Thirty years of being part of a meta-historic, grand drama of Jewish national renewal and redemption - by David M. Weinberg

Despite the mixed balance sheet of changes that have taken place in this country’s society and politics over the past 30 years since I moved to Israel, it is a privilege to be part of a meta-historic, grand drama of Jewish national renewal and redemption.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
07 August '20..
Link: https://davidmweinberg.com/2020/08/07/aliyah-a-30-year-retrospective/

Israel has changed quite a bit since my wife and I moved here 30 years ago yesterday, exactly.

(It was four days after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in 1990. Little did we know what we were flying into. Remember the safe rooms and gas masks of the First Gulf War?)

When we moved here 30 years ago, television ads were for drinking milk and eating oranges; not for 40” flat TV screens and “Survivor.” You could not get a regular telephone line for years, even if the prime minister intervened on your behalf. Today, every 16-year-old has two iPhones running on 4G internet, with TikTok and Instagram and a dozen other communication and entertainment apps.

Back then, all cars were white, and air conditioning was an uncommon luxury. The country’s wadis were filled with sand, not silicone. It was illegal to hold foreign currency, even for most businesses. Anatoly Sharansky was a Prisoner of Zion and Shimon Peres was on the right wing of the Labor Party. English was the country’s second language, not Russian.

When I moved here, serving your country was a privilege; living here was its own reward. Draft dodgers were people who closed their front doors when the evening breeze started. Israelis who moved to America were yordim (embarrassing dropouts) – even if they went to play basketball or star in the movies.

Passover and Succot vacations were for hiking the streams, mountains, and flower fields of the Galilee. Not for shop-till-you-drop excursions in airconditioned Azrieli mega-malls or for flights out to the casinos of Greece. We danced hora, not trance.

Back then, our lives were governed by the Ten Commandments, good judgment and common sense. ‘Grass’ was mowed, ‘coke’ was a soft drink, and ‘pot’ was something your mother cooked in. Most youngsters had both a mother and a father – of two different sexes. The Bible Quiz was the highlight of Independence Day television. The big festival in the spring was the May Day march, not the Pride Parade.

Non-kosher restaurants were rare. Shabbat was truly a day of reflective rest, down-time for every Israeli. The Bible was a best-seller, not When and How the Jewish People Was Invented by a post-Zionist Tel Aviv University professor, or Sapiens by a fiercely atheist Hebrew University professor. The Western Wall was where Jews went to pray, not protest.

Meretz meant the strength to work hard. Shas was the six orders of the Mishna. Lapid was a torch you held high with pride at state ceremonies. Burg and Barak were the names of veteran, thoughtful and erudite leaders. Oslo was a wonderful, far-away place where you could get away from Middle East politics. Zoom was something you did with a race car.

The Law of Return brought Jews to Israel. The Chief Rabbinate sought to build bridges for religion with secular Israelis. The Supreme Court dealt with legal issues and left it to you and me and the Knesset to decide what is “reasonable.”

Even the intellectuals were unabashedly patriotic. Zionism was considered the country’s heroic and defining ideology, not a chauvinist and politically incorrect prejudice. Settlement was not a dirty word. Nobody would dare use the epithet “apartheid” to refer to anything other than institutionalized racist segregation in South Africa.

Jerusalem was the first choice for Israeli school trips; a unifying symbol. It was the eternal, undivided capital of Israel – without question or debate. Withdrawal was a financial term (something you did with money at the bank), and disengagement meant breaking someone’s lovesick heart.

Time to Build a Museum of Aliyah - by Michael Freund

...Each of these journeys embodies powerful elements of Jewish history and longing, undertaken at times of peril out of an unbreakable sense of Jewish solidarity and mutual responsibility. Aren't those values worth promoting?

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
07 January '19..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/22217/museum-of-aliyah

In the annals of modern Jewish history, few stories are as epic or as inspiring as that of the ingathering of the exiles from the four corners of the earth.

Since the rebirth of the State of Israel in 1948, more than 3.2 million immigrants have made their way to the shores of the Holy Land from more than 100 countries worldwide. Some have come here fleeing persecution. Others were motivated by the Zionist dream or religious conviction or animated by the hope of creating a better life for themselves and their families.

And yet, even though Israel was built by aliyah, and will continue to be built by it, we have nonetheless failed to adequately preserve and relate the remarkable story of the ongoing return to our ancestral land.

And that is why I believe it is time for the Jewish state to erect a museum of Aliyah, one that will encapsulate the drama and heroism, the fulfillment and pride, that have accompanied the historic homecoming to Zion.

Indeed, if one looks back over the past 70 years, it becomes readily apparent that some of our nation's most stirring moments have been those that involved the rescue of Diaspora Jewish communities. Yet, how much does the younger generation know or fully appreciate these extraordinary tales?

They followed their hearts, feeling that it was up to their dreams to shape reality - by Nadav Shragai

...The reality at the time was harsh, almost unbearable: disease, swamps, scarce livelihood and dwindling security. But the hands of the few who believed created miracles. They followed their hearts, feeling that it was up to their dreams to shape reality, and not, God forbid, to withdraw from it. It was up to them to let their faith lead while acting wisely, to move forward with feeling and not to listen to the experts. As the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, said: "There are no experts on the future, only experts on the past."

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
First posted 20 April '15..

I never thanked my grandfather for packing up his meager belongings and coming to Israel in 1924, not to find a place safe from persecution, but simply because he knew that the Jewish people belonged in Israel.

It was not the obvious choice then, and it is not the obvious choice now. He and his ilk were part of the minority of the last few generations who came to the historic homeland not because of persecution and pogroms, but simply because they felt committed to their Jewish genes, to the historical, religious and national baggage that ties them to this place.

Their courage was perhaps different from that of the warriors on the battlefields, but it was no less magnificent. They deserve this belated thanks. Not, God forbid, as a way to diminish those who did come here out of distress and fear. We owe them thanks for our continued existence, for my parents' generation, my own generation and that of my children, as it is doubtful that we would have survived the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe had they stayed.

