A Jew's view from the capital of Israel and the future site of the Third Temple, may it speedily be rebuilt.
I would like to point out that the Arabic word for blood is the same as the Hebrew one, dam. Also, the word in Arabic for Matzah is FaTir, which is linguistically related to the Aramaic word, PaTira. You can see this in Targum Onkelos on the Torah portion Bo.
Now the LORD said unto Abram: 'Get thee out of thy country, and from thy kindred, and from thy father's house, unto the land that I will show thee.It is not easy to venture out of one's comfort zone. Certainly leaving one's country is not a simple matter. However, God promissed him that this move was for his benefit, as Rashi explains:
Get thee out, lit. go to you, for your benefit and for your good, and there I will make you into a great nation, but here, you will not merit to have children. Moreover, I will make your character known in the world.Our father Abraham, who believed in God and feared God, did as he was told.
If one wishes to make Aliyah, to fulfill the mitzvah of settling in the land of Israel, he should not do so for the hope of gaining any material benefit. He should do it simply for the love of the mitzvah, the love of fulfilling God's Will. By doing thusly he is really actualizing his own purpose for being in This World. If one's fulfillment the mitzvah of living in the land of were to be dependent on something external, for instance if one comes to live here because he was offered an exciting job, he is standing on shaky ground. For if the job were not to materialize, or if he were to be fired from it, he would probably catch the next plane back to the Diaspora. This is similar to what is written in the Mishnah:
Any love that is dependent on something--when the thing ceases, the love also ceases. But a love that is not dependent on anything never ceases. What is [an example of] a love that is dependent on something? The love of Amnon for Tamar. And one that is not dependent on anything? The love of David and Jonathan.Our love for the land of Israel and all of the other commandments in the Torah must be like the love of David and Jonathan. The fact that the economy is healthy, and that the land is giving forth its fruit in abundance is heartening but it is in no way our reason for being here.
Thou wilt arise, and have compassion upon Zion; for it is time to be gracious unto her, for the appointed time is come. For Thy servants take pleasure in her stones, and love her dust.That means that "Jerusalem will not be built unless the Children of Israel desire her in the utmost way until they take pleasure in her stones, and love her dust." (The Kuzari).
For those of you who do not understand Hebrew, the invitation is to the "wedding" of a Jewish Israeli girl named Moral to an Arab named Mahmud. If I am not mistaken the girl converted to Islam.
The girl's father strongly opposes the wedding, as can be seen here. Lehava has promissed to protest the wedding, which God forbid will take place at Shemesh Adumah (Red Sun) Hall in Rishon LeTzion on Sunday at 7:30 PM. Youth from the radical left Meretz party also promissed to be there to "protect" the couple from the protesters. Leftist activists also succeeded in having Lehava's Facebook page removed.
Here's a report from Tzinor Laila:
Unless a miracle happens, we will once again be mourning the destruction of the Temple. I saw on a calendar this morning that it is 1946 years since the Temple was destroyed. The more one learns Torah, the more one realizes the depth of this tragedy. This is a wound that the passage of time does not heal.
The truth is, we mourn its destruction on a daily basis, explicitly mentioning it many times every day. We end all of our prayers with the request that God will rebuild the Temple speedily in our days. We also remember the Temple in other ways, for instance leaving a square cubit of our homes unpainted. It is always in our head and heart.
Even so, we do not live our lives in a state of depression. A healthy Jew is an optimist, always looking at the half of the glass that is full of water. I once read how Rabbi Chana Porat, who was seriously wounded in the Yom Kippur War, thought that he had lost one of his arms. At that time, he was busy thinking how grateful he was to God for the one arm that remained.
But the 9th of Av is different. The entire day is devoted to remembering the destruction of the Temple and other tragedies that have befallen our nation. We take a serious look at the half cup of water that is empty.
There is hope. With the current war and all of its horrors, we were witness to a tremendous display of Jewish unity here in Israel. To paraphrase Rabbi Kook, if the Temple was destroyed because of senseless hatred, it will be built through unbounded love. Please God, have mercy on Zion for the time has come.
That's all in the meantime. It's time to go and dine on bread and a hard boiled egg dipped in ashes. Our sages said that those who mourn for Jerusalem will merit to rejoice in its rebuilding. May it be in our days.
The truth is that the Arabs are "alien usurpers of the land" here in the land of Israel. Jews are the indigenous people here.
