New T-shirt

Source


Okay, one more:

The Dashboard Shuckler

Get your dashboard figure here.

Need A Caption

By the spring of 2004, when Mr. Bush agreed to support a plan by Mr. Sharon to withdraw Israeli settlers and forces from Gaza, Mr. Sharon asked for something more that set off a huge fight within the administration: American recognition that Palestinian refugees and their descendants who had fled in the 1940s would have a right of return to a new Palestinian state, but not to Israel itself.

Ms. Rice agreed that allowing Palestinians to return to Israel would overwhelm the Jewish population and effectively obliterate Israel’s identity as a Jewish state. Mr. Cheney and his allies supported Mr. Sharon’s request, but the State Department had always taken the position that the issue — with the final borders of a Palestinian state and how Jerusalem might be shared by the two sides — should be decided through negotiations, not by fiat from Washington.

Aware of the debate within the Bush administration, Tzipi Livni, now the Israeli foreign minister but then the minister for immigrant absorption, went to plead her case to Ms. Rice in Washington. “I had the opportunity to convince Rice,” Ms. Livni said in an interview with The New York Times earlier this year.

Ms. Rice said she understood the issue was “very, very core” to Ms. Livni, and acknowledged that Ms. Livni’s appeal “was taken into account in the president’s words” when Mr. Bush made a pivotal announcement, in April 2004, that any “just, fair and realistic framework” for Israel would mean that Palestinians would have to settle in their own state — an enormous benefit to Mr. Sharon.

But does she adhere to that committment?

And she was blindsided?

Accordingly, Ms. Rice spent much of 2005 working on the Gaza withdrawal that she thought would contribute to stability. Instead, it was seen as so emboldening the radicals that in early 2006 Hamas won a landslide victory in Palestinian elections over Mr. Abbas and his governing party, Fatah.

Ms. Rice, who had heralded the election as a symbol of the new stirrings of democracy in the Middle East, was so blindsided by the victory that she was startled when she saw a crawl of words on her television screen while exercising on her elliptical trainer the morning after the election: “In wake of Hamas victory, Palestinian cabinet resigns.”

“I thought, ‘Well, that’s not right,’” Ms. Rice recalled. When the crawl continued, she got off the elliptical trainer and called the State Department.

“I said, ‘What happened in the Palestinian elections?’” Ms. Rice recalled. “And they said, ‘Oh, Hamas won.’ And I thought, ‘Oh my goodness, Hamas won?’”

Yet Another Non-Published Letter to the NYT

Thomas Friedman suggests that "if the Middle East could use more of anything these days it is more mingling — if not between the sexes then at least between the sects", ("The Case for Internmingling", Nov. 25). Witty, perhaps. However, the consequences for Israel until then are fraught with danger.

For if Arab Muslims, in Saudi Arabia, Iran, Gaza District, et.al., act so injudiciously, so cruelly and so immorally one to another within the same religion, what can the Jews of Israel, not only an enemy based on nationalistic misunderstandings but of a different religion altogether, expect? Should not an Israel-Arab peace wait until Arab Muslims make peace among themselves?

Outrageous Obfuscation and Objurgation

Roger Cohern had this sentence in an op-ed he published today about President Bush's behavior:-

It’s time to rectify the fundamental error he made in allowing war-on-terror rhetoric to discredit the Palestinian national movement.

Error?

The Pals. haven't done enough to discredit themselves?
(take a look here, for example, as well as here and this, too).

This is much better:-

The Palestinians are desperate because they are at a dead end. They’ve been the losers over six decades through ineptitude, corruption, Arab hypocrisy and their susceptibility to victims’ hollow consolations.

But this is worse:-

He must insist on Israeli sacrifice — territorial and ideological — in the name of U.S.-guaranteed security. “Without peace,” Bush should tell the Israelis, “the Arab birth rate and the jihadist tide will eventually wash over you.”

Besides being untrue, Israel need not sacrifice anything. Not a durn thing.

