Your American Tax Dollars At Work ... On Apartheid

Israelis cannot and probably will never drive along the roads being supervised by the engineers in the video clip below, paid for with American dollars (tax-exempted?):-



Yes, the "apartheid" that exists in the "West Bank" is Arab apartheid.


Oh, and Israel might go that way, too:

Northern Islamic Movement preacher Sheikh Ra'ed Salah, recently released from jail for inciting riots earlier this year, is back on the speakers' circuit, riling up Arab masses against Israel. Salah on Friday spoke at an illegally built mosque in Rahat, preaching that all of Israel belongs to the Muslims, and that there was no room for believers of another religion to have any authority here.

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Truly "Protocols"

First out so far is in Hebrew.

Remember that "settlers burn sheep" story?

Well, the Arab that complained was the one who himself set the field fire that got out of control.  He had burned his own sheep.

But the Jews are the ones that got blamed.

Here.     Here.     Here.

As soon as an English version goes online, I'll link it.

UPDATE

And here it is in English, a snippet:-

...The tale began to unravel when Arabs pointed their fingers at residents of Itamar, a religious community located almost an hour’s drive from the scene of the fire. The story then was changed, with the blame being placed on the closer community of Maaleh Ephraim, most of whose residents are professionals and who almost never have been involved in any activities against Arabs.

Fadel finally admitted to police the whole story was a lie and that he was responsible for the fire, which he set to burn thorns before it spread beyond control. Blaming Jews not only would have saved him from the embarrassment of having burned his own sheep, it also would allow him to claim damages from the government while being hailed as a hero among Palestinian Authority Arabs and left-wing anti-Zionists.

Hundreds of accusations against Jewish residents of Judea and Samaria have been leveled in recent years, usually in claims that Jews attack or destroy olive trees, although evidence has been produced that in most cases the Arabs have purposely improperly pruned their trees and then accused Jews of the damage.

Another tactic has been to instigate violence, especially on the Shabbat when Jews are forbidden to take pictures, and then accuse Jews of attacking them.

Yossi Dagan, adviser to the Samaria Regional Council, commented, “There is a system among left-wing groups who campaign for financial contributions from foreign countries, many of whom are hostile to Israel. They use European Union money, which has reached billions of dollars the past few years. Many of the workers for left-wing groups enjoy high salaries and use reports from so-called human rights organizations and then travel throughout Judea and Samaria and blow up or change facts to spread libel against Jews.”...

^

245 or 110?

.
The Ministry of Information of the Palestinian Authority has a history lesson for you from 1948:-

April 9: Irgun and Stern Gangs led by Menahim Begin and Yitzhak Shamir massacre 245 Palestinians in the village of Deir Yassin, western suburb of Jerusalem.

April 11: Haganah destroy village of Kalonia near Qastel and occupy Deir Yassin.

However, Uri Milstein writes that according to Arab sources, the death toll was about 100, much lower than the 254 victims that was initially reported by the Jewish Agency and the international press

and
 

SHAI’s Yonah Feitelson, who toured Deir-Yassin early on April 10, told his superiors that he had seen 80 dead. When Ari’eli returned from Deir-Yassin on the 13th, he told his wife that his GADNA unit had buried 70 corpses and blown up another 40, a total of 110. In 1981, an ex-villager, Mohammed Aref Samir, told an interviewer that 94 bodies “were gathered that day.” (Kol Ha'Ir, May 1, 1981) Bir-Zeit University researchers arrived at a figure of 110 after interviewing survivors. (Sharif Kanaana and Nihad Zitawi, "Deir Yassin," Monograph No. 4, Destroyed Palestinian Villages Documentation Project (Bir Zeit: Documentation Center of Bir Zeit University, 1987, p. 55). The number of dead appears to have been 110.

and

"There was no Massacre there" by Yerach Tal, in Ha'Aretz 8.9.91, page B3

See also this.

Another article which views the Arab side "Massacre was done there" by Dani Rubinstein Ha'Aretz 11.9.91 Page B2 states that in a new Bir-Zeit research of the affair the number of killed was estimated at 107.

with this, too:

I asked Dr. Khalidi how we should cover the story. He said, "We must make the most of this". So we wrote a press release stating that at Deir Yassin children were murdered, pregnant women were raped. All sorts of atrocities.