They deserve our gratitude for the understanding that they instilled in us that, even before this land became a safe haven for the refugees of the pogroms and the Holocaust, it was our destination; that while we might be here today thanks to our strength, we were here before thanks to the strength of our right; that security, which is today the central subject of discussion when it comes to Israel, is meant to allow us to realize our right to live here (in security, of course).

Many years ago, a member of the British House of Lords asked then-President Chaim Weizmann why the Jews were so insistent upon Israel when there were so many other places for them to settle. Weizmann responded: "That is like my asking you why you drove 20 miles to visit your mother last Sunday when there are so many old ladies living on your street."

And indeed, the land we came to, the land in which we re-established Jewish sovereignty, is above all our motherland. Unfortunately, all we speak about nowadays is security, while the conversation about our rights remains marginalized. Security is not everything. You cannot base domestic or international legitimacy on Jerusalem, Hebron or Beersheba, while ignoring the Bible, the patriarchs and the matriarchs, the Temple Mount, the City of David and the millennia-long story of a people yearning to return to their homeland. After all, we could have had security this past century in Brooklyn, London, or maybe even Uganda.

The students of the Vilna Gaon, who moved to Israel at the beginning of the 19th century, and the Jews of Yemen who came to the transit camps at the end of that century, did not come here because it was safe. They came despite the fact that it was less safe.

The State of Israel was not established because of the Holocaust, but in spite of the Holocaust that tried to destroy us.

Aliya as an act of faith - by Michael Freund

...May the arrival of the Bnei Menashe in Israel, along with growing numbers of French, Russian, Brazilian and other immigrants, inspire other Jews abroad to seize the opportunity that has been given to our generation and make the move – just as their forefathers would have wished.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
16 November '17..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/20546/aliya-faith

As they emerged from the plane at Ben-Gurion Airport this past Tuesday night, exhausted yet suffused with excitement, the latest batch of 82 Bnei Menashe immigrants from northeastern India to arrive in Israel marched toward passport control and suddenly burst into song.

Invoking the verse in the Book of Jeremiah (31:16), where the Creator consoles our biblical matriarch Rachel that her descendants, the people of Israel, will one day be restored to their land, the new arrivals mustered every ounce of their remaining energy and proceeded to chant the ancient Hebrew promise, "and the sons shall return to their borders."

The words, of course, were full of meaning, as these descendants of a lost tribe of Israel, whose ancestors were exiled more than 2,700 years ago by the Assyrian empire, were at last fulfilling the dream of generations to reunite with the Jewish people.

More than 3,000 Bnei Menashe have thus far made aliya thanks largely to Shavei Israel, the organization I founded and chair. Another 7,000 are still in India, all of whom wish to come.

Not surprisingly, the scene at the airport evoked a great deal of interest, as Israelis and tourists alike stopped to take photographs as they smiled and marveled at the unusual sight. After all, it is not every day that a group of airline passengers can be seen crooning as they make their way through passport control.

Indeed, bureaucratic processes just are not generally associated with evoking spiritual uplift. That, of course, is to be expected. In a world of paperwork, paper trails and paper-pushers, the numbing experience of waiting for a clerk to assess you based on the certificate you present is more likely to conjure phrases and expressions that are anything but divinely inspired.

Yet as I watched it all unfold amid my own fog of fatigue mixed with exhilaration, and added my voice to those of the Bnei Menashe in song, my thoughts turned to those countless Jews throughout the millennia who longed for Zion and dreamed of Jerusalem, yet did not merit to set foot on her soil.

How the Temple Mount Crisis Is Calling Me Home — to Israel - by Fred Menachem

...when the time is right, I’ll permanently return to my ancestral homeland to fulfill my deep responsibility and continue to do my part to make sure that the Jewish people continue to persevere, thrive and survive long after my time on this planet. That’s my covenant with God, the Jewish people and the future of the democratic and Jewish state of Israel. It is the Temple Mount crisis and the savage murders of my people that have sealed my fate and cemented that commitment.

Fred Menachem..
Algemeiner.com..
06 August '17..

This has been a particularly tough few weeks for the Jewish people.

The ‘crisis’ at the Temple Mount has given extremists in the Arab world the opportunity to use fallacious arguments, staged violence, propaganda and a skewed version of history to justify inciting and igniting violence and committing barbaric murders of Israeli Jews and non-Jews alike.

Oddly, but, not surprisingly, the mainstream international media — many of whom can’t see past their hatred of Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu — seem to have forgotten that this entire crisis was triggered when three Arab-Israelis shot and killed two Druze-Israeli police officers. Sadly and ironically, these police officers were keeping the Mount safe for everyone, including Muslims.

(Continue to Full Post)

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Operation Menashe 2017 is underway - by Michael Freund

...Queried by a journalist as to why he wanted to make aliya, Fanai looked surprised by the question, as though he had been asked why he desires to breathe. "It is a mitzvah," he said, without a trace of cynicism,...

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
26 February '17..
Link: http://www.michaelfreund.org/19700/operation-menashe-2017

Last week, less than a month shy of his 50th birthday, Lyon Fanai fulfilled a dream he had been nurturing for as long as he could remember. After an arduous journey across multiple time zones and spanning more than two millennia, Fanai and his beautiful family arrived safely in Israel, part of a group of 102 Bnei Menashe who made aliya from the northeastern Indian state of Mizoram.

And thus began Operation Menashe 2017, which was launched by Shavei Israel, the organization I founded and chair, in conjunction with Israel's Absorption Ministry.

With God's help, over the course of the next 12 months, we aim to bring another 600 Bnei Menashe back home to Zion, more than 27 centuries after their ancestors were exiled from this land.

Yes, despite the image put forward by much of the mainstream press, there are great things happening in the Jewish state.

