The Israel they are seeing is just the tip of the iceberg, but is something that truly speaks to their sensibilities - Dror Eydar

Israel and China are two ancient, glorious civilizations, but unlike the Jews, the Chinese remained in their land throughout their history. In order to truly understand a nation, we cannot go just by headlines – we must learn its history and aspirations.

Dror Eydar..
Israel Hayom..
24 August '18..
Link: http://www.israelhayom.com/2018/08/24/the-tip-of-the-iceberg/

I have had a number of opportunities to meet and chat with Chinese people – students, business women, researchers and members of academia, to name a few. I was told to talk to them about Israel, the Jewish people, our history and our culture. I automatically assumed that we did not have very much in common, aside from the fact that both our civilizations are ancient and glorious.

Imagine that we are looking at the sea right now, I would say to them. We are looking at waves, sea spray, birds flying overhead. And then, right in the middle of this giant body of water, we spot an island. Would it be wise to focus only on the island and ignore everything that surrounds it? The depths of the ocean are far greater and more powerful than this tiny piece of land that we discovered.

The renowned psychoanalyst Carl Jung once compared consciousness to an island in the ocean of the subconscious. The information we can glean from what our eyes can see is not enough to fully judge a person. A person's deeds and words are also insufficient to provide a complete picture. These things are too superficial. A person's history, biography, family, social background and education all come into play. A person's dreams and secret passions are also an important component that cannot be immediately seen. These are immensely important elements of any human being's personality and are therefore the key to understanding them.

As much as this holds true for human beings, it is even more applicable to nations and peoples. Newspaper headlines and politicians' speeches are certainly not enough to form a well-rounded opinion. Even the actions of individual members of a nation are not enough to formulate an accurate idea, whatever their prominence. These things are, again, too superficial. The nation's history, its religion, its mythology, the oral history that has been passed down through the generations for thousands of years, its customs, its heritage, its language and so many other factors are what make up the DNA of a nation.

When it comes to ancient cultures, this comprehensive view is even more important. I always tell my Chinese conversation partners that our two peoples survived the test of time. We created glorious civilizations. But there is one key difference: You stayed in one place and developed for yourself, generation after generation. Invaders who came in and thought they defeated you ultimately became a part of you. You endured catastrophes, no doubt, but your land was never destroyed, and you were never exiled the way the Jews were.

Unlike you, I tell them, we spent a significant portion of our history in exile. We twice endured great destruction, we were exiled again and again, and we were subjected to countless national tragedies. Hundreds of us wandered from place to place across the globe, looking for a place to rest. Many times we imagined that we had found a home, where we could settle and forget our troubles – each time we contributed to the local economy, culture and scientific community and even tried to adopt the local patriotism – but every time, we were eventually expelled. So we continued to wander in hopes of finding a better place.

Israeli Identity: What Has Changed This Year? - by Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen

...The tension between forging a unified nation and preserving the riches of multicultural variety should be seen as a fortunate advantage. This perpetual tension, which the Jewish people has experienced since it came into existence, is also its uniqueness.

Maj. Gen. (res.) Gershon Hacohen..
BESA Center Perspectives No. 599..
29 September '17..
Link: https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/israeli-identity/


External threats to our existence as Israelis create an awareness of a common fate. It is tempting to focus on such threats, because they provide a comfort zone in which security-political experts can ask the familiar question: how will we continue to defend our existence over the coming year? By concentrating on this question, we have found a way to repress basic questions about Israeli identity.

Beyond anxiety over our common fate as residents of this country stands a key question: do we still have anything in common? This debate, which has gathered steam over the past year, invites us to reconsider who we are and what we expect from our joint existence as a nation.

This past year, the Israeli identity crisis was expressed in new ways in the public discourse. President Reuven Rivlin described it in terms of the four tribes of the state of Israel: the religious, the secular, the ultra-Orthodox, and the Arabs. Amnon Rubinstein addressed the issue in his book The Tribes of the State of Israel: Together and Separately – Liberalism and Multiculturalism in Israel. Haaretz has devoted many articles to the topic.

Notwithstanding the president’s view, a focus on the deep structure of Israeli society, especially among the Jews, reveals an important common denominator, one that is more and more evident in the synagogues. Between Mizrahi and Ashkenazi Jews there are differences of formulation, not of essence. Hence a new trend is apparent in large synagogues in Tel Aviv: the conducting of frequent integrated prayer quorums and the use of blended versions of prayers.

Not only is there a new trend of integration of communities, but religious and secular Israelis are intermingling. Israeli sociologists largely concur with one another that “secular Jews are the majority.” They tend to identify the large numbers who identify as traditional as a secular subdivision – “secular lite.” As sociologist Oz Almog put it, “The majority of Israeli society is secular and traditional.”

Based on the same data, however, one can propose a different perspective and a contrasting conclusion. If we merely change the point of departure for the distinction between secular and religious – if we agree that not everyone who drives on Shabbat is necessarily secular, as in the case of Shalom Asayag in the fascinating TV series The 1980s – we can assert that the majority of Israeli Jewish society is religious and traditional. Those of a pronounced secular bent are in the minority.

