A Jew's view from the capital of Israel and the future site of the Third Temple, may it speedily be rebuilt.
Only 12 percent of Israelis believe U.S. President Barack Obama's policies are supportive of Israel, according to a poll released on Thursday.I wonder who those 12% are.
The poll was conducted jointly by the Ramallah-based Palestinian Center for Police and Survey Research and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. It was conducted between August 9 and 15.
For the record, I don't agree with the guy. I am also against graffiti.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
"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."Even more telling is Ha'aretz's apologetics for the leftist that stumbled:
"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."
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.
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.Read the rest.
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.
Several IDF navy boats intercepted, boarded and took control of a boat of pro-Arab activists trying to break Israeli sovereignty over coastal waters Tuesday afternoon. No one was injured, and an IDF spokesman told Israel National News that no shots were fired.
It was the first time the IDF has boarded one of the boats since the pro-Arab “Free Gaza” movement began sending ships to Gaza last August. The previous sailing, earlier this year, ended up with a collision with a navy boat that forced the activists away from Gaza. The activists have accused the navy of purposely ramming their vessel.
Among the 17 passengers on Tuesday's vessel, not including the captain and three-man crew, are former U.S. Congresswoman Cynthia McKinney, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Mairead Maguire and three journalists, including two from the Arabic-language Al Jazeera network. Other passengers are from the United States, Denmark. Ireland, Bahrain, Jordan, Yemen and Britain. One Israeli, Lubna Masarfwa, also is on board, according to the Free Gaze group that organized the voyage.
As the navy surrounded the activists’ boat, McKinney said by phone from the vessel, "I am extremely angry. We demand that the Israeli government call off their attack dogs.”
The IDF would not confirm or deny a charge by an Irish activist that the navy threatened to open fire if the boat did not turn back to Cyprus, where it departed on Monday. The navy boarded the boat after it passed from international waters into the area that Israel controls and which the activists claim belongs to the Palestinian Authority.
In the two years that I had attempted, ultimately unsuccessfully, to help Michael repair his life, what most frightened me was not that he would be arrested again for child molestation, although he later was. Rather it was that he would die. As I told CNN on April 22, 2004, "My great fear, and why I felt I had to be distanced from Michael ... was that he would not live long. My fear was that Michael's life would be cut short. When you have no ingredients of a healthy life, when you are totally detached from that which is normal, and when you are a super-celebrity you, God forbid, end up like Janis Joplin like Elvis... Michael is headed in that direction."
I am no prophet and it did not take a rocket scientist to see the impending doom. Michael was a man in tremendous pain and his tragedy was to medicate his pain away rather than addressing its root cause. On many occasions when I visited him he would emerge from his room woozy and clearly sedated. Who were the doctors who were giving him this stuff? Was there no one to save him from himself? Was there no one to intervene?
Patriarch Abuna Pauolos of the Ethiopian Orthodox Church has scheduled a news conference for Friday afternoon in Rome to unveil the Biblical Ark of the Covenant or make a full statement regarding it. While in Rome for meetings with Pope Benedict XVI, he told reporters that the time had come to reveal the Holy Ark before the world, adding that the holy container has been hidden in the custody of his church for hundreds of years.
The claim that the Ark has been kept at the Church, in the city of Axum, is an old one, but this is the first time that the Church plans to actually reveal the actual container, or news of it. It is not known whether the Church claims that the actual Tablets of the Law are inside it. Pauolos said "The Ark of the Covenant has been in Ethiopia for many centuries. As Patriarch, I have seen it with my own eyes, and only a few, highly-qualified persons could do the same - until now."
Jerusalem mayor Nir Barkat said Tuesday evening that the city-operated Safra parking lot would open this coming Sabbath, less than a month after the parking lot closed when Haredi protests on the issue turned violent. He also said the city had asked courts for permission to open the Carta parking lot, near Jerusalem’s old city.Can I say that "I told you so"? Check my other Barkat related posts.