- Hazen Nusseibeh, an editor of the Palestine Broadcasting Service's Arabic news in 1948, was interviewed for the BBC television series "Israel and the Arabs: the 50-year conflict." He describes an encounter with Deir Yassin survivors and Palestinian leaders, including Hussein Khalidi, the secretary of the Arab Higher Committee, at the Jaffa Gate of Jerusalem's Old City.

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What Those Bratzlav Hassidim Won't Do

.

I hope the Waqf doesn't see this.

Psssst:
Islamic Waqf Council

P.O. Box 19004
Jerusalem, Israel

02-628-3292


(Kippah tip: RH)

A Story Behind A Headline

Gee, now, even if it is "rare", this EuroNews headline

Rare calm in Bethlehem attracts Christmas tourists

doesn't inform why is there calm?

Could it be increased Israel security efforts?

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The 1962 Matzah Demonstration on Behalf of Soviet Jewry

I remembered a demo by Betar friends involving the dumping of Matzot in front of a Russian diplomatic institution but couldn't recall details. Here is our blog post on it.

In any case, I did receive this reminisce of the 1962 action, two years before the first mass public demonstration of May 1, 1964.

The 1962 Matzah Demonstration

Bernard J. Kabak, 1.22.04


What follows is an account of the 1962 matzah demonstration, as best as I can recall it. This account is created entirely from memory. (It is possible that I have some written materials pertaining to the demonstration among my papers, but I have not sought to retrieve them from storage.) This account is necessarily incomplete, as I have not conferred with others, particularly Benjamin Silverberg, who would have things to add and possibly to correct.

In early 1962, word had got out of the Soviet Union, and was reported in the general press, that the Soviet authorities were strictly curtailing the availability of matzah for pesach that year. While some matzah bakeries were allowed to bake a limited amount of matzah, other bakeries were closed down altogether. Nor were the authorities permitting the importation of matzah baked abroad. Plainly as a result of Soviet policy the supply of matzah would be inadequate to meet the needs of the Jewish population.

Responding to what was perceived here as a grave religious crisis for the Jews in the Soviet Union, students from several universities in New York City decided to hold a demonstration in protest. I cannot say anything about how the decision to hold the demonstration was reached or what went into the early planning, because I was not involved in the initial stage. Rather, I was asked to take the leadership reins to replace David Froelich, then a student at Yeshiva University, who was pressured by Y.U. not to participate. The other leader of the demonstration was Benjamin Silverberg. Benjy was, I believe, a student at one of the colleges of the City University system, but I’m not entirely sure. I was then in my junior year at Columbia, and I was tapped, perhaps, to draw students from the city’s private colleges to the demonstration. (Because of my activity in the Student Zionist Organization, I knew students at lots of schools in the metropolitan area.)

As word spread about the planned demonstration, we met some resistance, mostly from the orthodox world, primarily on the ground that it was better to work quietly behind the scenes. Because of the circumstances under which it was held, I recall in particular a meeting we had with Rabbi Pinchas Teitz, a noted leader from Elizabeth, New Jersey, who was adamant that the demonstration not go forward. I think it was a friend, Zvi Gittleman, who told us that Rabbi Teitz wanted to meet. We arranged to go to Rabbi Teitz’ house after shabbat. Coincidentally, Rabbi Teitz’ daughter Rivka became engaged just at that time. When we arrived at the Rabbi’s home, the place was packed with well-wishers. We joined the festivities, wished mazal tov all around, and drank a l’chaim.

It wasn’t till 1:00 or 2:00 in the morning, after all this conviviality, that we got down to talk business. Rabbi Teitz’ essential point was that our confrontational approach would undermine the quiet, behind-the-scenes efforts that he and others were engaged in that supported Jewish life in the Soviet Union. We disagreed (perhaps out of the chutzpa and passion of youth), and went forward with our demonstration.

I’m not sure of the date of the demonstration. Pesach in 1962 fell in mid-April, so the demonstration must have been in early April or possibly late March. In any case, I believe it was on a Thursday. The turnout, almost all college students and high schoolers, numbered probably no more than a hundred, if that many. Not bad, we thought, considering our inexperience in these things and the opposition from our most natural center of recruitment, Yeshiva University. As an example of the pressure applied to people not to participate, Ephraim Buchwald, at the time a student at Yeshiva University High School, had points deducted from his academic average because he came to the demonstration.

