What if your ancestors did not escape to the US in the 1800's?
Where do you think you would be?
Do you think you would be alive?
Shabbat Shalom
B"H
April 28, 2011
The American Aliyah . . . . and how it will happen
You heard it here first. By 2025 there will be over 1 million American Jews living in Israel.
Actually – you didn’t hear it here first. We read it in the Tanach, Hashem told us this would happen through His prophets over three thousand years ago.
The process of Kibbutz Galyout, the ingathering of the exiles, has been taking place for well over a century. Since the first Russian Jew had enough of the pogroms and headed eastward, there has been a mass movement to the Holy Land from three of the four corners of the earth. Israel today boasts millions of Jews who have roots in the Arab Lands, Asia, South America, Europe, and Africa.
The only part of the world that hasn’t come home en masse is North America.
That’s about to change.
It won’t change because of Zionism, persecution, or even, Hashem forgive me, religious observance. But Hashem is guiding His hand to help us. It will happen for the simplest of reasons – self preservation.
Here’s how millions of American Jews will find themselves in Israel by 2025:
Over the next 15 years, the economic fortunes of America and Israel will cross paths in opposite directions. For the first time since World War II, the U.S. government has amassed a debt load equal to its entire economy. During WWII, all of this money was used towards industrial production of the American war machine. When the war was over, the factories were already built. The capacity was in place for the greatest economic expansion mankind has ever seen. While the debt of the U.S. continued to rise in the post World War II period, the economy grew so much faster that the debt to GDP ratio fell dramatically.
Until now.
Today, more than any government department except defense, America spends $420 billion a year on interest for its debt. This is while interest rates at all-time lows. If interest rates were to “revert to the mean” and hit, say 5%, this amount will double. America owes five times as much debt as they report to the world in the form of future Social Security and Medicare payments. They have to come up with $100 trillion over the next 30 years. Over 60% of U.S. debt is in the form of two year notes. This means that if interest rates were to suddenly spike, America is very exposed. America does not have the luxury of having locked up low interest rates for decades in the form of 30 year treasury notes – they stopped issuing them a while back. If rates go up, within 24 months, the total interest charge to the $14 trillion debt will skyrocket exponentially.
The only way America can pay it’s credit card and keep growing is by printing money. The contemporary term is quantitative easing, or QE3. This is the death blow for any economy. This is what did Germany in during the 1920s. it’s already having an impact today.
As time wears on, less and less of that money will be readily available to the average American family. Taxes will have to go up to service debt, or at least to ensure that after the government pays the interest, there will be enough left to provide the American public the bare essentials. Taxes can go up to 50%. After taxes, the government will continue to print money to “make ends meet,” i.e., fill in the gaps. This causes inflation – which means that after your pay your taxes, the buying power of the money you have left will quickly erode. This is why printing money is often referred to as the “invisible tax.”
Until America fundamentally restructures itself, a process that will take many years of very painful rebuilding, it will continue its economic decline.
Compare that to Israel.
READ MORE........
http://www.mideastmag.com/33761/the-american-aliyah-and-how-it-will-happen/
READ MORE........
http://www.mideastmag.com/33761/the-american-aliyah-and-how-it-will-happen/
April 25, 2011
Mandate for Palestine....
The Mandate implicitly denies Arab claims to national political rights in the area in favor of the Jews; the mandated territory was in effect reserved to the Jewish people for their self-determination and political development, in acknowledgment of the historic connection of the Jewish people to the land. There remains simply the theory that the Arab inhabitants of the West Bank and the Gaza Strip have an inherent 'natural law' claim to the area. Neither customary international law nor the United Nations Charter acknowledges that every group of people claiming to be a nation has the right to a state of its own."
April 21, 2011
THEY MUST GO – RABBI MEIR KAHANE
THEY MUST GO – written in 1980, printed in 1981
RABBI MEIR KAHANE
But There is a G-d in Israel (excerpts)
The analysis and proposed transfer of Arabs from Israel that I have set down are not personal views. They are certainly not political ones. This is the Jewish outlook, based on halakah the law as postulated in the Torah.
The removal of all Arabs who refuse to accept the exclusive, unquestioned Jewish sovereignty over Eretz Yisrael is not only logical and normal for any Jew with a modicum of an instinct for self-preservation; it is also the Jewish halakic obligation. It is important that we know this in order to realize what true “Jewishness” really dictates and in order to instill in ourselves the faith and assurance that if we do this, all the nations in the world will be incapable of harming Israel.
The Jewish people are not merely one more nation. “Though I put an end to all the nations among whom thou art scattered, but I will never put an end to thee” (Jeremiah 30:11). Israel is indestructible. It is unique, it is holy, it is the Chosen of the L-rd; it has a reason for being. Its national uniqueness is built on an idea, on an ideology, that it alone has. The Jew is selected and obligated to be a religio-nation, commanded to obey the laws and follow the path of Torah. The covenant. The Jewish people took upon itself the yoke of the L-rd, acknowledging Him as G-d and observing His laws. The Almighty chose them as His unique people, pledging that they would be indestructible and would live in peace and prosperity in their own land, Eretz Yisrael.
The land was given as a reward, as a blessing. But it is more, much more, than that. The people of Israel have more than a right to the land; they have an obligation. “For you shall pass over the Jordan to go in to possess the Land which the L-rd your G-d gives you, and you shall possess it and dwell therein” (Deuteronomy 11:31).
A unique people given, uniquely, a particular land. Unlike all the other faiths that are not limited to one special country, the Jew is given a particular land and commanded to live there. And for a reason, as Moses explains: “Behold, I have taught you statutes and judgments, even as the L-rd, my G-d, commanded me, that you shall do so in the Land whither you go to possess it. (Deuteronomy 4:5).
It is impossible to create a holy, unique people that dwells as a minority within lands that belong to others. The majority culture must infiltrate, influence, corrupt, woo, tempt, pervert. The Jew is commanded to create for himself a holy nation, and that can only be done free of others, separate, different, apart. That is why the unique nation, chosen for holiness and unique destiny, was given a land for itself: so that it might create a unique, holy society that would be a light unto the nations who would see its example and model.
And as the Torah clearly commanded: And you shall drive out all the inhabitants of the land from before you…But if you will not drive out the inhabitants of the land from before you, then it shall come to pass that those which you let remain of them, shall be thorns in your eyes and thistles in your sides and shall torment you in the land wherein you dwell. And it shall be that I will do to you as I thought to do to them” (Numbers 3:52-56).
Far better than foolish humans did the Almighty understand the dangers inherent in allowing a people that believed the land belonged to it to be given free and unfettered residence, let along ownership, proprietorship, citizenship. What more natural thing than to ask to regain that it believed to be rightly its own land? And this over and above the need to create a unique and distinctly separate Torah culture that will shape the Jewish people into a holy nation. That “uniqueness” can be guaranteed only by the non-Jew’s having no sovereignty, ownership, or citizenship in the state that could allow him to shape its destiny and character.
This is Torah. This is Jewishness. Not the dishonest pseudo “Judaism” chanted by the Liberal secularists who pick and choose what “Judaism” finds favor in their eyes and who reject what their own gentilized concepts find unacceptable. They weigh “Judaism” on the scales of their own intellectual arrogance – arrogance, incidentally, of intense ignorance.
And if this is not only the right of Jews but their obligation, what do we fear? Why do the Jews tremble and quake before the threat of the nations? Is there no longer a G-d in Israel? Have we lost our bearings that we do not understand the ordained historical role of the State of Israel, a role that ensures that it can never be destroyed and that no further exile from it is possible? Why is it that we do not comprehend that it is precisely our refusal to deal with the Arabs according to halakic obligation that will bring down on our heads terrible sufferings, whereas our courage in removing them will be one of the major factors in the hurrying of the final redemption?
What is wrong with us? Who blinded us and blocked from our memories the existence and power of the G-d of Israel? Did a Jewish people exist for 2,000 years without state, government, or army, wandering the earth interminably from land to land, suffering pogroms and Holocaust and surviving powerful empires that disappeared into history, just by coincidence? Did a Jewish people return to its land from the far corners of the earth to set up its own sovereign state – exactly as promised in the Bible – through mere natural means? What other nation ever did such a thing? Where are the Philistines of Goliath today? Where is imperial Rome with its Latin and its gods? Who defeats armies in six days, and on the seventh they rest?
Who if not an Israel because there is a G-d in it! The Land of Israel is His divine Land; the State of Israel is His divine hand. History is not a series of random events, disjointed and coincidental. There is a Creator, a Guide, a Hand that plans and directs. There is a scenario to history. The Jew has come home for the third and last time. “But the third shall be left therein” (Zechariah 13:8). The first redemption was that from Egypt; the second, the redemption of Ezra. The third will never end” (Tanhuma, Shoftim 9).
We live in the era of the footsteps of the Messiah, the beginning of the final redemption. The rise of the State of Israel from the ashes of Auschwitz marks the end of the night of black humiliation and agony, of Hillul Hashem, and the beginning of the dawn of the final, total redemption, of Kiddush Hashem, sanctification of G-d’s name. The State of Israel is not a “political” creation. It is a religious one. No power could have prevented its birth and none can destroy it. It is the beginning of G-d’s wrath, vengeance against the nations who ignored, disdained, and humiliated Him, who found Him irrelevant, who “knew Him not.” But, it is only the beginning. How the final redemption will come, and when, depends on the Jews.
The exiles shall be ingathered only through “faith” (Mechilta, Exodus). If we have it, if we truly believe in the existence of the Creator and Guider of history, the G-d of Israel, we can bring the final redemption today. “When will the Messiah come? ‘Today, as it is said: “Today, if you will hearken unto my voice’” (Psalms 95:7, Sanhedrin 98a).
The Arabs of Israel represent Hillul Hashem in its starkest form. Their rejection of Jewish sovereignty over the Land of Israel despite the covenant between the L-rd of Israel and the Jews constitutes a rejection of the sovereignty and kingship of the L-rd G-d of Israel. Their transfer from the Land of Israel thus becomes more than a political issue. It is a religious issue, a religious obligation, a commandment to erase Hillul Hashem. Far from fearing what the Gentile will do if we do such a thing, let the Jew tremble as he considers the anger of the Almighty if we do not.
Tragedy will be ours if we do not move the Arabs out. The great redemption can come immediately and magnificently if we do that which G-d demands. One of the great yardsticks of real Jewish faith in this time of momentous decision is our willingness to reject fear of man in favor of awe of G-d and remove the Arabs from Israel.
The world? The nations – united or otherwise? What do they matter before the omnipotence of the Almighty?
“Why do the nations rage…the Kings of the earth set themselves and the rulers take counsel together, against the L-rd and against His anointed…He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh, the L-rd shall mock them…” (Psalms 2:1-4). The Jewish people and state cannot be destroyed. Their weapon is their G-d. That is reality
Let us remove the Arabs from Israel and bring the redemption.
