החיים והמות ביד הלשון

I don't remember where our sages said החיים והמות ביד הלשון, but I know of one guy who probably wishes he kept his tongue in his mouth:

Former Justice Minister Haim Ramon was found guilty of indecent conduct by the Tel Aviv Magistrates' Court on Wednesday. The three judges decided unanimously to convict Ramon.

Ramon was accused of having sexually harassed a female soldier at the Prime Minister's Office in July by "placing his lips on her lips and inserting his tongue in her mouth." Following the indictment, he resigned his post as justice minister.

Personally I have no confidence whatsoever in the Israeli judicial system. However I shall not shed any tears for Mr. Ramon, who supported the ill-fated Oslo Accords and "disengagement".

Sanhedrin Rabbis To Be Investigated

Here is the latest attempt of the Israeli judicial establishment to use their power as a means of quelling free speech:

Police were instructed to investigate rabbis calling to apply the 'din moser' - an edict that calls for capital punishment of one who betrays a fellow Jew to the authorities - to IDF Central Command Chief Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh. Assistant State Prosecutor Shai Nitzan gave the order Wednesday.

Remember the name Shai Nitzan. I'll mention a little bit about him later on in this post.

The headline to the ynetnews article I just quoted reads as follows:

Rabbis who threatened IDF general to be probed

Central Command chief, who recently signed a number of preventive restraining orders against right-wing extremists, receives letter from special Sanhedrin-affiliated court stating his alleged infractions and detailing death verdict

This is of course a media distortion. Matthew Wagner at jpost.com preceded ynetnews with this kind of garbage journalism on Jan. 18, 2007:

A group of rabbis have issued a halachic opinion implying that OC Central Command Maj.-Gen. Yair Naveh deserves to be killed.

The Sanhedrin has already responded to Wagner's distortions on their web site. Being that the case is clear cut i.e. no threats were issued here, I wondered what makes Shai Nitzan want to waste the police's time. A Google search found some very interesting information about Mr. Nitzan from Ben Chorin's blog:

The Knesset Law Committee (vaadat chukah) held a hearing today on two reports on violations of rights of disengagement opponents... Three little girls who sat in jail for extended periods came but weren't given an opportunity to speak at the hearing. They were interviewed by the press before the session. If anybody hears or sees coverage of the story in the press, please let me know...

Shai Nitzan, the assistant DA in charge of prosecuting disengagement opponents (and a no-longer-kippa-wearing graduate of Netiv Meir) tried to downplay the charges by noting that only 5 kids were detained for the duration of proceedings against them. This was totally disingenuous since it deliberately ignores the many more kids who were held for over a month but not for the duration, as well as the many who were put under house arrest with no legal justification.

Caroline Glick also took notice of Mr Nitzan:

This week, Israel's state prosecutor's office announced that it is considering a plan that would declare "negligent" parents of minor children who are repeatedly arrested for taking part in protests against the government's withdrawal and expulsion plan from Gaza and northern Samaria.

In so declaring the parents, the state would pave the way for the forcible removal of these children from their homes and their transfer to state custody. That is, the Israeli government's newest way to fight opposition protests against its plan to forcibly remove 10,000 law-abiding Israeli citizens from their homes, farms and communities this summer is to threaten parents with the forcible removal of their children from their custody if their children don't agree to stop protesting against the forcible removal plan.

This child confiscation proposal, which was defended on Wednesday by Deputy Attorney-General Shai Nitzan, is more than simply controversial. It is totalitarian. It is not simply hard-hearted. It is inhuman. And in announcing it, the government showed that in light of the precipitous drop in public support for its plan, it has lost its connection to the principles of democracy, morality and simple human decency which are the outstanding characteristics of the Israeli public.

Hashem Yerachem!

Update: The Failed Blogger Messiah doesn't know how to distinguish between truth and media distortion. And he has the gall to write in the header of his blog,

"The seal of G-d is Truth." – Rabbi Hanina, Babylonian Talmud Sanhedrin 64a

Shmittah Is Coming!

Next year will be the seventh year in the shmittah cycle. Arutz 7 has an article about how the Rabbinate is preparing for Shmittah. Here's a peek:

Following a special session of the Chief Rabbinate Council on the topic, the Rabbinate decided to make "great efforts to reduce the reliance on the dispensation to a minimum."

