Obama’s ‘Hit Man’ Emanuel Splitting US American Jewry

You all know by now that I think that BO stinks. Here's an interesting article which describes how Obama achieved his low rating here in Israel and increasingly among American Jews as well. A taste:

President Obama revealed this week that his White House advisor Rahm Emanuel, whose father was an Israeli and part of the underground resistance movement under the British Mandate, tells him everything he needs to know about Israel.

Emanuel also is the man who choreographed the handshake between former President Bill Clinton, former Prime Minister Yitzchak Rabin and Yasser Arafat on the White House lawn.

He has pushed the president into a head-on collision with the Netanyahu government, but there is a growing opinion that he has also left the president out on a limb. Emanuel’s strategy was to demonstrate that the pro-Israel lobby American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) no longer speaks for American Jewry.

Mondoweis Blogger Philip Weis, who continually attacks a Jewish presence in Judea and Samaria and eastern Jerusalem, wrote last month, “Obama's game is to defeat the Israel lobby from within. He could not defeat the lobby from outside it…. But now he is cracking it like a nut, and counting on Jews to do the cracking.”

That strategy has turned into a wall of opposition, both in Israel, where the president’s popularity rating is near-zero, in the U.S. where Emanuel has simply ignored opposing views of major Jewish organizations, and in the normally anti-settlement American press.

Israeli General: Disengagement Was a Mistake

I knew that! What he said:

The 2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria was "utter nonsense" from a security perspective, Maj.-Gen. (res.) Yiftah Ron-Tal, at the time OC Ground Forces, said Thursday.

Speaking to Army Radio, Ron-Tal said: "Today it's obvious to everyone - at the time it was perhaps under debate - that this was an event that, besides being rough, was simply utter nonsense from a security perspective."

Ron-Tal further described the pullout as a "terrible event." He said he had opposed the plan "in the deepest sense of the word," security-wise, belief-wise and on the national level, and that he had let this opposition be known.

The So Called "Child Starving" Mother Case

This should be interesting:

Deputy Health Minister Ya'acov Litzman instructed the Health Ministry ombudsman for dealing with complaints about medical professionals, Prof. Chaim Hershko, to conduct a broad investigation into the affair of the haredi mother suspected of starving her child, Israel Radio reported on Wednesday. The probe is to examine alleged shortcomings in the medical system's conduct in the case, including of medical officials and those around the mother's psychiatric assessments.

Perhaps we'll get to know the truth. Personally, I do not buy the Hospital/Police/Israeli MSM version.

BTW, check out this blog (in Hebrew) that has lots of info on the case.

Thoughts on the Ninth of Av

"The three weeks", "the nine days", "the week of", with their various prohibitions, will soon culminate with the fast of the Ninth of Av. The various customs of mourning reach their zenith tomorrow. If not getting a hair cut, not eating meat, not listening to music, and the other customs of mourning have not made an impression on us, have not made us consider the depth of our tragedy, perhaps the fast, reading the Book of Lamentations, and the reciting of the Kinot will.

The corpse is laying in front of us. The Temple Mount is in ruins. The commandments that deal with the sacrifices, which comprise such a large part of the Torah that God has commanded us, are not being performed. Do we understand the scope of our catastrophe?

Tomorrow is our chance to contemplate not only the lack of the Holy Temple, but also the other tragedies that our generation is witness to. How can we not lament about the widespread ignorance of Judaism among the Jewish People? How can we not cry about the fact that the gates of the land of Israel are wide open and so many Jews despise the Desirable Land and choose to cling to their surrogate mother? Is it not a calamity that the wicked nations of the world, along with a few rotten, dangling grapes in the vineyard of Israel, are trying to limit Jewish settlement in the land of our forefathers? Shouldn't we tear our clothes in mourning over the plague of intermarriage and assimilation? Are we not witnessing a silent holocaust, sans death camps and gas chambers but a holocaust nevertheless?

If the Temple is not built in the meantime, may tomorrow's fast be a meaningful one. May we do our best to improve our ways in order to merit seeing the rebuilding of the Temple.

Seen in Jerusalem

This armchair seems to be out of place:

I've Never Seen Anything in the Israeli Press Like This!!!

Check out this site's take on the tragic murder in Batzra. OMG!!!

HH #227

You can check it out here.

Obama is Despised in Israel

Amnon Lord got it right:

Thus Obama, who initially was much admired by many in Israel, has failed in his attempt to create a political crisis here and instead reaped a harvest of hatred. These days he is despised in Israel, with his lack of moral fiber regarding Iran and the elections putsch there adding fuel to the fire. Both his policy toward Iran and that regarding Israel have exposed US weaknesses.