Indeed, the normally bustling arrivals hall at Ben Gurion Airport was even more spirited than usual, as the immigrants emerged from customs and fell into the arms of loved ones they had left behind many years ago.

Menachem Menashe, who made aliya in 2006, was reunited at last with his sister, her husband and his six nieces and nephews, whom he hadn't seen in more than a decade.

A young man named Ariel was literally beaming with joy at the sight of his fiancé, who arrived with her family. They had not gazed into one another's loving eyes for more than seven years. Shortly, they will stand under the marriage canopy and finally be able to start a Jewish household together here in the Jewish state.

Israel’s Valentines - by Rachel Sharansky Danziger

...Israel evolves as many dreams kiss one concrete and tangible reality, allowing its potential to unfold. Here, we can choose to roll our sleeves and go to work and shape the actual, real future… and let it shape us for the better as we work.

Rachel Sharansky Danziger..
Times of Israel..
13 February '17..
Link: http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/israels-valentines/

Tomorrow, as millions of people will celebrate Valentine’s Day with their loved ones, a group of American Jews will gather in Newark Airport to celebrate a different kind of love.

Instead of walking into fancy restaurants and candle-lit rooms, this group will board a plane. Instead of sipping wine and savoring chocolates, these men and women will fill out paperwork, consult with Nefesh B’Nefesh representatives, and eat plain airline meals. Instead of gifting each other cards and roses, these Jews will walk off the plane at Ben Gurion Airport, and become newly-made citizens of the Jewish state.

While couples worldwide will exchange loving kisses, some of these olim might kiss Israel’s ground.

That little kiss, peppered as it is through countless personal stories, never fails to move me. Some people speak of their love for Israel in big, major-key words. They say things like “destiny” and “redemption” and “mission,” and color our future in bright, shiny hues. Don’t get me wrong: their words do resonate with me, and I sometimes even use them myself. But somehow, they’re just too grand to hit the mark. They miss the intimacy of loving. They can’t grasp the nuances of care.

That fleeting moment when lips touch dirt may be humble in comparison, and as a native-born Israeli I never actually experienced it myself. Yet it captures my actual feelings for Israel more fully than grandiose statements, and more accurately than heavy-handed words.

That eloquent kiss tells me that loving The Promised Land is loving a promise before we love a land. People don’t kiss dirt for dirt’s sake: Their elation stems from the vision that brought them to this moment, the promised Israel they carried in their hearts. We were the People of the Book before we were the People of the Land, wrote Ruth Bachi-Kolodni, a renowned Israeli writer and biographer. And it was the book that brought us to the land. Her words referred to our national story, but they capture our individual quests as well: For each and every Jew who chose to come here, Israel was an idea before it was grit and soil and dirt to kiss.

And now? It’s a joy and a thrill to be here all the time, 24/7 - by P. David Hornik

The Jews in-gather here, in the sunny land, because out there it gets cold.

P. David Hornik..
Times of Israel..
02 May '16..

I’ve been reading that a considerable part of today’s young American Jews are alienated from Israel. That the impact of its creation in 1948 has faded, along with the impact of the Holocaust that ended three years earlier. That young American Jews no longer perceive Israel as something miraculous or even special, but rather as some country out there that’s embarrassingly violent and nationalistic, doing bad things to Palestinians.

If that is now the picture of Israel for some young American Jews, it’s indeed different from the mystique Israel had while I was growing up in the U.S. in the 1960s and—though by then it started to dissipate—the 1970s. Not knowing too much about the subject, I thought of Israel as an ideal phenomenon, a land of farmers and warriors who were outnumbered and gritty, yet enlightened and humane. My heart sang with pride and admiration.

That idealized vision had something to do with my growing interest in making aliyah, which I fulfilled in 1984. By that time I’d read a lot more about Israel, and had a more nuanced grasp of it as a complex society displaying the normal human shortcomings. Still, I harbored a hope that the Israel I encountered would somehow live up to those earlier impressions.

So began the dialectic of my first, maybe, half-decade in the country. On the one hand, there were cold bureaucrats; Israelis who said, “You came here from America?”; tensions between Ashkenazim and Sephardim that could get quite nasty. On the other hand, I somehow kept feeling that Israel was the most wonderful place on earth, and that becoming part of it was the most wonderful thing I could experience.

And now? It’s a joy and a thrill to be here all the time, 24/7. And this after I’ve gotten to know Israel from the inside, and understand how silly were those earlier visions of a country where people were always admirable. How can this be?

1. Perspective. The idea that the rebirth of the Jewish state was something novel and stirring decades ago, but by now is old hat, stems from a lack of historical perspective. When I made aliyah, the Jewish population of the country came to about three million; by now it’s doubled. The startup nation keeps growing, sprouting, ramifying, and it evokes—or should evoke—wonder no less than ever. Israel is by now vastly more developed, innovative, and dynamic than in those early days. In the shadow of two thousand years’ exile and the Holocaust, we’re still living in a dawn of triumph, success, and rejuvenation.

Time to bring home the Subbotnik Jews of Ukraine and Russia - by Michael Freund

...Through stubborn dedication and determination, the Subbotnik Jews have somehow managed to keep the flame of Jewish life alive despite everything they have endured. Israel should now bring home the remaining Subbotnik Jews of Russia and the Ukraine to ensure that heroic blaze is never extinguished.

Michael Freund..
Pundicity/JPost..
27 January '16..

Last week, amid subfreezing temperatures in a Ukrainian city founded by Cossacks, I saw living proof that the Jewish spark can truly burn brightly even under the most unlikely circumstances.

Indeed, while the snow in Krivoi Rog may be kneedeep, blocking roads and turning thoroughfares into slippery escapades, that doesn't seem to deter the small local community of Subbotnik Jews from faithfully trudging to their modest synagogue, where they continue to turn their hearts and their hopes toward Zion.

