The convenient war against the Jews

Oct. 6, 2008
Caroline Glick , THE JERUSALEM POST

In the end, the global jihad, and the West's fickle response to radical
Islam's assault on its civilization, is about hating Jews. This truth, never
wholly hidden from view, was exposed in all its ugliness in recent months
with startling disclosures by former Italian president and Senator-for-life
Francesco Cossiga.

In a letter to Italy's Corriere della Serra in August, Cossiga acknowledged
that during the early 1970s, then Italian prime minister Aldo Moro signed an
agreement with Yassir Arafat's PLO and affiliated organizations that enabled
the Palestinians to field terrorists, operate bases and store weapons in
Italy in exchange for immunity from attack for Italy and Italian interests
worldwide. Cossiga also acknowledged that even when the Palestinians
murdered Italians, the government still protected them. Indeed, he admitted
for the first time that the largest terror attack ever to take place on
Italian soil - the bombing of the Bologna train station in July 1980 which
killed 85 people - was the work of PLO-affiliated terrorists from George
Habash's Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine.

At the time of the bombing, Cossiga was Italy's prime minister. Right after
it occurred, he blamed the atrocity on neo-fascists. In his words at the
time, "Unlike leftist terrorism, which strikes at the heart of the state
through its representatives, black terrorism prefers the massacre because it
promotes panic and impulsive reactions."

In August, he claimed that it was the work of the PFLP and asserted that the
bomb exploded inadvertently. That is, the Palestinians hadn't meant to kill
non-Jews - so Italian authorities protected them.

On Friday, Cossiga expanded on his disclosures to Corriere della Serra in an
interview with Yediot Aharonot's Rome correspondent Menachem Ganz. Cossiga
admitted that it wasn't just Israeli targets that Italy permitted the
Palestinians to attack with impunity, but Jewish targets as well. Indeed, in
at least one and probably two incidents, the Italians colluded with the
Palestinians in their attacks against Jews. On October 9, 1982, six
terrorists opened fire on worshippers leaving Rome's Great Synagogue. Dozens
of Jews were wounded and two-year-old Stefano Tache was murdered. Hours
before the attack the Italian police detail charged with securing the
synagogue was withdrawn.

Then too, in December 1985, Palestinian terrorists opened fire on the El Al
ticket counter at the Rome airport. Ten people were killed. Another seven
people were murdered in a simultaneous attack against the El Al ticket
counter at the Vienna airport. According to Cossiga, Italian intelligence
agencies received prior warning of the attack but didn't bother to share the
information with Israel.

Cossiga explained to Yediot, "No Italian targets were hit. They attacked the
Israeli airline at the airport. The murdered were all Israelis, Jews, and
Americans."

Then there was the hijacking of the Italian cruise liner Achille Lauro off
the Egyptian coast in October 1985. Palestinian terrorists led by Abu Abbas
commandeered the ship. They shot wheelchair-bound American Jewish passenger
Leon Klinghoffer and threw him overboard while he was still alive. The
Egyptians freed the hijackers and sent them off on a flight to Libya.
American jets forced a plane to land at a NATO base in Sicily. The Italians
refused to permit the Americans to take the hijackers into custody and freed
Abbas. The Italians cast the standoff as a victory against American bullies.
But it really amounted to a surrender to Palestinian murderers. As Cossiga
explained, "Since the Arabs were capable of harming Italy more than the
Americans, Italy surrendered to them."

COSSIGA ALLEGES that his country's agreement with the Palestinians has
recently been expanded to include Hizbullah. After the Second Lebanon War,
Italy agreed to command the UNIFIL force charged with preventing Hizbullah
from reasserting control over southern Lebanon and blocking its re-armament
efforts. Yet Cossiga asserts, "I can state with absolute certainty that.
Italy has a deal with Hizbullah according to which UNIFIL forces turn a
blind eye to Hizbullah's rearmament so long as no attacks are carried out
against soldiers in the force."

