his government.

Mr. Haniya nearly collapsed during his speech on Friday, apparently because he was fasting for Ramadan.

“I tell you with all honesty, we will not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel, we will not recognize Israel,” Mr. Haniya said to thunderous applause from tens of thousands of supporters, many waving green Hamas flags, at the Yarmouk soccer stadium in Gaza City.

Now, what would the recognition of Israel mean to Hamas if they would do so? Would it hurt them?

Anybody spot someone who would coexist with Israel here?

Arab Intragroup Violence

There's a paralellel in this story with the Pals.:-

Mau Mau veterans to sue Britain over torture and illegal killings in Kenya

An ageing group of former Mau Mau insurgents will launch a legal action in Britain next week accusing the army and colonial authorities of torturing or illegally killing thousands of Kenyans during the rebellion for independence 50 years ago.

Lawyers acting for Mau Mau veterans say they will serve notice on the Foreign Office of an intent to seek compensation for human rights abuses for a group of about 10 Kenyans, seen as a test case.

The claimants have given accounts of rape, systematic and prolonged beatings and other physical tortures that caused permanent injury and starvation as part of a British policy to break the rebellion. Some also witnessed killings.
If the case comes to court it is likely to divide Kenya by highlighting the part played in suppressing the Mau Mau by Kenyans who went on to hold senior government posts, and because insurgents killed many more black Kenyans than white settlers.

You see, the same thing happened during 1936-1939. Although 525 Jews were killed by Arabs, and many hundreds more of Arabs killed by British and Hagana and Irgun forces, the largest total of dead Arabs was the result of the "peace camp gangs", the units faithful to the Nashashibis rather than the Husseinis.

Oh No! It's Those "Defiant Settlers" Again

The London Times' version of the Peace Now report:-

Evicted settlers on defiant mission to build a new home

The families thrown out of Gaza last year claim they are following the legacy of Ariel Sharon

THE settlers who aimed to claim the whole Land of Israel for Jews had to be dragged by troops from their homes in Gaza 13 months ago amid bitter recriminations.

But now, a year on, 20 families that were thrown out of the Mediterranean beachfront community of Shirat Hayam are set to try again with a controversial new settlement on a West Bank hilltop steeped in Biblical resonance.

The move to Maskiot, above the Jordan Valley, was agreed by former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon weeks before he sank into the coma in which he remains.

For the religious families it is his legacy and meshes perfectly with his long-practised strategy to “grab more hills” to settle the land for Jews and deprive Arabs.

“Moving to Maskiot goes some way to repair the damage of our expulsion,” said Avinadav Vitkon, 28, a father of three. “It will restore some normality for us personally and for the nation. We think settling the land is very important.”

The families, some installed temporarily in the nearby settlement of Hemdat, scoured the country from the northern Sea of Galilee to the southern Negev desert to find somewhere to build.

They settled on Maskiot, in the occupied West Bank, with the backing of the Jordan Valley Regional Council, and battled for permission to go ahead even as the war in Lebanon raged.

The Israeli Peace Now settlement monitoring group said this week that settlers used the war against Hezbollah as cover to expand 31 illegal outposts. The West Bank’s Jewish population has grown 3 per cent in the first six months of the year.

Maskiot already has a few mobile homes, housing 35 religious students preparing for compulsory military service. The planned settlement of 40 mobile homes will be grafted initially on to the existing community and built on an adjacent hilltop.

Despite the agreement of Mr Sharon and the support of his successor, Ehud Olmert, the final permit that must be granted by the Israel Defence Ministry has been held up for three months.

“It’s very sensitive because this land lies in the occupied territories,” said Dubi Tal, the head of the regional council.

“We’re at the final hurdle but we’re waiting for Ehud Olmert and [Defence Minister] Amir Peretz to finish the process.”

Even before the initiative by the Shirat Hayam settlers, the regional council had embarked on the lengthy process of turning Maskiot into a new Jewish community.

