The Arab Lobby - Dershowitz....

While the media and politicians engage in frenzied debate about the virtues and vices of building—or preventing the building of—a Muslim community center (cum mosque) near the "sacred ground" of 9/11, Iran continues to build a nuclear weapon, as the Israelis and Palestinians take a tentative step toward building a peaceful resolution to their age-old conflict. Inevitably, whenever Middle East issues take center stage, the question of the role of lobbies, particularly those that advocate for foreign countries, becomes a hot topic. This book by longtime Middle East authority, Mitchell Bard, is a must read for anyone who cares—and who doesn't?—about the role of lobbies in influencing American policy in the Middle East. Its thesis, which is sure to be controversial, is easily summarized:

Yes Virginia, there is a big bad lobby that distorts US foreign policy in the Middle East way out of proportion to its actual support by the American public. Professors Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer, author of the screed, The Israel Lobby, are right about that. But the offending lobby is not AIPAC, which supports Israel, but rather the Arab lobby, which opposes the Jewish state.

Both the pro-Israel and pro-Arab lobby (really lobbies because there are several for each) are indeed powerful but there is a big difference — a difference that goes to the heart of the role of lobbying in a democracy. Bard puts it this way:

"One of the most important distinguishing characteristics of the Arab lobby is that it has no popular support. While the Israeli lobby has hundreds of thousands of grass root members and public opinion polls consistently reveal a huge gap between support for Israel and the Arab nations/Palestinians, the Arab lobby has almost no foot soldiers or public sympathy. It's most powerful elements tend to be bureaucrats who represent only their personal views or what they believe are their institutional interests, and foreign governments that care only about their national interests, not those of the United States. What they lack in human capital in terms of American advocates, they make up for with almost unlimited resources to try to buy what they usually cannot win on the merits of their arguments."

The Arab Lobby: The Invisible Alliance That Undermines America’s Interests in the Middle East. By Mitchell Bard. 432 pages. Harper. $27.99. This is a critical distinction for a democracy. The case for Israel (though not for all of its policies) is an easy sell for pro-Israel lobbyists, especially elected representatives. Voting in favor of Israel is popular not only in areas with large concentration of Jewish voters, but throughout the country, because Israel is popular with Evangelical Christians in particular and with much, though certainly not all, of the public in general. Lobbies that reflect the will of the people are an important part of the democratic process. Thus, the American Association of Retired People (AARP), the principal lobbying group for the elderly, is extremely powerful because there are so many elderly people in this country who want to protect social security, Medicaid, and other benefits. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is a powerful lobby precisely because so many Americans, for better or worse, love their guns. And The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) is a powerful lobby because Americans, in general, support the Middle East's only democracy and reliable American ally.

But why is the Arab lobby, and most particularly the Saudi lobby, also powerful? Saudi Arabia has virtually no support among Americans. Indeed, it is widely reviled for its export of terrorists such as Osama Bin Laden, its manipulation of oil prices, its anti-Christian and anti-Semitic policies, its total deprivation of any semblance of freedom of speech or dissent, and its primitive forms of punishment that include stoning and amputation. Yet, as Bard demonstrates, the Saudi lobby has beaten the pro-Israel lobby over and over again in head to head conflicts, such as the sale of sophisticated weapons to a regime that doesn't even have the technical skills to use them, and the conflict over whether to move the United States' Embassy to Jerusalem. Even now, Saudi Arabia is lobbying to obtain a multi-billion dollar arms deal , and it is likely to succeed over the objections of Israel.

How then does a lobby with no popular support manage to exert influence in a democratic country? The secret is very simple. The Arab lobby in general and the Saudis in particular make little effort to influence popularly elected public officials, particularly legislators. Again, listen to Bard:

"The Saudis have taken a different tact from the Israeli lobby, focusing a top-down rather than bottom-up approach to lobbying. As hired gun, J. Crawford Cook, wrote in laying out his proposed strategy for the kingdom, 'Saudi Arabia has a need to influence the few that influence the many, rather than the need to influence the many to whom the few must respond.'"

The primary means by which the Saudis exercise this influence is money. They spend enormous amounts of lucre to buy (or rent) former state department officials, diplomats, White House aides, and legislative leaders who become their elite lobbying corps. Far more insidiously, the Saudis let it be known that if current government officials want to be hired following their retirement from government service, they had better hue to the Saudi line while they are serving in our government. The former Saudi ambassador to the United States, Prince Bandar, who was so close to the President George H.W. Bush that he referred to himself as "Bandar Bush," acknowledged the relationship between how a government official behaves while in office and how well he will be rewarded when he leaves office. "If the reputation then builds that the Saudis take care of friends when they leave office, you'd be surprised how much better friends you have when they are just coming into office."

Bard concludes from this well known quid pro quo that: "given the potential of these post-retirement opportunities, it would not be surprising if officials adopted positions while in government to make themselves marketable to the Arab lobby."

The methodology employed by the Arab lobby is thus totally inconsistent with democratic governance, because it does not reflect the will of the people but rather the corruption of the elite, while the Israeli lobby seems to operate within the parameters of democratic processes. Yet so much has been written about the allegedly corrosive nature of the Israeli lobby, while the powerful Arab lobby has widely escaped scrutiny and criticism. This important book thus contributes to the open marketplace of ideas by illuminating the dark side of the massive and largely undemocratic Arab lobbying efforts to influence American policy with regard to the Middle East.

Redemption Clock is Ticking....

It is almost hard to know what you want to happen these days.
What with the Redemption clock winding down. Redemption, Moshiach, War of Gog & Magog....
It is all coming....

9/11 Victory Mosque (Cordoba)
Iran is pushing towards Nuclear capability.
Iraq is US combat troop free?
Kuwait still hates us.
The house of Saudi- Wahhabism
Europe is slowly being over-run by Muslim hordes (Eurabia).
Africa is full of genocide and Muslims trying to escape to Eurabia and Israel.
Israel has a secular leader and remains a state of Jews...not the Jewish State!
South America had Chavez and the drug cartel.
Mexico remains a country of deserters and drug pushers.
Canada remains on guarded knee.
Germany is still a country (WTF)?
China, first they export their lead here through Waly-Mart, their destructive drywall and then they buy cars and become the 2 largest industrial country in the world.
Sara Palin was/is considered viable...with a 2 bit education and backwoods experience.
Obama has done zip. Unless you realize the negative force he is....
Biden will probably replace Hillary if her health fails to fend off the Republicans in 2016.
Alliance of Terrorists...Goodbye Abu Mazen...
The 3 kidnapped Israeli Teens...
Nederlands throwing banana's on the pitch because of a black  player (still Nazi's)
Greece - Golden Dawn in Parliment...
Jews expelled from African Union meeting
Jews attacked regularly in France
The usual children and grandchildren of Nazi's remaining Neo-Nazi's
The USA caring not about Israel probably mostly due to the POTUS
 The Muslim infiltration in the US and the POTUS's administration

And on and on.....

Have your passports in order, create liquid assets and always be prepared...

Shalom

Throw Out The Arabs - Barbara Ginsberg

I don't know whether to cry or scream. I watch Rabbi Meir Kahane's , may G-d avenge his blood, films and hear is warnings. See him begging the Jewish people to avoid the tragedies that will happen if we don't listen to him and "Throw Out The Arabs".  "They are a cancer and must be cut out.  If you don't cut out a cancer, you die" explained Rabbi Kahane. He said that as time goes on it will be harder to get rid of them  And it is still not too late today, even though much harder. The Rabbi warned that we would have a Northern Ireland in Israel and every day Arabs and Jews will be killed. That did come to be. The Rabbi always said: "When I am Prime Minister no Jew will be killed and no Arab will be killed because the Arabs won't be here". " All they have to do is turn on the radio and hear "Rabbi Kahane Prime Minister" and they will run. They will know that their time is over"

Tell me, I ask who will they fear and run from today? Who? Bibi? Bibi who orders the IDF not to crush Hamas because it is Ramadan. Who the hell cares! Boys are missing and we are listening to the Muslim in the White House again and the world that hates us.