Ganz notes ruefully that although Cossiga's statements provoked the Italian
Jewish community to demand that Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi investigate
the government's collusion with Palestinian terrorists, no such
investigation is likely to be forthcoming. Ganz explains that Berlusconi
himself is not immune to the anti-Semitism that caused his predecessors to
abstain from protecting Italy's Jewish citizens. When he addresses Italian
Jews, Berlusconi often calls the Israeli government "your government," and
so exposes his adherence to the view that Jews are not true citizens of any
country other than Israel.

The anti-Semitic belief that all Jews are Zionists and therefore all Jews
are fair game in the war against Israel - itself simply another round of the
age-old war against the Jews - allows anti-Semites to obfuscate the fact
that their anti-Israel rhetoric is simply warmed over Jew-hatred. People
like Iranian leaders Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Ali Khamenei, and Palestinian
terrorists from the PLO and their progeny in Hamas and Hizbullah nearly
always limit their threats to "Zionists," and so pretend that they aren't
actually anti-Semites.

Their razor-thin deception is eagerly embraced by their fellow travelers in
the West - from university professors like Juan Cole, Steven Walt and John
Mearshimer, to policymakers like Brent Scowcroft and Zbigniew Brzezinski, to
Western decision-makers and European heads of state, and an alarming number
of American politicians.

This deception is par for the course of anti-Semitism. Throughout history
anti-Semites have used Jew-hatred as a way to rally their troops. By
attacking Jews as the collective enemy, tyrants have given their people a
convenient, weak culprit to attack to deflect criticism away from their own
failures or to hide real enemies from pacifistic publics uninterested in
fighting. Anti-Semitism appeals to people's basest instinct. But people
don't like to acknowledge how much they hate Jews, and Jews have always
preferred to deny that they are hated.

So anti-Semitic leaders have disguised their appeal to base instinct by
pretending that they are actually appealing to sublime aspirations. In the
case of the Nazis for instance, Adolf Hitler and Josef Goebbels appealed to
Germanic pride and love for the Fatherland. Today, the Left appeals to
people's aspirations for peace and justice. It is only by permitting and
indeed enabling Jews to die and the Jewish state to be destroyed that
"peace" can be secured and the Palestinians can receive "justice."

THIS STRATEGY appeals to European - and to greater and lesser degrees
American - policymakers for two reasons. First, as French Foreign Minister
Bernard Kouchner made clear in an interview with Ha'aretz on Friday, while
the West understands that Islamic jihadists seek the destruction of Europe
and the US, they believe - in part because their own anti-Semitism leads
them to exaggerate Jewish power - that they will get away with coddling the
Arabs and Iran because Israel will protect them.

Referring to Iran's nuclear weapons program, Kouchner said that no one is
particularly worried about Iran's nuclear threat because everyone believes
that Israel will attack Iran for them. In his words, "I honestly don't
believe that [a nuclear arsenal] will give any immunity to Iran. First, you
[Israel] will hit them before [they acquire nuclear weapons]. Because Israel
has always said that it will not wait for the bomb to be ready. I think that
they [the Iranians] know. Everybody knows."

What is ironic about this view is that it exposes the inversion of
anti-Semitic rhetoric. Five years ago, former Malaysian prime minister
Mahathir Mohamed told an approving audience of Islamic heads of state, "The
Jews rule the world by proxy. They get others to fight and die for them."

But the West's belief that Israel will protect it from Iran shows that the
opposite is true. The West is absolutely certain that Israel is its proxy,
and that Jews will fight and die protecting it from the forces of global
terror and jihad.

THE SECOND reason the Western champions of "peace" have opted to sell Israel
and the Jews out to the jihadists is because as anti-Semites, Western
"anti-Zionists" fear Jewish power and therefore want us to be weak. So it is
that for the past 40 years, European governments and the US State Department
have bankrolled anti-Zionist groups in Israel like Peace Now, B'tselem and
Four Mothers. So it is that they have blamed Israel for Palestinian
terrorism. And even when Israel succumbs to all their demands for
territorial withdrawals, they always manage to demand still more.

In the same interview with Ha'aretz for instance, Kouchner on the one hand
praised Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni for
their willingness to surrender Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria to the
Palestinians, but argued that this is still not enough. Israel must also
accept the free immigration of the hostile descendants of the Arabs who left
Israel in 1948. That is, Israel must also agree to its own destruction in
order to pave the way for "peace." In his words, "The main problem is the
refugees and Jerusalem, but more the refugees. Olmert and Livni do not have
the perception of this."