This blogger did not pay too much attention to the elections in the U.S.A. Obama revealed himself as a sleaze bag to me and others here is Israel during his Cairo speech. His racist policies with regards to where Jews are allowed to live are just a continuation of his sleaziness. BO stinks!

Remembering Walter Cronkite

Check out this excellent article by Irv Kass. Here's a snippet:

When I walked into ABC News headquarters in New York City, in August of 1973, my goal was to become the next Walter Cronkite. It was my first TV news job. Having just graduated from NYU a few months earlier, I quickly learned that my own interests and talents were better suited to producing newscasts, and managing news operations. But, despite my change in career plans, it was still Mr. Cronkite who represented the ideals and positive reasons for wanting to work in the news business.

Haveil Havalim Has Been Hi-Jacked

Here.

The case against Obama

I don't agree with everything that Isi Leibler wrote but he does make some very good points:

President Obama's keynote Cairo address included effusive praise for Islam, highlighted Western shortcomings but omitted mention of global jihad and Islamic fundamentalism. It also legitimized the Arab narrative including its malicious and false historical analogies. By alleging that the State of Israel was a by-product of the Holocaust, the president of the United States denied 3,500 years of Jewish history and the central role of Jerusalem in Judaism. He endorsed the Arafat mantra that Israel had been inflicted upon the Arabs by the Europeans to compensate for the Holocaust, even hinting at equivalence between Jewish and Arab suffering. Obama ignored the rejectionism, ongoing wars and waves of Arab terror directed against the Jewish state since the day of its creation. He also compared the Palestinians to the US civil rights movement. When the president of the world's greatest superpower provides an imprimatur for such a false narrative it represents a major breakthrough for those seeking to delegitimize Israel.

Remember, B.O. stinks.

Truth Sprouts From the Land!

Shai Dromi Acquitted of Manslaughter:

Shai Dromi, a Negev farmer who shot and killed a Bedouin thief in January 2007, has been acquitted of manslaughter charges.

The ruling was handed down Wednesday morning in the Be’er Sheva District Court by a majority vote. He was convicted, however, on charges of illegal possession of weapons.

Dromi owns a small farm in the Negev outside Meitar, northeast of Be'er Sheva and just south of the southern border of Judea and the Hevron area. The area is constantly plagued by Bedouin thieves, with long-standing complaints by residents about police helplessness. Dromi shot at thieves in the middle of the night after seeing that his dog had been poisoned and was dying in front of his eyes, wounding two men; one of them bled to death, though Dromi said he tried to administer first-aid.

Court Orders Arab Squatters Off Jerusalem Property:

Yitzchak Herskovitz, 78, has won a critical battle in his 16-year legal struggle to regain control of his property from Arab squatters in Jerusalem. The Jerusalem District Court ruled in his favor that the contested property, in southern Jerusalem’s Givat HaMatos neighborhood, in fact belongs to him.

Herskovitz must now begin the complex process of having the illegal trespassers removed from the site. It appears clear that the police will have to be involved, and/or that the squatters will appeal the ruling yet again.

Hizbullah Weapons Depot Explodes in Lebanon:

Lebanese and Israeli sources confirmed Tuesday afternoon that a series of explosions that rocked the border area earlier in the day took place at a Hizbullah terrorist weapons depot.

The storehouse, located near the Lebanese village of Khirbet Salim, some 20 kilometers from Israel's northern border, was filled with Katyusha rockets, automatic rifles and ammunition.

The Lebanese Army and the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) immediately closed off the area and began an investigation into the incident. Journalists were barred from the scene.

Sources said the depot contained arms that dated back to the 2006 Second Lebanon War.

The ceasefire agreement that ended the war -- United Nations resolution 1701 -- stipulated that all militias south of the Litani River, including Hizbullah, be disarmed. However, the terrorist organization has categorically refused to comply.

"We have the right, the entire right to possess any weapon, including air defense weapons, and we have also the right to use these weapons when we need them," the group's leader, Sheikh Hassan Nasrallah declared in a February 17 speech.

UNIFIL has refused to enforce the resolution, saying it is the responsibility of the Lebanese government to disarm the group.

The Lebanese government also refuses to disarm Hizbullah, which has a significant representation in the country's parliament, as well as in the cabinet. Although the Shi'ite terror organization has not won a majority in the government, it nonetheless wields significant influence there, as well as among the Lebanese population.