Three mothers are crying, praying and waiting, fathers are nervous, praying and waiting, the whole country is nervously waiting and praying and crying for the boys and parents. The IDF is searching and trying to crush Hamas and then the world steps in -  Obama speaks and Bibi listens. Ties the hands of the IDF. This government is soooo weak and insane and bringing the country to suicide.

People now are screaming that Rabbi Kahane was right. Where were they then? Where were they hiding? Why didn't they understand that the noose was almost at the necks? Why no riots when the Kach party wasn't allowed to run for Knesset, while the Arab parties were allowed? Why not enough votes for Otzma Le'Yisrael which had the best of the best running and speaking Rabbi Kahane's words.

What now? Who will these terrorists fear? What about the moral of the IDF with always new crazy orders to tie their hands. . Who is in the IDF? Everyone's child, or husband or brother. Yes 18-year-old children are our protectors.

Let's see something good and the three boys returned home fast and unharmed.
Let people wake up comes election time.

Barbara Ginsberg

A Neo-Nazi’s Political Rise Exposes a German City’s Ethnic Tensions

Siegfried Borchardt won a seat on Dortmund’s City Council pushing an anti-immigration “Germany for Germans” agenda. Credit Gordon Welters for The New York Times

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DORTMUND, Germany — He is known here as SS-Siggi, and with his bulky frame and “Germania” tattoos, he certainly looks the part.

For 30 years, which have included several brushes with the law, Siegfried Borchardt — a.k.a. SS-Siggi and who can bear a passing resemblance to Hulk Hogan — has been involved in the far right in this bleak city of 600,000, working from the political fringe. This month, to the horror of the political establishment and many residents, he took his seat on the 94-member City Council.

His ascent has punctured Germany’s image of itself as a country allergic to the nationalism and populism gaining ground elsewhere in Europe. That Germany — in Bavaria, in the southwest, around Frankfurt — is Europe’s economic powerhouse, with low unemployment, booming exports and gleaming stores oozing prosperity.

Dortmund is another Germany: a run-down former coal and steel hub in the industrial Ruhr heartland, with a scruffy north side, few jobs, higher than average crime in some districts, and a large center for registering asylum seekers, and where almost one in three inhabitants are of foreign descent.

Mr. Borchardt’s election in May both shocked and divided residents, and it has helped lay bare a host of tensions — not just between native Germans and more recent immigrants, but also among the city’s many immigrant groups themselves — that have arisen from the city’s profound demographic changes.

When Mr. Borchardt and about two dozen neo-Nazis tried to gain entry to a postelection party in May, it set off a brawl on the steps of City Hall. “Foreigners out!” one group screamed; “Nazis out!” the other yelled.

Amid a mist of pepper spray, 10 people were wounded, including Christian Gebel, 38, a computer graphics designer and City Council member for the Pirate Party, who still bears the small scar above his right eyebrow where a flying beer bottle struck him.

When Mr. Borchardt took his seat on the City Council last week, accompanied to City Hall by 15 of his friends, the police were taking no chances. “More police than politicians,” the local newspaper, the Ruhr Nachrichten, concluded on its live blog, as Mr. Borchardt and his cohort were greeted by 200 anti-Nazi protesters who had gathered to jeer him.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/06/25/world/europe/a-neo-nazis-political-rise-exposes-a-german-citys-ethnic-tensions.html?ref=todayspaper&_r=0

Nitsana Darshan-Leitner fights terrorism with pen and paper.

May 30, 2014: Nitsana Darshan-Leitner fights terrorism with pen and paper.

The Israeli lawyer takes on cases against extremist organizations, engaging in a civil form of guerrilla warfare. Her battlefields: Israeli, European and North American courts.

The Tel Aviv-based mother of six sees her work as a vocation. She was inspired to action by an incident that horrified Israel.

It was October 2000 and two Israeli reservists got lost. They ended up in Ramallah on the West Bank, where they were murdered by a mob.

“This mistake cost them their lives,” says Ms. Darshan-Leitner, who is due to speak June 9 at the annual gala of Chabad Flamingo, a Jewish community centre and synagogue in Thornhill, north of Toronto.

We thought in any normal state, the police and state would be found responsible for this horrible lynching, so we were determined to file a lawsuit against Palestinian Authority
“We thought in any normal state, the police and state would be found responsible for this horrible lynching, so we were determined to file a lawsuit against Palestinian Authority (PA) and police to have them compensate the families of the soldiers,” says the woman, who was then in her late 20s.

They ended up winning about US$20,000. She went on to help found Shurat HaDin, or Israel Law Centre, in 2003. The civil rights organization, which employs eight lawyers, aims to stop the flow of terror money by filing massive civil lawsuits.

It’s modelled on an Alabama law centre that shut down racist groups in the U.S. in this way. The pioneering Israeli organization has represented hundreds of victims in cases against Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbollah and the PA. It also takes on countries — Iran, Syria and North Korea, for example — and financial institutions, such as the Lebanese-Canadian Bank and the Bank of China.

Astonishingly, it has lost only one or two cases out of about 60. It’s won more than $1-billion in judgments, frozen more than $600-million in terrorist assets and collected $120 million in payments.

Getting the money isn’t always easy though, as is the case in a Canadian lawsuit in which Ms. Darshan-Leitner is involved.

Last year, Vancouver dentist Dr. Sherri Wise, who was injured in a 1997 Hamas suicide bombing, sued Iran, the first such case under a new Canadian law that allows victims to collect damages from state sponsors of terrorism.

“This case … is against Iran so it might end quickly, but the question is ‘How do you collect the money?’ That may take years,” the lawyer says on the phone from Tel Aviv.
And although she represents Palestinians, she would not do so in cases against Israel. The fearless litigator sees herself as a defender of the Jewish state and will take on all comers. She even sued the European Union over payments to the PA, which, it was claimed, help fund terrorism.

“[But because] the EU has diplomatic immunity in Israel … we couldn’t get the court to continue with it. It was dismissed,” she says.

Nonetheless, the lawsuit had an effect: It spurred the EU to look more closely at where its funding was going.

More recently, the centre has been combating “lawfare,” or perceived propaganda against Israel.

“When Israel’s enemies realized wars will not defeat it, they began utilizing other methods,” Ms. Darshan-Leitner says.

That includes the Palestinian-led campaign of Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS), which urges the boycott of Israeli products or events.
Ms. Darshan-Leitner has started legal proceedings against Jake Lynch, head of the University of Sydney’s Centre for Peace & Conflict Studies, claiming his support for the BDS movement amounts to racial discrimination.

Her organization also managed to prevent a Gaza-bound flotilla from setting sail from Greece in May 2011 by filing complaints about the boats’ seaworthiness, among other things.

While that was an instant win, many cases drag on endlessly.

“Some take many years, it is a hard struggle,” she says. “Those who do defend themselves in court, for example, banks, hire the best and biggest law firms and we find ourselves up against very sophisticated legal teams.

“We see ourselves as the little fish that bites the big shark … We are winning the war.”

We see ourselves as the little fish that bites the big shark … We are winning the war
But victory comes at a price. As the mother of six children aged six to 15, including triplets aged nine, she finds balancing work and family one of her biggest challenges.

“I have an obligation to my work, but the other is to my family — my kids and my husband. This is very demanding work, and takes away from me spending time with them. I try not to deprive them of anything … We spend weekends together and vacations; I am a very involved mum even from long distance.”

“I am very determined to succeed and to keep going,” she adds.

“I want to let people know there is a civil way to fight terrorism, a non-violent way to fight against Israel’s enemies. My victories assure me this is the right way to go.”




http://www.israellawcenter.org/page.asp?id=&show=photo&pn=1490&ref=report

Shurat Hadin - Kol Hakavod!!!

Shurat HaDin—

Israel Law Center is an Israeli based civil rights organization and world leader in combating the terrorist organizations and the regimes that support them through lawsuits litigated in courtrooms around the world. 