Kouchner for one is certain that Livni will come around to recognizing the
need to allow hostile foreign-born Arabs to move here. "I think she will
change. This is always the case for people that are in charge for politics
and for life," he claimed.

Kouchner soothed the reporters' fears of national destruction by claiming
that he's probably not talking about more than 100,000 hostile Arabs
immigrants. But that's today.

If Livni does form a government and comes around to this view, leave it to
the West to explain that placing "arbitrary" limits on Arab immigration is a
human rights abuse, and that Israel's Zionist racism is compelling the Arabs
and Iran to kill Jews and Westerners around the world.

AND THIS brings us to perhaps the greatest irony of the West's collusion
with the Arabs and Iran in their war against the Jews. The logical outcome
of the twin delusions of anti-Semitism - that Jews are all powerful and that
the Jews must be cut down to size - is the destruction of Israel. And if
that happens, the West will find itself in jaws of the Islamic jihadists
they have been feeding the Jews to for four decades.

The West's subversion of the Israeli elite has fomented a situation where
many Israeli leaders have embraced their anti-Semitic views of Israel.
Leaders like Livni and Olmert, and the media and academia in Israel, have
largely accepted the notion that Israel is to blame for the global jihad.
Today these leaders uphold Jewish weakness as an ideal. The longer these
Western-supported elites remain in power, the larger the chance that Israel
won't attack Iran and that Israel will allow itself to be destroyed in the
interest of pursuing "peace" with Palestinian terrorists.

And if Israel is destroyed, the West won't be able to depend on us Jews to
fight and die for them anymore. They will be all alone.

PALIN MUST EXPLAIN ANTI-SEMITIC STANCE OF HER CHURCH

October 7, 2008 (Fort Lee, NJ) -- In a Shalom TV editorial, Rabbi Mark S. Golub, president of American Jewry's national cable television network, expressed his concern that both the Jewish and secular media has not asked Alaska Governor Sarah Palin to clarify her position on the intrinsic religious integrity of Judaism and the Jewish People.

Golub points out that Governor Palin is a participating member of The Wasilla Bible Church whose pastor publicly preaches the need to convert Jews to Christianity. More specifically, Governor Palin was in attendance when the visiting executive director of Jews for Jesus preached that Palestinian terrorism which murders and maims Israeli civilians is God's punishment of the Jews for not accepting Jesus. Governor Palin's pastor followed this sermon with a collection for Jews for Jesus and prayed that God would make their work of bringing Jews to Jesus successful.

The call for Governor Palin to clarify her own stand on whether Jews need to be converted to Christianity deserves prompt media attention since it comes from an official member of the John McCain presidential campaign, Fred Zeidman, who serves as the McCain campaign co-chair for "Jewish Outreach."

In an interview on Shalom TV, Zeidman stated that Governor Palin not only owes an explanation of her views to the American Jewish community, but also owes an explanation to the American community at large--in the same way that Senator Barack Obama owed the American people an explanation of his affiliation with the Reverend Jeremiah Wright and the Trinity United Church of Christ.

For Golub, the lack of a Jewish follow-up to Zeidman's call raises serious questions. Are American Jews reluctant to make an issue over possible anti-Semitic church movements? Are American Jews resigned to a double standard that would condemn anti-white bigotry but not anti-Semitism?

And for Golub, the issue goes far beyond the Jewish community alone.

"It may well be that Governor Palin does not share the views of her church, her pastor, or the executive director of Jews for Jesus," said Golub from his New Jersey office. "But Jews in particular, and all Americans who care about church-state separation and religious tolerance in the United States, have a right to ask Governor Palin to clarify where she stands on the need to convert Jews. In America, one would not expect any public official to view any religious group--not Muslims, not Jews, not Christians--as a community of lost souls that must be converted. Yet this is the view of Governor Palin's pastor and church community, and if the governor does share her pastor's perspective on Jews--or on any other non-Christian group in America--one may wonder how her views might effect her public policy decisions were she to be elected in November."