The demonstration took place in New York City on East 67 Street between Third and Lexington Avenues. The police allowed us to parade right in front of the Soviet mission to the United Nations on that block. The demonstrators, who carried placards, were entirely orderly.

To our astonishment, after the demonstration had gone on for a while, the front door to the Soviet mission opened and someone came out to invite a delegation from the demonstration to come inside. I went in, but I don’t recall specifically who entered with me, except that I’m sure Benjy Silverberg had to have been there.

We met with several officials from the Soviet mission. I have no recollection as to their names or titles. The tone of the meeting was not argumentative. We pointed out, I believe, that the shortage of matzah contravened the promise of the Soviet constitution to allow freedom of religious practice. The mission official who did most of the talking acknowledged that, yes, perhaps the government’s matzah policy had been a mistake. After the meeting, we reported to the crowd outside.

I don’t recall whether the Anglo-Jewish press covered the demonstration. But the New York Herald Tribune (no longer published, but then a leading daily) carried a story the next day (Friday) that played up the official’s admission that the government’s policy was a mistake. This was at a tense time during the Cold War—the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred later that same year—when the Soviet mantra was the perfection and ultimate triumph of Communism. In furtherance of that worldview, disasters in the Soviet Union, whether natural or man-made, were kept secret, and the occurrence of errors, much less admitting to them, was inconceivable. So the fact that we got an official to acknowledge that a Soviet policy was a mistake really was news. (Later that day, I got a follow-up phone call from Irving “Pat” Spiegel, the Times’ Jewish beat reporter, who had been scooped on the story by the rival Herald Tribune, but the Times did not print any follow-up story of its own.)

That’s the gist of what happened as best as I can recall the demonstration. I will add that in 1977 I was in the Soviet Union visiting refusniks. One shabbat while there, I went to a shul where I picked up one of the few relatively new siddurim. On the inside cover was a plate noting that the siddur was a gift from Rabbi Teitz.

A few words of evaluation. Whether it resulted from our efforts I cannot say, but I don’t believe that from then until the collapse of the Soviet Union three decades later a shortage of matzah ever became an issue again. But plainly our demonstration had a limited purpose: to restore the supply of a specific religious need. Never did we imagine that within a short time after our demonstration there would be a groundswell pressing for a general enlargement of rights for Jews in the Soviet Union—especially the broad-scale right of emigration—that came to be known as the Soviet Jewry movement.

At the same time, I think the fact that we took our protest to the streets helped change the attitude of the organized American Jewish community, which, till then, had shied away from public outdoor demonstrations. New York City’s first Salute to Israel Parade followed not long after, then the marches and rallies for Soviet Jewry, and the rest.

Should you wish to follow up on my recital with any of the people I’ve mentioned, here’s what I can tell you about them today:

Benjamin Silverberg lives somewhere in northern New Jersey, possibly Bergen County. I believe he works in New York City either in accounting or information technology.

David Froelich lives in Israel. Years ago he worked for the one of the government ministries, possibly the Comptroller’s office.

Ephraim Buchwald is a rabbi in New York City, a giant in the kiruv movement who heads the National Jewish Outreach Program.

Rabbi Teitz is deceased. His community in Elizabeth, NJ is now led by his son

Rivka Teitz is married to Rabbi Yossi Blau.

Zvi Gittleman is a scholar in the field of Russian and Eastern European history. I believe he is on the faculty of the University of Michigan.

Pat Spiegel is deceased.

^

This One Has It All: Intermarriage, Palestine, State Department, Settling

The wedding of Mina Guiahi, Roman Catholic Iranian and Jesse Levinson, Jewish:

...The couple had been introduced in July 2006 at the Seattle wedding of mutual friends. At the reception, the talkative and twinkle-eyed Mr. Levinson, who had worked in the West Bank and Pakistan...

...Mr. Levinson said, “I don’t think people with backgrounds as different as ours could have gotten together in many places, and New York is one of them.”

And then he was gone. While he worked with a provincial reconstruction team in Iraq, Ms. Guiahi dealt with a different kind of risk: co-managing her first portfolio at Diamondback Advisors as the financial markets crashed.