Israeli intelligence officials have estimated that Hizbullah possesses more arms, with longer ranges, than it had stockpiled prior to the war. According to the most recent reports, the group's arsenal includes up to 10,000 long-range rockets and 20,000 short-range rockets, all being stored in southern Lebanon within range of Israel.

Kiryat Arba Shooter off the Hook:

Jerusalem prosecutors officially withdrew their case against Kiryat Arba resident Zev Baruda Tuesday, a month after the Supreme Court ordered the prosecution to reveal key information or withdraw the case. Baruda had been caught on video shooting at an Arab, but he claims he did so in self-defense.

The defense had demanded the prosecution release security evidence that could have helped acquit Baruda. The prosecution claimed that releasing the evidence would damage national security interests.

כל האמת על ברק חוסיין אבמה - הסרט (Kippah tip: Yaak)

HH #225

Maya from How to Be Israeli does a great job of presenting posts from all over the jblogosphere.

Tammuz on the Blog

Here.

Yossi Sarid's Award to Niece's Book - Revoked

IsraelNN.com:

Israel’s National Lottery has revoked a prestigious prize after the Land of Israel Legal Forum found “irregularities” in the award process. The main complaint: Chief judge Yossi Sarid is the winning book's editor's uncle.

The Land of Israel Legal Forum last week asked the National Lottery, Mifal HaPayis, to nullify its Sapir Prize for Narrative Literature for this year. The prize had been awarded to Alon Hilu for his book The Dejani Plantation.

The reason for the complaint: The chairman of the prize-awarding committee, former Education Minister Yossi Sarid of the far-left Meretz Party, happened to be the uncle of the book’s editor, Rena Verbin. In addition, the Forum noted, Sarid and Hilu appeared together at several events sponsored by the book’s publisher Yediot Acharonot in honor of their books’ release.

Here's an interesting reaction to this blatant act of nepotism:

"I am shocked and surprised," one of the winners, former Ma'ariv editor Amnon Dankner, told Army Radio on Thursday morning. "I believe what has happened here, contrary to reports, is that the problem is that the editor [of the winning book] is the niece of Yossi Sarid. There was also a problem with another of the judges, Prof. [Ariel] Hirschfeld, because the book he backed was dedicated to him."

"I don't think we can hide behind the excuse of being a small country," he said.

"I didn't know about the relationship, though, and I think that really innocent people, like the contestants and the winner, have been harmed by the inappropriate conduct of the members of the judging committee," Dankner said.

"Even if they didn't have any bad intentions, the result is catastrophic and terrible. We all deserve an apology."

Even more telling is Ha'aretz's apologetics for the leftist that stumbled:

It is common knowledge in Israeli society that everything and everyone is corrupt to some degree, and it is just a matter of time and some digging until the sordid truth will be out. It has to be said that that notion is not entirely unfounded, and some of our first and best citizens contributed (and received contributions) for such a notion to prevail. The result is an atmosphere of a righteous hunt for possible miscreants, and each public deed is prone to public scrutiny by innuendos, investigative reports and complaints lodged with the State Comptrollers' office.

A Tale of Two Forums

Remember the graphic I posted of the professional liar, Barack Hussein Obama? The young artist emlking posted it on two different forums. One forum received the work enthusiastically, while the other forum did not. The threads are in Hebrew and they are worth reading. You can learn a lot about Israeli society by the reactions the graphic evoked.

Our Prayers are With RivkA bat Tirzel

Please read.

Rabbi Shapira: Time to Fight Neo-Reformists in Our Midst

From IsraelNN.com:

Rabbi Yehoshua Shapira, a leading national-religious rabbi, has declared war on what he says is a neo-Reform stream within the religious Zionist camp. “This justifies tearing the clothes [in mourning – ed.] and tearing apart the public,” he told an audience of religious youth from the Ezra movement a few weeks ago. A recording of his speech was made public Sunday by Kobi Nachshoni on Ynet.

Shapira belongs to the more strictly traditional stream within the national-religious movement, which has been dubbed Hardali -- an acronym formed from the Hebrew words meaning "Hareidi national-religious."

He cited recent Halachic [Jewish-legal] rulings allowing pregnancy out of wedlock and the activity of the feminist women’s group Kolech, as well as that of Hod, an organization of religious homosexuals.

Read the rest.

Haveil Havalim #224 - The Fourth of July Weekend Edition

Here!

A Picture From Hebron

I was in Hebron yesterday for a wedding at the cave of the patriarchs. On a nearby building was this sign:



Here's a link to make it easy! http://www.machpela.com/