Rivka, a young member of the community, is a student of architecture at the local university who has taught herself to speak Hebrew. When I asked her how she envisions her future, she said, "I want to live in Israel so that with God's help I can have a Jewish wedding and educate my children in the spirit of Torah. This is very important to me."

Andrei, who is 19, told me that his dream is to serve in the IDF.

"I believe that doing so is a mitzva and that defending the Land of Israel is something sacred," he said.

The 200-year-old saga of the Subbotnik Jews is one laced with tragedy and persecution, but characterized by tenacity and resolve, and it is time for Israel to reward their fidelity and bring these precious people home.

The Subbotniks' origins trace back to southern Russia in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, when Judaizing sects arose for reasons that various scholars have struggled to explain. According to Czarist archives and Russian church documents of the time, the movement spread rapidly and grew to number in the tens of thousands.

While remaining Christians, many adherents took on some Jewish practices, such as observing the "Subbot," or Sabbath, on Saturdays, leading them to be referred to as "Subbotniks."

Among them, however, was a small group which left behind the Russian Orthodox faith and underwent conversion to Judaism.

They referred to themselves as the "Gerim," using the Hebrew word for converts, and began to practice Judaism openly, which in Czarist Russia was no small feat.

These Subbotnik Jews observed Jewish law, married Russian Ashkenazi Jews in the city of Voronezh, and some sent their children to learn in yeshivot in Lithuania and the Ukraine.

Their embrace of Judaism did not go unnoticed, and the Russian regime wasted little time in trying to destroy the movement.

Jews, a Kippah and Europe’s Future

...European Jews are entitled to hope that the situation will change, but no rational analysis of the situation lends any credence to such wishes....In that sense, French Jews are again the proverbial canaries in the coalmine indicating the peril of anti-Semitism. Their kippahs are an indication that European civilization as we knew it is once again in peril. While there are clear differences between what is happening now and what happened in the 1930s, the best advice for those Jewish communities may not be dissimilar. They can stay and bravely hope for the best. Or they leave and live fully Jewish lives elsewhere, particularly in Israel. Choosing the latter may not only be safer but the better part of valor.

Jonathan S. Tobin..
Commentary Magazine..
15 January '16..

This week after yet another brutal attack on a French Jew, one of the community’s leaders drew an ominous yet rather obvious conclusion. Reacting to the vicious assault on a Jewish man on his way to morning prayers by a Turkish-born radical Muslim who said his crime was committed “in the name of Allah,” the head of Marseille’s communal Jewish organization advised fellow Jews to stop advertising their identity. To be more specific, Zvi Ammar said Jewish men should cease wearing kippahs in the street “until better days.”

Ammar has been sternly criticized by other Jewish leaders, including those from the CRIF — the umbrella group of national Jewish organizations in France — who say his comments are akin to surrender to anti-Semites and terrorists. They’re right to point out that anti-Semites won’t be satisfied by driving Jews into hiding. Moreover, to abandon the streets to Islamist thugs is tantamount to saying that Jews can’t live openly as Jews in France. If European Jewry is to have any future in an era when anti-Semitism is on the rise, it can only be by standing up for who they are and what they believe in, including support for Israel, rather than cowering in fear.

But as wrongheaded as his Ammar’s advice might be, it must also be conceded that his approach might be rooted more firmly in reality than the brave talk coming from other Jewish leaders or the inspiring rhetoric we’ve heard in recent months from French political leaders about defending the rights of their Jewish citizens. It may well be as French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said last week while commemorating the anniversary of the terror attack on the Hyper Cacher market in which four Jews were slaughtered by the same Islamist cell that committed the Charlie Hebdo massacre, that the thought of Jews leaving the country because they were no longer safe was, “an unbearable idea.” In his view, “France without Jews is not France.”

Maybe so. But the reality of France — as well as much of Europe — in 2016 is that Ammar is right in assessing the danger to the Jews of Marseilles. Anyone who walks around in parts of the city overtly proclaiming their Jewish identity is taking their lives into their hands. That’s why immigration to Israel — a place where Jews can and do defend themselves against Jew-haters and where the expression of Jewish identity is guaranteed — is rising from France as well as the rest of supposedly enlightened Western Europe.

The France that Valls wants to believe in may be a secular republic where equal rights for Jews, Muslims and all religious and ethnic minorities are not called into question. But the Jews of Marseilles and Paris don’t live in such a place anymore. They understand that although the ringing speeches about fighting anti-Semitism we hear after every attack on Jews is comforting, neither those words nor other gestures of solidarity are going to protect Jews that are singled out for brutality by Islamist thugs.

While one should be careful not to exaggerate the danger, the frequency of attacks on Jews is discouraging and enough to impact the mentality of a community that understands that Europe is changing.

Thank you, anti-Semites, for spurring Israel to become a pretty amazing place to live

...In short, without the constant hostility, Israel probably wouldn’t have come as far and as fast as it has since 1948. So thank you, anti-Semites, for spurring Israel to become a pretty amazing place to live. We couldn’t have done it without your help.

Image by © ABIR SULTAN/epa/Corbis

Evelyn Gordon..
Analysis from Israel..
20 December '15..

I admit to getting a kick out of seeing anti-Semites inadvertently help the very Jewish state they dream of destroying. And it happens more often than you might think, as was driven home by three very different news reports this week.

The first is that some 8,000 French Jews moved to Israel this year, topping last year’s all-time high of 7,000. Immigration is always good for Israel. Not only does each group of immigrants bring its own ideas and strengths that contribute to making Israel a better place, but the country simply needs a critical mass of people to survive as a Jewish state in an Arab region. Indeed, had it not been for the millions of Jews who immigrated since 1948, Israel might not have survived.

Most immigrants to Israel are Zionists; they genuinely care about the Jewish state. But even so, most of them wouldn’t have left comfortable lives elsewhere had there not been a push factor as well as a pull factor; that’s why most American Zionists still don’t come. And usually, anti-Semitism has been part of that push factor, just as it is for French Jews today.