THEY MUST GO.
April 18, 2011
April 15, 2011
One last chance...the life after death!
I heard this on Tamar Yonah of INR and he is very interesting!
Please check this out.
Shabbat Shalom!
Please check this out.
Shabbat Shalom!
If you've read Maus...please read this..It is Brilliant
This is just excellent - for all MOT!
http://www.drybones.com/trees/download.html
Get your free copy of Trees ...the Green Testament.
April 14, 2011
With G-d's help, next year most of the Nation of Israel will be in the Land of Israel - before next Pesach.
Shalom to everyone. On the Seder night, the Hagaddah begins with the negative and ends with praise. In this short message, we will do the same.
*
This past week, we once again had a painful reminder of the fact that the State of Israel cannot exist for a long time when it is disconnected from its Jewish foundations. The last round of fighting against the Hamas in Gaza ended with the score of 2:0 - in favor of the Hamas. On one hand, every bus within five kilometers of the Gaza Strip has now become an easy and accessible potential target, while on the other hand, Israel will not dare to carry out targeted assassinations or the abduction of senior Hamas terrorists when those measures mean that all the residents of Ashkelon and Be'er Sheva must stay in bomb shelters.
The military solution is essentially non-existent because the only way to triumph is to capture the Gaza Strip and to establish real Israeli sovereignty over the region. But he who is disconnected form his Jewish foundations cannot see this solution as an option. He is incapable of accepting the fact that Gaza is simply the Land of Israel and that our roots in the city and surrounding area are no less deep than our roots in Tel Aviv. From the mighty Samson through Rabbi Yisrael Najarah and until the 1930's when the Jewish community in Gaza was destroyed, there had always been a Jewish community there.
Are you familiar with the Shabbat songs Yoducha Ra'ayonai or Kah Ribon olam v'olmaya? You've heard them. The next time you hear those songs, remember that they were written in Gaza and that their composers are buried in the Jewish cemetery there.
He who sees only the here and now, he who is disconnected from our past and our destiny in this Land - also has no present. He finds himself running to bomb shelters or to sophisticated protective systems.
It is not only Gaza that we cannot capture without our Jewish foundations - we cannot even justify our presence in Haifa and Be'er Sheva without them. Just one generation after the Holocaust, Europe is no longer inclined to apologize. Our security-based claims sound to them - and in no small measure, justifiably so - like the tears of the Robbed Cossack. When is the last time that you heard an official Israeli representative simply say, "This is our Land"? If we also admit that we occupied a land that is not ours, how can we complain that our children are in danger?
The negation of Israel's legitimate right to exist is spreading like wildfire in the West, IDF officers and Israeli politicians are afraid to leave the country to which they themselves do not understand their connection.
O.K., we also have to leave some time for the positive.
The good news is that despite the confusion, the Nation of Israel is upward bound. As individuals we may be confused, but as a nation we are displaying unbelievable vitality. The birthrate among Jews in Israel is the highest in the Western world - even without the religious factored in. All the Western nations are shrinking and by us, construction of new apartments does not meet growing demand. Israel today is one of the most modern and developed states in the world. We export more to the US than we import - and that is even though we buy more from America than Brazil or India, with its population of a billion. The Western economies are collapsing - while the Israeli shekel is the most stable in the world. Our foreign debt is small and unemployment in Israel is relatively minimal. True, the lack of a balanced Jewish culture of modest spending and loving kindness is currently preventing the wealth from filtering down to all layers of the population, but as we connect to our culture, that will also work out. We're talking about the positive now, remember?
With G-d's help, next year most of the Nation of Israel will be in the Land of Israel - before next Pesach. This demographic status has not occurred since the era of the First Temple!
So what is happening here? On the one hand the physical aspect of our nation is flourishing, while on the other hand we are experiencing spiritual weakness that threatens our continued existence. How can we change this situation? How can we progress? How can we take advantage of our national sovereignty and the great abundance that our Father in heaven is showering upon us and not lose them, G-d forbid?
The answer is leadership. To emerge from our state of mental subservience to genuine national liberty, we need Jewish leadership that will know how to stabilize our national structure on the foundations of our Jewish heritage.
How will we do it? How will we deal with the Arabs? How will we explain it to the Jews? How will we stand up to American pressure? We have answers to all those questions and more.
You can start by reading our articles, arranged on the Jewish Leadership website by categories . Check out Tomorrow Magazine for more details on various issues. And most important of all, get our ideas out through your own blogs and social media outlets.
We are entering Pesach 5771 with great hope. With G-d's help, we will greet Jonathan Pollard, Gilad Shalit and all our other captives this year. All the wounded and sick will completely recover and all of our dreams will be realized in the very best way.
Reality is nudging our nation into a new consciousness - Jewish consciousness. We are building an alternative and with G-d's help, we will soon lead our nation and complete the journey that our ancestors began in Egypt 3,013 years ago - on the Temple Mount.
I wish you a happy and kosher Festival of Freedom.
The military solution is essentially non-existent because the only way to triumph is to capture the Gaza Strip and to establish real Israeli sovereignty over the region. But he who is disconnected form his Jewish foundations cannot see this solution as an option. He is incapable of accepting the fact that Gaza is simply the Land of Israel and that our roots in the city and surrounding area are no less deep than our roots in Tel Aviv. From the mighty Samson through Rabbi Yisrael Najarah and until the 1930's when the Jewish community in Gaza was destroyed, there had always been a Jewish community there.
Are you familiar with the Shabbat songs Yoducha Ra'ayonai or Kah Ribon olam v'olmaya? You've heard them. The next time you hear those songs, remember that they were written in Gaza and that their composers are buried in the Jewish cemetery there.
He who sees only the here and now, he who is disconnected from our past and our destiny in this Land - also has no present. He finds himself running to bomb shelters or to sophisticated protective systems.
It is not only Gaza that we cannot capture without our Jewish foundations - we cannot even justify our presence in Haifa and Be'er Sheva without them. Just one generation after the Holocaust, Europe is no longer inclined to apologize. Our security-based claims sound to them - and in no small measure, justifiably so - like the tears of the Robbed Cossack. When is the last time that you heard an official Israeli representative simply say, "This is our Land"? If we also admit that we occupied a land that is not ours, how can we complain that our children are in danger?
The negation of Israel's legitimate right to exist is spreading like wildfire in the West, IDF officers and Israeli politicians are afraid to leave the country to which they themselves do not understand their connection.
O.K., we also have to leave some time for the positive.
The good news is that despite the confusion, the Nation of Israel is upward bound. As individuals we may be confused, but as a nation we are displaying unbelievable vitality. The birthrate among Jews in Israel is the highest in the Western world - even without the religious factored in. All the Western nations are shrinking and by us, construction of new apartments does not meet growing demand. Israel today is one of the most modern and developed states in the world. We export more to the US than we import - and that is even though we buy more from America than Brazil or India, with its population of a billion. The Western economies are collapsing - while the Israeli shekel is the most stable in the world. Our foreign debt is small and unemployment in Israel is relatively minimal. True, the lack of a balanced Jewish culture of modest spending and loving kindness is currently preventing the wealth from filtering down to all layers of the population, but as we connect to our culture, that will also work out. We're talking about the positive now, remember?
With G-d's help, next year most of the Nation of Israel will be in the Land of Israel - before next Pesach. This demographic status has not occurred since the era of the First Temple!
So what is happening here? On the one hand the physical aspect of our nation is flourishing, while on the other hand we are experiencing spiritual weakness that threatens our continued existence. How can we change this situation? How can we progress? How can we take advantage of our national sovereignty and the great abundance that our Father in heaven is showering upon us and not lose them, G-d forbid?
The answer is leadership. To emerge from our state of mental subservience to genuine national liberty, we need Jewish leadership that will know how to stabilize our national structure on the foundations of our Jewish heritage.
How will we do it? How will we deal with the Arabs? How will we explain it to the Jews? How will we stand up to American pressure? We have answers to all those questions and more.
You can start by reading our articles, arranged on the Jewish Leadership website by categories . Check out Tomorrow Magazine for more details on various issues. And most important of all, get our ideas out through your own blogs and social media outlets.
We are entering Pesach 5771 with great hope. With G-d's help, we will greet Jonathan Pollard, Gilad Shalit and all our other captives this year. All the wounded and sick will completely recover and all of our dreams will be realized in the very best way.
Reality is nudging our nation into a new consciousness - Jewish consciousness. We are building an alternative and with G-d's help, we will soon lead our nation and complete the journey that our ancestors began in Egypt 3,013 years ago - on the Temple Mount.
I wish you a happy and kosher Festival of Freedom.
April 12, 2011
Can Israel Withstand the Mounting International Pressure?: By Moshe Feiglin
3 Nissan, 5771
April 7, '11
It is worthwhile to watch this film clip of Samantha Power, a senior director on the National Security Council, one of the most influential people in the Obama administration. The two main points that Power makes in this interview, no holds barred, are the necessity to establish a strong army for the "Palestinians" (instead of "investing billions" in the Israeli army) and the necessity to enforce the political solution that she suggests with "massive" force.
As hallucinatory as Power's words may seem now, it is worthwhile to remember that the negation of Israel's right to exist, which was once the rhetoric of terror organizations and Arab states alone, has now become a central and legitimate topic throughout Europe. When a person of Power's stature speaks like this today, she clearly charts out the strategic course for the US and Europe tomorrow.
This week, Tony Blair, the Quartet's official envoy to the Middle East, announced that Europe would accept the Hamas as a negotiating partner. He refused to make that contingent on the terror organization's recognition of Israel's right to exist. Simply put, first we will take whatever you give us and then when you are helpless, we will swallow up the rest.
Shimon Peres, of course, rushed to join in the chorus and after his meeting this week with the US President announced with no small measure of identification that "Obama wants progress - not just another show." Our honored president has begged for a meeting with Obama for a long time and was willing to pay the price: adding his own voice to the international pressure being weaved around Jerusalem. Peres does not need much coaxing. His dream of a new Middle East perfectly complements Power's declarations.
Time and again Israel's public relations representatives have emphasized the fact that there is no connection between the uprisings in the Arab world and the Israel-Arab conflict. The world, though, is not interested in the facts. But we must at least understand that it makes no difference how much we will give to placate the Arabs and the world. As long as one grain of sand in the Land of Israel remains under Israeli sovereignty, they will not be satisfied.
"He said that the Arabs are not afraid of our expansion. They negate our very presence, as a foreign implant. 'The question is,' he said, 'will you be able to muster forces to establish the state larger than the forces that we will concentrate to prevent it?'"
(Abba Eban reports on his conversation with the secretary of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, September, 1947).