Every seventh year, the Land of Israel must lie fallow, forbidden to be worked to produce its fruits. The year is known as Shemittah, from the root meaning to "drop" or "abandon." In the Shemittah of 1889, rabbis of the Land of Israel agreed to temporarily sell parts of the Land to non-Jews, so that certain agricultural activities could be carried out. As the national economy grew and the potential losses - including the very destruction of the fledgling Jewish community - became more threatening, the dispensation became more widespread and institutionalized.

The dispensation, called the heter mechirah, was never universally accepted, and continues to be a matter of controversy even now. Among the scholars who accepted it were Rabbis Yitzchak Elchanan Spektor, Avraham I. Kook, Tzvi Pesach Frank, Yechiel Michel Tukachinsky and Shlomo Yosef Zevin, while Rabbis Naftali Tzvi Yehuda Berlin, Yechiel Michel Epstein and the Chazon Ish opposed it. Among living rabbis, Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef supports it, explaining that Shemittah applies nowadays only by Rabbinic dictum, while Rabbi Yosef Shalom Elyashiv opposes it.

Definitely Not Glatt Kosher

Who remembers Liora Glatt-Berkowitz(LGB for short)? I blogged about her a long time ago. She was attorney from the Israeli Prosecutors Office that leaked details on the Cyril Kern investigation to the Haaretz newspaper. This was in violation of the laws of the State of Israel whose judicial system she worked for. She was convicted of this crime in a plea bargain where other more serious charges were dropped.

Well Ms. LGB is back in the news:

Attorney Liora Glatt-Berkovich, who while serving as a Tel Aviv district prosecutor leaked the judicial inquiry into the Cyril Kern affair, filed a lawsuit in Tel Aviv District Court yesterday against former Haaretz court reporter Baruch Kra and former Haaretz news editor Shmuel Rosner.

Glatt-Berkovich, who is suing for NIS 2.5 million, claims Kra broke a number of promises he made to her, including not to publish documents she gave him and to call her from secure lines only, in order to protect her identity as the source.

You can read about in Ha'aretz or at jpost.com . It is interesting to note that both articles neglect to note that LGB committed a crime and was convicted. But then again, why pay attention to such small details?

I'm simply shocked at the chutzpah of the lady. She committed a crime, and she is upset that Ha'aretz was not careful enough in covering up her tracks. Jpost:

Glatt-Berkowitz wrote that she told Kra not to display the Justice Ministry's letter to the South African government and not to mention the letter she had written to the state attorney, since only she and the state attorney knew about it. She also told him not to call her on a phone that could be traced. He allegedly promised to abide by all of those conditions in return for the scoop.

But Kra broke all of the promises, Glatt-Berkowitz said, and called her several times from his cellphone. Police later ordered a printout of his phone calls and found the calls to her.

Haaretz:

The lawsuit alleges that Glatt-Berkovich and Kra agreed that the two documents she gave him - a draft request for a judicial inquiry and a letter to the state prosecution - would be destroyed or kept in Amos Schocken's safe at Haaretz and would not be given to anyone, unless the newspaper needed to defend itself in the event of a slander suit.

Glatt-Berkovich says her identity was revealed by comparing the staple marks on the judicial inquiry request, which was given to police by Channel 2 reporter Moshe Nussbaum, "or someone on his behalf."

Glatt-Berkovich maintains that while being investigated for leaking information, she was presented with evidence and segments of Kra's cellphone conversation along with the police forensic opinion that the staple marks on the copy handed over by Nussbaum and the copy she gave investigators were identical.

Does this sound like an attorney or a mobster?

Building Bridges In Jerusalem

It is supposed to look like this in the end.

It's Just Another Day

Innocent Until Proven Guilty

In spite of the attempts by the Israeli MSM to convict President Moshe Katzav without a trial, I believe in the legal adage of "innocent until proven guilty."

This just in:

(IsraelNN.com) The Knesset House Committee voted several minutes ago to accept President Moshe Katzav's request to suspend himself from duties temporarily, and Knesset Speaker Dalia Itzik now is acting President.

The vote was 13-11 following an hour recess called by committee chairman Ruhama Abraham (Kadima), who failed to convince the members to reach a consensus.