We sit down to hear the Megillah and remember how the story always ends - by Daniel Greenfield

...The knife is sharpened, the Grand Vizier and his aides smile, and the time is almost here. But it is not here yet. Now we sit down to hear the Megillah and remember how the story always ends.

Daniel Greenfield..
Sultan Knish..
First posted 07 March '12..
Link: http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/2012/03/ages-of-purim.html

Tonight begins (Saturday) the celebration of the Jewish holiday of Purim commemorating a historical incident of little relevance to the present day, involving a plot to exterminate the Jewish people. It is one of those holidays, that like most Jewish holidays, is inconvenient for liberal clergy because it involves violence and nationalism. And unlike Chanukah, on Purim, the Jews did not wait around to be massacred for a decade or two before they fought back, instead they carried out a preemptive strike.

During the winter, liberal pundits occasionally write horrified articles about the origins of Chanukah in a violent rebellion and a civil war between nationalists and internationalists, a handful of narrow-minded fanatics who wanted to keep their rituals and customs and were willing to die for it-- and the enlightened elites in the capital who were on the board the imperial train and eager to reeducate the barbarians in the settlements out of their beliefs.

Purim summons up fewer of these articles as if the revisionists are too tired to even deal with the actual story and throw up their hands and make up their own. At the Huffington Post, a liberal clergywoman explains that the holiday which culminated with bloody street fighting and public executions actually teaches us to forgive other people and not to take revenge on them. Another suggests that the message of Purim is speaking out against prejudice. The head of the radical left wing group, Uri L'Tzedek, explains that Purim is really about promoting progressive taxation. I'll spare you the transgender Purim which turns out to be a metaphor for coming out of the closet.

Or was it the land who would not relinquish her Jews? by Forest Rain

...There are many beautiful places in the world but there is only one place on earth that the land clings to the Jew.

Forest Rain..
Inspiration from Zion..
07 March '17..

This poem is the documentation of a modern miracle, brought forth out of the sheer stubbornness of a people and their relationship with a land that is just as stubborn.

In 1946, under the British Mandate, it was discovered that the Jewish community of Biriya, next to Tzfat, had stockpiled weapons. The British felt that Jews could not be allowed this freedom (self-determination) and decided to demolish the community. An order was given that declared the area “military territory” in which Jews were not allowed to live. The Jewish leadership saw this as an unprecedented infringement on the right to settle Jewish land and decided they would not relinquish their rights or the land.

Thousands of Jews flooded in to Biryia. The British army fought them off. With unwavering determination, another wave of Jews came, their numbers so great that the British were overwhelmed. The mighty army simply gave up.

Natan Alterman witnessed the victory over the British and the re-establishment of Biryia. The poem he wrote describing the event, so powerfully captured the relationship between the Jews and the Land that the British censorship would not allow it to be published in the newspaper (so it was published a few months later in a book!).

It was clear that the Jews would not give up on their land. Or was it the land who would not relinquish her Jews?

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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There is no 'State of Tel Aviv.' There is the State of Israel - by MK Ofir Akunis

...In our enemies' eyes, there are no secular Tel Avivians or ultra-Orthodox from Jerusalem. There is no periphery and no center, no Right or Left. Israel is a single enemy. That is how we should treat the waves of terrorism that have afflicted us since the first days of the Zionist movement, over 100 years ago -- as a single people, united.

MK Ofir Akunis..
Israel Hayom..
03 January '15..

There is no "State of Tel Aviv." There is the State of Israel -- and the first Hebrew city is an inseparable part of it.

How sad that we tend to remember that, and stress it, only after it is struck by a terrorist attack. Only when a loathsome murderer starts shooting there and murders two beautiful young people who were just starting their lives, who like many of their Tel Avivian neighbors came there from cities in the periphery: Shimon Ruimi from Ofakim and Alon Bakal from Carmiel.

It's easy to portray the Tel Aviv "detachment." Some call it a "bubble." The fact that the two people murdered came from the south and the north of the country tells us all: This is Israel. This is our story.

I grew up in Tel Aviv and on the family stories that Arab gangs would shoot at the family home in the Shapira neighborhood from orchards in Abu Kabir and Salameh, south of the city, before the state was even founded. We experienced the bombing at the Savoy Hotel and later the mega-attack on the bus at the northern entrance to the city, an incident that led to the first curfew since World War I.

It was Tel Aviv that was the first city in Israel to come under fire by long-range missiles, in the Persian Gulf War, when we were instructed to sit in sealed rooms. This is the city that three years later was shocked by the intensity of the No. 5 bus bombing near Dizengoff Square. The Simta Bar, the scene of Friday's shooting, is only a few yards away.

It was during Purim festivities in Tel Aviv that a suicide bomber slaughtered costumed, laughing families at a crosswalk in the middle of town. Yes, on Dizengoff Street again. Tel Aviv saw the terrible terrorist bombings at the Dolphinarium, at Mike's Place on the waterfront, and at the Rosh Ha'ir shawarma stand, and the entrance to the old central bus station at the beginning of the wave of terrorism at the beginning of the last decade. Tel Aviv, too, came under rocket fire from the Gaza Strip during Operations Pillar of Defense and Protective Edge, when residents headed down to the shelters.