But then Israel agreed with the US to freeze settlement growth under the defunct “road map” to peace, stalling the move.

Israel declared that any growth within a settlement’s existing boundaries would be legitimate. The regional council deems that the expansion at Maskiot is within generous existing boundaries, even though it is not legally a settlement.

Maskiot was started in 1982 as an army post where soldiers also farmed the land, leading the way for the arrival of Jewish settlers.

It was just as Mr Sharon detailed in his autobiography. “I felt then that in order to secure this part of the country the most important thing was to establish Jewish footholds. Those rocky heights . . . were essential,” he wrote of his time first as an Israeli army planner, then as Agriculture Minister a decade later in 1977.

The plans he made will become reality when settlers at Shirat Hayam build their new community and begin farming at Maskiot.“We built Shirat Hayam,” said Alon Zanbar, 27, a computer programmer. “Now we believe we have the strength to build in Maskiot and make something new. It’s not an easy place and most people couldn’t do it. But it’s vital.”

Yariv Oppenheimer, director of Peace Now, condemned the move, which he said would breach Israeli principles.

“No doubt they will try to pass it off as an expansion of an existing settlement,” he said. “But the existing structures at Maskiot are not technically a ‘settlement’. We totally condemn this.”

Unfortunately, the Yesha Council does not have a web site that I am aware of so, we'll have to do with this and this as responses.

Will the Shtreimel Be Next?

Seems there's a fashion controversy brewing in England.

Jack Straw has reignited the row over his request for Muslim women to remove their veils, by admitting he would prefer the garments not to be worn at all.

His comments came a day after he disclosed that he asks women who hold constituency meetings with him to remove their veil so that they can truly talk "face to face".



Those remarks sparked controversy, with Muslim leaders in his Blackburn constituency saying that many Muslim women would find his comments "offensive and disturbing" and George Galloway, the Respect MP, demanding his resignation. However, others said they understood Mr Straw’s position.

Today, the Leader of the Commons went a step further. Asked on BBC Radio Four’s Today programme if he would rather the veils be discarded completely, he responded: "Yes. It needs to be made clear I am not talking about being prescriptive but with all the caveats, yes, I would rather."

Will shtreimels be next?

New Conspiracy Theory

Found here.

In Lebanon there are two explanations of why Israel unleashed cluster bombs at the end of the war: to inflict as much damage as possible on Hezbollah before withdrawing, or to litter the south with unexploded cluster bombs as a strategy to keep people from returning right away.

Are these people really serious? Why would Israel want the residents to stay away? If the reason was to kill Hizzbee terrorist, well, maybe. But civilians? That's sick reasoning.

"It's the Zionists We Hate. Not the Jews"

Sure.

Read on:-

Report: Islamists in Prague had planned mass murder of Jews

Islamic extremists planned to kidnap dozens of Jews in Prague and hold them hostage before murdering them, the daily Mlada Fronta Dnes reported on Friday.

The Czech Republic's leading newspaper quoted unidentified sources close to intelligence agencies as saying the captives would have been held in a Prague synagogue while the captors made broad demands that they knew could not be fulfilled.

When those demands - which were not specified by the sources - were not met, the extremists would blow up the building, killing all who were inside, the paper added.

The paper, which gave other few details, did not say whether any arrests were made and did not specify the identities of the extremists.

Czech Chief Rabbi Ephraim Sidon said that the attack had been planned against the Jerusalem Synagogue in central Prague, and not against the highly-concentrated tourist attractions in the old Jewish Quarter.

On September 23 the government deployed armed guards around dozens of buildings and on the streets in the Czech capital after security services issued a warning that an unspecified attack was imminent.

Prime Minister Mirek Topolanek and government officials have since refused to divulge details of what kind of attack they feared in Prague.

"I am not authorized to provide any information in this
case," the paper quoted Topolanek as saying when asked about the information given by the sources.