Nothing much has changed since 1947. We are not engaged in a border conflict with the Arabs. They are totally unwilling to accept our sovereign existence in the Land of Israel. It is not despair at their lack of sovereignty that motivates the Arabs against us. On the contrary. It is their hope to negate our sovereignty here that keeps them going. That is why every small piece of land that we give them adds fuel to their bonfire of hope. It intensifies the conflict and the international pressure that invariably comes on its heels.
Both the Western and Arab worlds are weaker today than ever before. They will be at our throats only if we open the gates of Jerusalem to them. Israel's problem is not the military danger or the economic sanctions that a Western coalition will likely institute against us. We are fully capable of protecting our interests and emerging from this sort of crisis with an improved international standing and deterrence. Our problem is inside. Are we capable of relying on our internal sense of justice, on our ancient culture, on our faith in G-d? Or do we still worship America?
Experience has proven that we do not have the ability to speed up the maturation of consciousness enveloping Israeli society. We won the Gush Katif referendum and the race for the Knesset, but it didn't help. We must understand that until the public consciousness reaches a vital critical mass, no technical victory will change reality.
That is why Manhigut Yehudit is focused now on introducing a new, Jewish way of thinking into Israeli society. We are still in politics and will continue to do all that is necessary to win. But in order to get elected, the public must understand that there is a viable and attractive alternative for which it can vote. We must be perceived by the public as the solution - and not as part of the problem. We must remain accessible and relevant, ready for the moment that the Nation of Israel will seek out authentic faith-based leadership to lead it into the new, G-dly world reality.
April 7, '11
It is worthwhile to watch this film clip of Samantha Power, a senior director on the National Security Council, one of the most influential people in the Obama administration. The two main points that Power makes in this interview, no holds barred, are the necessity to establish a strong army for the "Palestinians" (instead of "investing billions" in the Israeli army) and the necessity to enforce the political solution that she suggests with "massive" force.
As hallucinatory as Power's words may seem now, it is worthwhile to remember that the negation of Israel's right to exist, which was once the rhetoric of terror organizations and Arab states alone, has now become a central and legitimate topic throughout Europe. When a person of Power's stature speaks like this today, she clearly charts out the strategic course for the US and Europe tomorrow.
This week, Tony Blair, the Quartet's official envoy to the Middle East, announced that Europe would accept the Hamas as a negotiating partner. He refused to make that contingent on the terror organization's recognition of Israel's right to exist. Simply put, first we will take whatever you give us and then when you are helpless, we will swallow up the rest.
Shimon Peres, of course, rushed to join in the chorus and after his meeting this week with the US President announced with no small measure of identification that "Obama wants progress - not just another show." Our honored president has begged for a meeting with Obama for a long time and was willing to pay the price: adding his own voice to the international pressure being weaved around Jerusalem. Peres does not need much coaxing. His dream of a new Middle East perfectly complements Power's declarations.
Time and again Israel's public relations representatives have emphasized the fact that there is no connection between the uprisings in the Arab world and the Israel-Arab conflict. The world, though, is not interested in the facts. But we must at least understand that it makes no difference how much we will give to placate the Arabs and the world. As long as one grain of sand in the Land of Israel remains under Israeli sovereignty, they will not be satisfied.
"He said that the Arabs are not afraid of our expansion. They negate our very presence, as a foreign implant. 'The question is,' he said, 'will you be able to muster forces to establish the state larger than the forces that we will concentrate to prevent it?'"
(Abba Eban reports on his conversation with the secretary of the Arab League, Azzam Pasha, September, 1947).
Nothing much has changed since 1947. We are not engaged in a border conflict with the Arabs. They are totally unwilling to accept our sovereign existence in the Land of Israel. It is not despair at their lack of sovereignty that motivates the Arabs against us. On the contrary. It is their hope to negate our sovereignty here that keeps them going. That is why every small piece of land that we give them adds fuel to their bonfire of hope. It intensifies the conflict and the international pressure that invariably comes on its heels.
Both the Western and Arab worlds are weaker today than ever before. They will be at our throats only if we open the gates of Jerusalem to them. Israel's problem is not the military danger or the economic sanctions that a Western coalition will likely institute against us. We are fully capable of protecting our interests and emerging from this sort of crisis with an improved international standing and deterrence. Our problem is inside. Are we capable of relying on our internal sense of justice, on our ancient culture, on our faith in G-d? Or do we still worship America?
Experience has proven that we do not have the ability to speed up the maturation of consciousness enveloping Israeli society. We won the Gush Katif referendum and the race for the Knesset, but it didn't help. We must understand that until the public consciousness reaches a vital critical mass, no technical victory will change reality.
That is why Manhigut Yehudit is focused now on introducing a new, Jewish way of thinking into Israeli society. We are still in politics and will continue to do all that is necessary to win. But in order to get elected, the public must understand that there is a viable and attractive alternative for which it can vote. We must be perceived by the public as the solution - and not as part of the problem. We must remain accessible and relevant, ready for the moment that the Nation of Israel will seek out authentic faith-based leadership to lead it into the new, G-dly world reality.
April 5, 2011
Eichman
by MEIR KAHANE
It is absurd to even begin to speak about the horrors of this era. No one who failed to see the death, who failed to smell the stench, who failed to live and die a thousand deaths daily in the camps can begin to imagine even one-thousandth or one-tenthousandth of the nightmare that was Nazidom. The writer has yet to be born whose pen could bring these things to life, the artist yet to be created whose easel could reproduce them. It is not six million, but one Abraham, one Yitzhak, one Ya’akov, one Sarah, one David, and on and on ad infinitum, each name representing a human being who cried and screamed and begged and died.
It is not within our capacity to understand. Only those who came upon the camps, who met the horror suddenly face to face. Only those remember that moment, when —
Their hearts went cold, their bodies numb, their speech dumb. The sun stood still and the wind was silent. The heavens gray and foreboding and their tears as gentle rain fell earthward to be buried with those gentle, awful bodies in the cold damp earth. In the cities and the fields, the rivers and the plains, the mountains and the valleys, the voice was stilled, the heartbeat stopped. Their hearts went cold, their bodies numb, their speech dumb. The sun stood still and the wind was silent. The heavens gray and foreboding and their tears as gentle rain fell earthward to be buried with those gentle, awful bodies in the cold damp earth. In the cities and the fields, the rivers and the plains, the mountains and the valleys, the voice was stilled, the heartbeat stopped.
Oh how doth she sit solitary, the continent that was full of our people is become a widow . . . .
The tears flowed unashamedly from men of steel. Their hearts were broken, their dreams were mashed, and the shattered remnants lay mirrored in the pool of tears, reflected in the river of despair. For in truth this was the end of a dream, the expiration of a vision. If such an abomination could be conceived by man, then there was no longer hope. If such evil could be born within his breast, there was no longer ight. If from the fruits of civilizationthere could emerge the worms of Satanism, there was no longer purpose. Such a world forfeits its right to existence, such a generation is fit only for the waters of a Flood. Such an era is guilty of the greatest of all crimes — the destruction of G-d’s dream.
Guilty. They were all guilty. The abominations such as Eichmann who planned it, the devils who executed it. The nations who kept silent and appeased the beasts, the nations whose gates were closed at a time when so many might have been saved. The crime is an albatross that must be hung around their necks with all its evil stench as a faint beginning at atonement, as a pitiful start toward asking for forgiveness.
The decent thing would be for them to slink quietly away. The least we have the right to expect is that they acknowledge their guilt by shamefaced silence. But they lack even this. They have the gall to question the right of Israel to hold this trial. It is the measure of our decadence we must deign to answer them.
There is no legal basis, they say. There is no jurisdiction. Eichmann did not murder Israelis but only Polish Jews or German Jews or Hungarian Jews. Israel was not even in existence at the time of the events. Only those nations whose citizens were killed may legally try him. Only a Germany or an international court has the legal right to try him. The world mutters disapprovingly, the scholars of international law shake their heads, and the world’s gall overflows its banks.
Let it be understood once and for all, THIS WAS A CRIME AGAINST JEWRY. It was not because they were Polish citizens that Eichmann destroyed the scholars of Lublin; it was not because they were Slovaks that they massacred the Jews of Bratislava; it was not because they were Lithuanians that they destroyed the Vilna ghetto. To Eichmann, and those with him, they were Jews, and all Jews, whatever their nationality, were only one entity — a Jewish
entity, the Jewish people. Others might escape by being Quislings; others might live by fawning condescension. Not the Jew. The Jew, be he Dutch or Pole or Slav or Teuton, was the Jew. This was the rationale for the crime, and by Heaven this shall be the rationale for the punishment.
It was the Nazi who decreed the existence of a unique and separate Jewish entity, and it is the Nazi who today must take the consequences of this thinking. For since the Nazi declared a war to the death against the Jewish nation, then that Jewish nation — through its sole sovereign power — the State of Israel — is the only logical tribunal to try him. It was the Nazis by their declaration of war against the Jewish nation who gave jurisdiction today for the receptacle and spokesman for the Jewish nation — the Jewish State of Israel.
And let us indeed ask the principals of the case, those who were destroyed by the Nazi, whom they designate as their agent of punishment. Let us whisper to the crematoriums and the gas chambers, to the ashes of the six million: Who is your spokesman?
Will these ghosts of the past answer: Germany, that destroyed them? Will they tell us Poland or Romania or Lithuania, where they lived in fear and terror, where they suffered poverty and discrimination, whose people were only too anxious to cooperate with the Nazi beasts? Will they choose an international court composed perhaps of the Russians who signed the death warrant for millions of Polish Jews with the Hitler-Stalin pact, or the British who locked
the gates of Palestine so that the Struma might go to the bottom of the sea with its Jews who escaped the Nazis, or the United States that never quite saw its way to raising immigration quotas when hundreds of thousands might have been saved? No, no, a thousand times no. Their answer would split mountains with the fervor of its shout: Israel! Only Israel!
But there is a greater — a far, far greater reason why it can ONLY be Israel, why it must only be Israel. For, if not Israel, there are no answers to the questions. If not Israel, there is no reason for the Holocaust.
We believe with a perfect faith that Evil cannot triumph and Goodness must in the end emerge victorious. This Emunah, this belief, is the cornerstone of our existence, the shield that preserved us through ages of persecution, that gave meaning to our bitter history. Our G-d is a G-d of history. Within his hands are formed the events and occurrences of time. There is purpose and reason to all, and in the end — these may come with chariots and these with horses BUT I SHALL CALL IN THE NAME OF THE L-RD!
They laughed at us all these centuries, they mocked us all these years. Wherefore shall the nations say: “Where is their G-d?” And we in the humbleness of our trust, in the purity of our conviction, answered: He will show Himself. We believe.
And as the fantastic machine of the German crushed our bodies and burned our souls, who believed then that there would sometime come a day when the machine would lie crumbling in the dust of retribution, and the stone that the builders had despised would rise once again?