Because Tel Aviv is Israel, and Israel is Tel Aviv. There is no artificial distinction and there shouldn't be one -- because what our brutal enemies prove to us time after time is that their fight against us isn't territorial. It isn't about one "territory" or another. It isn't about "the territories" or about "the occupation." It isn't a struggle over "the settlements" or about the 1967 borders.

(Video) Chanukah - Against All Odds

Chanuka is a time for miracles, both in those days and ours.


Torah Live

To see more Torah Live Chanuka videos, 
visit http://www.youtube.com/user/TorahLive

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work as well as a big vote to follow our good friend Kay Wilson on Twitter.

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Coping with Terror by Choosing Life by Evelyn Gordon

...Israelis, however, have repeatedly taken the third option: responding to grief and pain by actively working to make some little corner of their world a better place. And that’s precisely why Israel, against the odds, has become the thriving country it is amid a region that is falling apart. Faced with terror, Israelis have overwhelmingly chosen to build rather than destroy. And they have thereby chosen life.

Evelyn Gordon..
Commentary Magazine..
16 November '15..

The murderous terror that swept Paris on Friday is all too familiar to Israelis, and Israel has developed multiple strategies for dealing with such attacks. But the most remarkable aspect of Israel’s response to terror is not its intelligence or military capabilities, important though these undoubtedly are. It’s how the victims’ families and friends cope with their grief and pain. One might think this would vary widely from individual to individual. Yet one particular response has become so common that it has practically achieved the status of a norm: commemorating the victims by launching some concrete project to make Israel a better place.

A classic example was coincidentally highlighted by last week’s General Assembly of the Jewish Federations of North America. A commercial supplement produced in honor of the gathering by Haaretz detailed various federation-supported projects, including one called Nirim in the Neighborhoods that seeks to rehabilitate juvenile delinquents by means of wilderness therapy. What caught my eye was how this program got started: It was founded by a group of Israeli naval commandos to commemorate one of their comrades, Nir Krichman, who was killed during a counterterrorism operation in the West Bank in 2002. The program was subsequently adopted by the entire unit, and to this day commandos regularly accompany the teenage participants on the wilderness treks that constitute the therapy’s key element. Thirteen years later, Nirim claims that 95 percent of its 300 graduates have successfully turned their lives around and extricated themselves from poverty.

The story of Nirim’s founding is far from unique, as I’ve noted elsewhere. The Koby Mandell Foundation, for example, was established by Koby’s parents after the 13-year-old was murdered by terrorists in 2001; it runs programs to help traumatized siblings of terror victims. The Malki Roth Foundation was established by Malki’s parents after the 15-year-old was murdered by terrorists that same year; this organization, inspired by Malki’s devotion to her disabled sister, helps families care for special-needs children at home. The Benji Hillman Foundation, which assists lone soldiers, was started by Benji’s parents after he was killed fighting in the Second Lebanon War of 2006; it was inspired by his concern for lone soldiers in his own unit. And the list could go on.

Nor are social-service organizations the only form of commemoration. When Jonathan Einhorn fell in the Second Lebanon War, for instance, his parents chose to commemorate his love of the land by building a public park filled with native Israeli flora. After Gilad Shtokelman fell in the same war, his parents decided to build their small community’s first synagogue in his memory.

The projects are as diverse as the individuals they commemorate. But they all have one thing in common: the desire to honor a loved one’s life by leaving Israel a better place than they found it.

Our finest hours, in our darkest times by Smadar Bat Adam

...And we should know about Kenda Kesahu and his friends, who chased after the attacker in Petach Tikva, catching and holding him until security forces could arrive. After all, they could have returned home in peace, or taken cover, or fled for their lives. But they understood it was their duty to stop the attacker. Kesahu said, "I really don't know why they're calling me a hero. All I wanted was to help save my people."

Smadar Bat Adam..
Israel Hayom..
12 October '15..

The news of another horrific terror attack flickers from the television screen, and out of the darkness emerge stories of people, regular everyday people, who came face to face with a knife or bomb and took action. They fought back. They prevented a larger terrorist attack from happening. They chased, and they caught. Not that it was their job to do so, but they felt a duty. And they were resourceful. And sometimes, in those marvelous moments, all you want to see is the news anchor's stone face crack just a bit, for her to say with just a bit of pride: Look at us! Look how amazing we are! Just a good word, or two, nothing more.

Does that sound cliched? Be warned then, I'm just getting started. I still haven't said, "The people are a united front." Way before my time, Haim Hefer and Dubi Zeltzer waxed, "Long live this nation; thank heaven it is made of such people." But what does it matter, you and I will keep saying it, over and over, lest it be forgotten. And we will provide reminders that no other people living in an enlightened, developed democracy are forced to contend with these repeated waves of murder and terror, which have persisted for over a hundred years, and that the more these people are hurt the stronger they become. There is nothing else like them.