MSM Fails The Test

From the Augean Stables blog: The Media and the Dysfunctions of the 21st Century: Address at the 7th Annual Herzliya Conference:

Let me cut to the chase. If this wondrous experiment in human freedom that was launched on both sides of the Atlantic in the late 18th century survives to the middle of the 21st century, historians will look back on the performance of the MSM in the first decade of that century, in particular its coverage of the Arab-Israeli conflict, and give the journalists’ “first draft of history” an F.

- An F for failing to source-check – any impartial study will show that journalists systematically and incorrectly favored Palestinian over Israelis sources of information during the Intifada
- An F for failing to correct their errors — leaving Israel between libel and silence.
- An F for obsessively reporting the Arab Israeli conflict while people suffered from genocidal campaigns in other parts of the world
- An F for giving into intimidation and practicing access journalism without informing their public
- An F for scarcely mentioning the tidal wave of paranoia and hatred that currently dominates the Muslim media
- An F for echoing and amplifying the demonizing narratives told about Israel which they treat with unqualified credulity
- And F for allowing our media to be exploited by totalitarian forces as a theater of war rather than protecting that civic public trust from such vicious propaganda.
So when historians look back, I think they will identify the MSM’s appalling performance as one of the main sources the West’s vulnerability to Global Jihad at the beginning of this century. How else can we explain the astounding success of what, only a decade ago, seemed like a racist bad joke: Islam wants to take over Europe? You must be kidding.

Just Gimme Some Truth

Many of the "Israeli Elite" at the Herzliya Conference were probably not ready to get "some truth" from former IDF Chief of Staff Bogy Yaalon:

Speaking at the Herzliya Conference today, the former Chief of Staff said, "Conventional wisdom has it that a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will bring stablity to the Middle East. It is also widely felt that the core problem is Israel's occupation [of Judea and Samaria] and that a two-state solution will solve the 100-year-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict."

"These two mistaken assumptions," Yaalon said, "do not allow a new type of thinking that can truly solve the problem."

The Palestinians have no interest in a two-state solution with Israel, Yaalon said: "They have never agreed to any partition of the land. They objected to the Peel Commission's proposal in 1937, and to the UN's plan in 1947, and again in 2000 in Camp David. Arafat's rejection then of Ehud Barak's generous offer [of 95-98% of Judea and Samaria] and the war he launched instead showed that his goal was to prevent a two-state solution and, especially, the recognition of Israel... The fact that Kassams continue to fly from Gaza also prove this... Hamas has made it quite clear as well: they are interested in one Arab state from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea."

Similarly, he said, "The objective of Hizbullah is not the liberation of southern Lebanon - but rather the destruction of Israel... World War III is currently underway; a clash of civilizations between the West and radical extremist Islam. Al-Qaeda did not arise because of Israel, and the State of Israel was not yet around when the Muslim Brotherhood was formed [in 1928]..."

"Therefore," Yaalon said, "in my opinion, a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will not bring calm to the Middle East... The lack of an authoritative Palestinian leadership that is capable or willing to implement a two-state solution, and the fact that an entire young Palestinian generation is being brought up on hatred and death, shows that the two-state paradigm is not relevant now, if at all."

Listeners to public taxpayer-supported Israel Radio were prevented from hearing Yaalon's words, as broadcaster Gabi Gazit cut off the broadcast after three minutes. Gazit said he would return to the speech if Yaalon said something more "actual and hot." On the other hand, Gazit "allowed" the broadcast of the left-wing speech of Defense Minister Amir Peretz nearly in its entirety.

"We have experienced too many golden calves in the past years," Yaalon said, "that were supposed to give us hope and provide quick solutions. What we need is leadership that will give true solutions, not spins."

S ST STU STUP STUPI STUPID

I photographed this near Jerusalem's Central Bus Station:




These guys are entertaining when they dance around in the street. However, I wish they would stop "decorating" every blank wall.

The Moonbat Parade Continues

I don't know if I should laugh or if I should cry. Professional hate-monger Tommy Lapid has weighed in on the "violent incident" in Hebron, where Yifat Alkobi cursed her Arab neighbor. Check out his ridiculous article, "Stop the Jewish barbarians in Hebron". The barbarian of Popolitika, whose hate-mongering against the ultra-Orthodox has long ceased to bear fruit, is now looking for a new "tree" to pick. Judging from the talbacks there, the public isn't buying it.