Wake up, wake up, for your light has come; stir yourselves, sing your song, for the Magnificence of the L-rd is revealed unto you!
The Miracle of G-d! The open and obvious miracle! When the Jewish Brigade marched into Rome in 1944 and, with heads held high, marched under the Arch of Titus, symbol of our exile and suffering, pausing only to paint its base with the bold Hebrew words: “Am Yisroel Chai” (the nation of Israel lives) — that was part of the miracle. When a proud people spat in the face of Britain and threw back the Arab hordes — that was part of the miracle. When a people reborn took a land that was desert and waste and made it as the Lily of the Valley, green with Jewish grass, and sparkling with Jewish water; humming with Jewish song and teeming with Jewish life; rich with Jewish hope and strong with Jewish faith — this was part of the miracle.
And when Adolf Eichmann set foot in the prisoner’s dock of a Jewish courtroom, and faced three Jewish judges, and was restrained by two Jewish policemen, and was condemned by a Jewish prosecutor, and ate Jewish food, and, please G-d, will face Jewish punishment — this is the completion of the miracle.
The trial of Adolf Eichmann by the State of Israel is the proof and affirmation of the truth of our G-d. Eichmann must be tried there. Only thereby will our martyred dead gain some measure of comfort. Only thereby will their passing not have been in vain.
April 12, 1961
It is absurd to even begin to speak about the horrors of this era. No one who failed to see the death, who failed to smell the stench, who failed to live and die a thousand deaths daily in the camps can begin to imagine even one-thousandth or one-tenthousandth of the nightmare that was Nazidom. The writer has yet to be born whose pen could bring these things to life, the artist yet to be created whose easel could reproduce them. It is not six million, but one Abraham, one Yitzhak, one Ya’akov, one Sarah, one David, and on and on ad infinitum, each name representing a human being who cried and screamed and begged and died.
It is not within our capacity to understand. Only those who came upon the camps, who met the horror suddenly face to face. Only those remember that moment, when —
Their hearts went cold, their bodies numb, their speech dumb. The sun stood still and the wind was silent. The heavens gray and foreboding and their tears as gentle rain fell earthward to be buried with those gentle, awful bodies in the cold damp earth. In the cities and the fields, the rivers and the plains, the mountains and the valleys, the voice was stilled, the heartbeat stopped. Their hearts went cold, their bodies numb, their speech dumb. The sun stood still and the wind was silent. The heavens gray and foreboding and their tears as gentle rain fell earthward to be buried with those gentle, awful bodies in the cold damp earth. In the cities and the fields, the rivers and the plains, the mountains and the valleys, the voice was stilled, the heartbeat stopped.
Oh how doth she sit solitary, the continent that was full of our people is become a widow . . . .
The tears flowed unashamedly from men of steel. Their hearts were broken, their dreams were mashed, and the shattered remnants lay mirrored in the pool of tears, reflected in the river of despair. For in truth this was the end of a dream, the expiration of a vision. If such an abomination could be conceived by man, then there was no longer hope. If such evil could be born within his breast, there was no longer ight. If from the fruits of civilizationthere could emerge the worms of Satanism, there was no longer purpose. Such a world forfeits its right to existence, such a generation is fit only for the waters of a Flood. Such an era is guilty of the greatest of all crimes — the destruction of G-d’s dream.
Guilty. They were all guilty. The abominations such as Eichmann who planned it, the devils who executed it. The nations who kept silent and appeased the beasts, the nations whose gates were closed at a time when so many might have been saved. The crime is an albatross that must be hung around their necks with all its evil stench as a faint beginning at atonement, as a pitiful start toward asking for forgiveness.
The decent thing would be for them to slink quietly away. The least we have the right to expect is that they acknowledge their guilt by shamefaced silence. But they lack even this. They have the gall to question the right of Israel to hold this trial. It is the measure of our decadence we must deign to answer them.
There is no legal basis, they say. There is no jurisdiction. Eichmann did not murder Israelis but only Polish Jews or German Jews or Hungarian Jews. Israel was not even in existence at the time of the events. Only those nations whose citizens were killed may legally try him. Only a Germany or an international court has the legal right to try him. The world mutters disapprovingly, the scholars of international law shake their heads, and the world’s gall overflows its banks.
Let it be understood once and for all, THIS WAS A CRIME AGAINST JEWRY. It was not because they were Polish citizens that Eichmann destroyed the scholars of Lublin; it was not because they were Slovaks that they massacred the Jews of Bratislava; it was not because they were Lithuanians that they destroyed the Vilna ghetto. To Eichmann, and those with him, they were Jews, and all Jews, whatever their nationality, were only one entity — a Jewish
entity, the Jewish people. Others might escape by being Quislings; others might live by fawning condescension. Not the Jew. The Jew, be he Dutch or Pole or Slav or Teuton, was the Jew. This was the rationale for the crime, and by Heaven this shall be the rationale for the punishment.
It was the Nazi who decreed the existence of a unique and separate Jewish entity, and it is the Nazi who today must take the consequences of this thinking. For since the Nazi declared a war to the death against the Jewish nation, then that Jewish nation — through its sole sovereign power — the State of Israel — is the only logical tribunal to try him. It was the Nazis by their declaration of war against the Jewish nation who gave jurisdiction today for the receptacle and spokesman for the Jewish nation — the Jewish State of Israel.
And let us indeed ask the principals of the case, those who were destroyed by the Nazi, whom they designate as their agent of punishment. Let us whisper to the crematoriums and the gas chambers, to the ashes of the six million: Who is your spokesman?
Will these ghosts of the past answer: Germany, that destroyed them? Will they tell us Poland or Romania or Lithuania, where they lived in fear and terror, where they suffered poverty and discrimination, whose people were only too anxious to cooperate with the Nazi beasts? Will they choose an international court composed perhaps of the Russians who signed the death warrant for millions of Polish Jews with the Hitler-Stalin pact, or the British who locked
the gates of Palestine so that the Struma might go to the bottom of the sea with its Jews who escaped the Nazis, or the United States that never quite saw its way to raising immigration quotas when hundreds of thousands might have been saved? No, no, a thousand times no. Their answer would split mountains with the fervor of its shout: Israel! Only Israel!
But there is a greater — a far, far greater reason why it can ONLY be Israel, why it must only be Israel. For, if not Israel, there are no answers to the questions. If not Israel, there is no reason for the Holocaust.
We believe with a perfect faith that Evil cannot triumph and Goodness must in the end emerge victorious. This Emunah, this belief, is the cornerstone of our existence, the shield that preserved us through ages of persecution, that gave meaning to our bitter history. Our G-d is a G-d of history. Within his hands are formed the events and occurrences of time. There is purpose and reason to all, and in the end — these may come with chariots and these with horses BUT I SHALL CALL IN THE NAME OF THE L-RD!
They laughed at us all these centuries, they mocked us all these years. Wherefore shall the nations say: “Where is their G-d?” And we in the humbleness of our trust, in the purity of our conviction, answered: He will show Himself. We believe.
And as the fantastic machine of the German crushed our bodies and burned our souls, who believed then that there would sometime come a day when the machine would lie crumbling in the dust of retribution, and the stone that the builders had despised would rise once again?
Wake up, wake up, for your light has come; stir yourselves, sing your song, for the Magnificence of the L-rd is revealed unto you!
The Miracle of G-d! The open and obvious miracle! When the Jewish Brigade marched into Rome in 1944 and, with heads held high, marched under the Arch of Titus, symbol of our exile and suffering, pausing only to paint its base with the bold Hebrew words: “Am Yisroel Chai” (the nation of Israel lives) — that was part of the miracle. When a proud people spat in the face of Britain and threw back the Arab hordes — that was part of the miracle. When a people reborn took a land that was desert and waste and made it as the Lily of the Valley, green with Jewish grass, and sparkling with Jewish water; humming with Jewish song and teeming with Jewish life; rich with Jewish hope and strong with Jewish faith — this was part of the miracle.
And when Adolf Eichmann set foot in the prisoner’s dock of a Jewish courtroom, and faced three Jewish judges, and was restrained by two Jewish policemen, and was condemned by a Jewish prosecutor, and ate Jewish food, and, please G-d, will face Jewish punishment — this is the completion of the miracle.
The trial of Adolf Eichmann by the State of Israel is the proof and affirmation of the truth of our G-d. Eichmann must be tried there. Only thereby will our martyred dead gain some measure of comfort. Only thereby will their passing not have been in vain.
April 12, 1961
Israel's requirement from HaShem
Why do we have so many splintered ideas? Our outline is Torah. Our King is HaShem.
What we need to do is clear. Why do we as a people not speak out? What are we afraid of?
They didn't bomb the trains. The pogroms were allowed to happen. Blood libel is never punished.
Moneychangers and scapegoats, the hurdles we were given to simply have the opportunity to speak out and defend ourselves...but most importantly defend HaShem. That is all this about.
The Reform movement is getting anew "Head Rabbi" - Jacobs....and he is board member of J STREET!
OMG, they are nuts. I was born to a Reform family and Temple. These guys are exiting Judaism. There kids marry out and their children wear crosses! Scary!
We are pressuring the wrong people. Instead of fighting the Arab/Moooslim/Goyim Propaganda....we need to pressure Bibi and the Knesset to do the right thing. We need to create social action groups in the Galut to help the Right in Israel make Israel the Jewish state and give up the humanist nonsense.
We need to consolidate our bond drive money and tree money and all of the $$ we send to Israel and use it to control some results...The Israeli Government is the problem. They are weak, secular politicians. We need to get Manhigut Yehudit in power with Feiglin or National Union or.... Whomever will enforce the will of the Israeli people, directed by Torah and HaShem. Take back the Temple Mount - retake Gaza, Judea and Samaria, annex them. Start expelling Arabs and deporting all displaced "Refugees" with passports to their country of origin (Jordan).
World opinion is irrelevant, it is all Goldstone and Moooslim. The problem is we don't stand up for Israel in the Galut. All we ever do is try to motivate Jews to justify Israels right to exist. Enough of this weak effort to be accepted, it is far past time to only listen to HaShem and clear the land already! Get rid of the thorns!
No more smooth, nice talk. No more money need be accepted. Don't tell the US anything...just do what needs to done and ignore monetary threats. Build our own Merkava's and Jets! Enforce the laws without preference to not causing the Arabs trouble! No more foreign Arab workers!
Kahane Tzadak!
What we need to do is clear. Why do we as a people not speak out? What are we afraid of?
They didn't bomb the trains. The pogroms were allowed to happen. Blood libel is never punished.
Moneychangers and scapegoats, the hurdles we were given to simply have the opportunity to speak out and defend ourselves...but most importantly defend HaShem. That is all this about.