Shalom TV, available in more than twenty million American homes, has been in the forefront of presenting interviews relating Jewish concerns to the primary and general elections campaigns. The political interviews on Shalom TV have received worldwide secular media coverage on USA Today, the ABC News web site, Brian Lehrer's NPR radio program, the Huffington Post, and on many internet sites. Al Jazeera and other Arab new sources have featured Shalom TV's March '07 interview with Joe Biden in which the Democratic Senator declared, "I am a Zionist."

In addition, the Jewish media in America and Israel has often cited political comments made on Shalom TV, such as those by Natan Sharansky in support of John McCain.

So who Are You Voting For?

Most of us who are upset at the hunting of moose for meat have no problem with the slaughterhouse industry that, behind closed doors, kills cows for our burgers and steaks. There's a name for that attitude. It's called hypocrisy.

While thinking about that, I doodled a sketch of a moose and a cow having a chat. It turned into today's meat meets meat cartoon.

-Dry Bones- Israel's Political Comic Strip Since 1973

Vice Presidential Debate Reviewed

Obama/Biden VS McCain/Palin

Last night it was Biden VS Palin, and expectations were low.

Palin said she supported a 2 state solution the the "Middle East crisis" and she lost me completely at that point. Before that I thought she may have been a bit of an airhead. McCain's spokesmen have said the his administration will favor staying out the conflict and backing off.

Obama is AntiSemetic and wants to get very involved according to his administration spokesmen.

The question was: Would Biden not pounce on Palin to destroy her and could Palin
show that she had any intellect and was not just a local misplaced Canadian yokel.

Biden was a professional, educated succinct politician with plenty of experience and verve. Palin showed she could lokk straight into the camera and say the same things repeatedly...Alaska and energy. Palin also said she disagreed many times. Palin rarely supported any position with factoids and was throwing non specifics all night.
Palin did appear competent to be in a debate and had decent demeanor etc.

Syria Renews Nuclear Program; America Concerned

by Maayana Miskin

(IsraelNN.com) Syria has renewed its nuclear program, according to the Arabic-language daily A-Sharq al-Awsat. The report was based on information from anonymous sources within the IDF. Iranian experts visited the country last month to provide aid.

According to the report, Syria began rebuilding its program following Israel's attack on a Syrian nuclear site in September 2007. Syria is now following the lead set by Iran and has scattered its nuclear development program over several sites, in order to make it difficult to thwart with a single attack.

North Korea is assisting in the project, the sources said, and Iranian experts visited the country last month to provide aid as well. The sources warned that Israel will not allow Syria to develop a nuclear weapon and will act to stop the program if necessary.

U.S. Concerned by Syrian Policies
United States officials have expressed concern over Syria's support for terrorism, according to senior American diplomats. America is particularly concerned by weapons smuggling between Syria and Lebanon and by Syrian cooperation with Iran, they said. The international community expects Syria to stop its support for terrorism, expel terrorist leaders from its territory, cooperate with international investigators regarding its nuclear program, and end its cooperation with Iran.

An anonymous U.S. diplomat quoted in the Arabic London-based newspaper Al-Hayat said America had recently warned Syria not to interfere in Lebanon. Washington is concerned by the buildup of Syrian forces on the Lebanese border, the source said. Syrian forces have clashed with Lebanese terrorist groups in the area and Syria blames the groups for recent terrorist attacks within Syrian territory.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice met with Syrian foreign Minister Walid Moallem last week and expressed America's dislike of certain aspects of Syrian policy. Moallem told her that Syria has restricted the freedom of senior terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad, Syrian diplomats said. Hamas spokesmen denied the report.

The Two-Pronged Assault On Religious Zionism

By - Caroline B. Glick

Israel's 2005 withdrawal from Gaza was presented to the world as a strategic bid to enhance prospects for peace between the Palestinians and Israel. Proponents of the move argued that removing all Israeli civilians and military personnel from Gaza would take away the source of Palestinian grievances. Once fully appeased, the Palestinians would be forced to behave responsibly, abjure terrorism and build their state - first in Gaza, and then in Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem as well.