David Wilder, the spokesman for the Jewish community of Hebron, wrote an excellent piece about the incident. I am quoting an excerpt here, but please read the entire article:

For the past year and a half, radical left-wing organizations, led by the International Solidarity Movement, Christian Peacemaker Teams, B'tselem and Machsom Watch have essentially staged numerous provocations at the entrance to the Tel Rumeida Jewish neighborhood attempting to draw Jewish residents into violent encounters which are filmed, edited and fed to an unsympathetic media.

Their goal is to dehumanize Hebron Jews.

In understanding what goes on in Hebron, context is important. How many people know that Jewish children walking home from school are periodically attacked by local Arab youths on the road.

Tel Rumeida is a pressure cooker, and as tends to occur throughout the world, sometimes people lose control and use language not usually part of their everyday vocabulary. A psychologist e-mailed me that last week he found himself cursing an Arab who spit on him on a Jerusalem street. Taxi drivers curse commuters every hour of the day.

Should "nice Jewish ladies" use coarse language? It's certainly not polite, but I've heard worse.

Incidentally, how many people know that the Yifat video was filmed some six months ago. Why was such a "devastating incident" kept secret all this time before the film was publicized and a complaint issued?

There is one reason, and one reason alone for the fuss: The prime minister is facing several criminal investigations. The defense minister is holding on to his job by the skin of his teeth.

Both of them are looking for a good way to distract public attention from their woes.

Together with a very left-wing media, they have found the solution: Yifat Alkobi and the 'W' word.

Scraping It In Tel Aviv

I caught this skyscraper on the cosmic camera. For some reason, perhaps the perspective, it looks like the tower is leaning:

Knesset Member Yuri Stern Dead at 58

Baruch Dayan HaEmet

I must admit that I knew very little about the man. It seems that he was one of the more respected members of the Knesset.

The story:

Arutz 7

Ynetnews

Jpost

Ha'aretz

A New Jblogger On The Block

The newest jblogger is none other than MK Avraham Ravitz's of the United Torah Judaism party:

This is MK Avraham Ravitz's (United Torah Judaism) first JPost blog; it is part of a new series in which prominent politicians from across the political spectrum debate hot issues on their own personal blogs.

The Total Failure

Check in Google

Hat tip: ynetnews

Yawn Of The Day

The ynetnews headline screams:

Olmert on settler violence: I am ashamed

I think to myself, "What happened? Did the big bad settlers throw stones or beat up an Arab?" I read further:

Prime minister watches video clip published in Ynet in which Jewish woman settler in Hebron attacks Arab family: 'This is brutality, arrogance, and contempt that can't be come to terms with.' Settler doesn't show for interrogation, summoned again for Monday.

Again I think to myself, "What did this woman do?" I continue to read:

Prime Minister Ehud Olmert responded for the first time Sunday to the incident in the Tel Rumeida section of Hebron in which a settler woman verbally attacked an Arab family.

Am I supposed to laugh, or what? The jokers at ynetnews included a video of the "violent" incident as well. Do the people over there really want us to take them seriously?

Update: David Wilder, the spokesman for the Jewish community of Hevron weighs in.

Update: Hevron Jews Protesting Probe of Heckler

Cyberjews

New from ynetnews:

Your guide to everything Jewish on the net: Blogs, Aliya and Klita agencies, Jewish Organizations and more

Kol HaKavod!

Why Do Jews Salt Meat?

First, the wrong answer, courtesy of jpost.com:

Ezra Kedem, chef and owner of Arcadia for 12 years, explains: "We are an Israeli-style kitchen doing original Mediterranean food with Arabic influences. I have a catering outlet that is kosher, but didn't want the certificate [for the restaurant] because of our crowd; we get a lot of business during Shabbat day. I think kashrut is something good... mesoratim [traditional Jews] find themselves here and I feel totally fine with that. At the end of the day I work with the same elements, but there are laws that I don't understand. I know that once there weren't refrigerators so we used salt [on meat], but now that is more symbolic."