Fighting for the rights of hundreds of terror victims, Shurat HaDin seeks to bankrupt the terror groups and grind their criminal activities to a halt – one lawsuit at a time.

Established in 2003 and based in Tel-Aviv, Shurat HaDin works together with western intelligence agencies and volunteer lawyers around the world to file legal actions on behalf of victims of terror.

Following the model pioneered by the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center—a non-profit legal center that over the last four decades has successfully confronted and shut down racist groups across America—Shurat HaDin seeks to bring terrorism to a halt through legal action. Shurat HaDin represents hundreds of victims in cases against Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Hezbullah, the Palestinian Authority, Iran, Syria, North Korea, and numerous financial institutions such as UBS AG, the Lebanese-Canadian Bank, American Express Bank, and the Bank of China.
Our main goals:

• Stop the flow of terror money through massive civil suits and other legal action;
• Defend the victims of terror and their families, by representing them in court, seeking disbursement of funds and implementation of rulings;
• Educate the broader public about terrorism and terror funding through missions, public lectures, publications, targeted mailings, and our website.

Shurat HaDin has succeeded in winning more than $1 billion in judgments, freezing more than $600 million in terrorist assets and in collecting $120 million in actual payments to the victims and their families. We are a fully independent non-profit organization, unaffiliated with any political party or governmental body.

Our Director, Attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner

Since 1997, Israeli activist attorney Nitsana Darshan-Leitner has been leading the struggle to fight the Palestinian and Islamic terrorist organizations in the courtroom. As the director of the Israel based civil rights group, Shurat HaDin – Israel Law Center, she is currently representing hundreds of terror victims in lawsuits and legal actions against the HAMAS, Islamic Jihad, the Palestinian Authority, the PLO, Hizbollah, Iran, Syria, Egypt, North Korea, UBS, The Arab Bank, Bank of China, and LCB. The cases, being litigated in the Israeli, American, Canadian and European courts, allow the victims of terrorism to fight back.

A mother of six, including triplets, Darshan-Leitner is a graduate of the Bar-Ilan University Law Faculty and holds an MBA from Manchester University. She regularly appears in the media including Israeli talk show programs, Voice of Israel radio, CNN, the BBC, European television, the Jerusalem Report and many American, Canadian and European publications.



http://ilcblog.org/

The Lemming - Meir Kahane

The lemming looks like a sensible enough animal, but its habit of drowning itself in the sea has long puzzled scientists.  The lemming is a small animal, about the size of a rat.  The lemming is a strange animal with a very strange custom.  The lemming, every few years, gathers together with a great many other lemmings, and they all march together – to the sea.  The lemming and all the other lemmings march shoulder to shoulder and when they reach the sea they do a very strange thing:  They jump in and drown.  The lemming is a very strange animal and no one can understand it.

There are various categories of lemmings and last Saturday night, the Hebrew lemmings gathered in Jerusalem, some several thousand of them, small creatures, the stature of rodents.  And they marched.  Shoulder to shoulder down the road of madness, inexorably moving to the sea of destruction.  The march of the lemmings,  “Suicide Now”.

The Hebrew lemming is a strange animal undoubtedly the most irrational of all.  Psychologists and sociologists and anthropologists and biologists and students of irrational behavior from far and wide gathered to study the march of the Hebrew lemmings.  “Peace Now”, was what they carried as their slogan as they marched to the sea of suicide to partake of the most permanent of peace. “Leave Lebanon” was etched on their banners as they marched in preparation of leaving the world.  “Stop Jewish settlements in the Occupied Territories” they proclaimed as they began their uprooting of their settlement on this earth.

The Hebrew lemming is a strange animal and it is said that no one can understand it.  That is not really true.  I understand the small Hebrew lemming, the stature of the rodent, who seeks to leap into the sea to die.  And if the sociologists and psychologists and anthropologists and biologists and students of irrational behavior will gather together, I will describe for you what makes the Hebrew lemmings – run – to commit suicide.

The issue is not and never was “Lebanon”.  The issue was never the “occupied territories of 1967”.  What strikes terror into the hearts of the Hebrew lemmings of the stature of the rodent, is an immense cancer called guilt, that grows inside of them until it gives them no rest.

The lemming of guilt is the Hebrew-speaking rodent who is haunted by the thought that he is not only an oppressor and aggressor in the “occupied lands of 1967” but he is also a thief and robber of a people he calls “Palestinians”, and really has no right to any of the land that was once “Palestine”.  The Hebrew lemming of Suicide Now is haunted by the thought that his family had no right to come from Russia or Poland or Galicia or England or Canada or Argentina or the United States to create a “Jewish State” on lands that were owned by others.

But since the lemming is the size of a rat, who lacks the courage to honestly follow up his convictions, stand up before the “Palestinian” and say:  “I am a thief and I hereby return my kibbutz to you” – he must, instead, fight all the harder for the poor “Palestinian” in Judea, Samaria, Gaza, Lebanon.  His weakness and inability to give up his houses in Kibbutz Mishmar Ha’Emek or the artist’s colony of Ein Hod or the tennis courts of Ramat Ha’Sharon or villa in Savyon, drives the Hebrew lemming into even greater depression of guilt and self-hate.  His need to prostrate himself before the poor Arab of any other area except his own house becomes an all-consuming, obsessive one. 

And, of course, the guilt goes much further.  The Hebrew lemming, who is a small animal about the size of a rat, deeply despises with a psychopathic passion everything that smacks of Judaism and the curse of fate that made him Jewish.  In his little heart the lemming knows that Judaism’s values are at odds with everything that he wishes his life to consist of.  The separateness and exclusivity of Judaism vis-à-vis other peoples is anathema to his universalistic desire to intermarry, assimilate, amalgamate with all the goyim and thus find love and escape in their midst.  The concept of Chosenness repels him for he seeks anything that will enable him to eliminate the barriers between Jews and others.  The holiness that decrees discipline and sanctity and abstinence and personal limitations are all diametrically opposed to his materialistic need for total freedom, anarchy, and limitless right to license.  He sees in Judaism racism, primitiveness, parochialism, concepts that he abhors because he seeks to be a universal rodent.  And faced with this Judaism, he is faced, too, with the fact that he is a Jew.  This is the horror that he cannot abide.  From guilt emerges self-hate, black and ugly self-hate.  The lemming must escape.  His escape is through the sea.  The Sea of Suicide, Suicide Now. Let the state that he feels to be a robber state, go under.  Let the people and faith that he sees as reactionary and fascist and abominable, cease to exist.  “Let my soul perish with the Philistines!  The cry of the Hebrew lemmings of Suicide Now. 

            The tragic story of the Hebrew lemmings.  But, if it must be, it would be sufficient if they leaped into the sea themselves.  The real tragedy is that while ordinary lemmings take the plunge themselves, the Hebrew ones seeks to take all of us with them.

            And that cannot be.  That is why the lemmings of Israel must be fought.  Because they have become more than an interesting zoological phenomenon.  They threaten the existence of normal, healthy, true Jews who are not small animals the size of a rodent.

FEAR, THE NEW ZIONISM - 1986 ( Kahane)

If there is anything left of secular Zionism to prove its success in the wake of its ideological tatters and bankruptcy, it can only be the claim that it took the Jew out of the ghetto, out of the exile, out of fear and terror, and created a state of security and safety for the Jewish people.  Alas, the truth is that what has occurred is that Israel is in the process of creating a new Minsk, Pinsk, Sa’ana and Brooklyn.  Fear has become a permanent resident of Israel, moving into the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands of Jews who fear the night, fear to hitch rides, fear to drive in the evening through Arab villages, fear to allow their children to play alone in the streets.

Four Jews have been stabbed within two months, within the Old City of Jerusalem, capital of Israel, home of Teddy Kollek and his Arab friends.  One was Yossi Martin, a tank commander, whose girlfriend blurted, “I will never again enter the Old City.”  Fear. It is hard to find Jews who are prepared to use the Damascus Gate to walk to the Western Wall.  Fear.  The Jerusalem weekly paper Kol Ha’ir printed a survey asking, “Should we continue going to East Jerusalem?” Fear.     