This was the pretext of Israel's withdrawal. But it wasn't the subtext. The subtext of the withdrawal - telegraphed to both Israelis and the international community - was that the withdrawal was cause the demise of Religious Zionism at the hands of the leftist progeny of Labor Zionists. That is, the operation wasn't about peace with the Arabs. It was about cultural supremacy within Israel.

In the countdown to the withdrawal, the Palestinians did everything they could to make clear the move would not enhance the chances for peace. They triumphantly declared that then-prime minister Ariel Sharon's decision to expel Gaza's Jews was an admission that Israel had been defeated by the Palestinians. Hamas was ascendant and both Hamas and Fatah declared repeatedly that they would continue their terror war until all of Israel was destroyed. And as the pretext crumbled, the subtext became more prominent.

Haaretz editorialized six weeks before the expulsion of Gaza's 8,000 Jews, "The disengagement of Israeli policy from its religious fuel is the real disengagement currently on the agenda. On the day after the disengagement, religious Zionism's status will be different. The real question is not how many mortar shells will fall, or who will guard the Philadelphi route [connecting Gaza with Egypt], or whether the Palestinians will dance of the roofs of Ganei Tal. The real question is who sets the national agenda."

Religious Zionist leaders were in a horrible bind. If they responded to the demands of their own people and fought fire with fire, they knew - given the Left's control of the media - they would be demonized for years to come. And they knew that if the Left succeeded in destroying their reputation among rank and file Israelis, they would be powerless to defend Judea and Samaria.

So in the end, Religious Zionist leaders disappointed their followers, making do with mass protests in the countdown to the expulsions and then allowing the IDF to carry out the expulsions largely unchallenged. While they failed to save Gaza's Jews from internal exile, they at least succeeded in preventing the demise of Religious Zionism as a political and social force in Israel.

Their success was acknowledged by Haaretz. In the weeks that followed the expulsions, Haaretz columnist Orit Shochat bemoaned the fact that the campaign against Religious Zionism had not succeeded. As she put it, "Soldiers who experienced the evacuation won't travel to an ashram in India because they discovered that there is an ashram next door. The same Jewish religion that they hadn't seen up close for a long time embraces them into its fold with a song and a tear for a common fate. They have now sat arm-in-arm at the synagogues in Gush Katif, they have now felt the holiness mixed in sweat, they have now moved rhythmically and sung songs. They have stood in line to kiss the Torah scrolls. They are now half-inside."

Zionism's revolutionary message to Jewry was that after 2,000 years of powerlessness, Jews would again become actors on the global stage. But Zionism has many movements and not all of them are equally revolutionary. The two most significant Zionist movements today are Labor Zionism and Religious Zionism.

The inherent weakness of Labor Zionism is that it was never aimed specifically at enabling Jews to be Jews. Rather, its purpose was to enable Jews to be socialists. Understanding that the anti-Semitic climate in Europe in the early 20th century rendered Jewish assimilation into a larger socialist sea impossible, Labor Zionists argued that by establishing a Jewish state Jews would be "normalized" and accepted as regular people and socialists by the nations of the world. That is, Labor Zionism's message was assimilation on a national rather than on an individual one since conditions in Europe precluded individual assimilation.

Labor Zionists have been confounded by the endurance of anti-Semitism and its transformation of Israel, though anti-Zionism, into the International Jew. The world's refusal to accept Israel as an equal has been shattering for them. It has caused Labor Zionists to abandon Zionism in the hopes that by doing so they will finally be accepted as equals by the nations of the world. At its core, Labor Zionism is outward seeking rather than inward looking.

In contrast, Religious Zionism is inward looking. It seeks to turn Jews into actors on the international stage as Jews. It also seeks to make Judaism responsive to the imperatives of an empowered people as it was responsive to the imperatives of Jews as a powerless people during the generations of exile. Because of its specific message to Jews as Jews, Religious Zionism is a pure revolutionary ideology.

Religious Zionists are a finger in the eye of the Labor Zionists for their stubborn devotion to Judaism and their relative indifference to whether Israel is accepted by the anti-Semites of the world. And Labor Zionists are not alone in their angry rejection of Religious Zionism's message. They are joined by the non-Zionist religious establishment.