This is just plain silly:-

Israel is powerful, but Palestinian humiliation is an Israeli and Jewish nightmare. I feel it; many American Jews feel it.

Bernard Lewis' Thoughts on the Jewish Question

From an article in the Wall Street Journal today:-

...The first question (one might think it is obvious but apparently not) is, "What is the conflict about?" There are basically two possibilities: that it is about the size of Israel, or about its existence.

If the issue is about the size of Israel, then we have a straightforward border problem, like Alsace-Lorraine or Texas. That is to say, not easy, but possible to solve in the long run, and to live with in the meantime.

If, on the other hand, the issue is the existence of Israel, then clearly it is insoluble by negotiation. There is no compromise position between existing and not existing, and no conceivable government of Israel is going to negotiate on whether that country should or should not exist.

...Without genuine acceptance of Israel's right to exist as a Jewish State, as the more than 20 members of the Arab League exist as Arab States, or the much larger number of members of the Organization of the Islamic Conference exist as Islamic states, peace cannot be negotiated.

A good example of how this problem affects negotiation is the much-discussed refugee question...What happened was thus, in effect, an exchange of populations not unlike that which took place in the Indian subcontinent in the previous year, when British India was split into India and Pakistan...The Poles and the Germans, the Hindus and the Muslims, the Jewish refugees from Arab lands, all were resettled in their new homes and accorded the normal rights of citizenship. More remarkably, this was done without international aid. The one exception was the Palestinian Arabs in neighboring Arab countries.

...The reason for this has been stated by various Arab spokesmen. It is the need to preserve the Palestinians as a separate entity until the time when they will return and reclaim the whole of Palestine; that is to say, all of the West Bank, the Gaza Strip and Israel. The demand for the "return" of the refugees, in other words, means the destruction of Israel. This is highly unlikely to be approved by any Israeli government.

...Which brings us back to the Annapolis summit. If the issue is not the size of Israel, but its existence, negotiations are foredoomed. And in light of the past record, it is clear that is and will remain the issue, until the Arab leadership either achieves or renounces its purpose -- to destroy Israel. Both seem equally unlikely for the time being.

Words of Wit

The astute English critic Kenneth Tynan identified Broadway humor as being chiefly of two kinds: Jewish and homosexual. He might have called it kvetch and bitch

Source

Lurking - A Photographic Interpretation

Kevin Van Aelst's photographic interpretation of lurking:

Tom Friedman - Trying to be Witty

It seems to me that if the Middle East could use more of anything these days it is more mingling — if not between the sexes then at least between the sects.

Source

Listen for an Explanation of A Hebrew Slang Verb

Click here and then click on "Listen Now" to know what l'candel or לקנדלmeans.

(Kippah tip: SP)

The Big Lebowski Goes Commercial

(Found here)

Talk About Tattoos: A "Jewish" Skinhead

Boy George on trial.

Funny, that Magen David is only visible is he shaves his head, so no Samson is he.

Gives a new meaning to "skinhead".

(Found here)

Please Excuse Any Typos That Sneak In

Found here.

The Return of Shiloh Perfume

I noted previously that there is a Shiloh perfume.

Well, I received this invitation from Symine Salimpour who heads the company producing Shiloh perfume (and who beat out Angelina Jolie-Pitt in a court case over the name):-



I won't be able to make it but if anyone does go, let me know how the smell is.

I Agree

Stephen Flurry of Philadelphia, publishes in The Trumpet, a Christianity proponent blog, the following inter alia in a discussion on the Temple Mount excavations by the Waqf and the difficulties Eilat Mazar has with her digs nearby:

On the other side of the struggle, in an increasingly irreligious and secular Western world, about the only thing left to re-establish that link are the ancient ruins buried beneath the surface of Israel’s homeland. And in recent years, with little or no help from the Israel Antiquities Authority, archaeologists like Eilat Mazar have been making fantastic discoveries—palaces, pottery, city walls and bullae—much of it dating to the First and Second Temple periods...