As yet another soldier, waiting to hitch a ride, was murdered in cold blood (just three kilometers from his Petach Tikvah home), the response from hysterical politicians was, “compel public transportation to give rides to (female soldiers!”  Which led, of course, to outrage and the brave new Zionist demand, “free bus transportation to male soldiers, too.”  And, since this leaves civilians to the pleasure of the Arabs who move freely and without fear about Israel, naturally a columnist in the Histradrut paper Dvar wrote an article, “Home Before Dark,” in which he outlined his terror, driving through Jerusalem late at night.

That secular Zionism from its beginning was the bankrupt and naked of all ideological meaning was obvious to me long ago.  But here, we see in the State of Israel, that rose in order to sanctify G-d’s name through Jewish power and strength and victory, the exact opposite – Hillul Hashem, desecration of G-d’s name – as the same fear and terror of the Exile is recreated in Hebrew on the soil of the Holy land.

The nations, the gentile, understand Jewish destiny and truth only in terms of power and victory.  If for two millennia they were able to persecute, trample, humiliate, burn, gas and massacre the Jew – to them this was proof not only of Jewish impotence, but of the very non-existence of the G-d of the Jewish people!  Defeat, humiliation and weakness of the Jew have always been the yardsticks of gentile desecration of G-d’s name, whereas power and victory of the Jew over his enemies have always been proof to the gentile that the G-d of Israel is One and the only one.  Kiddush Hashem, sanctification!

The pitiful secularists of Israel, joined by the ghettoized ritualists, have institutionalized fear in Israel.  They desecrate G-d’s name daily.  The answer to Arab arrogance, to attacks on Jews, stoning of Jews, stabbing of Jews, murder of Jews – is not to have Jews fearfully ride public buses or use the “Jewish” Jaffa Gate rather than the “Arab” Damascus Gate in the Old City.  It is not to tell Jews to keep a watchful eye out for bombs and explosive devices.  This is the policy of Minsk and Brownsville, Brooklyn.  This is pandering to the fear and humiliation of the ghetto and Exile we left.  This is the reincarnation of Hillul Hashem in the Land of Israel, the Land of Kiddush Hashem.

The answer to the Arab who desecrates G-d’s name by attacking Jews is to rise up with the Jewish wrath of G-d and drive the contemptuous Arab from the land.  For in the end, the removal of the Arab is the removal of desecration.  Jewish power and strength and pride and confidence – walking with the G-d of Israel – are the Jewish reply to Both Arab and Hellenized Jew.

Are You Listening, Jew? (Meir Kahane) 1989

Rabbi Ya’akov Emden (Yavetz) was one of the great halachic authorities of his time.  He lived in Hamburg at a time when – despite general belief – the Jews were already beginning to acclimate to society and live comfortably.  And in the introduction (Sulam Beit El) to his famous siddur (Prayer Book), he wrote the following remarkable words – a cry to the Jew in the Exile:

Not one in a thousand arouses himself to dwell in the Land (of Israel), to live there.

Only one from a town and two from a family.  

No one seeks its love, desires its peace and good and waits to see it.  

It appears to us as we sit in comfort in the Exile that we have already discovered another Land of Israel and another Jerusalem.

And that is why there came upon us all the evils when we sat in Spain and other lands in comfort and great honor since the time of the Destruction … until we were later driven from there and not a trace was left of Jews in those countries.

And he concludes with words that shake the firmaments of the Jewish world:

How long will you sleep, O lazy one, in the bed of laziness … until the foundations of the universe shall be uncovered! And why shall you not acquire for yourself wise counsel to flee for your life while you yet may?

Stunning, powerful, awesome words from a halachic giant, Rabbi Ya’akov Emden!  And the Jew hears nothing.  And why should we be surprised?  Why should we be astonished that the Jew fails to hear the words that echo from the eighteenth century, from Hamburg, German, when he cannot hear the cry of Bensonhurst?

I arrived in the United States for two weeks in time to see and hear the awesome cry of Rabbi Ya’ akov Emden – this time from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.  And I look about me at the Jew who apparently is blind to what is so obvious; so deaf to the screeching sounds about him, and so dumb – both in inability to express the reality and to understand it.

In the cold-blooded murder of a black youth in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, lies the reality of America, and the impossible dilemma for the Jews of that country who, like those of so many generations of Exile past, thought, in the words of Rabbi Ya’akov Emden, that “they had discovered another Land of Israel and another Jerusalem.”

Bensonhurst lies in White America, attacked to Boro Park – land of Jewish certainty and assurance that herein lies yet another Eretz Yisrael and Jerusalem.  Bensonhurst is an almost all-white enclave that, incredibly, brings comfort and security to the Jews who live there or who border on it.  And in Bensonhurst a young man was gunned down because he was black – and the Jew heard nothing and understood nothing and felt not the slightest alarm.  Indeed, G-d help us, there were not a few who agreed with the white gentiles that blacks who come into the neighborhood risk receiving what the murdered black man got.

Does no one see?  Does not the Jew understand what the lesson of Bensonhurst is?  Does not one look at the faces and souls of the Bensonhurst whites who stood jeering and taunting blacks and shouting “niggers,” and understand that the bells toll for him?  Is there not a Jew who saw the hate and venom and willingness to murder, and understood that those same faces and same haters and same people could, tomorrow, just as easily and willingly do the same to the Jew?  Does the Jew not understand what he is hearing?  Is the Jew listening?  Does he want to listen?  Does he want to understand that haters are not capable of being limited in their hatred to one particular people that is different?  That those who hate blacks hate Jews, too, and perhaps even more?  That hatred is a disease that enters the marrow of the bones and emerges in all its horrors whenever social or economic or psychological conditions drive it out into action?

What is it about the Jew that fails to make him understand that the hater, the bigot, the murderer of the black man today will be the destroyer of the Jew, tomorrow?

There is a host on a large New York City radio station.  He is immensely popular with Jews, especially those of Brooklyn.  He is a bigot and a hater – albeit a clever one.  And how the Jews love it when he, in his viciousness, goes up against a “shwartzer.”

And I remember once, driving in an automobile and listening to the man as an Hispanic caller phoned in.  How the radio host-bigot ridiculed the man’s accent!  How he humiliated the man because of that accent that was different from the “American” one.  And the very next caller fairly fell over himself in delight and congratulations to the host for how he handled the foreigner.  The caller who was so delighted was from Brooklyn and had a Hungarian accent thick enough to serve with goulash under the light of his chandelier and the happy smiles of his wife under her sheitel

It is more than blind and needless hate that I cry out against.  It is the fact that the Jew hears the haters of Bensonhurst crying out their bigotry and does not hear the unspoken word, “Jew!”  For those thugs and gross hooligans and ignoramuses hate Jews with more passion than they do blacks.  For what they really feel about blacks is fear, but they hate Jews.  They are jealous of them and envious, and no greater hate emerges than from that .  What did Solomon say: “Wrath is cruel and anger is overwhelming, but who is able to stand before jealousy?” (Proverbs 27:4).

The same ones who murder blacks, and hate and fear them and curse them and  “make the neighborhood safe,” are those who sit in their bars muttering about Jews in frightening envy and jealousy that breeds the most awesome hatred of them all.  They are a danger to the very survival of Jews and G-d help us all should there be an economic collapse that will drive them into unemployment and desperation and loosen the social chains that bind them.

And that is the dilemma.  For the black community is one that is riddled with Jew-hatred.  Real hard-core hatred of Jews.  And much more open and much more “legitimate” than the kind that is endemic to whites.  Not only is a Jesse Jackson capable of making outrageous anti-Jewish comments and yet remain a legitimate national figure and candidate for the Presidency, but on every campus in American the local black student group can issue openly anti-Jewish statements and not be condemned, let alone lose its college funding.  Black papers and radio

stations can spew forth anti-Jewish hate, and the FCC and political leaders are strangely silent.  The fact is that, despite the obscene refusal of Jewish liberals to condemn black Jew-hatred but rather to rationalize it away, blacks in great measure and in huge numbers hate Jews.