The Reform movement is getting anew "Head Rabbi" - Jacobs....and he is board member of J STREET!
OMG, they are nuts. I was born to a Reform family and Temple. These guys are exiting Judaism. There kids marry out and their children wear crosses! Scary!
We are pressuring the wrong people. Instead of fighting the Arab/Moooslim/Goyim Propaganda....we need to pressure Bibi and the Knesset to do the right thing. We need to create social action groups in the Galut to help the Right in Israel make Israel the Jewish state and give up the humanist nonsense.
We need to consolidate our bond drive money and tree money and all of the $$ we send to Israel and use it to control some results...The Israeli Government is the problem. They are weak, secular politicians. We need to get Manhigut Yehudit in power with Feiglin or National Union or.... Whomever will enforce the will of the Israeli people, directed by Torah and HaShem. Take back the Temple Mount - retake Gaza, Judea and Samaria, annex them. Start expelling Arabs and deporting all displaced "Refugees" with passports to their country of origin (Jordan).
World opinion is irrelevant, it is all Goldstone and Moooslim. The problem is we don't stand up for Israel in the Galut. All we ever do is try to motivate Jews to justify Israels right to exist. Enough of this weak effort to be accepted, it is far past time to only listen to HaShem and clear the land already! Get rid of the thorns!
No more smooth, nice talk. No more money need be accepted. Don't tell the US anything...just do what needs to done and ignore monetary threats. Build our own Merkava's and Jets! Enforce the laws without preference to not causing the Arabs trouble! No more foreign Arab workers!
Kahane Tzadak!
April 4, 2011
Many IDF soldiers don’t know what they are fighting for.
Columbus discovered America in 1492. The Civil Rights War was in 1861 between the Confederates and the northern states. We also know about the Civil Rights movement and Martin Luther King.
The reason we know about this is because if you’re an “American,” and go to school, you should know about your country and heritage.
Ask most Israelis who the 1st Israeli NBA player is and they know.
However, ask most Israelis to name 7 of the 10 “Mackos” and they don’t know.
Ask most Israelis to name 2 players on the Tel-Aviv Macabee team and they know.
Ask most Israelis why Hevron is important to us and they don’t know.
Ask most Israelis to name 2 players on the Israeli soccer team and they know.
Ask most Israelis where the land that belongs to Shevet Efraim and Shevet Manashe is and they don’t know.
We have been privileged to have Moshe Feiglin at our house many times and were inspired by his vision, knowledge, and leadership capabilities.
Today in Israel we face many issues:
A) 90,000 children go to sleep hungry each night.
B) Hamas in the south. – Firing thousands of rockets in the past 4 years.
C) Hezbollah in the north.
D) Iran, G-d forbid with nuclear weapons.
E) Egypt in disarray.
F) Many Arab states now in disarray with no leadership.
G) Uneducated Israeli’s that don’t know why this land is theirs.
H) And the list goes on.
I would like to go through some things but not answer them – that is for Moshe Feiglin to do.
1. On May 14th, 1948, the state of Israel was established.
Jews around the world listened on their transistor radio of the announcement.
We were literally dancing in the streets.
2. In 1967 we were proud of the 6 day war. We captured Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – which we gave back.
3. In 1976 we were proud of the Entebee Rescue. We were proud and all Israeli’s were
proud and all Jews felt a bond across the globe.
4. After 63 years we built a modern country with highways, sky scrappers, hi-tech
companies that are marveled around the world. The shekel is at it’s strongest.
5. And the list goes on of how many things we can take pride in.
Today:
1. UN has condemned Israel 187 times for war crimes and human rights violations.
They only condemned the Arab states 6 times.
2. Major General Doron Almog and others cannot get off the plane in London without
being arrested for war crimes.
3. We cannot visit Kever Yosef in Shechem without getting shot at or killed.
4. We cannot walk free in Hevron nor can we visit Avraham, Yitzchok or Yaakov
on a daily basis.
5. Just last week, as a family slept on a Friday night, they were
massacred in their own beds.
6. We cannot go up to the Temple Mount and pray.
7. Almost 9,000 rockets have fallen in Sedrot – I was there with my family when a rocket was launched and landed.
8. We pulled out of Gaza – for what?
9. Building freeze – for what?
10. Gilad Shalit is sitting in a hole somewhere for 5 years.
11. Jonathan Pollard is in an American jail for 25 years.
12. We are building a fence around ourselves. One of the strongest armies in the world
and we’re fencing ourselves in.
13. Many soldiers don’t know what they are fighting for.
14. Not one Prime Minister has stood up in Israel or to the world and said, “This land is
ours because G-d gave it to us.”
15. We keep recycling the same Prime Ministers.
(Bubi, Ehud Barak, Livni)
16. The world at large condemns Israel.
17. Alilyah would increase if we can build anywhere and live anywhere safely and - if
Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
18. Jewish pride would be restored - if Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
19. Jewish values would be restored – if Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
20. Israel would be a Jewish state run by Jewish values – if Moshe Feiglin was our
Prime Minister.
21. Pride would be restored to the army – if Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
22. All Jewish children would know their heritage and be proud of it – if Moshe Feiglin
was our Prime Minister.
23. The world would respect us – if Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
How will he do this, what would he do differently – ask him.
He’s here tonight.
I have heard some of his plans and goals and I am 100% confident in his abilities to accomplish
this so what can we do?
The reason we know about this is because if you’re an “American,” and go to school, you should know about your country and heritage.
Ask most Israelis who the 1st Israeli NBA player is and they know.
However, ask most Israelis to name 7 of the 10 “Mackos” and they don’t know.
Ask most Israelis to name 2 players on the Tel-Aviv Macabee team and they know.
Ask most Israelis why Hevron is important to us and they don’t know.
Ask most Israelis to name 2 players on the Israeli soccer team and they know.
Ask most Israelis where the land that belongs to Shevet Efraim and Shevet Manashe is and they don’t know.
We have been privileged to have Moshe Feiglin at our house many times and were inspired by his vision, knowledge, and leadership capabilities.
Today in Israel we face many issues:
A) 90,000 children go to sleep hungry each night.
B) Hamas in the south. – Firing thousands of rockets in the past 4 years.
C) Hezbollah in the north.
D) Iran, G-d forbid with nuclear weapons.
E) Egypt in disarray.
F) Many Arab states now in disarray with no leadership.
G) Uneducated Israeli’s that don’t know why this land is theirs.
H) And the list goes on.
I would like to go through some things but not answer them – that is for Moshe Feiglin to do.
1. On May 14th, 1948, the state of Israel was established.
Jews around the world listened on their transistor radio of the announcement.
We were literally dancing in the streets.
2. In 1967 we were proud of the 6 day war. We captured Gaza, the West Bank, Jerusalem and the Temple Mount – which we gave back.
3. In 1976 we were proud of the Entebee Rescue. We were proud and all Israeli’s were
proud and all Jews felt a bond across the globe.
4. After 63 years we built a modern country with highways, sky scrappers, hi-tech
companies that are marveled around the world. The shekel is at it’s strongest.
5. And the list goes on of how many things we can take pride in.
Today:
1. UN has condemned Israel 187 times for war crimes and human rights violations.
They only condemned the Arab states 6 times.
2. Major General Doron Almog and others cannot get off the plane in London without
being arrested for war crimes.
3. We cannot visit Kever Yosef in Shechem without getting shot at or killed.
4. We cannot walk free in Hevron nor can we visit Avraham, Yitzchok or Yaakov
on a daily basis.
5. Just last week, as a family slept on a Friday night, they were
massacred in their own beds.
6. We cannot go up to the Temple Mount and pray.
7. Almost 9,000 rockets have fallen in Sedrot – I was there with my family when a rocket was launched and landed.
8. We pulled out of Gaza – for what?
9. Building freeze – for what?
10. Gilad Shalit is sitting in a hole somewhere for 5 years.
11. Jonathan Pollard is in an American jail for 25 years.
12. We are building a fence around ourselves. One of the strongest armies in the world
and we’re fencing ourselves in.
13. Many soldiers don’t know what they are fighting for.
14. Not one Prime Minister has stood up in Israel or to the world and said, “This land is
ours because G-d gave it to us.”
15. We keep recycling the same Prime Ministers.
(Bubi, Ehud Barak, Livni)
16. The world at large condemns Israel.
17. Alilyah would increase if we can build anywhere and live anywhere safely and - if
Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
18. Jewish pride would be restored - if Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
19. Jewish values would be restored – if Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
20. Israel would be a Jewish state run by Jewish values – if Moshe Feiglin was our
Prime Minister.
21. Pride would be restored to the army – if Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
22. All Jewish children would know their heritage and be proud of it – if Moshe Feiglin
was our Prime Minister.
23. The world would respect us – if Moshe Feiglin was our Prime Minister.
How will he do this, what would he do differently – ask him.
He’s here tonight.
I have heard some of his plans and goals and I am 100% confident in his abilities to accomplish
this so what can we do?
Jewish Rights on the Temple Mount: The Acid Test: By Moshe Feiglin
25 Adar Bet, 5771
March 31, '11
It is just one of the laws of nature here in the Middle East. When the Arabs feel that we are not determined to maintain Israeli sovereignty over our Land, when we apologize all the time and project transience, when they understand that we are not motivated by the feeling that we are right, the missiles and bombs are just a matter of time. It is not the massacre in Itamar, the rockets on Be'er Sheva or the bomb in Jerusalem that should surprise us, but the relatively long time that the façade of quiet held up.
The point where we lost our spirit and feeling of justness has a name and an exact topographical location: It is the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the quintessence of the Land of Israel. There is no place holier to the Jews - and only to the Jews - than this place. There is no other place in the world that has been the focal point of our prayers and our destiny over the millennia. The entire trek of Abraham, Moses and King David leads us to the Temple Mount. Without it, our presence in Israel loses its meaning.
The Nation of Israel has longed for the Temple Mount throughout 2000 long and cruel years of exile. It is this longing and focus that preserved our Jewish identity and that brought us back to our Land. It is also the dynamic that provided the national foundation for the establishment of the State of Israel.
The Temple Mount was liberated during the Six Days of Miracles. The paratroop commander announced, "The Temple Mount is in our hands" and a wave of jubilation swept over us all; religious and secular, alike.
But just a few hours after the Temple Mount was liberated, the Israeli flag was removed from the site. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan gave the keys to the Mount to the Moslem wakf. Ever since then, the legitimacy for Israel's existence has slowly but surely eroded. "He who rules the Mount rules the Land," wrote poet of faith and rebuke Uri Tzvi Greenberg. He understood that the grand victory parades were obscuring the fact that when we left the Temple Mount, we lost the war.