We should expect these new discoveries to find a more prominent place in Israel’s future political discourse, especially after peace talks with the Palestinians break down. But will they lead to a spiritual revival within the deeply divided Jewish state?..

This past, of course, is grounded in the Hebrew Bible, where Jerusalem is referred to more than 650 times. Founded by King David, Jerusalem became Israel’s capital city one thousand years before the establishment of Christianity — 1,700 years before Islam.

For Arab propagandists to erase that from their history books is one thing.

But for Israel’s own leaders to separate themselves from that heritage?

Columnist Shmuel Schnitzer asked years ago in the Israeli newspaper Maariv, “[W]hat kind of Jewish people will this be with no attachment to its land, without all the places of the book of Joshua, the wonderful vistas there, without the intensity of the prophetic vision, without the heritage of our fighters who spilt their blood for the country which was promised them and their descendants?” (Sept. 14, 1994).

Surrounded by enemies bent on de-legitimizing their right to exist, Israel’s survival depends on winning the fight for its own history. The Bible, Schnitzer pointed out, can’t become a historical curiosity. It must be their calling card. Otherwise, as Schnitzer intoned, they will become a new Jewish people — “a nation which doesn’t belong to its land.”

Israel’s enemies have always believed the Jews don’t belong where they are. And by denying their past, Israel’s Jews are essentially saying the same thing.

I can but agree.

What I Do on Saturday Nights

For the past dozen years or so (I really can't recall now), I participate in a shi'ur every Motzei Shabbat (Saturday nights for those unfamiliar with the Hebrew term).

First, we went through Mishna Middot. Then the Rambam Sefer Avodah. And now Sefer Shoftim.

The Rav is Yaakov Navon (second from right) and the present participants are (left to right) Tzvi Shavit, Mitch Meyers and yours truly.



(The wine and cake were on the occasion of Rav Navon's birthday. We don't drink every shi'ur).

Shmuel Katz on Annapolis

Shmuel Katz's latest op-ed (he'll be 93, bist hundrid un tzvuntzig, next month):-

The looming danger of Annapolis

The Jewish state is in greater danger than anytime since the 1948 War of Independence. The danger stems not from current Arab violence, nor the threat of future violence. It lies in the convocation of the Annapolis conference conceived and promoted with almost frenetic enthusiasm by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

Today, Arab League foreign ministers are scheduled to meet in Cairo to decide which countries will send representatives to Annapolis besides Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority/Palestine Liberation Organization. An unknown number of delegates from various Arab states together with representatives of the Quartet - US, Russia, the UN and the European Union - will presumably turn up for the conference opening at Annapolis, Maryland, on November 27.

WHOEVER THEY are, an analysis of their respective outlooks shows that all the delegates are committed to the diminution of Israel and some, frankly, to her consequent extinction.

They will be faced by a single delegation from Israel, headed by Ehud Olmert. He has already announced (on November 4) that there will be no "negotiations" at the conference, only a "jumping-off ground for continued serious and in-depth negotiations, which will not avoid any issue or ignore any division which has clouded our relations with the Palestinian people for many years."

And among them he mentioned "refugees." Coming even from the notably unprincipled Ehud Olmert, his inclusion of the "refugees" is most disturbing. This is a subject which, as all Israeli governments have repeatedly made clear, they are not prepared to discuss, for very good reason. It is simply not arguable. To discuss it is to flout the will of the people. Now it touches the outer edge of Olmert's irresponsibility.

The "refugee problem" was created by the Arabs, who led the 1948 invasion of Israel, and it was created deliberately to bring about what president Gamal Nasser of Egypt called the "end of Israel." Olmert's loose-tongued talk raises acutely the serious question of the very legitimacy of all his representations on behalf of Israel.

No less significant are his and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni's frequent references to the Road Map as the basis for Israel's policy at the projected conference. This is outright deception.

The Road Map is dead. It died stillborn - when Abbas refused to implement its first clause: the surrender of arms. "I do not intend," he said, "to have a civil war on my hands."