And that despair grips a Jew from Israel as he sees, on the one hand, the mindless, ugly faces of the Bensonhurst whites with their Jew-hatred barely beneath the surface, while at the funeral of the black youth, Farrakhan and his black-faced brownshirts arrived.  The fact that they allowed the black Nazi Farrakhan to speak, and not one black leader protested (and naturally not a white politician dared to), underlies the despair and the hopelessness of the situation for the Jew.

On the one hand, a black community that has made anti-Semitism an integral part of its existence.  On the other, far more dangerous white majority Jew-hating class.  And that for the Jew is the real meaning of Bensonhurst and America that is riven, polarized, riddled with hate and violence that is held back only by economic prosperity.  But behind that dam lie the waters of hate and envy and jealousy.  And it is the Jew who is the target.

The Jew who saw and heard the faces and voices of Bensonhurst, the hate and violence and taunts, and who saw nothing and heard nothing.  And the voice of Rabbi Ya’akov Emden comes across the ages, crying:  Are you listening, Jew?   And the Jew does not even hear that.

Europe and anti-Jewish Terrorism

First Blood - Was Meir Kahane’s murder al-Qaida’s earliest attack on U.S. soil?

Last fall I received a cryptic email from Emad Salem, the ex-Egyptian Army major who was the FBI’s first undercover asset in what would become known as the war on terror. I’d told Salem’s remarkable story in my last three books, which were critical of the bureau’s counterterrorism record. Because I had treated him fairly, Salem reached out to me after years in the Federal Witness Protection Program.
We made plans to meet in early November, after a lecture I was giving at New York University. But Salem didn’t show. I went back to my hotel that night and had chalked it up as a lost opportunity. The phone rang at 2 in the morning. It was Salem, summoning me to a meeting outside 26 Federal Plaza, the building that houses the FBI’s New York office. Very cloak and dagger, but that’s how this man rolls. You don’t infiltrate the cell responsible for the 1993 World Trade Center bombing without practicing a little tradecraft. Anyway, when my cab pulled in to Foley Square a few minutes later, Salem was standing in the shadows.
That was the start of a series of interviews that led to some astonishing revelations about two of the most infamous al-Qaida murders since Osama Bin Laden formed his terror network. The first one—in fact, arguably the first blood spilled by al-Qaida on U.S. soil—occurred on the night of November 5, 1990, just after Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the ultra-nationalist Jewish Defense League, finished a speech at the Marriott East Side in New York.
Kahane, a volatile figure who had been expelled from the Israeli Knesset in the mid-1980s and returned to the United States to warn American Jews about what he believed to be a “second holocaust” at the hands of radical Islam, was gunned down by El Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian émigré. The New York Police Department initially labeled him a lone gunman. I have argued that it was much more than that: an unsolved murder with dire implications for the war on terror.
Now, as a result of new intelligence I’ve learned from Salem, it’s clear for the first time that the rabbi’s death was directly linked to Osama Bin Laden. More surprising, there was a second gunman on the night of Kahane’s murder: a young Jordanian cab driver named Bilal Alkaisi. Alkaisi was also identified in FBI files I’ve obtained as the “emir” of a hit team in a second grisly al-Qaida-related homicide months after the assassination—the 1991 murder of Egyptian immigrant Mustafa Shalabi. The identities of the alleged killers in that second slaying have now become known as a result of information from Salem that prompted the New York Police Department to reopen the Shalabi case.
But the real news is that Alkaisi, originally indicted in the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, was cut loose by the feds in 1994 and presumably remains at large. This new intelligence, about a pair of historic terror-related homicides in New York City, lay buried for years in the files of the Joint Terrorism Task Force—until I obtained them from a government source.

Click  -    http://www.tabletmag.com/news-and-politics/44243/first-blood/print/

For the rest of the lengthy story.....

Avi

The Israeli Truth

After Pew: What Will It Take to Save American Jewry

Not all of the news coming out of the Pew Research Center’s “A Portrait of Jewish Americans” released this past October is depressing. 

The Orthodox population is growing exponentially. We have a high birthrate and a very low intermarriage rate. 

Moreover, one of the most impressive findings of the Pew report is that 70 percent of the Orthodox population was raised Orthodox. That means that 30 percent, or three out of every ten Orthodox Jews, did not grow up Orthodox but became Orthodox somewhere along the way. 

Not only is Orthodoxy attracting those from other streams, but our retention rate is remarkably high. It used to be that only 22 percent of American Jews stayed Orthodox. Today, 83 percent of Orthodox Jews stay Orthodox. Although we would prefer to retain 100 percent, no other group in the Jewish community or any other faith community has improved its retention rate like Orthodox Jewry.

No doubt, we have a right to feel proud of our accomplishments, specifically the burgeoning day school movement, the vast array of Orthodox summer camps and programs, phenomenally successful youth groups such as NCSY, the limitless chesed organizations in each and every Orthodox community as well as all of the other communal endeavors that have helped make Orthodoxy strong and vibrant as we enter the twenty-first century. But the truth is that as much as we have accomplished, we haven’t accomplished nearly enough.

Among our non-Orthodox brethren, the intermarriage rate has skyrocketed. If we leave out the Orthodox—who very rarely intermarry—71.5 percent of American Jews marry outside of the faith. (This number refers to no form of conversion, that is, when the spouse identifies him or herself as a non-Jew. If we included nonhalachic conversions, the number is significantly higher.) That statistic should make us all feel deeply distressed. Are we not our brothers’ keepers?

There are significant parallels between the Pew study and the National Jewish Population Study conducted in 2000. Both studies arrive at the same devastating conclusion: the non-Orthodox Jewish population is heading on a path toward becoming a small fraction of itself. 

As the Pew report made clear, the largest block of American Jews ages forty and under are unaffiliated. 

Moreover, most non-Orthodox Jews will intermarry; among children of the intermarried, the statistics are abysmal. Only 17 percent of the children of intermarried couples marry other Jews. With a birthrate of only 1.9 children and an astoundingly high intermarriage rate, American Jewry is on a train speeding headlong into self-destruction. This should devastate each and every one of us.

Tragically, this will not be the first time in our history that a segment of our people cut themselves off from the Jewish nation. Following the Assyrian conquest of the Northern Kingdom of Israel in the eighth century BCE, the Ten Tribes were exiled to various lands, and they gradually assimilated and disappeared.


American Jewry - READ MORE

British Inferiority Complex - Obadiah Shoher

For Britain, the Arab-Israeli peace process is not only a matter of objective self-interest: of course the British side with the Arabs, both as a matter of historical allegiance and out of modern-day economic and strategic necessity.\

Israel has little hope of competing with the strategic importance of the Arabs:  a whining country suing for peace is not a viable geopolitical partner for anyone. But even if Israeli leadership changes miraculously and turns the country into a strategic asset, we cannot hope to become as significant as the Arabs, whose influence is based on oil, aggressive fundamentalism, and
terrorism, and who occupy a large territory of geopolitical importance. 

Thus, the West will continue its natural alliance with Arabs.
Moreover, the West sees the Arabs as a strong and important culture, while Jews are stereotyped as an ugly, Holocausted minority. 

Psychologically, too, Western sympathies are on the side of the Arabs. That may change with the Muslim influx into Europe, which will turn them into a hated minority, but so far the stereotype holds.

Back to the British: the peace process for their leaders is highly
personal—Britain tried to occupy the same land Israel took over. Israeli victory is thus a British defeat. 

Naturally, the British seek to subvert the victor. That logic applies to most Christians, except for a small segment of pro-Jewish Evangelicals, and even for them a favorable attitude to Jews is not
built-in: in the 1940s, they did not love Jews very much (nor did the Jews love Jews, for that matter). 