“This is a matter of principle that doesn’t change the status quo,” Barkat claimed. “Consideration and negotiations do not take the place of making decisions when necessary.”
Only 6 percent of Jewish Israelis consider the views of American President Barack Obama's administration pro-Israel, according to a new Jerusalem Post-sponsored Smith Research poll.Read the rest of the article for various explanations on why Israelis have a negative opinion regarding B.O.
The poll, which has a margin of error of 4.5%, was conducted among a representative sample of 500 Israeli Jewish adults this week, following Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's speech in which he expressed his support for a demilitarized Palestinian state.
Another 50% of those sampled consider the policies of Obama's administration more pro-Palestinian than pro-Israeli, and 36% said the policies were neutral. The remaining 8% did not express an opinion.
The numbers were a stark contrast to the last poll published May 17, on the eve of the meeting between Netanyahu and Obama at the White House. In that poll, 31% labeled the Obama administration pro-Israel, 14% considered it pro-Palestinian and 40% said it was neutral. The other 15% declined to give an opinion.
I am learning a great book now that goes by the name of "Sichat Avot". The author of the book, Rabbi Yitzchak Daddon, is best known for his part in killing the terrorist that infiltrated the Library at the Merkaz HaRav Yeshiva and murdered eight students. However, it would be a shame if this act of heroism, as important as it was, will overshadow the great books that this Torah scholar is putting out.
"Tension in Israel in Before the "Placation Speach" in Which Obama is Expected to Present:Unfortunately, those of us who live here remember when the phrase "The New Middle East" was coined and what those who coined it brought us: Death and terror. We are not impressed by photographs of grinning American Presidents and Arab smiling despots. Shimon Peres' "New Middle East", in which he gave Arafat and his henchmen weapons and territory is much, much worse than "The Old Middle East".
The New Middle East
If you follow My statutes: I might think that this refers to the fulfillment of the commandments. However, when Scripture says, “and observe My commandments,” the fulfillment of the commandments is [already] stated. So what is the meaning of “If you follow My statutes”? It means that you must toil in the study of Torah [for the word for “follow” here, תֵּלֵכוּ, literally means “walk,” which is a strenuous activity (Gur Aryeh)]. — [Torath Kohanim 26:2]All of the blessings from Above are dependent upon this. Not only that, but when this devotion to Torah learning is lacking, the descent into spiritual oblivion has begun. See what Rashi has to say on Vayikra (26:14-15). An objective look at Jewish history reveals the stark truth of this Divine law. We have to set aside time every day and night for learning. Learning Torah requires great effort, and even affliction. "The Holy One Blessed Be He gave three good gifts to Israel, and all of them He did not give except through affliction, and they are: Torah, and the Land Of Israel, and the World To Come"(Berachot 5A). It is not the same as reading a paperback novel or your favorite blog. According what we put into learning Torah, so is the reward. "According to the suffering is the reward" (Avot end of ch. 5). This can be interpreted as the reward in The World To Come, but it can also be interpreted in more earthly terms. That is to say, you get out of it what you put into it. "The law of the Hashem is perfect, restoring the soul..." (Psalms 19:8) How much the Torah will revive your soul depends on how much time and effort you invest in learning. In general we must remember that the Torah is from Hashem. It is His way of letting us know His will. We pray to Hashem and ask Him for what we need and want. But do we try to understand what He wants from us? "He that turns away his ear from hearing the Torah, even his prayer is an abomination"(Proverbs 28:9). It's a two way street. On this Shavuot holiday, may we all merit to receive the Torah in happiness, and to serve Hashem in happiness. May we all strengthen our commitment to learning and keeping the Torah. May we succeed in learning Torah in depth and in breadth, the written Torah which is the "Torah of truth", and the Oral Torah which is the "eternal life" that Hashem "planted within us" (Shulchan Aruch). And may we purify ourselves and be worthy of learning the secrets of Torah as well.