Now the correct answer, courtesy of aish.com:

The Torah forbids eating of the blood of an animal or bird (Leviticus 7:26); fish do not have this requirement. Thus in order to extract the blood, the entire surface of meat must be covered with coarse salt. It is then left for an hour on an inclined or perforated surface to allow the blood to flow down freely. The meat is then thoroughly washed to remove all salt. Meat must be koshered within 72 hours after slaughter so as not to permit the blood to congeal. (An alternate means of removing the blood is through broiling on a perforated grate over an open fire.)

It is disturbing that the editors at jpost.com did not add a parenthetical note correcting the chef's misunderstanding. Perhaps the next jpost article will be about the "hole in the sheet."

Everything That You Wanted To Know About Noam Federman

Very interesting.

Israel Gets Its First Moslem Minister

Ynetnews:

Defense Minister Amir Peretz appointed MK Raleb Majadele as the Labor party's seventh minister, Minister of Science, Technology, Culture, and Sports.

Majadele is the first Arab to be appointed minister in the State of Israel since its inception.

Actually he is the first Moslem minister. Salah Tarif, a Druze Arab Israeli, served as a Minister Without Portfolio in 2001.

It seems that Peretz, who lacks the qualifications to fill the post of Defense Minister, is continuing the tradition of appointed people lacking the proper qualifications to posts in the Israeli government. According to the Knesset web site, Majadele is a businessman with a high school education. He is certainly a far cry from the reknowned physicist Yuval Ne'eman, who "founded the Ministry of Science and Technology and served as its minister in Yitzhak Shamir's government."

What are the halachic implications of the appointment?

What are the implications of the appointment of an Arab minister for the many Jews who see the State of Israel as the "beginning of the sprouting of our Redemption"? Rabbi Zalman Melamed, Rabbi of Beit El and a leading yeshiva head of the religious-Zionist public, said, "I don't see this as something revolutionary... It is not the government that is holy, but rather the state itself. In any event, we have not been blessing the government for quite a while [since the plans for the Disengagement began to be implemented]."

Rabbi Chanan Porat of Kfar Etzion, a founder of the Gush Emunim settlement organization in Judea and Samaria and a former MK, said, "I think the real issue is not whether he is a Jew or an Arab, but what his positions are; we already have plenty of Cabinet ministers with positions that are too pro-Arab. Take Peretz, for instance; his latest diplomatic plan shows that he is more concerned about a Palestinian state and about Gaza than he is about Sderot... From a Halakhic [Jewish legal] perspective, the late Rabbi Sha'ul Yisraeli [a member of Israel's Chief Rabbinate Council, a Rabbinical Court Judge, and dean of Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav Kook], has already written that appointments that are transient in nature do not violate the prohibition of 'from amongst your brethren.'"

DovBearGate

DovWeasel just isn't leaving good old DovBear alone. It seems that he found seven more examples of plagiarism on DovBear's blog.

This is becoming interesting. It reminds me of the book, All the President's Men. DovWeasel is playing the role of deep-throat, DovBear is Richard Nixon, and Renegade Rebbetzin and Failed Messiah are .... never mind.

Update: "Tricky Dovie" has published the following:

Additional instances of plagiarism not caught during the Ren Reb's Copyscape review are in the process of being corrected. I will continue to examine my blog and to correct every instance of plagiarism that I discover. Future examples of plagiarism and/or phrase-borrowing brought to my personal attention via email will also be corrected. It's extremely important to me that the blog be clean, and any help you can provide me in this endeavor will be appreciated. Thank you

He has also enabled comment moderation on his blog. I wonder why.

Chana Meira Is Back!

She's in Israel and has started blogging again. I wonder what some of the other Israelis think about this observation of her's:

However, what has not escaped my notice is that some Americans are quite arrogant and act like they own the state, or are treating Israel like their little playground.

Have I Forgotten English, Or Did I Never Really Know It?

That is the question that I ask myself when I encounter words on other blogs or web sites that I don't understand. Has living in Israel spoiled my English, or perhaps my knowledge of English was never that great to begin with?

Today I came across the word "revenants" over at My Right Word. Do you know what the word means? Come on, tell the truth!

revenant \REV-uh-nuhnt\, noun:
One who returns after death (as a ghost) or after a long absence.