Islam is just another competing religion, but Judaism is
far different: if Jews are right, then Christians are wrong. Mohammed recognized Jesus; Jews don’t. Naturally, most believing Christians would prefer Jerusalem to be internationalized, or at least in Muslim hands, rather than under Jewish control.

But by far most gentiles simply do not care. They would mildly prefer that the conflict be settled in order to stop the news of the Arabs’ oppression and Arab terrorism, but the issue is as remote to them as any tribal conflict.

Israelis are unduly wary of the world’s reaction to its actions. They confuse the reactions of leaders with public opinion. Engaged in foreign affairs and close to Arabs, Western leaders condemn Israel while the Western public is mildly curious at the most. In the short term, it is only the leaders’ opinions that matter: it is they, rather than the public, who can inflict sanctions on us. In the long term, leaders cannot veer too far from their voters and press issues that are irrelevant to the public.

Israel won’t make her international position any worse by evicting the Arabs.

Awake and Arise! - Professor Paul Eidelberg

Let's ponder the names of Israeli prime ministers since the signing of the Oslo or Israel-PLO Agreement of September 1993:

Yitzhak Rabin

Shimon Peres

Binyamin Netanyahu

Ehud Barak

Ariel Sharon

Ehud Olmert

(And again, Binyamin Netanyahu)


What do these prime ministers have in common?

1) All are assimilated or inauthentic Jews.

2) All have religiously adhered to the Oslo Agreement despite its having been violated, again and again, by the PLO-Palestinian Authority.

3) All have therefore contributed to the undoing of what even non-religious observers have called the miracle of the Six-Day War—evidence of which is even contained (unwittingly) in Michael Oren's Six Days of War. Oren, who is not religious—indeed, he is a cultural relativist—was appointed by Mr. Netanyahu as Israel's ambassador to the United States. Ponder this brief summary of Oren's account of the first two days of the war:

On Day One, in little more than half an hour, the Israel Air Force destroyed 204 planes—half of Egypt’s air force—all but nine of them on the ground (while destroying six Egyptian air fields, four in Sinai and two in Egypt). “The Israelis were stunned. No one ever imagined that a single squadron could neutralize an entire air base” (175).

On Day Two, Col. Avraham Adan, watching the rout of the Egyptian army, was “stupefied.” “You ride past burnt-out vehicles and suddenly you see this immense army, too numerous to count, spread out over a vast area as far as your eyes can see … It was not a pleasant feeling, seeing that gigantic enemy and realizing that you’re only a single battalion of tanks” (216). Moshe Dayan was no less puzzled: “Though Israel had gained command of the skies, Egypt’s cities were not bombed, and the Egyptian armored units at the front could have fought even without air support” (ibid.). Gen. Avraham Yoffe: “There was no planning before the war about what the army would do beyond the al-’Arish-Jabal Libni axis, not even a discussion. Nobody believed that … the [Egyptian] collapse would be so swift” (ibid.).

4) Despite the enormous power of the IDF and its stunning victory in the Six-Day War, every Government of Israel since then has pursued a policy of territorial retreat, which means it has been appeasing Arab thugs—and this, regardless of which party in Israel has been at the helm.

5) The prime ministers mentioned above are conspicuous failures. None have displayed dauntless courage, let alone political wisdom and inspiring Jewish pride. All lack direction or clear cut Jewish national purpose. All behave like leftists! The deceased Rabin aside, all supported Labor's policy of "unilateral disengagement" from Gaza. This they did contrary to the Knesset testimony and warnings of Israel's highest defense and intelligence officers.

As for the people of Israel: recall that the vast majority rejected Labor's defeatist policy in the January 2003 election. Recall, too, that this election was effectively nullified when Likud Prime Minister Ariel Sharon adopted Labor's policy! The government subsequently betrayed the nation in October 2004, when the Knesset voted for disengagement—which it did even though 74 of its members had campaigned against that policy, which was never debated in public. What does the government's contempt for the public mean in regime terms?

6) It means—but no one dares say—that Israel's Government is, in reality, a democratically elected dictatorship! This dictatorship results from the fact—virtually unheard of in every democracy—that members of parliament are not individually accountable to the voters in constituency elections. It was precisely this systemic fact that enabled 23 of the 38 Likud MKs to vote for disengagement with impunity! The system facilitates political treachery.

7) Does it not cry to heaven that Netanyahu could endorse a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria without parliamentary and public debate? Doesn't this suggest he will persist in the pusillanimous policy of appeasement, of territorial retreat, of dishonesty vis-a-vis the despotic Palestinian Authority? Awake oh Jews: you are closer than ever to losing your heartland to your implacable and Janus-faced enemies: Where is common sense? Where is resistance and outrage? The SYSTEM and its spineless leaders have demoralized and disempowered you!

8) I conclude from the above considerations, reinforced by more than thirty years of observing the inane and ignoble behavior of Israeli prime ministers and their self-serving system of multiparty coalition government that the State of Israel must perish for Israel to survive!

9) Israel will continue to decline so long as it continues to elect inauthentic Jewish prime ministers—and this is not a call for conventional religious leaders.

10) Indeed, I blame the religious leaders for failing to initiate a movement to reform Israel's decadent political culture, which can the more readily be done because a large majority of the people of Israel, despite a left-wing dominate media, have always been more right-minded as well as more faithful to the Jewish heritage than Israel's smug and faint-hearted governments.

Sooner or later the Jewish People will scrap their decrepit State and restore the name of Israel. What a blessing this would be to our patriotic friends in the United States who are seeking to restore the name of America! May the New Year bless these two nations and redeem for each its noble heritage.

World War III

Sinead O'Connor says she'll back out of Israel show if she can

Irish singer tries to cancel Caesarea concert, saying she was 'unaware that a boycott of Israel had been requested by the Palestinian people.

Obviously, someone pressured her...nobody can be that uninformed about ther own racist positions...Can they?

She is of course...a complete nutjob anyway....


http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4531271,00.html

Palestinian Two-Step

Israel: The World is Crazy

Muslim Rioters Stone Police on Temple Mount

Twenty masked Muslim rioters on Friday pelted police forces with stones on the Temple Mount. The attack occurred at the Rambam (Mughrabi) Gate, the only point of access for Jewish visitors to the holiest site in Judaism.
The twenty launched their rock barrage at the end of Muslim prayers on Friday.
Police forces broke in through the Gate, pushing the rioters back into the Al-Aqsa Mosque where they took cover.
The situation is currently reported as being under control, with visitors being dispersed from the site.
Muslim violence on the holy site has seen a sharp skyrocketing this week, with police responding each time by blocking Jewish access.
On Sunday, Jewish visitors were removed from the site by police through the Chain Gate on the western side of the Temple Mount, after Muslim rioters threw stones and shoes at them from the Al-Aqsa Mosque.
The script repeated itself on Monday, when police removed a Jewish group consisting of a groom and his entourage through the Gate of the Tribes, after Muslim visitors tried to corner them from different sides in a threatening manner.
Then on Tuesday, Muslims visitors to the Temple Mount formed a riotous mob on the inner side of the Rambam Gate, prompting Israeli police to submit to their violent outbursts and ban Jewish entry. The raucous mob was caught on video.
Yehuda Glick, head of the LIBA Movement for Freedom of Movement on the Temple Mount, condemned the police submission to Muslim violence.
"Someone has to wake up before there's a tragedy. We can't give a prize to rioters. The barrage in recent days doesn't bode well; the government has to order the police to take serious preventative actions before this dangerous snowball explodes in all our faces," warned Glick.

Dear J Street: Time to End the Hypocrisy

Home » InDepth » Op-Eds »

Dear J Street: Time to End the Hypocrisy

By: Chloe Valdary

Published: May 9th, 2014
Latest update: May 10th, 2014

J Street has called on the Jewish community to shun a 21 year old college student for having different political views from its own.