Today, almost 44 years later, Jews essentially have almost no rights on the Temple Mount. Try your luck and go to the Temple Mount - not as a tourist, but as a Jew. Put a kippah on your head and try to say a few words of Psalms or any other prayer. Before you are even allowed to enter the Mount, you will be detained at the side while all the tourists enter. Then you will be subjected to a thorough search - just in case you, Heaven forefend, are carrying a book of Psalms or prayer book. When you enter, a wakf worker and a policeman - often a Moslem, as well - will accompany you and scrutinize your every move. If your lips move in prayer - and it makes no difference if nobody else is there - the wakf worker will tell the policeman, who will hurriedly arrest you and take you off to the police station.
All of this is a patent violation of the basic human right of the Jewish People to pray at the place most holy to them - but the "human rights" organizations could not care less. The Supreme Court explains time and again that it is permissible for a Jew to pray on the Temple Mount, but that it is up to police discretion to authorize each prayer. It is actually just a game. The Supreme Court awards the police with responsibility when it fits its agenda; to negate the most basic rights of the Jews in their own Land.
It is on the Temple Mount that we lost the justness of our hold on this Land. He who consciously gave the royal crown to his enemy can no longer claim that his presence in any other part of the Land is just - not in Tel Aviv and not in Haifa.
Police "representative" in the Knesset, MK and former Police Chief Aryeh Bibi attempted to claim that the discriminatory and scandalous behavior of the police on the Temple Mount is caused by Jewish provocations. Police Chief of the Old City Avi Ruoeff also attempted to make similar claims. Arab MKs present at the hearing attempted to claim that all the trouble was being made by an "extremist and dangerous" Jewish fringe group.
These attempts, which had been successful in the past, totally failed. The police representatives embarrassed themselves with their contradictions and lies.
The faithful to the Land and the Temple prevailed not because of the power of their claims, but because of the stature of the claimants. MKs Uri Ariel, Aryeh Eldad and Michael Ben Ari spoke eloquently and did excellent work. But when the key speaker is Coalition Chairman MK Ze'ev Elkin and he is followed by Likud MKs Yariv Levin, Tzippy Hotobeli and even MK Otniel Schneller from Kadimah, the hearing cannot be squelched simply by demonizing the claimants.
At the next hearing, the police will be required to present the committee with the rules for ascent to the Temple Mount, the list of people prohibited from entering the Mount and the reasons for their disqualification and - most importantly - an explanation of what the police consider a 'provocation.' Is it a provocation to enter the Mount with a Jewish prayer book? Wearing an IDF uniform?
Michael Fuah and I were at the hearing. We did not speak. But everyone present knew that without Manhigut Yehudit the entire hearing would not have taken place.
The position of the Israeli government and Israel's Police force on Jewish rights on the Temple Mount is an acid test for the State of Israel's commitment to its Jewish identity and its democracy. We will continue to work hard on this issue, which is a reflection of the state of our sovereignty over the entire Land.
March 31, '11
It is just one of the laws of nature here in the Middle East. When the Arabs feel that we are not determined to maintain Israeli sovereignty over our Land, when we apologize all the time and project transience, when they understand that we are not motivated by the feeling that we are right, the missiles and bombs are just a matter of time. It is not the massacre in Itamar, the rockets on Be'er Sheva or the bomb in Jerusalem that should surprise us, but the relatively long time that the façade of quiet held up.
The point where we lost our spirit and feeling of justness has a name and an exact topographical location: It is the Temple Mount. The Temple Mount is the quintessence of the Land of Israel. There is no place holier to the Jews - and only to the Jews - than this place. There is no other place in the world that has been the focal point of our prayers and our destiny over the millennia. The entire trek of Abraham, Moses and King David leads us to the Temple Mount. Without it, our presence in Israel loses its meaning.
The Nation of Israel has longed for the Temple Mount throughout 2000 long and cruel years of exile. It is this longing and focus that preserved our Jewish identity and that brought us back to our Land. It is also the dynamic that provided the national foundation for the establishment of the State of Israel.
The Temple Mount was liberated during the Six Days of Miracles. The paratroop commander announced, "The Temple Mount is in our hands" and a wave of jubilation swept over us all; religious and secular, alike.
But just a few hours after the Temple Mount was liberated, the Israeli flag was removed from the site. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan gave the keys to the Mount to the Moslem wakf. Ever since then, the legitimacy for Israel's existence has slowly but surely eroded. "He who rules the Mount rules the Land," wrote poet of faith and rebuke Uri Tzvi Greenberg. He understood that the grand victory parades were obscuring the fact that when we left the Temple Mount, we lost the war.
Today, almost 44 years later, Jews essentially have almost no rights on the Temple Mount. Try your luck and go to the Temple Mount - not as a tourist, but as a Jew. Put a kippah on your head and try to say a few words of Psalms or any other prayer. Before you are even allowed to enter the Mount, you will be detained at the side while all the tourists enter. Then you will be subjected to a thorough search - just in case you, Heaven forefend, are carrying a book of Psalms or prayer book. When you enter, a wakf worker and a policeman - often a Moslem, as well - will accompany you and scrutinize your every move. If your lips move in prayer - and it makes no difference if nobody else is there - the wakf worker will tell the policeman, who will hurriedly arrest you and take you off to the police station.
All of this is a patent violation of the basic human right of the Jewish People to pray at the place most holy to them - but the "human rights" organizations could not care less. The Supreme Court explains time and again that it is permissible for a Jew to pray on the Temple Mount, but that it is up to police discretion to authorize each prayer. It is actually just a game. The Supreme Court awards the police with responsibility when it fits its agenda; to negate the most basic rights of the Jews in their own Land.
It is on the Temple Mount that we lost the justness of our hold on this Land. He who consciously gave the royal crown to his enemy can no longer claim that his presence in any other part of the Land is just - not in Tel Aviv and not in Haifa.
***
On Tuesday, the Knesset Interior Committee, chaired by MK David Azulai of Shas, held a hearing on the violation of the rights of the Jews on the Temple Mount. The hearing was summoned by Coalition Chairman MK Ze'ev Elkin along with MKs Yariv Levin, Tzippy Hotobeli, Uri Ariel, Michael Ben Ari and Aryeh Eldad in the aftermath of the report on Jewish Rights at the Temple Mount recently published by Manhigut Yehudit. Police "representative" in the Knesset, MK and former Police Chief Aryeh Bibi attempted to claim that the discriminatory and scandalous behavior of the police on the Temple Mount is caused by Jewish provocations. Police Chief of the Old City Avi Ruoeff also attempted to make similar claims. Arab MKs present at the hearing attempted to claim that all the trouble was being made by an "extremist and dangerous" Jewish fringe group.
These attempts, which had been successful in the past, totally failed. The police representatives embarrassed themselves with their contradictions and lies.
The faithful to the Land and the Temple prevailed not because of the power of their claims, but because of the stature of the claimants. MKs Uri Ariel, Aryeh Eldad and Michael Ben Ari spoke eloquently and did excellent work. But when the key speaker is Coalition Chairman MK Ze'ev Elkin and he is followed by Likud MKs Yariv Levin, Tzippy Hotobeli and even MK Otniel Schneller from Kadimah, the hearing cannot be squelched simply by demonizing the claimants.
At the next hearing, the police will be required to present the committee with the rules for ascent to the Temple Mount, the list of people prohibited from entering the Mount and the reasons for their disqualification and - most importantly - an explanation of what the police consider a 'provocation.' Is it a provocation to enter the Mount with a Jewish prayer book? Wearing an IDF uniform?
Michael Fuah and I were at the hearing. We did not speak. But everyone present knew that without Manhigut Yehudit the entire hearing would not have taken place.
The position of the Israeli government and Israel's Police force on Jewish rights on the Temple Mount is an acid test for the State of Israel's commitment to its Jewish identity and its democracy. We will continue to work hard on this issue, which is a reflection of the state of our sovereignty over the entire Land.
April 2, 2011
Reconsidering the Goldstone Report on Israel and war crimes - By GOLDSTONE!!!
We know a lot more today about what happened in the Gaza war of 2008-09 than we did when I chaired the fact-finding mission appointed by the U.N. Human Rights Council that produced what has come to be known as the Goldstone Report. If I had known then what I know now, the Goldstone Report would have been a different document.
The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”
Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.
The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.
For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.
While I welcome Israel’s investigations into allegations, I share the concerns reflected in the McGowan Davis report that few of Israel’s inquiries have been concluded and believe that the proceedings should have been held in a public forum. Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn’t negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.
Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants. The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).
As I indicated from the very beginning, I would have welcomed Israel’s cooperation. The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel. I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within. Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.
Some have charged that the process we followed did not live up to judicial standards. To be clear: Our mission was in no way a judicial or even quasi-judicial proceeding. We did not investigate criminal conduct on the part of any individual in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. We made our recommendations based on the record before us, which unfortunately did not include any evidence provided by the Israeli government. Indeed, our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report. McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree; Hamas has done nothing.
Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms.
In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise. So, too, the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.
I continue to believe in the cause of establishing and applying international law to protracted and deadly conflicts. Our report has led to numerous “lessons learned” and policy changes, including the adoption of new Israel Defense Forces procedures for protecting civilians in cases of urban warfare and limiting the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas. The Palestinian Authority established an independent inquiry into our allegations of human rights abuses — assassinations, torture and illegal detentions — perpetrated by Fatah in the West Bank, especially against members of Hamas. Most of those allegations were confirmed by this inquiry. Regrettably, there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
Simply put, the laws of armed conflict apply no less to non-state actors such as Hamas than they do to national armies. Ensuring that non-state actors respect these principles, and are investigated when they fail to do so, is one of the most significant challenges facing the law of armed conflict. Only if all parties to armed conflicts are held to these standards will we be able to protect civilians who, through no choice of their own, are caught up in war.
The writer, a retired justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, chaired the U.N. fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict.
The final report by the U.N. committee of independent experts — chaired by former New York judge Mary McGowan Davis — that followed up on the recommendations of the Goldstone Report has found that “Israel has dedicated significant resources to investigate over 400 allegations of operational misconduct in Gaza” while “the de facto authorities (i.e., Hamas) have not conducted any investigations into the launching of rocket and mortar attacks against Israel.”
Our report found evidence of potential war crimes and “possibly crimes against humanity” by both Israel and Hamas. That the crimes allegedly committed by Hamas were intentional goes without saying — its rockets were purposefully and indiscriminately aimed at civilian targets.
The allegations of intentionality by Israel were based on the deaths of and injuries to civilians in situations where our fact-finding mission had no evidence on which to draw any other reasonable conclusion. While the investigations published by the Israeli military and recognized in the U.N. committee’s report have established the validity of some incidents that we investigated in cases involving individual soldiers, they also indicate that civilians were not intentionally targeted as a matter of policy.