The non-Zionist religious establishment feels threatened by Religious Zionism's attempts to reinvest Judaism with its nationalist mission for the Jewish nation. And, unfortunately, the non-Zionist religious establishment is joining forces with the Labor Zionist establishment to attack Religious Zionism.

In early May, a panel of three non-Zionist rabbinic judges on Jerusalem's High Rabbinic Court published a ruling in a divorce case declaring all the thousands of conversions carried out under the auspices of Religious Zionist Rabbi Chaim Druckman, and the state's Conversion Authority he headed, null and void. The court argued that Druckman did not investigate sufficiently whether the converts were committed to observing all the mitzvot. Piling on to the non-Zionist establishment's act, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert last week removed Druckman from his position as head of the Conversion Authority.

Both Rabbi Avraham Sherman, who wrote the rabbinical high court's decision, and Druckman's fellow Religious Zionist rabbis agree that the dispute is an attack on Religious Zionism's view of the role of religion in Israel rather than a strictly halachic disagreement. In his ruling, Sherman wrote of Druckman and his Religious Zionist colleagues in the Conversion Authority, "All these rabbis have one thing in common. They all see in conversion a sacred commandment as part of their national responsibility. In other words, the conversion is not primarily the spiritual and religious need of the individual convert who wishes to join the Jewish people and accept upon himself all the commandments. Rather, conversion is a means of improving the spiritual situation of the entire Jewish nation living in Israel. It is a way of bringing Jews closer to their Judaism."


The Religious Zionist movement is up in arms over the ruling, which its leaders are calling an act of aggression and halachic malfeasance. Rabbi Yuval Cherlow, who heads the hesder yeshiva in Petach Tikvah and is considered a leading rabbinic authority in Religious Zionist circles, called Sherman's ruling "a desecration of God's name" and said that if it is not overturned he would set up independent conversion courts outside the aegis of the Chief Rabbinate.

Between the Labor Zionists' attempts to destroy Religious Zionism politically, and the non-Zionist rabbinic leadership's attempts to demonize it religiously, Religious Zionism has been under tremendous pressure in recent years. One can only hope its leaders will have the wisdom to persevere. Israel and the Jewish people need Religious Zionism more than anyone will ever admit.

Caroline Glick is deputy managing editor of The Jerusalem Post. Her Jewish Press-exclusive column appears the last week of each month.

Jews in Judea, Samaria Increased by 20 Percent in Olmert's Term

by Gil Ronen


(IsraelNN.com) The number of Jews in Judea and Samaria grew by 20 percent from 250,000 when Ehud Olmert began his term as Prime Minister in April of 2006, to more than 300,000 in the Interior Ministry's official census in 2008, according to Yesha Council Director Pinchas Wallerstein.

Wallerstein said Sunday that the Jewish people are the ones to be thanked for the development, which occurred under what he called "the government most hostile to the settlement movement" since 1967.

"It turns out that the nation is strong," Wallerstein said. The spirit of the people remains steadfast, he said, even at a time in which "the Prime Minister is giving up the Beit She'an Valley and additional parts of
"It turns out that the nation is strong."
the Land of Israel."

'This folding is endless'
Olmert's ongoing concessions, Wallerstein added, "only prove our claim that this folding is endless, and only the stance by the public – that is willing to come out and settle and build its homes – makes the difference."

"This summer more than 400 caravans were built and populated," Wallerstein said. "The meaning of this is that more than 400 families entered the village communities, besides the ones that entered cities like Ariel and Ma'aleh Adumim. These are the very same communities that Olmert said he was willing to give up."

"Besides," the former longtime Binyamin Council head said, "300 permanent houses were also put up.

Outposts will stay
Wallerstein estimated that the state will not wind up evicting residents from any of the outposts which are currently under dispute. "If the leadership – including those who disagree with us – wishes to avoid a confrontation with us, we will be able to reach a permanent solution for construction regarding both the outposts and the permanent communities."