So thank you, anti-Semites, for turning a country of 800,000 people into one eight million strong. It would never have happened without your help.

The second news item was the announcement of a planned trilateral summit between the leaders of Israel, Greece, and Cyprus. For most of its history, Israel’s relationships with Greece and Cyprus were chilly; in contrast, it had close ties with their longtime enemy, Turkey. It was only when Turkey, under the leadership of the virulently anti-Semitic Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, turned against Israel that a rapprochement with Greece and Cyprus began, since all three countries now had a common enemy.

In other times, this might have seemed a poor strategic bargain. Greece and Cyprus have weaker militaries than Turkey, offer smaller economic markets, and don’t provide diplomatic entrée to the Muslim world. But in a month where the West has just given Iran a pass on two major violations of its shiny new nuclear deal – failing to come clean on its past nuclear work and conducting a banned missile test – it’s a godsend.

Why? Because Iran now knows for certain that it can cheat its way to nuclear weapons with impunity, which means Israel will someday face a choice between bombing Iran or letting Iran get the bomb. But bombing will be harder than it would have been before the nuclear deal because the deal gave Russia a green light to finally supply Iran with its advanced S-300 aerial defense system. And Israel lacks experience with the S-300; the allies its air force traditionally trained with, including Turkey, mainly use American weapons platforms.

But Cyprus, which has long had close ties with Russia, bought an S-300 back in 1997, which it later transferred to Greece. And since Israel, Greece, and Cyprus are now friends that conduct joint military exercises, Greece reportedly let the Israel Air Force practice against its S-300 this spring to devise ways of defeating it.

So thank you, Erdogan, for enabling the IAF to get the training it will need if it ever has to bomb Iran’s nuclear facilities. It wouldn’t have happened without your help.

Reaching further for the dream

...I may ‎be at the heart of conflict, but all I can feel at that moment is that I am ‎standing at the center of hope. The families who live here are almost all immigrants, returning to Zion; but they have chosen to take a step beyond that, ‎reaching further for the dream.

Annika Hernroth-Rothstein..
Israel Hayom..
19 August '15..

I'm standing on a balcony in Nof Zion, a Jewish neighborhood in the ‎southeast of Jerusalem. The neighborhood is on Jewish-owned land ‎surrounded by the houses of the Arab village of Jabel Mukaber‎. The ‎view is breathtaking; I can see the Dome of the Rock, the walls of the Old City and the hills around our capital. ‎

It's a small, two-street neighborhood, with 85 families and plenty of ‎communal grounds. The people who live here know each other, their children ‎play together, and they share in celebrations and sorrows in each other's houses and ‎synagogues. ‎

Eleven Jewish families purchased the first piece of land in this neighborhood ‎in the 1930s. Later, after the War of Independence, the Jewish ‎contractor Rahamim Levy bought land from the Arab villages overlooking ‎the Temple Mount, but the growing area remained empty until the 1990s ‎when the Rabin government finally gave building permits and a ‎community could begin to take shape. ‎

I arrived in Nof Zion by way of the Temple Mount. There was only one ‎other woman up there with me that Thursday morning, and we struck up ‎a conversation that ended with an invitation to come to her family's ‎house for coffee and cake. Her name was Michal, and she had lived in ‎Nof Zion with her husband Maor and their three children since 2007. ‎When I ask her why they ended up here, she tells me her husband is of ‎Yemenite descent, and that the right of return is a concept that for her ‎family has more than one layer. ‎

In 1882, as part of the First Aliyah, the Jews of Yemen arrived in ‎Jerusalem. Their arrival was marked with difficulty -- there was little or no ‎work, other Jews questioned their Jewish status, and they had a hard ‎time finding housing. Desiring proximity to the remnants of the Temple, ‎a portion of the Yemenite community decided to settle in open caves on ‎the side of the Mount of Olives, creating a makeshift homestead on the ‎hills. ‎

Seeing the plight of the Yemenites, Rabbi Israel Dov Fromkin, owner of the ‎newspaper Havatzelet, set up the Ezrat Nidachim organization to ‎aid and assist the Yemenites in the village of Shiloach, and with their ‎help land was donated on the western part of the Mount Olives, where "the ‎Yemenite village" was established. ‎

At its peak of growth, the village had over 200 families, but the ‎thriving community came to a halt in the 1920s as violence erupted. In ‎‎1929, Arabs injured and robbed the Jewish inhabitants of the Yemenite ‎village and the lion's share of the residents left under pressure from the ‎British mandatory government. Members of the village, under the leadership of Rabbi Yosef Madmoni (son of the founder of the village), returned to the village ‎for a number of years, but following the disturbances of the Great Arab ‎Revolt and the British government's failure to protect the Jews from the ‎Arab attackers, the Jews were permanently chased away by the British in 1938. Despite written guarantees by the high commissioner allowing the Yemenite Jews to return to the village when the calm returned, the mandatory ‎government did not agree and the village remained empty of Jews. ‎

Following the disturbances and the expulsion of the Jews, Arabs looted ‎their property and their homes were almost completely destroyed. Shlomo Yaakov Madmoni, a resident of the village, was killed on his way to the ‎village to save the remaining Torah scroll. Despite this, the British government unceremoniously denied ‎numerous requests by the Zionist leadership, the Chief Rabbinate and others to allow the Jews to ‎return to the village. ‎

In recent year, Jewish families have returned to the area of the Yemenite village, and with the help of old deeds, the land has been ‎reclaimed and repurchased. Needless to say, this has not been without ‎controversy or contention. Stones and other projectiles are regularly hurled at the Jewish-owned buildings and their occupants. ‎

They followed their hearts, feeling that it was up to their dreams to shape reality

...The reality at the time was harsh, almost unbearable: disease, swamps, scarce livelihood and dwindling security. But the hands of the few who believed created miracles. They followed their hearts, feeling that it was up to their dreams to shape reality, and not, God forbid, to withdraw from it. It was up to them to let their faith lead while acting wisely, to move forward with feeling and not to listen to the experts. As the first prime minister of Israel, David Ben-Gurion, said: "There are no experts on the future, only experts on the past."