On Friday, April 25, on the way back to his dorm room, Brandeis student Daniel Mael passed a  group of his peers with whom he had previously engaged in civil discourse about the state of Israel and the complexities of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Although they had often disagreed on many aspects of this issue, according to Mael, he felt that it was necessary to extend a hand of graciousness and respect to them in the name of civil and polite discourse. After all it was the Sabbath, and politics should never interfere with showing kindness to your fellow man.

And so, that Friday night, Mael wished these students a “Shabbat Shalom.”  Yet Instead of responding with the same respect and cordiality Mael afforded her, according to witnesses present,  Talia Lepson, a J Street U Brandeis board member, shrieked at Mael, “Jews hate you!” and “You’re a [expletive deleted]bag!” It was also reported that another unidentified male in the group echoed Lepson’s words, again hurling the vulgar epithet at Mael.

Understandably taken aback by this verbal lashing and feeling unsafe in such a hostile environment,  Mael filed an incident report with the university police. He also wrote at length about it on his Facebook page, wondering why this simple act of saying ‘Shabbat Shalom’ elicited such a hateful response. Yet by the time the Sabbath was over, he put the incident out of his mind.  Thinking it had passed, he began to focus on more important things like taking finals and finishing the semester.

But he was wrong.

That following Sunday afternoon, J Street National posted a blog on its website denying the incident had occurred. Moreover, they accused Mael of making up the story and claimed that he was the one harassing them. They wrote that he had engaged in a “campaign of personal intimidation and harassment” and implored others to distance themselves from “this blogger and others with a history of conduct driven by malice and deceit.”

But suggesting that Mael would make up a story which witnesses corroborated and then proceed to report that same story to the police is risible. He would not only be incriminating himself but the people with him who witnessed the incident.

According to Mael, he was deeply upset by this slander. It was bad enough to have been verbally attacked on campus. It was worse to have the perpetrators blatantly lie about it on a national forum and suggest that he should be shunned by the entire Jewish community. This bullying and  intimidation caused him great physical and emotional turmoil.

Unfortunately J Street’s behavior  is typical. Founded in 2008, J Street is an extreme left-wing national advocacy group that claims to be a pro-Israel organization. According to its website, J Street is committed to “fighting for the future of Israel as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people."

But J Street has lobbied for anti-Israel legislation: it endorsed a North Carolina resolution proposed in 2012 by the North Carolina Democratic Party which called for negotiations with Hamas and it has supported efforts to divide Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.

J Street also has university chapters known as “J Street U” whose students have promoted anti-Israel activity. For example, at UC Berkley, J Street U students have supported the BDS movement, which calls for a boycott of the only Jewish state in the Middle East. Also, just last week at Swarthmore University, J Street U students co-hosted an event with Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a rabidly anti-Semitic organization that calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and which also promotes BDS on campuses.

Moreover, J Street has had a history of attacking and maligning its opponents and then, when called out for such behavior, it accuses others of harassment and claims to be the victim. For example, J Street has hosted rabidly anti-Semitic speakers such as Sam Bahour on its national stage. Bahour peddles slanders against the Jewish people, accusing them of engaging in ethnic cleansing and genocide against Arabs. Yet when activists in the Zionist community reject allowing such an immoral group into the pro-Israel “tent,” J Street claims it is being bullied.

Additionally, J Street has hosted speakers who have justified and echoed the sentiments of Hamas and Hezbollah, like Rebecca Vilkomerson, executive director of Jewish Voice for Peace. J Street thus promotes positions which are inimical to human rights, and yet claims its human rights are being violated when it is questioned and critiqued. This is a deliberate inversion of the truth that turns bullies into victims and vice versa, swapping fact for fiction and proclaiming that lies are axiomatic.

But does J Street even realize the paradox that it promotes?

In the blog on its website, J Street writes “We will not tolerate harassment of our student leaders, and we see no reason for us to have any further interaction ... with those peddling in slander.” Yet J Street president Jeremy Ben-Ami has said of Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas that he has been engaged in “peace diplomacy and negotiation” the majority of his life. This is the same Abbas who has been serving in his post longer than he was elected to do so and has thrown Arabs in jail for critiquing him and his government on social media platforms.

According to the Arab based Independent Commission For Human Rights (ICHR), the Palestinian Authority has sanctioned death to apostates who leave Islam. Its report,which was released in January of this year,  also indicated that the Palestinian Authority has engaged in torture of its own citizens and, according to the Boston Globe, the Palestinian Authority  has sanctioned the systematic rape of and honor killings perpetrated against Arab women in the region.

So J Street will not tolerate “harassment” from a student who disagrees with its viewpoints but it will indulge a soft tyrant who has oppressed his people, embezzled billions of dollars, and dictated that selling land to a Jew is punishable by death.

For J Street, engaging in civil discourse over relevant issues is apparently reflective of “consistently and consciously cross[ing] that line” that must never be crossed, yet investing billions of dollars into a propaganda campaign that broadcasts to Arab children descriptions of Jews as apes and pigs elicits no such outrage.

According to its website, J Street has no problem engaging with Hamas since “one makes peace with one’s enemies not one’s friends.” Thus,  J Street is willing to engage in dialogue with a genocidal Islamist internationally recognized terrorist organization that calls for the annihilation of all Jewry,  hangs homosexuals in the public square, and perpetrates human rights abuses against women. But God forbid people should ever speak to a 21-year-old junior at Brandeis University who commits the egregious crime against humanity  by blogging about politics.

The absurdity would be comedic if it wasn’t so morally reprehensible.

One thing is certain. Because of its clear disregard for human rights as well as its shameful adoption of bullying tactics to silence its critics, J Street has no authority to dictate who should and should not be spoken to.  If it sincerely desires to stand for the values it claims to represent--”Peace” “Israelis” and “Palestinians”---it would behoove J Street to not promote organizations that engage in murder, anti-Jewish, and anti-Arab activity.

In the meantime, it is time to end this hypocrisy. People’s lives are literally at stake.

Caroline Glick, The Israeli Solution

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JM7ItAXOvQk&feature=em-subs_digest-vrecs