Quote Of The Day

Here:

We get unforunately too comfortable in the nations that let us dwell there in our galuses. We may live in America , but we're NOT Americans!!!!! It's like calling ourselves Mitz[r]im because we were born in Egypt.
B"H America isn't flooded with anti-semitism. However, what is dangerous about the current galus and OUR galus here in America (canada..wherever ) is that we forget that we're IN an exile ourselves.

Italiani Brava Gente

Is this not entertaining?

(IsraelNN.com) Italy is calling on European Union member states and the United Nations to push for an international moratorium on capital punishment. The move follows the controversial execution Saturday of Iraq's former dictator Saddam Hussein, who was sentenced to death for committing crimes against humanity.

Benito Mussolini's granddaughter Alessandra Mussolini was shocked by the images of Saddam's execution: "My mind immediately flicked to pictures of my grandfather, who also had his uncovered face exposed to the public for ridicule."

Boo Hoo Hoo!

Longing For The Land Of Israel

From Rabbi Yitzchok Adlerstein at Cross Currents:

The rush piece was on Jews who make aliyah. She asked what Jewish law said about this. Was it obligatory for a Jew to live in Israel? I explained that there was a difference of opinions about the law. Something inside told me that this was not all I should say about the importance of our Holy Land. Yosef did it instinctively; I had to make a conscious choice. I did opt to add a dimension beyond the law. I told her that a good child doesn’t obey the wishes of his parent because he fears the consequences, but because he wants to please his parent. After two millennia of forced separation from our Land, G-d gave us the opportunity to come back and build a center of Jewish life, hopefully as the first step towards the full redemption. How could we not respond to that gift? I considered it a personal failing that I hadn’t made aliyah yet, but hoped to do so, and my married daughter did make the move.

Important Torah Texts Now Online!

Now this is fantastic:

The Bar Ilan University Responsa Project, launched in 1991 in its CD format, was recently uploaded to the Internet on a platform provided by C.D.I. Systems. (See http://www.responsa.co.il)

The virtual library encompasses all major Rabbinic sources representing more than 3,000 years of Hebrew and Aramaic literature. The website includes the Hebrew Bible and its principal commentaries, both the Babylonian and the Jerusalem Talmud with commentaries, Midrashim, the Kabbala's main book - the Zohar, Maimonides' Mishneh Torah, Rabbi Yosef Karo's compilation of halacha - the Shulchan Aruch with commentaries, and the collection of Responsa questions and answers on matters of Jewish law.

The internet version of the Responsa Project includes a variety of tools and capabilities in its various features of search, navigation of texts, and hypertext links between books in different databases.

Parts of the site are free, while full access requires a paid subscription.

Strange Poll At Ynetnews

I don't get it: According to ynetnews

"77 percent of Israel is are dissatisfied with Olmert's performance as prime minister"

but at the same time

"Some 47 percent of the respondents gave the prime minister a grade of "very good," 30 percent gave him a grade of "fairly bad," and 20 percent graded him as "good."

I must be missing something.

Update: The article has been corrected:

Some 47 percent of the respondents gave the prime minister a grade of "very bad," 30 percent gave him a grade of "fairly bad," and 20 percent graded him as "good."

It turns out that I'm not the only one who is not happy with the PM.

Search Of The Day

Here.

Do You Know What Your Daughters Are Reading?

Tzvi Fishman, in his continuing struggle to increase modest dress and behavior, has written another great article. Don't miss it.

Teddy Kollek Passes Away

He was 95 years old:

Teddy Kollek, Jerusalem's legendary mayor, diet at his apartment at the Hod Yerushalayim retirement home in the Kiryat Yovel neighborhood in the city Tuesday morning.

Kollek will be laid to rest on Thursday at the Mount Herzl cemetery in Jerusalem. his coffin will be placed at the Safra Square in Jerusalem Thursday morning, before the funeral procession starts making its way to the cemetery.

I remember Teddy (negatively) for his efforts to stymie the growth of the ultra-Orthodox community in the city:

Architect David Kroyanker says “the ultra-Orthodox are settling predominantly in the north, but the problem is that the border continues to move south. At first traditional religious people arrive, then come the more modern ultra-Orthodox, but it is not long before the neighborhoods become completely ultra-Orthodox.”

