En Gedi Waterfall - by BiblePlaces.com
The BibleSearchers Reflections
Reflections on the Time of the End
By Robert Mock MD
Gleanings on Global News at the
Time of the End
January 2005 Special Edition Issue
Topics
Tu B’Shvat, The “Festival of Trees”
Sharon’s Disengagement of Israeli Citizens from the Gaza Strip
The year of 2004 was a pivotal year for the Land of Israel. The death of Yassir Arafat moved the Israeli people into a new era of relationships with the Palestinians and the rest of the world. There will be struggle for this new reality and the “Oracle of Zechariah” will see its eventual fulfillment. The nation of Israel accepted the invitation of the European Union to become a part of the EU Neighborhood Program and by an international pact agreed to place themselves under the geo-political influence of the national bodies that constitute the ancient Roman Empire known as the Edomites to their ancient forefathers. Ariel Sharon as the leader of the Likud, chose to follow a political pathway that abrogated the political rights and the political voice of his own Jewish constituents. He was willing to destroy the majority party relationship of his own Likud Party in order to advance the disengagement of the Jewish people living in the southern Gaza Strip even at the risk of a civil war within his own country and the potential of an uprising within the Israel Defense Force (IDF).
When we watch political wrangling that is weaving throughout the political and social life of the Jewish people as the fallout for the “go it alone Sharon”, must we not ask why? If Israel truly is a democratic nation and the model of democracy to the Islamic people, does Sharon have a different master than the will of the Israeli people? Will Arial Sharon be looked upon in history as the Prime Minister who departed from serving his own people and his own God in order to secure a place in the echelons of nations who want to absorb Israel into a unified international identity? Will this internal conflict within the Nation of Israel begin a new revolution that the Israel ordained by the God of Israel will not be a democracy but a theocratic state under the rulership of the Messiah of Israel?
A trend is escalating in the national identity of the Jewish people that Jews who believe in the Messiah of Jesus are not only welcome but courted to make aliyah (return to live in their national homeland) in the Land of Israel. These do not currently include Messianic Jews from American, British, Australian and New Zealand but it does include the Spanish and Portuguese Marrano Jewish Christians, the Ethiopian Falash Mura Jewish Christians and the Russian Orthodox Jewish Christians. With the door wedged open, someday a floodgate may occur for Messianic Jews to return to the land of their forefathers from Europe, America and former lands of the British Commonwealth. Some many consider that it is the will of the God of Israel to plant within their own land Jewish people with a love for their own rabbi and son of the Land of Judea, Yahshua HaMoschiach (Jesus the Messiah?
A new identity is also developing in the Land of Israel that is willing to stand up in opposition to the secular political agenda of the Labor Zionists whom more and more are recognized as Sabbatean Jews, the offspring of the last great ‘false’ messiah of the Jews, Shabbatai Zevi in 1666. There is a rising tide of fundamental theocratic orthodox Jews who believe that the true spiritual Nation of Israel will not become a literal reality until the messiah of Israel returns. A new Jewish Sanhedrin was re-established for the first time in over one and one-half millennium. Will they be responsible to leading the Jewish people back to a life of Torah? Shabbat worship (Seventh-day Sabbath) is also becoming a political and economic force in the Land of Israel that may lead to a counter-force revolution in the rest of the world to enforce Sunday Laws in honor of the Christian Sunday worship. Yet there is another political trend developing in the Land of Israel, an unabashed vibrant Jewish identity towards the realization of a vision: the building and re-establishment of the Beit HaMikdash (the Holy Temple.) There will in the future be a clash as to whether this ‘Holy Temple’ will be built by the political-religious forces within and by the Nation of Israel or by David, son of David, the future Messiah of Israel. The Eternal One of Israel is molding a new reality that bring His Eternal Will into a living reality as foretold by the prophets of Israel and Judah.
Tu B’Shvat, The “Festival of Trees”
The Celebration of our Earth, the Environment and the Fruits
the Eternal One of Israel has given to Nourish our Lives
As the sun begins its ascent into the heavens and prepares this earth for the bounties of new harvest season, the Festival called Tu B'Shvat awakens the soul of man to the Creator of His earth that He called “Good”. This Jewish festival is an agricultural holiday and celebrates the earth and the beginning of the harvest cycle. Today it is known as the Jewish Arbor Day or “The birthday of the trees.” Here we remember in the center of the Garden of Eden, two trees, the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil.
Tu B’Shvat falls on the 15th day of Shvat which usually occurs in January. The festival of Tu B'Shvat is celebrated by eating seven types of plants: wheat, barley, grapes, figs, pomegranates, olives, and date honey. Today the people in Israel celebrate by planting trees in their homeland, making this land the greatest restoration and reclamation project in the history of the world. Here we see the “fruits of Torah” in the future messianic restoration of this planet earth. BibleSearchers invites you to visit the sites of Tu B’Shvat on www.Aish.com
Click here to see a
beautiful and inspiring 90-second movie on Tu B’Shvat:
It's Your World
Kabbalistic Insights into Shvat
Dr. Mitzvah - The Treasure Trees
Blessings on Fruits (advanced quiz)
The Land of Israel
Ezekiel 37:25-28 - Thus they shall remain in the land which I gave to My servant Jacob and in which your fathers dwelt;
they and their children and their children's children shall dwell there forever, with My servant David as their prince for all time.