For example, the most serious attack the Goldstone Report focused on was the killing of some 29 members of the al-Simouni family in their home. The shelling of the home was apparently the consequence of an Israeli commander’s erroneous interpretation of a drone image, and an Israeli officer is under investigation for having ordered the attack. While the length of this investigation is frustrating, it appears that an appropriate process is underway, and I am confident that if the officer is found to have been negligent, Israel will respond accordingly. The purpose of these investigations, as I have always said, is to ensure accountability for improper actions, not to second-guess, with the benefit of hindsight, commanders making difficult battlefield decisions.
While I welcome Israel’s investigations into allegations, I share the concerns reflected in the McGowan Davis report that few of Israel’s inquiries have been concluded and believe that the proceedings should have been held in a public forum. Although the Israeli evidence that has emerged since publication of our report doesn’t negate the tragic loss of civilian life, I regret that our fact-finding mission did not have such evidence explaining the circumstances in which we said civilians in Gaza were targeted, because it probably would have influenced our findings about intentionality and war crimes.
Israel’s lack of cooperation with our investigation meant that we were not able to corroborate how many Gazans killed were civilians and how many were combatants. The Israeli military’s numbers have turned out to be similar to those recently furnished by Hamas (although Hamas may have reason to inflate the number of its combatants).
As I indicated from the very beginning, I would have welcomed Israel’s cooperation. The purpose of the Goldstone Report was never to prove a foregone conclusion against Israel. I insisted on changing the original mandate adopted by the Human Rights Council, which was skewed against Israel. I have always been clear that Israel, like any other sovereign nation, has the right and obligation to defend itself and its citizens against attacks from abroad and within. Something that has not been recognized often enough is the fact that our report marked the first time illegal acts of terrorism from Hamas were being investigated and condemned by the United Nations. I had hoped that our inquiry into all aspects of the Gaza conflict would begin a new era of evenhandedness at the U.N. Human Rights Council, whose history of bias against Israel cannot be doubted.
Some have charged that the process we followed did not live up to judicial standards. To be clear: Our mission was in no way a judicial or even quasi-judicial proceeding. We did not investigate criminal conduct on the part of any individual in Israel, Gaza or the West Bank. We made our recommendations based on the record before us, which unfortunately did not include any evidence provided by the Israeli government. Indeed, our main recommendation was for each party to investigate, transparently and in good faith, the incidents referred to in our report. McGowan Davis has found that Israel has done this to a significant degree; Hamas has done nothing.
Some have suggested that it was absurd to expect Hamas, an organization that has a policy to destroy the state of Israel, to investigate what we said were serious war crimes. It was my hope, even if unrealistic, that Hamas would do so, especially if Israel conducted its own investigations. At minimum I hoped that in the face of a clear finding that its members were committing serious war crimes, Hamas would curtail its attacks. Sadly, that has not been the case. Hundreds more rockets and mortar rounds have been directed at civilian targets in southern Israel. That comparatively few Israelis have been killed by the unlawful rocket and mortar attacks from Gaza in no way minimizes the criminality. The U.N. Human Rights Council should condemn these heinous acts in the strongest terms.
In the end, asking Hamas to investigate may have been a mistaken enterprise. So, too, the Human Rights Council should condemn the inexcusable and cold-blooded recent slaughter of a young Israeli couple and three of their small children in their beds.
I continue to believe in the cause of establishing and applying international law to protracted and deadly conflicts. Our report has led to numerous “lessons learned” and policy changes, including the adoption of new Israel Defense Forces procedures for protecting civilians in cases of urban warfare and limiting the use of white phosphorus in civilian areas. The Palestinian Authority established an independent inquiry into our allegations of human rights abuses — assassinations, torture and illegal detentions — perpetrated by Fatah in the West Bank, especially against members of Hamas. Most of those allegations were confirmed by this inquiry. Regrettably, there has been no effort by Hamas in Gaza to investigate the allegations of its war crimes and possible crimes against humanity.
Simply put, the laws of armed conflict apply no less to non-state actors such as Hamas than they do to national armies. Ensuring that non-state actors respect these principles, and are investigated when they fail to do so, is one of the most significant challenges facing the law of armed conflict. Only if all parties to armed conflicts are held to these standards will we be able to protect civilians who, through no choice of their own, are caught up in war.
The writer, a retired justice of the Constitutional Court of South Africa and former chief prosecutor of the U.N. International Criminal Tribunals for the former Yugoslavia and Rwanda, chaired the U.N. fact-finding mission on the Gaza conflict.
A Leadership Reform Rabbi with a Troubling Agenda - Mort Klein (ZOA)
I must express concern at the appointment of Rabbi Richard Jacobs as head of the Union for Reform Judaism (URJ). Rabbi Jacobs is a member of the Rabbinic Cabinet of J Street, the extremist, George Soros-funded lobby group that takes positions to the left of the Israeli Labor and far-left Meretz parties, recently opposed sanctions on Iran, and urged President Barack Obama not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning as “illegal” Jewish homes and communities in Judea, Samaria and eastern Jerusalem. Jacobs is also a long-time board member and advocate of the New Israel Fund (NIF), which is a leading promoter and funder of organizations that advocate boycotting, divesting from, and imposing sanctions upon, Israel (BDS) as well as other groups involved in delegitimizing Israel and mounting ‘lawfare’ suits against Israeli political and military officials, causing these officials to not visit certain European countries. The ZOA, which I am president of, is also concerned by Rabbi Jacobs’ close association with J Street and NIF and thus at the prospect of the Reform movement becoming a captive of the beliefs and actions of both organizations. We hope the Reform movement, under Jacob’s leadership, will not become an unnamed arm and political ally of these organizations.
We are not alone in our concerns. Commentary magazine’s Alana Goodman recently wrote, “Jacobs involvement with J Street and the New Israel Fund is a troubling sign,” adding “The Reform movement has always leaned toward the political left, but its decision to tap Rabbi Richard Jacobs as its new leader signals that it might be shifting its focus toward a slightly different form of political activism.”
The ZOA notes that while also politically leftwing, Jacob’s predecessor, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, who steps down next year, has in contrast, criticized J Street for having “misread the issues and misjudged the views of American Jews.” Yoffie condemned J Street because it “has spoken out sharply against Israel’s actions in Gaza … I know a mistake when I see one, and this time J Street got it very wrong.” Yoffie criticized J Street’s “conclusion … that Israel made a mistake in attacking Hamas and that the United States and others must press for an immediate cease-fire … A second J Street statement was worse by far. It could find no moral difference between the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militants … and the long-delayed response of Israel, which finally lost patience and responded to the pleas of its battered citizens in the south … These words are deeply distressing because they are morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve.” Yoffie then pointed out that “that most politicians on the left support the offensive, as do more than 80% of all Israelis, according to polling data.” Yoffie also strongly condemned the Palestinian Authority’s promotion of hatred and violence against Jews and Israel in their media, schools and speeches.
In contrast, Rabbi Jacobs not only proudly sits on J Street’s board, but has also proudly participated in demonstrations of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, which urges an end to Israel “occupation” and the liquidation or fundamental change of organizations that contribute to the “dispossession of Arabs,” including the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Lands Authority. Rabbi Jacobs also publicly agrees with leftwing, harsh critic of Israeli security actions Peter Beinart’s assertions that Israel is becoming undemocratic, theocratic and ill-treating its Arab minority. (The debate between ZOA’s Mort Klein and Peter Beinart on last year’s Gaza flotilla incident can be seen here).
Rabbi Jacobs has also attended rallies vigorously supporting the Islamist Imam Feisal Rauf and his efforts to build a mosque adjacent to New York’s Ground Zero site, ignoring Rauf’s terrible record of refusing to condemn Hamas, a terrorist organization which has murdered hundreds of Israelis and whose Charter calls for murder of Jews and Israel’s destruction; his calling U.S. policies an “accessory” to Al-Qaeda's 9/11 horror and stating that “in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA”; and his writing that “Israel will become one more Arab country, in our lifetime, with a Jewish minority.” Jacobs appeared on CNN in favor of Imam Rauf’s Ground Zero mosque.
J Street has taken positions to the extreme left of the Israeli political spectrum. Only this week, Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon described J Street as a pro-Palestinian organization. Similarly, Otniel Schneller of Israel’s left-wing Kadima party has said the question of J Street’s positions on various issues call into question its claims to be pro-Israel and justify Knesset hearings into the organization. Unlike even leading Israeli far leftists like former Meretz head, Yossi Sarid, J Street opposed imposing strong sanctions on Iran for most of the past two years.
It refused to support Israel’s 2008-9 Gaza operation, saying nothing about Israel’s right and duty to defend its citizens under attack from Gaza, while referring only to the “humanitarian crisis” and the “crisis in Gaza” and declaring that “ultimately there must be a political rather than military solution to this conflict.” Israel’s Gaza operation was only launched after eight years and 8,000 rocket attacks upon Israeli civilians by Hamas and other terrorist groups, attempting to murder Jews and making their lives miserable.
J Street supports negotiating with the extremist, Nazi-like Hamas, whose Charter openly calls for the murder of Jews. J Street has criticized Israel on numerous occasions when the country was under one-sided pressure to make one-sided concessions. It has also provided a platform for proponents of BDS at its conferences such as Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of the extreme left Jewish Voice for Peace.
J Street repeatedly and openly lied about receiving funds from anti-Israel billionaire George Soros but, in reality, received $750,000 from him in the past three years. Soros has blamed the U.S. and Israel for the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe; claimed the U.S. removed Saddam Hussein for the sake of “oil and Israel”; advocated negotiations with Hamas; has said that the Nazis, Israel, Arab terrorists, and America after September 11 are all cases of “victims turning perpetrators” and openly said “I am not a Zionist.”
Soros has spoken of his goal of bursting the “bubble of American supremacy.” Soros also wrote that, “these ten months [of the Nazi occupation in 1944] were the happiest times of my life” – a strange sentence, when hundreds of thousands of his fellow Hungarian Jews, along with millions of other Jews, were being murdered. Soros has also been a massive contributor to Human Rights Watch, to which he pledged $100 million last month and which international law authority Professor Anne Bayefsky has described thus, “Human Rights Watch defended the U.N.’s ‘anti-racism’ Durban Declaration despite its blatant discrimination against Israel and cast its lot with those who have painted the defenders of Jewish self-determination as racists. HRW supported the U.N.’s Goldstone report.”
J Street has funded some of Israel’s harshest Congressional critics, including a number of those who were among the small minority (54 House Members) who signed the January 2010 letter, which ignored Hamas’s call for a genocide of the Jews and demanded Israel lift security measures protecting Israelis. J Street has also been found to have been significantly funded by pro-Saudi activists, Arab-American leaders, Muslim activists and State Department anti-Israel Arabists.