The Temple Mount is in Your Hands

This post originally appeared at rabbisblog.brsonline.org/
In his incredible book The Prime Ministers, Yehudah Avner describes the remarkable circumstances surrounding the capture of the Old City of Jerusalem and the reunification of the eternal capital of the Jewish people:
Menachem Begin’s brain was so crammed with thoughts that he could not sleep. Tossing and turning, he was gripped by Jewish memories as old as time. His all-encompassing grasp of Jewish history stirred his deepest convictions, causing him to ponder how much longer Israel could wait before restoring to the bosom of its people Jewry’s most sanctified treasures locked behind the Old City’s walls. Who among his cabinet colleagues, besides Allon, would be brave enough to fight for a motion calling for the immediate storming of the Old City’s walls? At four in the morning he switched on the radio and heard the BBC announcer say that a UN Security Council ceasefire resolution was about to be voted upon with a clear majority. This was the last straw! Instantly, he phoned Eshkol. “What is it?” the prime minister yawned. “Forgive me for disturbing your sleep,” said Begin, “but I’ve just heard the BBC. The Security Council is about to pass a ceasefire resolution. We have no time left. I propose the army be ordered to enter the Old City forthwith, before it is too late.”
“Speak to Dayan,” said Eshkol, his voice suddenly wide awake. “See what he thinks and get back to me.” Begin got hold of Dayan and urged him to agree to a quick cabinet meeting to decide on the storming of the Old City. He did. Again Begin spoke to Eshkol and it was decided the cabinet would convene at seven that morning. It was a quick meeting. By unanimous decision the order was given to immediately penetrate the Old City’s walls, the troops to be spearheaded by a parachute brigade. Some three hours later, after intense combat, the brigade crashed through the Lion Gate, and shortly thereafter came the commander’s message over the wire: “The Temple Mount is in our hands! The Temple Mount is in our hands!”
Just imagine, that now famous statement, “Har Ha’bayit b’yadeinu,” “the Temple Mount is in our hands,” uttered by Motta Gur, commander of the division that captured the Old City of Yerushalayim, might not have been said had Begin slept well that night and a cease fire been called, eliminating the possibility of retaking the Old City and the Temple Mount.
In his book Like Dreamers, Yossi Klein Ha’Levi explains what happened next:
“Motta’s communications officer, Orni, produced an Israeli flag from his pouch. “Should we hang it on top of the Dome? Arik asked Motta. “Yallah,” Motta replied – Go on. Ari and Orni approached the copper doors, intending to hoist the flag onto the crescent moon atop the tome. The entrance was bolted; Arik shot it open with his Uzi.
The men entered the domed silence, boots on thick patterned carpets…Orni and Arik ascended a staircase to the balcony overlooking the sanctuary…Standing on Arik’s shoulders, Orni reached up and fastened the Israeli flag to the Islamic crescent…
Captain Yoram Zamosh reached the Mount. Zamosh was the Mercaz student who had been given an Israeli flag by an elderly woman just before the battle and who had promised to hang it on the Wall.
Motta’s deputy, Moisheleh Stempel-Peles, along with several other paratroopers, was searching for a way down to the Wall and Zamosh joined them. They came upon an old Arab man in a white robe, an official of the Waqf, the Islamic trust in charge of the Mount. He pointed them towards a fenced-off ledge.
The paratroopers stepped onto the ledge. Below them – the Wall. From his ammunition belt, Zamosh extracted the flag and fastened it onto the fence. Then the men sang “Hatikvah,” the national anthem. Zamosh recalled a legend he’d learned as a child: when the Roman legion commanded by Titus burned the Temple, priests threw its keys toward heaven, and a hand reached out and retrieved them for safekeeping. Now, Zamosh thought, the keys had been returned…
Defense Minister Moshe Dayan stood on Mount Scopus and, raising binoculars to his single eye, watched the Temple Mount across the valley… Now, seeing an Israeli flag flying over the Dome of the Rock, Dayan was appalled. He radioed Motta: You’re going to set the whole Middle East on fire. Remove the flag immediately. Motta relayed the order to Arik, who dispatched one of his men: he couldn’t bear to do it himself.
Now, forty-seven years later, as we look back on these miraculous events and reflect on those historic words, Har Ha’bayit b’yadeinu, the Temple Mount is in our hands, we can’t help but wonder, is it really? When Israel gained possession of the Temple Mount, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol wanted to fulfill his dream for this holiest spot. He envisioned a multi-faith council of Jews, Christians and Muslims to control the location and allow all who wished to come and pray to do so. However, his plan never came to fruition.
If, in fact, as the young soldier Zamosh thought, the keys to the Temple Mount had been returned, Moshe Dayan gave them back rather quickly. Just a few days after the Six Day War, Dayan, an Israeli war hero, visited the Muslim Waqf on the Temple Mount. In his autobiography, “Moshe Dayan: Story of My Life” he describes the conversation:
I said that Israeli troops would be removed from the site and stationed outside the compound. The Israeli authorities were responsible for overall security, but we would not interfere in the private affairs of the Moslems responsible for their own sanctuaries. These were two Moslem places of worship, and they had the right to operate them themselves. My hosts no doubt knew that on the day we had captured this site, I had given orders that the Israeli flag be removed from the Mosque of the Dome, where it had been hoisted. We had no intention of controlling Moslem holy places or of interfering in their religious life.
Forty-seven years ago, Moshe Dayan gave the Waqf control of the Temple Mount and they continue to control it today. Just a few weeks ago, I visited Har Ha’Bayit for the third time. When Rabbi Levine, Daniel Katz, David Kay, and I approached the entrance we were told we must submit identification and wait for approval to ascend. As we waited for a good half an hour, we watched as non-Jews and non-observant Jews marched right up without being stopped at all. When we were finally approved, we were cautioned emphatically not to bow, pray or even move our lips in a way that looked like prayer. We were not allowed to bring a Siddur, Tehillim, Tefillin or any religious objects. As we walked the perimeter of the enormous Mount, in addition to an Israeli police officer who seemed more concerned with our not upsetting anyone than with protecting our right to be there, a representative of the Waqf followed us closely looking and listening to all that we did.
Our experience on Har Ha’Bayit was paradoxical, spiritually exhilarating on the one hand, and yet so sad and mournful on the other. Standing on stones from the time of the second Temple, seeing where the Holy of Holies stood, understanding the enormity and magnificence of our Beis Ha’Mikdash, visualizing how the Mount looked on Erev Pesach when the entire Jewish people were bringing their Pesach sacrifices, was simply incredible. Yet, observing the irresponsible excavations that are destroying our ancient artifacts, seeing our holiest site being desecrated, and being deprived of the ability to pray was depressing, tragic, and mournful.
As we walked, we passed groups of women, each of whom stared in our direction and screamed Allah Akbar. As our group paused to look and learn about where we were standing, a man near us took a large metal pipe and continuously dropped it against the stone floor in an effort to disturb and intimidate us, both of which he accomplished successfully. In a small gesture of defiance, we continuously prayed in our hearts and when we paused opposite the Kodesh Ha’Kadashim, the Holy of Holies, we even had Daniel Katz, a Kohen, give us the Priestly Blessing.
As we descended the Mount, I kept thinking to myself, it sure doesn’t feel like Har Ha’Bayit b’yadeinu. Did Moshe Dayan make a historic mistake or were we simply not ready? Are we ready now? Do we really care about Har Ha’Bayit and do we truly yearn to have the right to pray there?
Less than a year ago, a survey was done in Israel to measure public opinion on the importance of the Temple Mount. Only 29% of the people asked thought that Har Ha’Bayit is the holiest place for the Jewish people, with 66% believing it is the Kotel. Forty percent said that it is not important to them that Jews visit the Temple Mount. Forty-one percent have no interest in a tour of Har Ha’Bayit. The survey was conducted randomly, but I imagine that if these same questions were asked of observant Jews, the responses wouldn’t be that different.
Despite being pervasive in our prayers and occupying so much of our tradition, the average Torah Jew, unfortunately, does not think often about Har Ha’Bayit or what we can do to gain the right to pray there. Granted, ascending the Mount is not for everyone. There are legitimate halachik concerns and not all authorities allow it. Those that do ascend need to first go to the mikvah with full preparations, not wear leather shoes, not carry any bag and maintain the seriousness and sobriety that our holiest place demands.
There are legitimate reasons not to go on Har Ha’Bayit but there is no excuse not to think about, care about, and advocate for the right for Jews to pray on Har Ha’Bayit. No matter what has happened in our history, we have not forgotten the Temple Mount. R’ Menachem Meiri in the 13th century references those that ascend Har Ha’Bayit. Rabbeinu Nissim, the great 14th century Spanish halachist, explicitly acknowledges the custom yet in his time of aliyah l’regel, visiting Har Ha’Bayit. In the 15th century, the Radbaz wrote that his peers regularly visited the Temple Mount to pray there and, “we have not heard or seen anyone object to this.”
Maybe we are finally ready to take back the keys. This week, Labor Party Knesset member Yehiel Bar joined Likud Knesset member Miri Regev in sponsoring a bill that would grant freedom of movement, religion, and worship on the Temple Mount to all religions. However, immediately, the Jordanians, Arab Knesset members, and even the Shin Bet who fear it could spark riots, placed significant pressure to withdraw the bill.
Importantly, nobody is suggesting doing anything to the Dome of the Rock or the Mosque on Har Ha’Bayit. No one is advocating preventing Muslims from practicing and praying. The bill only seeks equal access and rights for all religions, just as Prime Minister Eshkol originally wanted.
Will it pass? Will we get the keys back to our people’s holiest place taking us one step closer to the final redemption? I don’t know. What I do know is meriting Har Ha’Bayit begins with caring about it. As we celebrate Yom Yerushalayim this week and the forty-seventh anniversary of the reunification of our holy city, the eternal capital of the Jewish people, please keep Har Ha’Bayit close to your hearts and prayers.
May we merit the day to ascend together as we visit the third Beis Ha’Mikdash speedily in our day.