Wallerstein also said that the Yesha Council is about to launch a new "massive" campaign which he called "very Jewish," targeting the entire Israeli populace, religious and non-religious. Without revealing details, he said the campaign would mention King David and the Hasmoneans, and will "move the public to the right, a bit more than it already is."

Who moved my note?

The Jewish New Year is upon us, and thousands are flocking to the Western Wall in Jerusalem. Every evening, according to reports, between 100,000 and 150,000 people arrive at the Western Wall plaza, many of them as part of the month of Selichot (penitential prayer said to seek forgiveness for one's sins).

Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitz told Ynet that "it's a special feeling hearing all the versions of the Selichot, each person and his own version and community. It's particularly exciting listening to the prayers and seeing the people come every day, being drawn to the atmosphere of holiness prevailing in this place, in order to ask God for forgiveness.

"There is no place more suitable to seek forgiveness than the Western Wall. This is a place uniting us all, a place where the Holy of Holies resided, where the great priest would enter to ask for forgiveness for the people of Israel."

As before every Rosh Hashana, a campaign was held at the Western Wall in recent days to clean the stones from the thousands of notes placed between them every day by the many visitors. The cleaning campaign was held to mark the tradition of "Yashan mipnei chadash totzi'u" (remove the old because of the new – Leviticus 26:10)

The different notes are cleared into sealed bags, so that no one will read them; it is very likely that one of the notes belongs to US Democratic Presidential Candidate Barack Obama.

The removal of the notes is being accompanied by engineers and by placing a crane in front of the wall, to make sure that the rocks don't fall on top of people's heads and to protect the integrity of the stones themselves.

After the notes have been collected, they are hidden in Jerusalem's Mountain of Olives. "Of course we hope that all of the prayers and requests that were placed in the wall over the course of the year, have been accepted by god," said Rabbi Rabinovitz.

The rabbi invited all of the people of Israel to come and pray at the Western Wall and to "connect with the generation chain of the people of Israel, and to the essence of things, the essence being the spirit of the Jewish people."

Tefillin? Not in this school - IN ISRAEL!

By Hila Shay Vazan

A high school in the central city of Modiin forbade a student to bringing his phylacteries (small leather case containing Scriptural texts which is worn during morning prayers) onto school grounds, threatening to expel him.

"It started on the first day of school," says A, an 11th grader. "Two classmates of mine told me they wanted to put on teffilin every morning, and asked me to take them to a rabbi to have them checked. I did that, and the rabbi found the tefillin to be damaged and in need of repair."

For the time being, A. started bringing his phylacteries to school, and in their free time, during breaks and free periods, the three would gather at a small classroom which was not being used, and put on the phylacteries for a few minutes every day.

Other students heard about this and asked to join them, and they would all meet every morning. This went on uninterrupted until one day the students wanted to put on the phylacteries when a class was cancelled and their regular classroom was occupied.

Instead, the group entered the school library, where the librarian pointed them in the direction of the unoccupied photocopy room.

When the students returned to the same room the following day, the librarian told A. that the school principal, Nurit Zak, wanted to see him in her office.

When A. and his friend arrived at the principal's office, Zak reportedly told them, "What you are doing is religious coercion and missionary incitement. There are students in this school whose parents won’t have them exposed to religious characteristics."

A.'s mother was amazed by the decision. "I am shocked and astonished," she said. "We came from France, where such things happen on occasion, but we never imagined that they could happen here, in Israel. It hurts me that he was punished so severely, as if he had brought drugs or alcohol to school."

The high school principal refused to respond and directed us to the Modiin Municipality's spokesperson, who said that "nothing is stopping those who wish to put on teffilin at the school privately and personally. The student was asked not to bring his tefillin to school and to pursause others to join him."

Obama, McCain and Israel Who really stands by Israel?

Obama's, McCain's worldviews provide the answer

Published YNET
09.27.08, 14:13

By Yoram Ettinger

A worldview shapes presidential attitude toward Israel as a strategic asset
or a liability and toward Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria and the Golan
Heights. A presidential worldview determines the scope of the US posture of
deterrence in face of Middle East and global threats, which directly impacts
Israel's national security.