Nadav Shragai..
Israel Hayom..
20 April '15..

I never thanked my grandfather for packing up his meager belongings and coming to Israel in 1924, not to find a place safe from persecution, but simply because he knew that the Jewish people belonged in Israel.

It was not the obvious choice then, and it is not the obvious choice now. He and his ilk were part of the minority of the last few generations who came to the historic homeland not because of persecution and pogroms, but simply because they felt committed to their Jewish genes, to the historical, religious and national baggage that ties them to this place.

Their courage was perhaps different from that of the warriors on the battlefields, but it was no less magnificent. They deserve this belated thanks. Not, God forbid, as a way to diminish those who did come here out of distress and fear. We owe them thanks for our continued existence, for my parents' generation, my own generation and that of my children, as it is doubtful that we would have survived the horrors of the Holocaust in Europe had they stayed.

They deserve our gratitude for the understanding that they instilled in us that, even before this land became a safe haven for the refugees of the pogroms and the Holocaust, it was our destination; that while we might be here today thanks to our strength, we were here before thanks to the strength of our right; that security, which is today the central subject of discussion when it comes to Israel, is meant to allow us to realize our right to live here (in security, of course).

Many years ago, a member of the British House of Lords asked then-President Chaim Weizmann why the Jews were so insistent upon Israel when there were so many other places for them to settle. Weizmann responded: "That is like my asking you why you drove 20 miles to visit your mother last Sunday when there are so many old ladies living on your street."

And indeed, the land we came to, the land in which we re-established Jewish sovereignty, is above all our motherland. Unfortunately, all we speak about nowadays is security, while the conversation about our rights remains marginalized. Security is not everything. You cannot base domestic or international legitimacy on Jerusalem, Hebron or Beersheba, while ignoring the Bible, the patriarchs and the matriarchs, the Temple Mount, the City of David and the millennia-long story of a people yearning to return to their homeland. After all, we could have had security this past century in Brooklyn, London, or maybe even Uganda.

The students of the Vilna Gaon, who moved to Israel at the beginning of the 19th century, and the Jews of Yemen who came to the transit camps at the end of that century, did not come here because it was safe. They came despite the fact that it was less safe.

The State of Israel was not established because of the Holocaust, but in spite of the Holocaust that tried to destroy us.

A Month After the Paris Attacks - The French Dilemma

...Why would any Jew choose to live in a country wherein the hatred toward them is so great from the ten times larger French Muslim community that they need armed guards on a daily basis to protect themselves and their children? The truth is, there is probably precious little that the French government can do, beyond the heavy-handed use of the military, to protect French Jewry from Islamist violence. Ultimately French Jewry has three options.

Michael Lumish..
Israel Thrives..
11 February '15..

Record numbers of Jews are emigrating out of France this year. The French government is therefore taking measures to secure the safety of its Jewish citizenry after the anti-Semitic Islamist attack on the Hyper Cacher kosher market... which the Obama administration now insists was merely a "random" attack by some generalized human beings against other generalized human beings for reasons unknown.

The Jerusalem Post tells us:

The French government has decided to delegate the safe-guarding of Jewish institutions to the army for the time being, while beefing up police presence in all Jewish neighborhoods.

I have little reason to doubt that when French governmental authorities claimed that they would do their best to protect the tiny Jewish minority in that country that they were largely sincere. The fact that they have actually dispatched the French army to guard Jewish day schools and synagogues speaks to that fact.

The problem is that while guarding Jewish institutions with the army may prevent future Islamist attacks, it is simply no way to live. Who would want to raise their children in an environment so dangerous as to require armed guards?

Why would any Jew choose to live in a country wherein the hatred toward them is so great from the ten times larger French Muslim community that they need armed guards on a daily basis to protect themselves and their children?

The truth is, there is probably precious little that the French government can do, beyond the heavy-handed use of the military, to protect French Jewry from Islamist violence.

Ultimately French Jewry has three options.

1) It can put its head down and simply hope for the best... which is the traditional strategy that has worked out so well in the past.

Defeating the terrorists who killed my mother, 13 years on.

...They most likely had no idea that they had killed my mother and a 20-year-old passenger named Esther Alwan, sitting in the back seat. They probably didn’t know they had injured my stepfather and put two bullets through my brother’s shoulder. They were consummate terrorists: trying to instill terror in their enemy by randomly attacking civilians.

Yoni Berg..
Times of Israel..
23 January '15..

Today marks the thirteenth anniversary of the greatest decision of my life. I decided to leave my comfortable, promising, possibly lucrative life in exile and come to my new home in my ancestral homeland.

I had so many reasons to stay in New York. I was young, healthy, and fresh out of college. I had a decent-paying job to fund an active social life while paying no bills thanks to guest rooms and couches of friends and family. I was dating (at one point very seriously) my on-again-off-again girlfriend, I had a cool Jeep, and my father was offering (bribing?) me a number of easy jobs that would guarantee my financial security, if I stayed.

In addition, patriotism was skyrocketing in the US of A. 9/11 was a fresh wound on the nation, and everyone was uniting under the star-spangled banner. President Bush was playing his part of the cowboy perfectly, promising to root out Al Qaida wherever they were hiding. In the still-smoldering New York, Mayor Rudy Giuliani had just rejected a ten million dollar donation from Saudi Arabia, and the city loved him for it. It was a grand time to be an American, and it was even better to be a New Yorker.

On top of all that, Israel was in turmoil at the time. The second Intifada was raging. Dozens of Israelis were killed and hundreds were injured in various terrorist attacks – and that was just in the month before I came. Bus bombings were commonplace, as were indiscriminate terrorist shootings at heavily populated civilian targets.