These stories need to be told. We need to hear about Liat Ohana from Kiryat Gat, who fought like a lion, with her bare hands, against an armed terrorist who broke into her apartment while fleeing from the scene of his crime; and about Daniel, who after being stabbed in the head and back turned around and shot the terrorist who was trying to kill him; and about the resourcefulness of the female soldier who was stabbed near the Azrieli Center in Tel Aviv, but still managed to slow down the attacker and prevented him from stealing her weapon by sitting on him; and about the officer who just happened to be walking nearby, who in an instant realized what was going on and shot the terrorist, preventing others from being hurt; and about Sgt. First Class Moshe Chen, a policeman, who was wounded when a female terrorist he had ordered to stop near Maaleh Adumim, on the road to Jerusalem, detonated an explosive device, but who still managed called for help and directed emergency crews to the scene. And we can only estimate the potential magnitude of the attack that was prevented after a gas canister and another bomb were found in the terrorist's car.

A Prayer for 5776 by Caroline Glick

Israel’s greatest strategic asset is our willingness to see things for what they are. It is my prayer for the coming year that our vision becomes ever sharper and that through our moral and strategic clarity we rally the Americans and other like-minded nations to our side in our fight for ourselves and for the noblest attributes of humanity.

Caroline Glick..
Column One/JPost..
10 September '15..

As we approach Rosh Hashana, the people of Israel need to recognize how lucky we are.

True, today, we find ourselves largely alone, set apart from our traditional partners in the Western world. But standing alone isn’t always the worst option. Today it is certainly not the worst option.

Over the past several years, we have witnessed the growing radicalization and fragmentation of the societies of neighboring lands. Sunnis fight Shi’ites and one another. Minority populations are slaughtered, enslaved and oppressed. Regimes fall, rise and fall again. Today, every Arab society is either in danger or at war. And in almost every case, it isn’t good fighting evil but varying degrees of evil and barbarism fighting one another.

From the PLO to Islamic State, through Hamas, the Muslim Brotherhood, the Assad regime in Syria, the ayatollahs of Iran, Hezbollah, the Erdogan regime in Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and every single actor in the region resorts to some degree of torture and oppression.

And all do so while quoting the Koran.

Israel has responded rationally to the carnage at our doorstep.

We help where we can. For instance, we are assisting the Egyptian regime in its war against jihadist forces in Sinai. We support the Hashemite regime in Jordan. We provide humanitarian assistance to the victims of the bloodbath in Syria.

And we are securing our borders.

After we finished building the border fence with Egypt, we built one along the Syrian border. Now we are fencing off the border with Jordan.

These fences may not make good neighbors. But they do keep the bad ones at bay.

Similar rationality is in short supply today in Europe and among the smart set in America. Westerners are increasingly at a loss in the face of the break-up of societies throughout the Arab world.

Consider for instance Europe’s disoriented, confused response to the massive wave of refugees from Syria now washing onto its shores. Perhaps the most notable aspect of the unfolding drama is that it appears the Europeans only just realized that Syria has fallen apart.

The war in Syria broke out nearly five years ago.

For Their Modeling Faith and Love, We Are in Their Debt

...They gave Israelis a model for religious commitment, national unity and brotherly love not only in times of crisis but also in everyday life; throughout all regular seasons of our rough-and-tumble spiritual-social-political life. For this, we are in their debt.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
02 July '14..

So it turns out that the families of Naftali Fraenkel, Gilad Shaer and Eyal Yifrach knew almost from the beginning of this ordeal that one or two of the three boys were likely to have been killed in the course of the kidnapping on June 12.

There were gunshots on the recording of the SOS call made by Gilad, which was played for the families. There were bullet casings and blood found in the burnt shell of the getaway car, and the families were told this too.

They were told that the lack of demands from the kidnappers was a sign that the boys might no longer be alive.

And yet all three families exuded optimism, faith and positive energy for 18 long days. They went before camera and after camera, reporter after reporter, concert after concert, and prayer assembly after prayer assembly, and asserted their confidence that just a bit more effort could bring a positive result. They met every youth group, every foreign diplomat, every UN assembly, every IDF commander they could, thanking everybody for their efforts, in their upbeat, affirming and unassuming way.

What amazing people! What noble people! How they raised the spirits of an entire nation; united an entire nation; comforted an entire nation!

They taught us how to harness all our temporal powers to drive towards a national goal in unison. They taught us all what it means to believe in powers greater than our own.

Perhaps the most profound thought uttered over the past three weeks was expressed by Racheli Fraenkel at the Western Wall last week. In a clip shown on Israeli television, and seen I think by just about every person in this country, Mrs. Fraenkel is approached at the Wall by a group of very young girls who want to wish her well.

Instead, Mrs. Fraenkel bends down to them and offers theological reassurance and warm wisdom. “I want you to promise me,” she softly says, “that no matter what happens, you won’t be crushed or broken. That you won’t lose faith. After all, we must remember that G-d isn’t our ‘employee.’ He doesn’t always do as we wish.”