...(He is now an adviser with the State Department in Washington on Palestinian economic affairs.)

...Juan Gabarro, who knows Mr. Levinson well, said his friend can be “a bit mercurial,” and recalled the “settling effect” of Ms. Guiahi’s influence.

...They were married on Dec. 18 at the Harvard Club of New York in a ceremony that was officiated by the Rev. Gilbert Martinez, a Roman Catholic priest, and that incorporated elements from their Persian, Catholic and Jewish heritages. The couple sat on chairs atop a sofreh, a ceremonial spread that was covered with Persian wedding symbols including a mirror, candelabra, eggs, nuts, pomegranates, flat bread and spices...

At least, I think he's Jewish as his mother is Gail M. Donovan. Donovan?

^

Abbas Makes It Clear: No Israelis In "Palestine" (Is That Apartheid?)

From someone who knows Arabic:

Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas announced on Saturday that when a Palestinian state is established, it would have no Israelis in it.

“We have frankly said, and always will say, if there is an independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, we won’t agree to the presence of one Israeli in it,” Abbas told reporters in Ramallah. He was commenting on unconfirmed reports that suggested that the PA leadership might agree to the presence of the IDF in the West Bank after the establishment of a Palestinian state.

“We are ready to go to peace on the basis of international legitimacy and the road map, which we have accepted, as well as the Arab peace initiative,” Abbas said. “But when a Palestinian state is established, it would have no Israeli presence in it.”

Ynet tries to spin it in his favor, a bit, but falls flat:

While touring Ramallah, Abbas rejected the possibility that Israeli soldiers would remain stationed along the borders of the future Palestinian state or will be a part of an international force that will deploy there.

"We are prepared to move toward peace based on international resolutions, the Road Map and 1967 borders, but when a Palestinian state is established it will be empty of any Israeli presence," said the Palestinian leader.

"If a Palestinian state is established with Jerusalem as its capital, we will object to the presence of even one Israeli in its territory. This is our position," he said.

According to reports, Abbas was referring only to Israelis, as the Palestinian Authority does not object to foreign Jews being a part of the international force which may deploy along the borders of a future Palestinian state. He was referring to IDF soldiers, settlers and Israelis carrying a blue identification card.

When not in Ramallah, Abbas can be found in Bethlehem:

President Mahmoud Abbas, who traveled to Bethlehem to greet Christmas revelers, says he hopes a Palestinian state will be established next year.

Credit

"We are seekers of peace in the path of Jesus," he said. "We hope that next year will be a year of peace by establishing the independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital, living side by side with Israel in peace and security."

Side by side?

So, do we get to empty out all those "Arab settlements" and have the "settlers" move into Palestine just as he wants the Jews to 'return' to the state of Israel?

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Solway Makes It A Simple Message

Here, in The Palestinian Agenda: End Israel, Not Found a State - Understanding the real goal explains the missed opportunities:

...the Palestinians want a state, but it is not the state that Israel has offered to facilitate and that Western politicians perceive as the gleaming destination at the end of the road map.

The Palestinians want a totalistic entity built on the debris of Israel...the state they do not want is Israel — as the Fatah charter, like the Hamas covenant, makes abundantly clear. Neill Lochery justly remarks in Why Blame Israel? that this is the reason they have repudiated every concrete proposal for statehood in the early negotiations when Israel did not yet exist as an internationally recognized nation. That, he writes, “would have led to the establishment of a Jewish state.” The rejectionist position still holds.

It really is simple and plain sometimes.

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It's Help A Shepherd Time

The Havat Yair sheep herd was stolen on the night of Decemver 12-13.  Didn't quite make the general media except for this in Hebrew in Maariv.  Found this also in Hebrew.

You are asked to contribute towards the purchase of a new one:

Oh, the pro-Arab view.

John le Carre and Israel (And the Jews)

In his new book, "Our Kind of Traitor", he manages to get in a mention of Israel in a neutral fashion on p. 121:

...his son Ben having invited an Israeli school friend...

I point this out because of le Carre's conflict with the issue of anti-semitism:

a) 1996

...people might say you were embracing anti-Semitic stereotypes?

I have carried that label around with me ever since I wrote "The Little Drummer Girl." I received such awful letters from organized Jewish groups that I never felt on safe ground after that. My great sin was suggesting that the state of Israel — that Palestine — was in fact a twice-promised land.