That first clause was manifestly the only potential safeguard of Israel's security.

MORE THAN that, when and how did the Israeli government accept the Road Map? Do Olmert and Livni forget the Road Map's reverberating slaps in Israel's face? The Road Map was concocted by the Quartet as a means of foisting on Israel a plan for creating a Palestinian state. It was drawn up in consultation with, and perhaps by the inspiration of, one of Israel's most virulent and most active enemies - Saudi Arabia. Then it was submitted for approval by the Arab League. Israel was kept in the dark.

Israel was handed the Road Map in the same way, weirdly enough, as the Munich Pact was handed to the betrayed Czechs in 1938, by its authors Britain, France, Germany and Italy. When a shocked prime minister Ariel Sharon ventured to say that there were 14 amendments (which he presumably felt could make the repugnant diktat acceptable to Israel), he was told tersely and without qualification by US secretary of state Colin Powell that no amendments would be considered (exactly what the Czechs were told in 1938).

Sharon kept on trying.

It is important to read at least the first, and most important, of these proposed amendments:

"The Palestinians will dismantle the existing security organizations and implement security reforms during the course of which new organizations will be formed and act to combat terror, violence and incitement (incitement must cease immediately and the Palestinian Authority must educate for peace). These organizations will engage in genuine prevention of terror and violence through arrests, interrogations, prevention and the enforcement of the legal groundwork for investigations, prosecution and punishment.

"In the first phase of the plan and as a condition for progress to the second phase, the Palestinians will complete the dismantling of terrorist organizations (Hamas, Islamic Jihad, the Popular Front, the Democratic Front, al-Aksa Brigades and other apparatuses) and their infrastructure, collection of all illegal weapons and their transfer to a third party for the sake of being removed from the area and destroyed; cessation of weapons smuggling and weapons production inside the Palestinian Authority, activation of the full prevention apparatus and cessation of incitement. There will be no progress to the second phase without the fulfillment of all the above mentioned conditions relating to the war against terror."

MANIFESTLY NONE of this was implemented, and the Road Map was quietly buried. But Washington, feeling the need for some achievement in the Middle East as a counterweight to the widespread criticism of its performance in Iraq, then gave birth to an alternative means of producing a quick-fix Palestinian state. That, it seems, is how the idea of an international conference was born.

Meantime, however, the political map of the Israel- Arab dispute changed radically.

Not that the demonization of Israel throughout the Arab world - and the world at large - has decreased. The imams continue to blare forth their incendiary messages from the mosques every Friday, the children in the schools continue to be indoctrinated daily with hate and contempt for Israel and the Jewish people. A revolution, however, has taken place in the Palestinian arena. By a democratic election in January 2006 the Hamas terrorist organization became the governing power in the Palestinian Authority. And by June 2007 Hamas had ousted Fatah from the Gaza Strip.

Abbas still heads the Palestinian Authority on the "West Bank," so in fact there now exist two conflicting governing bodies; and it is Hamas that provides most of the terror - though bizarrely, Abbas's own Fatah Aksa Martyrs Brigades took responsibility for the murder of Ido Zoldan, a 29-year-old father of two from Shavei Shomron, on Monday night. It carried out the attack as "a protest against the Annapolis conference and a response to Israel's crimes against the Palestinians."

So it turns out that Abbas doesn't (or won't) control all armed factions of his own Fatah movement.

STILL HE'S considered a "moderate," and is now widely courted. Abbas has been received at the White House, and he is the Chosen Partner of Olmert and Livni. They, under the tutelage of Condoleezza Rice - and, as they claim, the inspiration of the Road Map - will help to bring about peace and the Palestinian state.

To smooth the path toward negotiations and boost Abbas' popularity, Israel is told to make concessions. Any difficulties that arise are met by cries from Washington: "The conference must not fail."