With these crushingly humble words, Racheli Fraenkel captured the hearts of an entire nation. Her words resounded through every living room and every workplace. People repeated them, reflected upon them, debated them. Agree or disagree, nobody could deny her strength of spirit. Nobody could avoid being awestruck at her clear-sightedness; at her breathtaking display of faith within realism.

Israel, A believing nation

...Faith is a healthy state of mind on the personal and national levels. Belief in the Rock of Israel is to our credit and is an overwhelming benefit. It is not a danger. May G-d and the powers He invests in the Jewish People bring the kidnapped boys home safe and sound, soon.

David M. Weinberg..
A Citadel Defending Zion..
27 June '14..

As I walked into work yesterday after a two week study trip abroad, a colleague of mine grabbed me to talk about the kidnapped boys: Naftali, Eyal and Gilad. She knew that I live in Nof Ayalon, Naftali Fraenkel’s home neighborhood. Naftali’s parents are my friends.

“The mothers of those three boys are amazing,” she said. “Especially Rachel Fraenkel, who spoke so eloquently and inspiringly at the UN in Geneva this week. It must be easier for them as religious women to handle the situation, since they have faith to rely upon. Oy, sometimes I wish that I had such faith too. I am secular.”

I responded to her philosophically. A world without faith is a harsh and cold world, I said; a world without sustainable hope. Religious people indeed believe that the ultimate reality at the heart of the universe is not blind to our existence, deaf to our prayers, and indifferent to our fate. Faith in G-d’s providence is a central tenet of the Jewish religion; indeed, of all the world’s major religions.

I don’t know that such faith makes the situation any “easier” for the families of the kidnapped boys, I told her, but it certainly provides a framework within which to channel one’s energies, desires, needs and aspirations.

Believers are not blind, and understand that G-d “isn’t our employee” – as Rachel Fraenkel poignantly said this week. But they nevertheless believe that prayer and Torah study, good deeds, and initiatives that promote national unity indeed can have a constructive impact in the Heavens.

“Yeah, but I don’t pray,” my colleague responded. “Alas, I just don’t have that faith.”

I countered: “I bet you have more faith than you credit yourself for. After all, we are a nation of believers. Just about everybody in this country feels part of a grand meta-historic journey. A journey that is connected to spiritual powers and a moral heritage invested in the Jewish People that has sustained us for thousands of years and returned us to the Land of Israel.”

“Of course, not everybody in the country is ‘religious’ in terms of the traditional practice of Judaism. Far from it. But I’m sure that you feel, like me, that there is some guiding hand behind the modern renaissance of Jewish life and peoplehood.”

“Isn’t that why we all participate in the Passover seder; because it encapsulates our faith in Jewish history and destiny? Isn’t that what the State of Israel’s founders meant when they wrote in the Declaration of Independence, ‘With faith in the Rock of Israel…’?”

“Yes, I accept what you’re saying,” admitted my secular colleague. “There is something powerfully evocative and meaningful in Jewish history, and I don’t think that we live here only by chance or on a whim. In any case, I admire the religious families of the kidnapped boys for their faith and noble posture in these terrible days. And perhaps I too will light a candle for their release this Shabbat.”

The War of Independence isn't over, but we're neither tired nor giving up

...For 2,000 years, we prayed to return to Jerusalem. We never stopped hoping, and ultimately, at the big moment, we did return. We must let everyone know that we are determined to continue to fight bravely, for another 2,000 years, for our basic right to live in our homeland. The only way for the days of waiting for peace to be shortened would be for the Palestinians to become convinced, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the Jews are prepared to live by the sword and draw it from the sheath whenever necessary.

Dr. Haim Shine..
Israel Hayom..
16 June '14..

The criminal kidnapping of Eyal Yifrach, Naftali Frenkel and Gil-ad Shaer was not, apparently, carried out by an "extremist" terror group.

The difference between extremist Palestinians and Palestinians with whom we hold peace talks is an imaginary one created by the Israeli Left, which has tired of bearing the burden of maintaining the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. If a poll was taken of the Palestinian public, it is certain that the kidnappers would be seen as heroes at the forefront of the effort to realize the dream of removing the Jews from their homeland. The only difference between Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas is that Haniyeh says what he really thinks, while Abbas masks his intentions with sweet words and doublespeak. It is a great shame that there are Israelis who have been captivated by the charm of the false rhetoric of Yasser Arafat's disciples, exalting the victims of the peace process.

While the Israel Defense Forces and other Israeli security entities are doing everything they can to find the kidnapped teens and the citizens of Israel are united in prayer and concern, some Israeli media commentators have rushed to explain that the kidnapping was the result of a lack of a political horizon and the fact that Jews live in Gush Etzion. This interpretation is an evil distortion of reality. The truth is completely different. The teens were kidnapped because they were Jews living in their historic homeland, regardless of the location of their place of study or residence. Jews were maliciously murdered in the past by Palestinian terrorists at the Dolphinarium discotheque in Tel Aviv, a hotel in Netanya, a restaurant in Haifa and on the streets of Jerusalem. Only people with short memories have forgotten the history of our modern-day return to Zion, in which many Jews were killed for no reason, even before the Six-Day War and the liberation of our homeland.