It is the same reason that CNN hushed up the atrocities committed by Sadam Hussein, as admitted by none other than former CNN executive Eason Jordan way back in 2003:
Over the last dozen years I made 13 trips to Baghdad to lobby the government to keep CNN's Baghdad bureau open and to arrange interviews with Iraqi leaders. Each time I visited, I became more distressed by what I saw and heard -- awful things that could not be reported because doing so would have jeopardized the lives of Iraqis, particularly those on our Baghdad staff.Hamas is a terrorist organization, a group of violent thugs who do not value human life. Using "human shields" is only one item on the long list of atrocities that this evil organization is responsible for.For example, in the mid-1990's one of our Iraqi cameramen was abducted. For weeks he was beaten and subjected to electroshock torture in the basement of a secret police headquarters because he refused to confirm the government's ludicrous suspicion that I was the Central Intelligence Agency's Iraq station chief. CNN had been in Baghdad long enough to know that telling the world about the torture of one of its employees would almost certainly have gotten him killed and put his family and co-workers at grave risk.
Working for a foreign news organization provided Iraqi citizens no protection. The secret police terrorized Iraqis working for international press services who were courageous enough to try to provide accurate reporting. Some vanished, never to be heard from again. Others disappeared and then surfaced later with whispered tales of being hauled off and tortured in unimaginable ways. Obviously, other news organizations were in the same bind we were when it came to reporting on their own workers.
Eason Jordan closes his "mea culpa" with the following:
I felt awful having these stories bottled up inside me. Now that Saddam Hussein's regime is gone, I suspect we will hear many, many more gut-wrenching tales from Iraqis about the decades of torment. At last, these stories can be told freely.The same will be said when we finally get rid of the Arab terrorists in Gaza, Judea and Samaria. All of those journalists who feared for their lives and therefore covered up the crimes of Fatah, Hamas and all the other terror organizations, whitewashing their activities and calling them "militants", will be free to tell the truth.
1) Pray - every prayer counts.
2) Take upon yourself to learn more Torah and perform more mitzvot.
3) Donate blood. The soldiers and the nation need it. I gave blood today.
4) Be an internet warrior. Counter the anti-Israel propganda spread by Arabs and other Jew-haters on the internet. Here are some sites that can help you:
And of course there are many good blogs. Two which I find especially useful are The Elder of Zion and Israellycool.
Autz 7 reports the following in regard to the aftermath of the speech:
At the end of the speech, as Bennett got down off the stage, a group of roughly 20 to 30 youths tried to physically attack him. One of them succeeded in reaching him and punching him in the back.
So perish all Thine enemies, O LORD;
Update: Here it is:
Here is the navy doing its part:
Is the book really "non-fiction"? To receive an answer, you must read Martin Kramer's article, What Happened at Lydda.
To make a long story short, it looks like Shavit was quick on the trigger to accuse Israel of a massacre that in all likelihood did not occur. Read the article!
It is hard not to see the similarities between Shavit's academic sloppiness/negligence/ineptitude and that of Teddy Katz. Katz claimed that a massacre occured in Tantura, and was sued for libel by the veterans of that battle. Katz lost the case. Unfortunately, the veteran's of the Lydda battle, heroes who fought so bravely for Israel's independence, are probably no longer living or just too old and fragile to sue Shavit. Too bad.
BTW, did I mention that Shavit is a Ha’aretz columnist and member of its editorial-board? Are you surprised?
For extra credit, read what Caroline Glick has to say about this.
It seems that I've written about Ari Shavit in the past. See Do Murderers Sit Shiva? Almost eight years have passed since I published that post and it is interesting to see it in a historical perspective.
Eyal Yifrah 19, from Elad; Gilad Sha'ar, 16, from Talmon; and Naftali Frenkel, also 16, from Nof Ayalon, went missing on June 12th, and officials soon identified Hamas as the culprits. Their bodies were found near between the Arab village of Halhul and the Jewish village of Carmei Tzur, near the city of Hevron, where the search operation for them - dubbed Operation Brother's Keeper - had been focused.My heart goes out to their families. May they be comforted from Heaven.The bodies were apparently found together, bound and buried in a shallow grave in a field at approximately 5 p.m. The families of the boys have been informed of their tragic loss.
Since the kidnapping the nation has been united in prayer for the safe return of the boys. In almost every prayer in the various synagogues that I have attended, special psalms were said after the regular prayer service for the boys. Unfortunately the prayers were not answered. I should have known that something happened when tonight, after ma'ariv, no psalms were said. It was only afterwards I received a phone call informing me of the bad news.
We do not know why this had to happen. I will not attempt to be God's bookkeeper.
What I do know that this is another manifistation of Ishmaelite savagery. Animals!
The nation of Israel will continue to build and be built, despite the acts of Arab terrorists and their Jew-hating supporters.
"He will swallow up death for ever; and the Lord GOD will wipe away tears from off all faces; and the reproach of His people will He take away from off all the earth; for the LORD hath spoken it." - Isaiah 25
I love the caper bush in bloom:
Free advert for Tova Embroidery:
Good Shabbos, Shabbat Shalom, have a good Sabbath!