Still, I didn't feel queasy about addressing the tradition of Jewish tailors in the East End.

b) 1997

In his Nov. 15 article Mr. le Carre said he was warned by friends of the futility of responding to the Times review that appeared on Oct. 20, 1996, which he contended ''smeared'' him as an anti-Semite. The review, by Norman Rush, a novelist, praised the book as a ''tour de force'' but faulted it for portraying the principal character, a Jew, as ''yet another literary avatar of Judas.'' Mr. Rush said the association, ''however little Mr. le Carre intended it,'' left him with a feeling of ''unease.''

Mr. le Carre described his reaction in the article, saying, ''I realized that we were dealing not with offbeat accusations of anti-Semitism so much as the whole oppressive weight of political correctness, a kind of McCarthyite movement in reverse.'' He said he wished he had ignored his friends' advice and gone ahead and written to The Times.

But in fact he did. The Times published his letter complaining that he had been ''tarred with the anti-Semitic brush.'' on Nov. 3, 1996, along with a response from Mr. Rush denying the contention. ''I have not said or implied that Mr. le Carre is an anti-Semite, and I do not think it,'' Mr. Rush wrote.

c) 1998

Here, in the plush surroundings of London's Savoy Hotel, John Le Carre wants to talk about the pain of the outsider and the yearning to belong, about Smiley and Jews and anti-Semitism. And, of course, about Israel.

"Perhaps I learned too early how the British can treat you if you are not quite one of them," he says. "Perhaps that lesson continued as I discovered how the English punish their artists.

"Or perhaps," he suggests, "I am no different from any other artist anywhere in the world who feels himself an outsider in his own country and believes there's another country somewhere else where he will be happier and safer."

..."I knew nothing of the Middle East, but then I have always seen my novels as opportunities for self-education," he says. "Investing my ignorance in my central character -- a leftist English actress -- and making a virtue of her naivety, I set off on a journey of self-enlightenment, living my character, leaning with each breeze -- now toward Israel, now away from it -- in a series of schizophrenic visits to Amman, Damascus, Beirut, South Lebanon and later Tunis. Then back to Israel, across the Allenby Bridge or by way of Cyprus."

Israel, he says, "rocked me to my boots. I had arrived expecting whatever European sentimentalists expect -- a re-creation of the better quarters of Hampstead [in London]. Or old Danzig, or Vienna or Berlin. The strains of Mendelssohn issuing from open windows of a sumer's evening. Happy kids in seamen's hats clattering to school with violin cases in their hands..."

Instead, what he found was "the most extraordinary carnival of human variety that I have ever set eyes on, a nation in the process of re-assembling itself from the shards of its past, now Oriental, now Western, now secular, now religious, but always anxiously moralizing about itself, criticizing itself with Maoist ferocity, a nation crackling with debate, rediscovering its past while it fought for its future."

"No nation on earth," he says passionately, " was more deserving of peace -- or more condemned to fight for it."

In the offices and homes of his Israeli hosts, Le Carre bounced around ideas and probed -- without, he notes, ever having to persuade anyone of his goodwill. "And when I told my hosts that I was about to walk through the looking-glass and take my questions to the Palestinians, they said, 'good idea' and wished me luck. And I believe they meant it."

...What exercises him above all -- wounds him -- are dark charges of anti-Semitism from the United States that have persistently hung over him and his closely examined, intricately dissected work.

"In my perception of the Jewish identity -- in my continuing dialogue with it, in private and in my novels -- I have been aware from early of a spiritual kinship that embraces what is creative in me, and forgives what is despicable, and shares with me the dignity and solitude and anger that are born of alienation.

"Ever since I can remember, my ears have been pricked up for the careless chamber music of English prejudice. And certainly I pride myself on having as good an ear as anyone for the nuances of that repulsive, but mercifully dying art-form, British anti-Semitism in the chattering classes.

"I have been so keen to reproduce it in my books that sometimes the undiscerning have mistaken the singer for the song. These are nervous times. They were nervous from the day I started writing some 40 years ago."

d) and let's go back to 1983

...examining Fiedler in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, a character Mr. Laqueur summarily dismisses. There are four main characters in the book, a spy novel which has not been equaled since its publication in 1963: Leamas, the disillusioned anti-hero who works for London; Mundt, the ex-Nazi who runs East German security; Fiedler, the brooding intellectual East German Communist who suspects his superior of treason; and Liz Gold, the naive, idealistic British Communist party member. Her Jewishness is crucial to the story, but it is inexplicably overlooked by Mr. Laqueur.