Former Mayor Teddy Kollek, who understood in the early 1980s that something has to be done, initiated the construction of a sports complex in north Jerusalem to attract the secular population. The ultra-Orthodox protested against the plan, saying cars traveling in the area would disrupt the Sabbath. Some haredim even went as far as throwing sand and stones in the tractors’ engines to interfere with the construction work.

Eventually the plan was foiled, and the city’s soccer stadium, which was named after mayor Kollek, was built in the southern Malcha neighborhood.

A Hareidi view of the matter:

In the late 1970s, Teddy Kollek, then mayor of Jerusalem, schemed to build an international stadium--to be named after himself--on top of the Shuafat ridge, where the present Ramat Shlomo neighborhood is located. The entrance to the grandiose stadium would be through the 443 road which passes by Ramot. One hundred and twenty buses would be able to leave and enter the stadium grounds at once -- every Shabbos during the soccer season.

Kollek suspected that the plan might arouse opposition from the religious councilmen in the municipality, so he cunningly planned to push it through during a period of elections. Promising the religious councilmen all kinds of financial plums if they would agree to the plans, he distracted them from the main issue and was poised to pass it without serious opposition.

Rabbi Bulman was then living in Sanhedria Murchevet. He heard about the plans and was immediately galvanized into action. Joined by Rabbi Hershel Zaks, Rabbi Yoshua Leiman, and Rav Mordechai Krashinsky, Rabbi Bulman held numerous meetings in his home where plans were laid to counter Kollek.

An Israeli askan, who was deeply involved in the efforts, relates, "Most religious askonim thought that the stadium in Shuafat was a local problem, an inconvenience for the nearby religious community of Sanhedria Murchevet. Rabbi Bulman noticed that the stadium was an attempt by Kollek to cut the northern Jerusalem neighborhoods in half and force a secular Shabbos atmosphere on all the northern religious neighborhoods between Ramot and Mattersdorf.

I would not usually quote this source (World War 4 Report), but I remember hearing Kollek say this on the radio. In 2002 Kollek was in favor of relinquishing Israeli sovereignty over some parts of Jerusalem:

Former longtime Jerusalem mayor Teddy Kollek said Aug. 22 that Palestinians should be granted control over parts of the city, including some disputed Old City holy sites. Kollek said the 200,000 Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem should not be under Israeli control. "Listen, they [the Palestinians] have been sitting there for so many years and feel that it is theirs. You can't achieve calm if you don't give them part of what they want and can control. There's no solution without this," Kollek, mayor from 1965-1993, told Army Radio. "I think there needs to be an arrangement and we need to give something to them [the Arab residents of Jerusalem] and have part for ourselves. It will never be easy." Palestinian residents of East Jerusalem, annexed to Israel after 1967, have Israeli residency and receive Israeli social benefits. They are eligible to vote in municipal elections, which they boycott.

According to Nicholas Bethell, Kollek was also a moser:

By his own admission, according to Nicholas Bethell's The Palestine Triangle, Haganah member Kollek worked "sporadically" with the British and against the Irgun and Lechi, saying, 'We detained Jewish dissidents, interrogated them, then either released them or handed them over to the CID [British Intelligence].'" Irgun and Lechi members caught by the British were often deported, sometimes tortured, and occasionally killed.

Teddy, like all of us, had his good points and bad points. God will judge him.

The Two Zeroes Remain

I made this graphic based on a cartoon that I saw in the Yisraeli newspaper the other day:

HH #100 at Bagel Blogger

This is a truly amazing compilation. Don't miss it!

More Biblical Associations For Saddam

Yesterday I mentioned that the Saddam execution reminded me of Agag's execution at the hands of Samuel. Yaak commented and offered the following:

That's a good Pasuk. Another one is that of the hanging of Haman. Or, the slaying of Balshatzar in Daniel.

Today I saw this at Lemon Lime Moon:

Never mind that Nebuchadnezzar was not Mohammedan nor was he an Arab at all. But such were his fantasies
Psychologists called this Saddam's " Nebuchadnezzar Imperial Complex "because he thought himself to be the reincarnation of the ancient dictator.

Nebuchadnezzar lived for years as a mindless beast and when they found Saddam Hussein he was living in a dirty hole with long fingernails, long hair, covered in filth and living like an animal.
Yesterday on the eve of this important day, Saddam Hussein, who styled himself the modern reincarnation of Nebuchadnezzar was removed from decent human society.

I like it.