A veteran Palestinian public figure who lived in Hebron told me years ago that a Palestinian leader who conceded even a grain of sand of the Land of Israel would quickly find himself buried under that same grain of sand. Reality has proved how right he was. At every moment of truth, when decision time has arrived, Palestinian leaders have stepped back, remembering what their people expect of them, and retreated to transparent and hypocritical political maneuvers. It is only Israeli government leaders who, on every platform (real or virtual), continue to wave around peace proposals, playing chess alone and putting themselves in checkmate. It is too bad that these futile proposals cause real damage to Israel's foreign policy and weaken the resilience of the Israeli public.

And for that reason, I very much love my army

...I love my tefillin because they are my otherworldly tool of spiritual enhancement (I even have two pairs!). But I also love my land, my country and my people. And for that reason, I very much love my army – it defends all that I hold dear, and it is the place where you actually get to meet the land (because the army exists in places where people barely do), and you get to meet the people (outside of your social and geographical bubble).

Yishai Fleisher..
yishaifleisher.com..
26 January '14..

It’s 6:30 a.m., super cold in the desert, and we just went to sleep a few hours ago after a full night of hiking, maneuvering and positioning on IDF reserve duty.

But we are up, and there’s even a fire warming our frozen feet, and a cup of coffee proudly made by a buddy.

I take out my special tefillin bag, and start by donning my tallit, the white cloth starkly contrasting with olive green of the uniform and the jeeps.

Immediately, I sense a change in the atmosphere. Most of my fellow soldiers are secular, or more accurately, do not put on tefillin regularly. We don’t talk about it much, just a word or two here and there. They all know someone who does it. A friend, a brother, a grandfather; someone in their life does this strange bit of wrapping leather boxes and mumbling while swaying.

As I pray, one guy turns up the rock music coming from his phone but I don’t let it disturb me, and soon he turns it off. Another silently pushes a stick in the fire. The sun is coming out, and the desert cold begins to be replaced (mercifully) by desert heat.
IDF_reserve_duty_desert_2013_dec

From the few words we have exchanged on the issue, I try to imagine what my fellow soldiers think as they see me praying: Do I believe in God? Does God talk to man? Does He really command man to put on these things? Am I still a Jew if I am not observant? Is it important for me to self-identify as a Jew, or does my Israeli identity suffice? I finish my session and begin to wrap up the tefillin, and fold the tallit. I don’t prod anyone to borrow my tefillin. I do my thing proudly, but without missionizing.

If anybody asked, I would be happy to lend my tefillin. But they don’t ask, and I am content to just to be there among these great men.

While they may not consider themselves observant, to me, they observe so many of our people’s essential values, like “Ve’ahavta l’reacha kamocha” – loving the other as much as one loves oneself. They show this by volunteering to take a week out of their busy lives to practice the art of war in the service of the Jewish state and the Jewish people.

Actually, many of them appreciate me for putting on my tefillin – I take care of that department for them.

Our unit has many departments: sharpshooters, light artillery, scouts, anti-tank, and explosives, but someone has to be the praying guy, the good luck charm, the shaliah tzibur. So along with our other duties, a few of the guys and I have praying duty, and just like our whole unit has to operate the many departments with one goal in mind, I make sure to pray for all the other men as well.

As it Goes with Israel, ... Where's the Coverage?

SC..
CAMERA Snapshots..
25 April '13..

When terrorists bomb a public place in Israel, injuring dozens and even killing children, or when an Israeli police officer is killed by terrorists, it is not all that jarring to most of the world. Though it should be.

Last week, radicalized Muslim terrorists reportedly bombed the Boston Marathon, injuring dozens and killing three civilians including an eight-year-old boy. Subsequently, they allegedly also murdered a young police officer.

In the wake of this tragedy, both victims and the admitted terrorist are being treated by doctors who were trained in Israel, and in the case of Professor Kevin (Ilan) Tabb, the director of Boston’s Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (the BI), an actual Israeli. Suspected terrorist Dzhokhar Tsarnaev is being treated at the BI as are 24 people who were injured in the attack, among them 16 who are in serious condition.

According to an article in Ynet:

“Unfortunately, I have had a lot of experience with these types of injuries after years of treating people injured in terror attacks in Israel,” said the professor, who is a member of the board of Hadassah Ein Kerem hospital in Jerusalem, where he studied medicine and completed his residency. “We have a few Israeli doctors in the emergency room, and the director of the ER is also Israeli.”
[…]
“It was very similar to what I was used to in Israel in that we had to admit many injured people in a short period of time,” Professor Tabb said. “The fact that we are treating both the victims and the suspected terrorist also reminds me of similar situations in Israel. In Israel we had an injured soldier and a terrorist lying on adjacent beds. When an injured person is admitted to the ER, the doctor or nurse treats him without asking questions.”

These facts have not received much coverage, except in the Israeli and Jewish press. No surprise there. Even more important, however, is their broader implication. Israel is not just a great friend and ally to the United States. Israel is on the front line of our own battle.

(Video) Dr. Mordechai Kedar - The underlying intolerance of a Jewish state of any size.