And here's the story in the original Czech:-

Teror v Praze: chtěli unést desítky Židů
MF DNES získala tajné údaje o hrozbě terorismu: šlo o vydírání

Praha - Arabští teroristé chtěli v Praze unést několik desítek lidí, držet je jako rukojmí a nakonec je všechny povraždit. Takový byl scénář akce, kterou v Praze chystali muslimští extremisté a kvůli které přijala vláda před dvěma týdny mimořádná bezpečnostní opatření.

MF DNES to zjistila z důvěryhodných zdrojů blízkých zpravodajským službám. Podle informací, které tajné služby měly k dispozici, chtěli teroristé vzít jako rukojmí lidi, kteří vyznávají židovskou víru.

Extremisté plánovali, že propuštění rukojmích podmíní splněním určitých podmínek. Co přesně to mělo být, tajné služby nevědí. Podle jejich předpokladů by šlo patrně o obecné výzvy ke stažení amerických vojsk z Iráku. Nebo o to, aby Spojené státy přestaly podporovat Izrael.

Protože takové požadavky nelze splnit, únos by patrně skončil tragicky. Teroristé podle tajných služeb zamýšleli, že budovu, v níž by rukojmí drželi, vyhodí do povětří. Výbušniny by měli s sebou.

Jak chtěli teroristé plán provést? Všechny dostupné informace míří k tomu, že během židovského svátku chtěli vniknout do synagogy v Jeruzalémské ulici v centru Prahy a vzít jako rukojmí přítomné věřící. „To, co uvádíte, beru jako něco, co by se v krajním případě stát mohlo, nikoli jako něco, co se stát mělo,“ řekl včera jeden z členů Topolánkovy vlády.

How Anti-Religious Can Haaretz Be?

I found this sentence here:-

Ostensibly, the case concerns two Haredi ultra-Orthodox men.

Hareidi and ultra-Orthodox?

Come on guys! Either or. You don't need both.

The Hoaxer was Professional; Barkai Very Much Less So

Of course, if you don't allow for a response/reaction from the person involved, if you don't act accoding to the journalism code, then this is what happens:-

Hoaxer convinces Army Radio that Meridor is waiving Washington posting

Army Radio reporter Razi Barkai was the victim yesterday of a strange practical joke: He told listeners that Israel's ambassador-designate to Washington, Sallai Meridor, had decided to give up the appointment after consulting a maharishi. Barkai got the information from his producers, who received a call from an individual who identified himself as an aide to Meridor.

Barkai said on the air that Meridor was apparently an admirer of the maharishi, and that "Sallai was going to a press conference in which he would announce his decision to turn down the job. No official statement has been released, but this is what we hear from Washington."

Later in the program, Barkai said: "I hope we have not fallen victim to a joke to end all jokes. People are calling the station and saying 'Listen, Razi, have you gone crazy? Is this an April Fool's joke?' So we are checking it again, but as we said, sources very close to Meridor said that he has decided to give up the appointment. But people from the Prime Minister's Office, the prime minister's bureau, the foreign minister's bureau, and all kinds of places are saying that there's no truth to it. We can't reach Sallai meanwhile. I don't know why he's keeping silent."

Barkai told Haaretz yesterday that the individual impersonating Meridor's aide "took us for a ride very professionally." Barkai said that the man had Meridor's number, according to the station's phone records, and the program's research assistant had held several phone calls with him, beginning the night before. Throughout, the man sounded believable and professional.

"Why didn't we call Sallai at home? We tried to, but I don't know if there was an answer. We also tried to reach his office."

A statement from Army Radio said that the staff of Barkai's program were mislead and thus had unintentionally misinformed listeners. "Army Radio and the program staff apologize for the mistake, as Razi Barkai has already done on the air," the statement said, adding that Army Radio is considering legal action against the impostor.

Meridor's wife, Noa Meridor, said that her husband had "taken the matter with a smile."

You see, not all media criticism is 'extreme right-wing idiocy'.