Was I crazy? Why would I ever leave such a potentially wonderful life in exchange for such a potentially dangerous (and possibly short) one?

I wish I could say it was pure idealism that got me to go. I mean, It was idealism, but it was also more than that.

Six months prior to my Aliya, my mother was murdered in one of those commonplace, indiscriminate shootings.

Her murderers didn’t use a sniper rifle like the one that killed Shalhevet Pass. They didn’t kill her face-to-face like the ones who killed Koby Mandell and Yosef Ishran. No, those deaths were personalized. The men who killed my mother sprayed the car she was in with submachine gun fire. They most likely had no idea that they had killed my mother and a 20-year-old passenger named Esther Alwan, sitting in the back seat. They probably didn’t know they had injured my stepfather and put two bullets through my brother’s shoulder. They were consummate terrorists: trying to instill terror in their enemy by randomly attacking civilians.

Most people would see this as another reason for me not to live here. Why would I willingly go to the very place where my own mother was killed for the simple fact that she was Jewish?

Has Packing Time for France’s Jews Arrived?

...It’s true that Israelis run greater personal risks than French Jews. Then again, Israelis needn’t rely on the rectitude of those in power (however long they may remain in power) to see their children home safely from school. It’s also true that leaving France is a victory of sorts for French anti-Semites. But the point of living isn’t to win arguments with bigots. Settle your affairs, pack your things, leave home, go home.

Bret Stephens..
Wall Street Journal..
19 January '15..

Should French Jews move out? Does it make sense for a community that, in this century, has lost roughly 10 people to jihad in France, to pack up and go to Israel—where jihadis have claimed more than 1,000 Jewish lives? Haven’t the leaders of the Fifth Republic demonstrated in word and deed that they are committed to the protection of Jewish property and life?

The answer to that last question is yes, they have. The problem isn’t the Fifth Republic, in which French Jews have, on the whole, thrived. The problem is the arrival, sooner or later, of the Sixth. Which is why French Jews need to leave sooner rather than later, despite the disruption and risk, while the exits are not blocked and the way is still open.

Perhaps inadvertently, French Prime Minister Manuel Valls made the basic point last week when he told his Parliament that “history has taught us that the awakening of anti-Semitism is a symptom of a crisis for democracy and of a crisis for the Republic.” Very true, but if anti-Semitism is the symptom of the crisis, then ringing Jewish schools, synagogues, groceries and neighborhoods with gendarmes is not its cure. Necessity is proof of insufficiency.

So what is the crisis of France’s democracy and Republic?

Partly it’s political: Every Fifth Republic presidency (with the arguable exception of François Mitterrand’s) has ended in failure. Partly it’s economic: Since 1978, French economic growth has clocked in at an average rate of 0.45%; unemployment hasn’t fallen below 7% in over 30 years. Partly it’s ideological: Égalité begat egalitarianism, and egalitarianism is what animates the politics of envy. Partly it’s cultural: Too many French Muslims don’t want to conform to the norms of modern society, and too many French don’t want to conform to the realities of a globalized world. When National Front leader Marine Le Pen says “the multinational interests that impose their own ways are not good for France,” she is attempting to stuff the French body politic into an economic burqa.

Above all, it’s cumulative. Similar-size countries like Germany or Britain have had their highs and lows in recent decades, periods of growth or recession, feelings of confidence or malaise. French decline has been constant, unrelieved, embittering. “In one of my finance seminars, every single French student intends to go abroad,” Sorbonne economics Prof. Jacques Régniez told the Daily Telegraph in 2013. It isn’t just the Jews who want out.

But it’s especially the Jews who need out.

Concrete Lessons From France: Aliyah is the Cornerstone of Zionism

...One need only observe the response of French Jews at a grass-roots level to see how appreciative they were of Netanyahu and his message. The very fact that the families decided to bury all four Jewish victims in Jerusalem is resounding proof. But we pray that we continue to welcome only living Jews from France to their historic homeland.

Isi Leibler..
Candidly Speaking From Jerusalem..
20 January '15..

French Prime Minister Manuel Valls courageously stated that “if 100,000 Jews leave, France will no longer be France. The French Republic will be judged a failure.” He said that he did not employ the term Islamophobia because it “is often used as a weapon by Islam’s apologists to silence their critics” and called on his nation to wage “a war against terrorism, against radical Islam, against everything that is aimed at breaking fraternity, freedom and solidarity.”

In a recent National Assembly speech reminiscent of Emile Zola’s “J’accuse,” he passionately cried, “How can we accept that in France … where Jews were martyred 70 years ago, that cries of ‘death to the Jews’ can be heard in the streets? … How can we accept that French people can be murdered for being Jews? … How can we accept that in certain schools and colleges the Holocaust cannot be taught? … How can we accept that when a child is asked ‘who is your enemy?’ the response is ‘the Jew’?”

But alas, Valls’ noble remarks were not echoed by a single senior French government spokesman. On the contrary, President Francois Hollande, while conceding that the kosher supermarket murders were anti-Semitic acts, refused to even hint that this was an act motivated by Islamic radicalism. He mumbled about “obscurantist” forces and even insisted that “those who committed these acts have nothing to do with the Muslim religion” and that the “main victims” were Muslims.

More galling for French Jews was the absence of comparable national demonstrations of sympathy or solidarity concerning the anti-Semitic violence and murder suffered during the preceding two years and their unanswered appeals for increased security. The authorities were far more concerned with their attempts not to offend Muslims than with defending and protecting the besieged and victimized Jews.

Further evidence of this was reflected by the despicable manner in which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was treated. Initially, Hollande had the gall to suggest that the Israeli leader, at the frontlines of the international struggle against Islamic terrorism, absent himself from the global leadership gathering because his presence would introduce the “divisive Israeli-Palestinian” issue. That he could make such a request to the head of the Jewish state in the wake of the brutal anti-Semitic carnage, was mind-boggling.