London wants Fiedler destroyed to save Mundt, its “mole” in the East German regime. London's plan hinges on the mutual sympathy that will develop between Leamas and Fiedler: behind their cynical, jaded façades, both men in fact . . . attempt to stay true to what they perceive as their ideals. It is the book's supreme irony that in a fearfully symmetrical denouement, Leamas unwittingly helps destroy Fiedler, thus helping to restore Mundt's credibility in the eyes of the East Germans. . . .

But The Spy Who Came in from the Cold should be read on another level: as a reflection of the Stalinist show trials of the late 40's and early 50's in Eastern Europe. Fiedler personifies the old guard, intellectual Communists—mostly Jewish—whom the Stalinist apparat had to destroy. Leamas's words to the tribunal: “I'll tell you something—no one else will. . . . Mundt had Fiedler beaten up, and all the time, while it was going on, Mundt baited him and jeered at him for being a Jew.” This mirrors the actual truth: Hungarian, Polish, and Czech Communists of Jewish background were above all jeered at as Jews during their interrogation and torture. Nowhere was this as obvious as in Czechoslovakia; seven out of nine “deviationist” Communists tried in Prague, including Slansky, general secretary of the party, were vilified as Jews. And earlier, in a similar trial in Hungary, the accused who had changed their names were meticulously identified by their original, Jewish-sounding names.

It is surprising that Mr. Laqueur would miss these historical analogies and can accuse Le Carré of implausibility. After all, how many Western authors have written about these trials, not to mention with Le Carré's insight and sympathy for the falsely accused Jewish Communists—and as early as 1963?

And now about The Little Drummer Girl, set in the Middle East. In a curious twist, Mr. Laqueur now finds a “fraudulent air of authenticity hovering about all [the] implausible situations” described in the book. He singles out Kurtz, the leading Israeli anti-terrorist expert, for his analysis. First he searches for literary clues and finds that the trail leading to Conrad is a cold one. Mr. Laqueur is looking for a Jewish villain, but Kurtz defies categorization. . . . Mr. Laqueur himself supplies enough quotes to illustrate Kurtz's nonconformism, yet never spells it out.

Kurtz is a Jewish Smiley. But just as Mr. Laqueur consistently refuses to recognize Smiley's humanity and integrity amid the cunning required by his profession, so he refuses to see Kurtz's higher morality in his skeptic's disguise. Le Carré describes Kurtz as “too paradoxical, too complicated, made of too many souls and colors,” and this does not fit into Mr. Laqueur's argument. In fact, Le Carré captures the more general fate of the Jews when he says about Kurtz: “When he spoke of death, it was clear that death had passed by him often and very close, and might any moment come his way again.”

I also take exception to Mr. Laqueur's accusation that Le Carré takes a pro-Palestinian Arab line in this book. Equating sympathy for bombing victims with a pro-Palestinian stand can only be attributed to narrow-mindedness. After the unusual publicity build-up that preceded The Little Drummer Girl, I was frankly disappointed by the book. I found its overwrought plot slightly insulting to my intelligence, but not at all offensive to my hypersensitive Jewish feelings.

Thomas B. Windholz


Walter Laqueur writes:

...Thomas B. Windholz has lived under both Hitlerism and Stalinism, but Le Carré, alas, has not. Mr. Windholz says that he found The Little Drummer Girl not offensive to his Jewish feelings. Nor did I. Le Carré was charged with anti-Semitism by some critics following the publication of an earlier book, a fact which seems to have escaped Mr. Windholz. I tried to make it clear, unfortunately without success, that I thought this specific charge misplaced: Le Carré seems not to like people in general, why should Jews get preferential treatment? As for Fiedler, the Jewish Communist in The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, it is perfectly true that Le Carré makes him more sympathetic than Mundt, the ex-Nazi; one ought to be grateful for small mercies. Regarding Liz Gold (in the same novel), I did note that there are a number of characters in these novels who, judging by their names, may or may not be Jewish. But their Jewishness is no more meaningful in this context than the color of their hair, and the issue is therefore irrelevant.