JooTubeTV..
03 February '13..
H/T Batzi..





Middle-East scholar, Prof. Mordechai Kedar, discusses Israel's legitimacy, the legality of Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria, and Muslims' underlying intolerance of a Jewish state of any size in the Jewish ancestral homeland.



Link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=jGpDbQbwnPQ

About JooTube.TV Channel: A visual chronicle of the survival of Jewish faith and culture, with insights into preserving the health of all free societies.

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Slow news day - Haaretz resurrects the Khazar Jews theory

Dore Gold..
Israel Hayom..
28 December '12..

Every number of years the theory is advanced that the Jews of Europe are actually descendants of the Khazar kingdom, a mostly Turkic people whose king and nobility converted to Judaism in the early eighth century, allowing them to become a buffer state between Islam and Christendom.

When the Khazar kingdom collapsed in the 13th century, according to the believers in the Khazar theory, its population fled into Eastern Europe and served as the core of European Jewry. Most Jewish historians argued for centuries that after the destruction of the Temple and the Bar Kokhba Revolt, many Jews who had been exiled moved up the Italian peninsula north of the Alps into the trading cities along the Rhine River in Germany. From there, European Jewry began to populate the countries of Eastern Europe in the centuries that followed.

In his monumental work, "Arab Attitudes to Israel," written in the early 1970s, Professor Yehoshafat Harkabi described the Khazar theory as one of the arguments marshaled in the Arab world to assert that the Jews of the modern period were not the descendents of the biblical of children of Israel and hence had no historical right to recover their land. This position is also voiced in the Palestinian media today.

For example, Jarir al-Qidwa, who was an educational adviser to Yasser Arafat and later chairman of the Palestinian Authority Public Library, appeared on PA television on August 2, 2004 and explained that the original Jews of the biblical period were dispersed among the nations and that it was the "Khazar Jews who live in Palestine today." Prominent voices within the Muslim Brotherhood have also advanced the idea that modern Jews are descendants of the Khazars, as well.

The Khazar theory was strange. If only a small number of Khazars in the court of their king converted to Judaism, then how could they become the basis for the masses of European Jewry? Arab historians in the 10th century reported that most of the Khazars were Muslims, in any case. Moreover, if the Khazars, whose language was close to Turkish, were the source for European Jews, then why did Yiddish evolve as a European Jewish language that was linguistically close to German and Hebrew, but not to Turkish or any other Central Asian language?

(Video) Against All Odds

Chanuka is a time for miracles, both in those days and ours.



To see more Torah Live Chanuka videos, 
visit http://www.youtube.com/user/TorahLive

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Gentlemen, history cyclically reappears. Nothing is forgotten, nothing disappears.

"...Wherever we turn, we seem to encounter daily reminders that indeed “history cyclically reappears.” So it was on the fifth day of this new year. Heavily armed terrorists opened fire on Israeli soldiers at the border with Sinai. Such naked aggression in itself was sure to excite no condemnation from pompous pontificators overseas, to say nothing of even generating plain press coverage.

Sarah Honig..
Another Tack..
28 September '12..

The entire country mourned the passing of iconic songwriter Haim Hefer on this new year’s second day. We were awash in a deluge of nostalgia, which was only fitting, bearing in mind that Hefer was a master of nostalgia. His ability to home in and seize on the singular sentiment of the era proved the hallmark of his prolific output.

And so in 1948, as the Palmach achieved its greatest feats but was already threatened with dismantlement by Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion, Hefer wrote a somewhat premature self-lamenting eulogy for the Hagana’s elite strike force. I translated its opening stanza:

Gentlemen, history cyclically reappears.
Nothing is forgotten, nothing disappears.
We’ll yet remember how under a lead barrage,
The Palmach in Syria did march

Hefer tugged hard at the Palmach stalwarts’ heartstrings by recalling its earliest campaigns, like the summer of 1941 missions on behalf of the Allies to prepare for Operation Exporter – the assault on the Levant’s Vichy French forces. (It was then, while capturing strategic bridges, that Moshe Dayan lost his eye).

But Hefer’s observations on the repetitive nature of history apply far more broadly than just to the specifics he lists in his rhyming elegiac. Wherever we turn, we seem to encounter daily reminders that indeed “history cyclically reappears.” So it was on the fifth day of this new year.

Heavily armed terrorists opened fire on Israeli soldiers at the border with Sinai. Such naked aggression in itself was sure to excite no condemnation from pompous pontificators overseas, to say nothing of even generating plain press coverage.

No one abroad paid attention, most likely because no one cared that a 20-year-old corporal, Netanel Yahalomi, was slain by a bullet to the head and that another trooper was wounded. World opinion’s capacity to tolerate the cold-blooded murder of Israelis knows no bounds.

But there was no such equanimity about the results of the ensuing chase in which IDF soldiers – female sharpshooters included – got three of the terrorists. “Israelis kill three in Sinai,” screamed the headlines on foreign news outlets. It was all presented as a random skirmish. The unprovoked nature of the attack on the Israelis was never acknowledged.