To make matters worse, when Netanyahu made his intentions clear that he was attending, the head of the French National Security Council responded that Israel would face dire consequences and immediately invited Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas to demonstrate “even-handedness.” Hollande subsequently also displayed his feelings when he and his government delegation departed from the Grand Synagogue just prior to Netanyahu’s address.

Hollande welcomed the presence of the corrupt and duplicitous Abbas, who exemplifies the suppression of free speech which the demonstration was condemning. But more importantly, he personally endorses the very murderous anti-Semitic attacks that Hollande condemned. The French and the other European leaders are aware that Abbas formed a union (which failed) with the genocidal Hamas, which calls for the murder of all Jews. He incites vicious hatred against Israelis, pays salaries to murderers of innocent civilians, provides pensions for the families of suicide bombers, and glorifies the most barbaric terrorists. Hollande is aware that this abhorrent Holocaust-denier only recently sent a formal condolence note to the family of the terrorist who sought to murder Rabbi Yehuda Glick.

From France the Exodus has Begun

...From being the largest Jewish community in the EU at the start of this decade, with a population of around 500,000, it is expected by Jewish community leaders to have fallen to 400,000 within a few years. That figure is thought by some to be too optimistic. Anecdotally, every French Jew I know has either already left or is working out how to leave.

Stephen Pollard..
The Telegraph..
09 January '15..

The least surprising thing about today’s turn of events in Paris is that Jews are the target. Because when it comes to home grown anti-Semitism, France leads the world.

A survey last year from the European Jewish Congress and Tel Aviv University found that France had more violent anti-semitic incidents in 2013 than any other country in the world. Jews were the target of 40 per cent of all racist crimes in France in 2013 – even though they comprise less than 1 per cent of the population. Attacks on Jews have risen sevenfold since the 1990s.

No wonder Jewish emigration from France is accelerating. From being the largest Jewish community in the EU at the start of this decade, with a population of around 500,000, it is expected by Jewish community leaders to have fallen to 400,000 within a few years. That figure is thought by some to be too optimistic. Anecdotally, every French Jew I know has either already left or is working out how to leave.

Natan Sharansky, the former Soviet refusenik who is now chair of the Jewish Agency Chairman, said last year that 2,254 French Jews moved to Israel during the first five months of 2014, against only 580 in all of 2013. That is a staggering 289 per cent increase, but in recent months the figure is thought to have increased exponentially.

Coming Home. A Zionist Dream Come True

...“Here you have for the first time, a clear thing,” Sharansky said. “There is a massive exodus from a community in the free world, which has all the doors open to them, and they are choosing Israel.” It’s a Zionist dream come true. 

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
07 January '15..

In many ways, the year that just ended was a difficult one for Israel–a war in Gaza, terror in Jerusalem, escalating international opprobrium, a slowing economy. Perhaps that explains why so little attention has been paid to the fact that last year also marked the achievement, for the first time in Israel’s history, of one of Zionism’s longtime goals: In a year where immigration to Israel hit a 10-year high, a majority of the immigrants, for the first time ever, came from the West. In other words, for the first time ever, most immigrants came to Israel not because they had no other options, but because they wanted to come.

Granted, rising anti-Semitism in Europe contributed to the immigration surge; Jews from France, where anti-Semitism has increasingly turned violent, constituted more than a quarter of the 26,500 immigrants. But there’s another factor as well, epitomized by the identical and completely unsolicited comments I independently received from citizens of two different European countries at last week’s Limmud UK conference: Europe, they said, feels dead. Israel feels alive.

And it’s worth noting that neither of the speakers came from one of the continent’s economic basket cases. They came from Britain and the Netherlands, two of Europe’s stronger economies.

Indeed, as Jewish Agency chairman Natan Sharansky pointed out, until not long ago, even French Jews who wanted to leave Europe preferred to go to Montreal. Today, as many as 70 percent choose Israel–and the number is likely to keep growing. A year ago, the Jewish Agency ran one immigration information seminar a month in France, Sharansky said. Now, it runs two a day.

What ties our hearts to this place, despite the distance and the criticism

...The truth is that the real reason is very simple and contains two parts: First, the Jewish genome. None of the young people of Garin Tzabar, myself included, have given up -- despite the many temptations -- on our right to take on the burden of protecting our Jewish identity. We were never willing to cut the historic, cultural, or religious ties that bind us, even if some of us had only seen Israel on postcards. We always fought -- in school, at conferences, in forums, in conversations with friends -- to tell Israel's side, despite the criticism we got for it.

Rom Lerner..
Israel Hayom..
04 January '15..

Reports last week said that the scope of immigration to Israel had reached a 10-year high. I was one of the sea of immigrants who chose to move here this year, arriving from Kenya with the help of the Israel Scouts youth movement's Garin Tzabar project. I'm currently waiting to be drafted into an IDF combat unit. Our aliyah carries added value, because all of the 400 young Jews who moved to Israel this year under the auspices of Garin Tzabar did so with the intent of being drafted into the Israel Defense Forces and performing valuable service as lone soldiers.

Talking with my fellow members of the garin (a group of people immigrating to Israel together), I always seek the true reasons that led us to take this brave step. Many talk about the anti-Semitism that is rearing its head in recent years, forcing Jews to hide their identity, about fear of discrimination or about anti-Semitic incidents. A few even speak in whispers about a new threatening atmosphere that reminds us of stories from Jewish history we read about and heard Holocaust survivors tell chokingly. Others talk about the economic crisis Europe and the U.S. have undergone in recent years, which is even affecting the well-to-do Jewish communities.

Despite all this, all my garin comrades would certainly agree that none of these were the catalyst that caused them to leave their families and everything else behind, immigrate to Israel and be drafted as lone soldiers into the IDF, where they might risk their lives. Most of us have not personally experienced unusual anti-Semitic events, most of our parents haven't been seriously affected by the economic situation, and to be honest, most of us had a comfortable, well-planned life ahead of us.