I always remember that he even got the scene in Jerusalem's Hall of Heroism Museum wrong, when he has his character visitor to gallows' room where two Hebrew underground fighters took their own lives rather than permit the British occupiers to hang them.

^

Odd Headline

That headline seems odd:

Print screen snap here at 17:55, Dec. 25.

Actually, they weren't talking to the body but

Missouri police are investigating the death of a 27-year-old woman whose body was found this week at the home of beer tycoon August Busch IV.

Frontenac, Missouri, police officers got a 911 call just before 1:15 p.m. last Sunday about an unresponsive woman at a residence later identified as belonged to Busch, the town's police chief, Thomas Becker, said in a news release.

Paramedics and police officers arrived eight minutes later to find Adrienne Nicole Martin dead, "with no apparent signs of trauma or other indications of cause of death," Becker said.

Busch's lawyer, Art Margulis, on Friday described Martin as a friend of his client.

^

BBC Bongling

"Bongling" like in 'mindbongling'.

I just saw a report from Bethlehem on the BBC (3:20 PM Israel Time). Impact.

The reporter is in Bethlehem and on the one hand, notes the secure atmosphere drawing thousands of tourists and pilgrims but points out the difficulty getting into the city from Israel because of the security barrier.

The next item is on the Iraqi Christians killed and how a wall has been built around their church to protect them but...it came too late for the 40+ murdered religious martyrs.

Does not the editor have any idea what the BBC is broadcasting?

What's good for Iraqi Christians is bad for Jews in Israel?

Here's the text:

In Bethlehem -

It's an edited-down version but at 2:08 you can hear part of what I am referring to above.

and On Iraq -

Since that attack the government has stepped up security outside this and other churches, deploying armed police and installing blast walls.

But they came too late for the people who lost their lives that day, and it will take more than concrete barriers to persuade many Christians that they are still safe in Iraq.

At least we didn't get this message via the BCC:

Jesus was a Palestinian - "no one denies that" says PA TV

One of the ways the Palestinian Authority attempts to create a Palestinian history is to deny the Judean/Jewish nationality of Jesus, and misrepresent him as a "Palestinian."

Palestinian Media Watch has documented this ongoing Palestinian Authority historical revision. Recently on PA TV, the author Samih Ghanadreh from Nazareth was interviewed about his book "Christianity and Its Connection to Islam."

^

Reversing History

Reversing history is the Pal. goal it is suggested.

I found that interesting as when watching NFL games on METV here in Israel, one of the Christian characterized commercials has a preacher, James Price, screaming "reverse is curse".

Read on:

The Palestinian goal seems less to obtain a state (they have repeatedly rejected one) than to reverse history: a return to the 1967 lines would reverse the 1967 war; a “right of return” would reverse the 1948 one; and controlling the Old City (aka East Jerusalem) would reverse the history before that. At the end of his book, Ross describes the Oval Office meeting where Arafat rejected the Clinton Parameters, with Arafat denying that the Temple ever existed in Jerusalem. Ten years later, the PA denies any Jewish connection to the Western Wall. Not only has the PA taken no steps to prepare its public for peace; its maps and media presume Israel does not exist.

In thinking about the recurring failures of the peace process, it is time to reflect on that.

^

More on the Charge of "Illegality"

A collection from my mentor, Shmuel Katz, from the blog site that David Isaac maintains, researching and composing from Moekie's articles we found and collected.

Here.

^

On Defending Kissinger - An Unpublished Letter

In response to a letter published in the New York Times defending Henry Kissinger, I responded thus:-

The letter in defense of Henry Kissinger by three past chairmen of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations asks us to consider the context of all of the former Secretary of State's actions on Israel (Dec. 22, 2010).

In doing so, we need recall that it also was his intention to see Israel “bleed just enough to soften it up for the post-war diplomacy he was planning” as your paper published the story on March 17, 1976. In fact, it was President Nixon, ostensibly the more verbal anti-semitic of the two in the recently released tape transcripts, who overruled Kissinger's policy and ordered the airlift to beleaguered Israel.

I guess the NYT isn't that excited over Kissinger's lack of morals.

P.S.