For example, President Nixon was not a friend of the US Jewish community and
was not a leader of pro-Israeli legislation in the US Senate. In 1968, he
received only about 15% of the Jewish vote. However, his worldview
recognized Israel's importance to US national security, as was demonstrated
in 1970, when Israel rolled back a Syrian invasion of Jordan, preventing a
pro-Soviet domino scenario into the Persian Gulf. It was Nixon's worldview
which led him to approve critical military shipments to Israel - during the
1973 War - in defiance of the Arab oil embargo and brutal pressure by the
Saudi lobby in Washington, and in spite of the Democratic pattern of the
Jewish voters.

On the other hand, President Clinton displayed an affinity toward Judaism,
the Jewish People and the Jewish State. However, his worldview accepted
Arafat as a national liberation leader, elevated him to the most frequent
guest at the White House, underestimated the threat of Islamic terrorism,
unintentionally facilitated its expansion from 1993 (first "Twin Tower"
attack) to the 9/11 terrorist tsunami, adding fuel to the fire of Middle
East and global turbulence.

How would the worldview of Obama, McCain and their advisors shape US policy
toward Israel?

1. According to McCain, World War III between Western democracies and
Islamic terror/rogue regimes is already in process. According to Obama, the
conflict is with a radical Islamic minority, which could be dealt with
through diplomacy, foreign aid, cultural exchanges and a lower US military
profile. Thus, McCain's worldview highlights – while Obama's worldview
downplays – Israel's role as a strategic ally. McCain recognizes that
US-Israel relations have been shaped by shared values, mutual threats and
joint interests and not by frequent disagreements over the Arab-Israeli
conflict.

2. According to Obama, the US needs to adopt the worldview of the Department
of State bureaucracy (Israel's staunchest critic in Washington,) pacify the
knee-jerk-anti-Israel-UN, move closer to the Peace-at-any-Price-Western
Europe and appease the Third World, which blames the West and Israel for the
predicament of the Third World and the Arabs. On the other hand, McCain
contends that the US should persist – in defiance of global odds - in being
the Free World's Pillar of Fire, ideologically and militarily.

3. According to Obama, Islamic terrorism constitutes a challenge for
international law enforcement agencies and terrorists should be brought to
justice. According to McCain, they are a military challenge and should be
brought down to their knees. Obama's passive approach adrenalizes the veins
of terrorists and intensifies Israel's predicament, while McCain's approach
bolsters the US' and Israel's war on terrorism.

4. Obama and his advisors assume that Islamic terrorism is driven by
despair, poverty, erroneous US policy and US presence on Muslim soil in the
Persian Gulf. On the other hand, McCain maintains that Islamic terrorism is
driven by ideology, which considers US values (freedom of expression,
religion, media, movement, market and Internet) and US power a most lethal
threat that must be demolished. McCain's worldview supports Israel's battle
against terrorism, demonstrating that the root cause of the Arab-Israel
conflict is not the size – but the existence - of Israel.

5. Contrary to McCain, Obama is convinced – just like Tony Blair - that the
Palestinian issue is the core cause of Middle East turbulence and
anti-Western Islamic terrorism, and therefore requires a more assertive US
involvement, exerting additional pressure on Israel. The intriguing
assumption that a less-than-100 year old Palestinian issue is the root cause
of 1,400 year old inter-Arab Middle East conflicts and Islamic terrorism,
would deepen US involvement in Israel-Palestinians negotiations and
transform the US into more of a neutral broker and less of a special ally of
Israel, which would drive Israel into sweeping concessions.

Obama's worldview would be welcomed by supporters of an Israeli rollback to
the 1949 ceasefire lines, including the repartitioning of Jerusalem and the
opening of the "Pandora Refugees' Box." On the other hand, McCain's
worldview adheres to the assumption that an Israeli retreat would convert
the Jewish State from a power of deterrence to a punching bag, from a
producer – to a consumer – of national security and from a strategic asset
to a strategic burden in the most violent, volatile and treacherous region
in the world.

The writer is a Middle Eastern and American affairs expert

http://www.acpr.org.il/people/yettinger.html

http://yoramettinger.newsnet.co.il/Front/NewsNet/newspaper.asp