Not a word was said about the fact that the Israelis were set upon by a group intent on a large-scale homicidal spree. Its members carried explosives, suicide belts, an RPD machine gun, rocket-propelled grenades, hand grenades, Kalashnikovs and ammunition. These men, though in civilian garb, weren’t out on a leisurely stroll.

Neither, for that matter, were the Israelis. The difference was that instead of aiming to terminate life, the Israelis aimed to preserve life. The IDF soldiers brought water to some 15 African illegals who were attempting to cross into Israel at one of the points where the construction of the border fence hadn’t yet been completed.

We Israelis are soft-hearted. We may seek to stem the influx of African infiltrators that threatens us with inundation and has already rendered large urban swaths into Third World no-man’s lands. But we simultaneously take pity on the individuals trying to gain unlawful access into our country. And so a number of soldiers took vital supplies to the economic migrants stuck on our doorstep.

All that while, the terrorists followed the Africans, keeping tabs on their movements from a short distance away. Their assumption was that at some point Israelis would make contact with the infiltrators and offer them succor. The Arabs didn’t have to speculate. They had studied Israeli habits carefully and had reason to expect humanitarian “duty of care.”

The Jewish People's Struggle for Universal Human Rights

Isi Leibler..
Candidly Speaking From Jerusalem..
30 August '12..

One of the conundrums associated with the enduring nature of global anti-Semitism which has soared exponentially in recent years, is why, having made such disproportionate contributions towards all levels of civilization and left major imprints on science, ethics, medicine, culture and the arts, we Jews continue to act as a magnet for such virulent hatred.

Equally bizarre is the failure of formerly oppressed groups and nations to reciprocate or even acknowledge the extraordinary Jewish contributions in support of their struggles towards overcoming persecution, discrimination, abuse of human rights and achieving independence.

This is typified by the fact that whereas there is no American group comparable to the Jews who sacrificed so much to help African-Americans to overcome racial discrimination and their struggle for civil rights, ironically, today they are amongst the foremost US racial or ethnic groups promoting anti-Israelism and anti-Semitism. The recent loathsome outburst by the African-American writer Alice Walker who sought to prohibit her novel – relating to racism – from being translated into Hebrew, typifies this. Walker’s demonization of Israel even extended to accusing Israel of practicing “racism” in a more extreme manner than was the case in apartheid South Africa. This is all the more perverse because aside from being the only free and democratic society in the region, the Jewish State probably also comprises the greatest mélange of racial groups in the world committed to equality.

The same criticism would apply to the current South African government which is today bitterly anti-Israeli despite the fact that individual South African Jews were at the vanguard of the struggle against apartheid, many having been forced to leave the country during apartheid regime.

Yet, even Archbishop Tutu, whose anti-Israeli outbursts have now morphed into vulgar populist anti-Jewish diatribes, concedes that “in our struggle against apartheid, the greatest supporters were the Jewish people… They almost instinctively had to be on the side of the disenfranchised, of the voiceless ones”. But in the same breath he paved the way for his government’s recent anti-Israeli initiatives by calling for divestment from Israel which “has oppressed more than the apartheid ideologues could ever dream about in South Africa” and descends into primitive anti-Semitism referring to Jews as “a peculiar people” who “once oppressed and killed” are now “empowered”, and “refuse to listen and disobey God.”

Israel already is the center of Jewish culture

Fresnozionism.org..
19 August '12..





A particularly pessimistic article about the future of France’s Jews — that is to say, about the lack of one — has prompted me to think about the future of the Jewish people everywhere.

Two major centers of Jewish culture disappeared during the 20th century, in Eastern Europe and the Muslim Middle East. Now there is pressure on what is left of the Jewish populations of Western Europe.

A general explanation for this phenomenon can and does fill books, but a quick summary is that traditional forms of antisemitism that developed in the Christian and Muslim worlds came together and exchanged DNA during the Nazi period, making both strains more virulent. Then, after 1948 and in the cauldron of the Cold War, political anti-Zionism combined with simple Jew-hatred to produce today’s particularly dangerous pathogen, which is as deadly as Nazism and as easily transmissible as left-wing politics.

Jews today are concentrated in Israel and in the US. There’s no need to discuss yet again the external and internal threats Israel faces (although I’m confident that it will prevail in the current confrontation with Iran). What about the Jewish population of the US?

America is different from Europe or the Muslim world. America defines itself as a nation of immigrants, so the Jew is not automatically an ‘other’ as in France, for example. America has an aggressive tradition of institutionalized religious tolerance which is unmatched anywhere else in the world.

The influence of Muslims is less of a problem than in Europe. American Muslims are a much smaller percentage of the population than in Europe, and they tend to be more educated, assimilated and likely to accept Western values.

That is not to say that there isn’t a certain amount of Jew-hatred here, either the more traditional “paleo” kind represented by Pat Buchanan or David Duke, or the so-called “new antisemitism” that hides behind an anti-Zionist political facade. But the great majority of Americans find these attitudes offensive. While ugly stereotypes about Jews are common, they rarely result in overt behavior. All this could change, but not easily and not quickly.