From Shmuel Katz:

...When the Israeli Army, after its initial were and nearly fatal setback, began turning the tables, and while the Soviet Union was operating its new, massive supply train, airborne and seaborne, of supplies to Egypt and Syria, the losses the Israeli Army bad suffered threatened a shortage of essential materiel. There occurred then a never officially explained delay, lasting eight days, in the shipping to Israel of promised supplies by the United States. In reply to the daily agitated appeals by the Israeli Ambassador, the American Secretary of State claimed that it was the Defense Department that was holding up the supplies. In fact, the Defense Department was acting according to the directions of the State Department. What the Secretary of State omitted to explain to the Israeli Ambassador was that (as he had explained to his colleague, the Chief of U.S. Naval Operations, Admiral Elmo R. Zumwalt, Jr.) it was his intention to see Israel “bleed just enough to soften it up for the post-war diplomacy he was planning.”

http://shmuelkatz.com/Articles/BattlegroundFactandFantasyinPalestine.pdf

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Wall Posters - The Latest From the Hareidi Communities

This one renews the demand that modest women wear a shawl over their shoulders and upper body from a decade ago:-

And this one prohibits listening to any radio, even the so-called "holy stations":-

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Z Street Goes Into High Gear

Reported:-

Z Street amends lawsuit

...Z Street has maintained that its request for a tax exemption has been delayed due to IRS concerns that the group's activities might conflict with White House policies on Israel.

In an amended complaint filed Friday, Z Street said the IRS, using apparently circuitous logic, has sought to justify its actions by noting that "Z Street deals with Israel, and Israel is a country 'with' a heightened risk of terrorism."

Ironically, the complaint continued, "the government claims to be investigating intensively an organization whose charter opposes terrorism, and which is devoted exclusively to speaking in support of a country victimized by terrorism, on the theory that such intensive review is necessary to prevent terrorism, because such an organization might be funding terrorism."

Contacted Monday, Z Street founder Lori Lowenthal Marcus said she found the IRS' rationale to be "bizarre and offensive."

Go, Lori!

My Comment Has Been Removed from the New York Times' The Lede

The story started here but I'll repeat:

At the New York Times' 'The Lede' blog of Robert Mackey, I left a comment
here.  I suggested that others can leave a comment as well.

Then, I added another, responding to another comment.

And then another.

Mackey was communicating.

But I think I was gaining the upper hand.

And then a friend alerted me to the unfortunate, for the NYT, fact that I had been censored, removed.
The link of that last comment leads nowhere.

This comment of mine was online for 2-3 hours.  But Brian of London informed me it's now gone, #25 is skipped over between #24 and #26 but we have a screenprint shot so you can still read what was published:

Since I had mentioned the Queen of Jordan, that she is "Palestinian" and therefore, perhaps Mackey could agree that at least 50% of Jordan is "Palestinian", I suggested that maybe King Abdullah complained or just Jordan's New York Consul-General.

But all I did was suggest that Mackey's sources, American, and my source, American, were contradictory.  Does a discussion on the makeup of Jordan's demographics bother someone?  The King?  Presaident Obama?  The NYT's editor?  Robert Mackey?

In any case, if you really think my #25 comment is outrageous, vile, mendacious, slandering, plagiarizing or soemething else that would cause it to be removed, let me know.  The policy on editing or, in my case, worse is this:

A few things we won't tolerate: personal attacks, obscenity, vulgarity, profanity (including expletives and letters followed by dashes), commercial promotion, impersonations, incoherence and SHOUTING.

And, if you agree with me that either the NYT or Robert Mackey is playing with my right to free expression, well, let them know:

Contact Arthur S. Brisbane

E-mail: public@nytimes.com

Phone: (212) 556-7652

Address: Public Editor

The New York Times

620 Eighth Avenue

New York, NY 10018

Thank you.

And someone else, Brian of London, has been thwarted.

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Kaffiyeh As Fashion

An element of identification the the cause (lost?) of "Palestine" is the kaffiyeh-as-fashion.

Atlas Shrugs of Pamela Geller has a great display.

Most of us in Yesha, unfortunately, see in the kafiyeh a threatening and even dangerous aspect, if worn in a certain way:

But, yes, there are other ways:

But this young lady combines an element of kafiyeh without the attached political aspect and bravo to her:

And those tassles!

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