And so comes the pressure for concession after concession by Israel to "help Abu Mazen": almost 500 security prisoners are to be released on top of the hundreds already freed; Abbas's forces in Nablus are to receive 25 Russian-made armored vehicles; blockades in Judea and Samaria have been lifted (making drive-by shootings easier), and future cessions of territory are dangled before the Arabs. All this on top of Jerusalem's promise that every claim and demand ever made on Israel by the "Palestinians" will be on the table.

PERHAPS Ms. Rice simply does not understand that in the situation thus created, Abbas, his hold threatened by a more belligerent Hamas, dares not claim and demand from Israel any less than Hamas, and so Olmert, willy-nilly, will find himself, in effect, negotiating in Annapolis on terms laid down by Hamas.

Thus Israel has reached an unprecedented nadir in the dispute with the Palestinian Arabs. An examination of each step down into the depths proves how every Israeli government has failed to assert itself in confronting the deadly Arab purpose. There is only one way to stop the descent. Israel must effect a complete reversal of policy.

Interestingly enough, Tzipi Livni, in the course of a recent lecture published in the Israel Journal of Foreign Affairs, unwittingly laid down two vital truths on which Israel must base its policy. In the title of her lecture she describes Israel's present situation as being at a "crossroads," and in the body of the lecture she says "Absolutely the last thing that Israel can afford and the last thing the world needs is the establishment of another terror state in the Middle East."

Absolutely, indeed; and as neither she nor Olmert - nor, if you were to press them, Rice and President George W. Bush himself - can provide a smidgen of evidence to suggest that a Palestinian state will not be a terror state, "the last thing that Israel can afford and the last thing the world needs is a conference to establish a Palestinian state."

The writer, who co-founded the Herut Party with Menachem Begin and was a member of the first Knesset, is a biographer, essayist and veteran Post contributor.

A Shared Letter in today's Jerusalem Post Magazine

Written with Barbara Oberman:-

Out of sight, and that's unfortunate

Sir, - The exhibit reviewed in your magazine on November 2 ("Let my people go"), which presents a historic summary of the Jewish national movement struggle in the USSR, is the result of a large investment of time and energy on the part of the organizers. Nevertheless, one major failing must be pointed out.

The exhibit represents the position of official Israel government policy, and of the Jewish establishment bodies. In essence, the leading activist players and groups who actually galvanized the struggle and took it into the streets and into the media are marginalized, if not eliminated entirely. The visitor leaves knowing nothing of the central crucial factor of that struggle, which is that the campaign to liberate Russian Jews was delayed, and at times crippled, by the policy of the various governments of Israel and the Jewish organizations abroad who fell in with it.

As is documented, for example, in Prof. Fred Lazin's recent book The Struggle for Soviet Jewry in American Politics, as well as in others, the opposition to an independent activist struggle and the denigration of and interference with such tactics - which were then adopted several years later - hampered the campaign.

In addition, much is hidden. The pre-1967 activities are downplayed. Later minor figures are near-glorified. The early crucial contributions of Yitzhak Shamir, Geula Cohen, Morris Brafman, Bernard Deutsch, Pesach Mor and many others are absent. Rabbi Meir Kahane's JDL is dismissed as simply "crude."

Are we to assume that political favoritism was at play here? Was history altered and perhaps obliterated to suit patrons? We can argue retrospectively over methods and tactics, but that a great part of what happened in those years was placed out of sight is an unfortunate reflection on the organizers.

SONJA COHEN ILLUZ
Formerly Committee for the Release of Soviet Jewish Prisoners UK
Shoresh

BARBARA OBERMAN
Founder of The 35s, London
Herzliya Pituah

Today's Visit to Tel Shiloh

For those following this blog you know that I am very involved with Tel Shiloh, the archeological mound where the village of Shiloh existed with the Tabernacle, etc.

And you know that two years ago there was a major excavation involving the discovery of a new basilica. And that the digs were extended to the west where Roman structures have been found.

Well, here's a new view, looking south:



I don't know if you noticed what interested me. Here's a close look:



More about those later.

Well, that was enough of the past. Let's see something from the present and future.