J Street’s urging of President Obama not to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Jewish construction as “illegal” led liberal Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) to cut ties with J Street, saying, “I’ve come to the conclusion that J-Street is not an organization with which I wish to be associated … The decision to endorse the Palestinian and Arab effort to condemn Israel in the U.N. Security Council is not the choice of a concerned friend trying to help. It is rather the befuddled choice of an organization so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains have fallen out … [Mahmoud Abbas has refused to make] unilateral gestures of good faith … But astonishingly, it is Israel that J-Street would put in the stocks in the public square.”
J Street’s Educational Fund has also cosponsored a congressional mission to Israel with the Churches for Peace in the Middle East, an organization whose affiliates support the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
Regarding Rabbi Jacobs’ involvement with the New Israel Fund, it is relevant that, on the New Israel Fund’s website, the group admits that while it opposes ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ (BDS), “as a strategy or tactic … we will not reduce or eliminate our funding for grantees that differ with us on a tactical matter. NIF will not fund BDS activities nor support organizations for which BDS is a substantial element of their activities, but will support organizations that conform to our grant requirements if their support for BDS is incidental or subsidiary to their significant programs.” NIF has also funded groups like Adalah, granted $510,150 by NIF in 2008, which the previous year drafted a “Democratic Constitution” calling for the erasure of Israel’s Jewish character. It is troubling that Rabbi Jacobs has announced that, “I’m very proud of almost 20 years of work with NIF.”
While we are heartened by Rabbi Jacobs’ statement that ‘the connection to Israel is a vital part of Jewish life’ and while we strongly praise Rabbi Jacobs’ work to help victims of war, famine and massacres in places like Chad, Darfur and Haiti, we wonder if he has also taken a similar interest in the 10,000 Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria, whose lives were turned upside down and made miserable after being forcibly uprooted from their homes and had their thriving communities, established with Israeli government permission and support, dismantled. To this day, a large number of these Jews are unemployed, dislocated, living in temporary housing and continue to suffer from their uprooting.
There has been a dramatic increase in the psychological problems, divorce and drug use among this population. We would hope that Rabbi Jacobs would utilize his extraordinary energies and truly impressive humanitarian concerns to involve himself with the organizations that are working to alleviate the plight of these Jewish people.
I am concerned that the Union for Reform Judaism has selected as its leader someone who has strong associations with the extremist groups J Street and the New Israel Fund. We hope that our fears about his association with these groups will be proven wrong, that Rabbi Jacobs will unequivocally take a strong stand against those who delegitimize Israel and seek to pressure Israel into dangerous concessions and policies, and that his alliances with these groups will not be a factor in URJ policy decisions.”
Mort Klein is national president of the Zionist Organization.
We are not alone in our concerns. Commentary magazine’s Alana Goodman recently wrote, “Jacobs involvement with J Street and the New Israel Fund is a troubling sign,” adding “The Reform movement has always leaned toward the political left, but its decision to tap Rabbi Richard Jacobs as its new leader signals that it might be shifting its focus toward a slightly different form of political activism.”
The ZOA notes that while also politically leftwing, Jacob’s predecessor, Rabbi Eric Yoffie, who steps down next year, has in contrast, criticized J Street for having “misread the issues and misjudged the views of American Jews.” Yoffie condemned J Street because it “has spoken out sharply against Israel’s actions in Gaza … I know a mistake when I see one, and this time J Street got it very wrong.” Yoffie criticized J Street’s “conclusion … that Israel made a mistake in attacking Hamas and that the United States and others must press for an immediate cease-fire … A second J Street statement was worse by far. It could find no moral difference between the actions of Hamas and other Palestinian militants … and the long-delayed response of Israel, which finally lost patience and responded to the pleas of its battered citizens in the south … These words are deeply distressing because they are morally deficient, profoundly out of touch with Jewish sentiment and also appallingly naïve.” Yoffie then pointed out that “that most politicians on the left support the offensive, as do more than 80% of all Israelis, according to polling data.” Yoffie also strongly condemned the Palestinian Authority’s promotion of hatred and violence against Jews and Israel in their media, schools and speeches.
In contrast, Rabbi Jacobs not only proudly sits on J Street’s board, but has also proudly participated in demonstrations of the Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity Movement, which urges an end to Israel “occupation” and the liquidation or fundamental change of organizations that contribute to the “dispossession of Arabs,” including the Jewish Agency, the Jewish National Fund and the Israel Lands Authority. Rabbi Jacobs also publicly agrees with leftwing, harsh critic of Israeli security actions Peter Beinart’s assertions that Israel is becoming undemocratic, theocratic and ill-treating its Arab minority. (The debate between ZOA’s Mort Klein and Peter Beinart on last year’s Gaza flotilla incident can be seen here).
Rabbi Jacobs has also attended rallies vigorously supporting the Islamist Imam Feisal Rauf and his efforts to build a mosque adjacent to New York’s Ground Zero site, ignoring Rauf’s terrible record of refusing to condemn Hamas, a terrorist organization which has murdered hundreds of Israelis and whose Charter calls for murder of Jews and Israel’s destruction; his calling U.S. policies an “accessory” to Al-Qaeda's 9/11 horror and stating that “in the most direct sense, Osama bin Laden is made in the USA”; and his writing that “Israel will become one more Arab country, in our lifetime, with a Jewish minority.” Jacobs appeared on CNN in favor of Imam Rauf’s Ground Zero mosque.
J Street has taken positions to the extreme left of the Israeli political spectrum. Only this week, Deputy Knesset Speaker Danny Danon described J Street as a pro-Palestinian organization. Similarly, Otniel Schneller of Israel’s left-wing Kadima party has said the question of J Street’s positions on various issues call into question its claims to be pro-Israel and justify Knesset hearings into the organization. Unlike even leading Israeli far leftists like former Meretz head, Yossi Sarid, J Street opposed imposing strong sanctions on Iran for most of the past two years.
It refused to support Israel’s 2008-9 Gaza operation, saying nothing about Israel’s right and duty to defend its citizens under attack from Gaza, while referring only to the “humanitarian crisis” and the “crisis in Gaza” and declaring that “ultimately there must be a political rather than military solution to this conflict.” Israel’s Gaza operation was only launched after eight years and 8,000 rocket attacks upon Israeli civilians by Hamas and other terrorist groups, attempting to murder Jews and making their lives miserable.
J Street supports negotiating with the extremist, Nazi-like Hamas, whose Charter openly calls for the murder of Jews. J Street has criticized Israel on numerous occasions when the country was under one-sided pressure to make one-sided concessions. It has also provided a platform for proponents of BDS at its conferences such as Rebecca Vilkomerson, the executive director of the extreme left Jewish Voice for Peace.
J Street repeatedly and openly lied about receiving funds from anti-Israel billionaire George Soros but, in reality, received $750,000 from him in the past three years. Soros has blamed the U.S. and Israel for the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe; claimed the U.S. removed Saddam Hussein for the sake of “oil and Israel”; advocated negotiations with Hamas; has said that the Nazis, Israel, Arab terrorists, and America after September 11 are all cases of “victims turning perpetrators” and openly said “I am not a Zionist.”
Soros has spoken of his goal of bursting the “bubble of American supremacy.” Soros also wrote that, “these ten months [of the Nazi occupation in 1944] were the happiest times of my life” – a strange sentence, when hundreds of thousands of his fellow Hungarian Jews, along with millions of other Jews, were being murdered. Soros has also been a massive contributor to Human Rights Watch, to which he pledged $100 million last month and which international law authority Professor Anne Bayefsky has described thus, “Human Rights Watch defended the U.N.’s ‘anti-racism’ Durban Declaration despite its blatant discrimination against Israel and cast its lot with those who have painted the defenders of Jewish self-determination as racists. HRW supported the U.N.’s Goldstone report.”
J Street has funded some of Israel’s harshest Congressional critics, including a number of those who were among the small minority (54 House Members) who signed the January 2010 letter, which ignored Hamas’s call for a genocide of the Jews and demanded Israel lift security measures protecting Israelis. J Street has also been found to have been significantly funded by pro-Saudi activists, Arab-American leaders, Muslim activists and State Department anti-Israel Arabists.
J Street’s urging of President Obama not to veto the U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Jewish construction as “illegal” led liberal Congressman Gary Ackerman (D-NY) to cut ties with J Street, saying, “I’ve come to the conclusion that J-Street is not an organization with which I wish to be associated … The decision to endorse the Palestinian and Arab effort to condemn Israel in the U.N. Security Council is not the choice of a concerned friend trying to help. It is rather the befuddled choice of an organization so open-minded about what constitutes support for Israel that its brains have fallen out … [Mahmoud Abbas has refused to make] unilateral gestures of good faith … But astonishingly, it is Israel that J-Street would put in the stocks in the public square.”
J Street’s Educational Fund has also cosponsored a congressional mission to Israel with the Churches for Peace in the Middle East, an organization whose affiliates support the boycott, divestment, sanctions (BDS) campaign against Israel.
Regarding Rabbi Jacobs’ involvement with the New Israel Fund, it is relevant that, on the New Israel Fund’s website, the group admits that while it opposes ‘boycott, divestment and sanctions’ (BDS), “as a strategy or tactic … we will not reduce or eliminate our funding for grantees that differ with us on a tactical matter. NIF will not fund BDS activities nor support organizations for which BDS is a substantial element of their activities, but will support organizations that conform to our grant requirements if their support for BDS is incidental or subsidiary to their significant programs.” NIF has also funded groups like Adalah, granted $510,150 by NIF in 2008, which the previous year drafted a “Democratic Constitution” calling for the erasure of Israel’s Jewish character. It is troubling that Rabbi Jacobs has announced that, “I’m very proud of almost 20 years of work with NIF.”
While we are heartened by Rabbi Jacobs’ statement that ‘the connection to Israel is a vital part of Jewish life’ and while we strongly praise Rabbi Jacobs’ work to help victims of war, famine and massacres in places like Chad, Darfur and Haiti, we wonder if he has also taken a similar interest in the 10,000 Jews of Gaza and northern Samaria, whose lives were turned upside down and made miserable after being forcibly uprooted from their homes and had their thriving communities, established with Israeli government permission and support, dismantled. To this day, a large number of these Jews are unemployed, dislocated, living in temporary housing and continue to suffer from their uprooting.
There has been a dramatic increase in the psychological problems, divorce and drug use among this population. We would hope that Rabbi Jacobs would utilize his extraordinary energies and truly impressive humanitarian concerns to involve himself with the organizations that are working to alleviate the plight of these Jewish people.
I am concerned that the Union for Reform Judaism has selected as its leader someone who has strong associations with the extremist groups J Street and the New Israel Fund. We hope that our fears about his association with these groups will be proven wrong, that Rabbi Jacobs will unequivocally take a strong stand against those who delegitimize Israel and seek to pressure Israel into dangerous concessions and policies, and that his alliances with these groups will not be a factor in URJ policy decisions.”
Mort Klein is national president of the Zionist Organization.
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