Rabbi Ya'ir Frank gives us 3 tips for surfing the internet safely: before, during, and after. In a world where internet is becoming such a significant part of our lives it is warmly recommended to think about these things and to adopt them:
1) Enter with a list
In order to avoid wasting money, one of the recommendations of the Pa'amonim organization is to go to the store with a shopping list and buy only what is written on it. One who goes shopping without a list will often find himself buying things that he does not really need. Why? Because it was "on sale", or in a pack of five, and it's a shame not to buy...
We can say the same with relation to internet, and even more so. After all, the difference between the internet and the supermarket is that in the supermarket at least you have to pay for what you buy, and on the internet everything is (almost) free. What's more, the merchandise on the internet can be much more harmful and rotten that the merchandise in the store.
Therefore, one who enters the internet should have a defined purpose why he is entering, to enter only for that, and to leave. Many times one enters one place, but he finds himself wandering from site to site, and taking everything that is available. And certainly one should not enter the internet for the purpose of wandering about.
2) Prayer before entering the internet
The rabbis said that one entering a city should pray," May it be the will of the Lord my God that you will cause me to enter the city in peace". Why? Because in the city there are various dangers. We have found similar things in relation to one who goes to the bath house, to taking medical cures, and more.
It seems that is our generation one should pray - before entering the internet.(click on the pic to see the prayer in Hebrew)
3) I'm a wayfarer here, and not a member of the household
After I have entered the 'city', I must remember that I am only a guest, passing through, and not God forbid a member of the household. Sometimes the web surfer feels that the entire world is under his mouse. Every opinion, be it true or false, and every culture or something that would like to be thought of as such, are presented as equals in front of his eyes. He feels the entire world, the 'global village', is flowing into his computer without discretion and without judgment. He takes interest in the life of Smith and in the thoughts of Jones, who is sitting somewhere at the end of the earth. Beyond the fact this this can create shallowness and superficiality, mainly it can divert the main point life to other vistas. The inner aspirations of being close to God, of repairing life and the world, and the exalted vision of the nation of Israel and God's Torah, can be blurred under the (apparently) infinite flood of the world around us.
We must remember - our home is somewhere else. Our home is the family and the community, the Torah and the Beit Midrash. On the internet we are only wayfarers, and only after we leave it do we return to our true home (page).
They forgot the victims, and the counter protest tent of those opposed to a deal was dismantled within 24 hours.
It’s also difficult to find reports about the ramifications of this deal. Reports that not only ask what the terrorists could do once they are be released, but also a wider discussion about the impact this deal will have on IDF operations in the future, on the combat doctrine and efforts to sacrifice lives rather than fall into captivity, and about the issue of capturing terrorists alive in order to try them in Israel, knowing that the verdict is temporary until the next abduction.
The media has chosen to serve the Shalit family and not the public interest. But good journalism is tested in difficult times, not easy times.
It’s tested in its ability to stimulate a debate, to protest, to fuel an argument, raise doubts and create cracks in a monolithic public opinion. The same goes for peace times as in times of war. Journalism has a decisive role to play in a democratic society. Its role is not to move hearts.
The Arab terrorist who attacked police officers and civilians in Jerusalem with his bulldozer on Thursday was a resident of the city, police have announced. He was identified as 26-year-old Mir'i Redeideh.
Redeideh was married, police said, and had one child. He lived with his family in the neighborhood of Beit Hanina, in the northern part of the city.
Redeideh was carrying a Palestinian Authority ID at the time of the attack, leading to initial reports that he was a resident of the PA-controlled areas in Judea and Samaria.
He was shot and killed by alert police officers and a civilian taxi driver (and a Rabbi from the Chorev Yeshiva - CX) as he attempted to carry out his rampage. Before he was neutralized he managed to wound two police officers and had sent several schoolgirls into severe emotional shock.