Let's look at some new vineyards that will be producing Shiloh wine soon:



UPDATE

Those two unique looking stones are:

lintels dating from the Roman period, in secondary use in a Moslem structure.

say two people Ruchama and Rachel who wrote to me,.

Is This A Front for Tony Blair?

Below is the top half of a political advertisement that appeared in today's Haaretz (the bottom half appears at the end of this blog post).



The subject is an attempt by a group, supposedly students and young people, which is seeking the division of Jerusalem. It's main slogan reads:

Olmert, There Must be a Compromise in Jerusalem!

But what interests me is that, if you will please look carefully at the left upper section, you will see that the advert was prepared by "McCann PRess".

Funny, that. Who/What is McCann PRess? Stay with me.

Well,

McCann PRess Weber Shandwick is one of the leading communications agenices in Israel. The company provides media and public relations consultancy to businesses and organisations, with a strong specialism in crisis management.

The highly-experienced team, including the deputy spokesman for the Israeli Ministry of Justice, has worked with leading companies in Israel and beyond. McCann PRess has expertise in managing crises and issues in the media, including for organisations in the legal, public, economic, criminal, and work relations sectors.

The office offers a full range of services, including media training, media messaging, and press releases. For clients visiting Israel, the team at McCann Press can act as spokespeople, co-ordinate interviews with officials, arrange photo calls, and work with the media teams of the Prime Minister, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, and the Chairman of the Opposition to publicise the visit.

Current clients include the Atomic Energy Commission, the Four Seasons hotel chain, Markstone Capital Group, Excellence Nessuah Investment House, Yellow Pages, Manpower, NeoPharm, Agrexco, 888.com and the Jerusalem Development Authority.

Contacts

McCann PRess Weber Shandwick
Raul Walenberg st. 2a
Tel-Aviv
Israel
T: 972 3 7686444

Amir Dan
Joint managing director
T: 972 3 7686444

Einat Oren
Joint managing director
T: 972 3 7686444

Hmm. "and the Chairman of the Opposition". Neat, that.

But I'm interested in something more.

According to this,

...Weber Shandwick specialises in media, business and government; providing marketing communications, media and web relations, public affairs, and issues management, and offers corporate communications counselling services. It has 81 offices in 39 markets. Chaired by Jack Leslie, its global CEO is Harris Diamond. Its president is Andy Polansky. UK CEO Colin Byrne was hired by Peter Mandelson to advise UK Prime Minister Tony Blair during the 1997 and 2001 general elections.

In 2006, Weber Shandwick was named Large PR Firm of the Year (PR News U.S.), European Consultancy of the Year (The Holmes Report) and Network of the Year (Asia Pacific PR Awards). The firm also won the United Nations Grand Award for outstanding achievement in public relations. In the Holmes Report's Best Agency to Work For study, Weber Shandwick scored the highest marks of any of the large, publicly-traded, full-service agencies. In 2007, Weber Shandwick received the highest client-satisfaction honors in the 2007 Agency Excellence Survey by PRWeek U.S. Weber Shandwick's clients include many Global Fortune 500 companies.

So, it's a big firm (which means that someone is coughing up a lot of money) and it has links to...EU Special Middle Easy Envoy, Tony Blair.

If Ron Weber is the Weber in this firm's name, well I recall him from maybe 20 years ago. He was an American Habonim member, lefty, travelled with Yossi Beilin, Shimon Peres, then got rich and branched out.

But why would students and young people go to this PR firm? Have they the money, or the contacts? Or..

Is it Tony Blair somehow pushing the division of Jerusalem?

==========================================



And by the way, if you try visiting the website included there at the bottom of the advert, here, you get nowhere but to a dead-end. Very odd, that.

UPDATE

Oops. Here's their site. And it strenghtens my case. It's a poor unimpressive site. As if they have no money. But they did have tens of thousands of NIS for the advert and to employ an expensive PR firm. So, is this a pro bono thing by McCann PRess? If so, why? Do they identify politically with Jerusalem's redivision or are they sucking up to Blair?