I will make a covenant of friendship with them; it shall be an everlasting covenant with them;
I will establish them and multiply them, and I will place My Sanctuary among them forever.
My Presence shall rest over them; I will be their G-d and they shall be My people.
And when My Sanctuary abides among them forever, the nations shall know that I the L-rd do sanctify Israel.
God
is getting ready to bring the rest of His people home to Israel –
January 6, 2004
The Golden Report - There is
something moving in the spirit that can only be explained by a move of God in
the end days. Most reading this were alive and witnessed the budding of
the fig tree, when Israel became a nation after 2500 years of exile. A time
when God moved supernaturally by His Spirit re-establishing the Jews back on
the land He promised our Forefathers Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. When God removed
the Roman name of Palestine and replaced it with the name He had given Jacob “Israel” as an everlasting covenant. Reestablishing the Hebrew Language that had been
denied the Jews in exile in nearly every country for over 2500 years.
Aerial of the Temple Mount – by BiblePlaces.com
But even with the great move of Jews flooding into the land after the Holocaust, still many remained outside still to be re-gathered. Spiritual hindsight is also 20/20, and now we can see that many things were not in place for the completion of God’s prophetic Word to be fulfilled. For one thing the time wasn’t right in 1948 for the rebuilding of the Temple or the appearance of the anti-Christ. Ishmael was too primitive and too poor to rise up against the rest of the world as we see them doing today.
But the question remains in most of your minds, where are the rest of the Tribes, and where did they go? There are among us those who will never accept any answer to either question, but with God all things are possible and His Word will come to pass. God is not a man that He should lie, and His ways are not our ways. The Jews were scattered by several events one was the Nazarenes who all ran to Petra after the Bar Kochba revolt. Most of them were Messianic Believers in Yeshua and knew God’s Word said not to follow after false Messiahs and Simon Bar Kochba had declared himself to be the Jewish Messiah, so they did what the Word told them to do, and went to Petra for safety. From there they scattered throughout the entire world. Today there are millions around the world with Jewish blood in their veins because of this historical event. Because this happened during the time of the destruction of the second Temple around 70 AD it makes it nearly impossible for such descendants to prove their Jewish heritage. But many reading this have a supernatural drawing to move to Israel, and inside their very soul they know they are Jews.
Over the past few months I’ve noticed a trend in the Israeli Knesset (Government) that says things are changing and for the first time in the 55 years of this Nation of Israel doors are opening to Jews who have embraced Yeshua as Messiah. That is not to say that all Jews known as Messianic Jews are welcome in Israel for that is not the case, at least not yet. And certainly not those from the US or the UK, but we will discuss that later.
There are three groups of Jewish Believers who have been accepted by the Israeli Government, in fact, the Israeli Newspapers are full of this information. Maybe those who are reading this information don’t read it in the same light as I do but the information is there for those who have eyes to see.
There are three groups of Jews who over the past centuries have converted to Christianity, most by force and others by choice. They are the Marranos, Falash Mura of Ethiopia and the Russians. For the benefit of those not familiar with these names I will take each one and give a short definition. And I should add the forth group of Jews and in that group Connie and I fall. It is the ones who have been touched by the Ruach Ha Kodesh and brought into a relationship with the Blessed Jewish Messiah Yeshua. There are literally hundreds of thousands of us as well and we are known today as Messianic Jews. It has brought us closer to our Jewishness and the Torah.
Marranos originally came from Spain and Portugal, there were two waves of them, the first in the 1300’s the second in the 1400’s during the time that Columbus discovered America, Columbus was a Marrano Jew. Hundreds of thousands of Marranos were given basically two choices, convert to Catholicism or die. Some even converted to Islam to save their lives and the lives of their families. They were tortured, burned and murdered by the hundred of thousands, and they ran to nearly every country on the face of the earth. Today Marranos can be found in America, the UK and throughout the entire world. There are larger concentrations of them in the Mediterranean Countries. Many of them have and still practice Judaism secretly. I have recently discovered such a group near the Syrian Turkish border. And our list of contacts grows daily as we prepare a ministry to go after them.
Marranos do not like to be called Marranos, and when addressing such a person it is wise to call them Jews, or if they are in hiding one must be very careful in addressing them at all. The name Marrano means several things and the definition of the word explains why they prefer not to be called one.
Marrano means:
(1) marit ayin, a Hebrew term (the appearance of the eye) or (referring to the fact Marranos were Christians but actually Judaizers.
(2) Mohoram attah (you are excommunicated); Mar anus, and Aramaic Hebrew term (forced convert) mumar or mumarano (aportal); mora’in an Arabic term meaning (hypocrite); anathema maranatha, barron meaning outsider or stranger; swine referring to the fact marranos ate pork often times they would purchase pork just to show they were not Jews, Often Marranos were called “New Christians” or Coversos.” Anasim, a Hebrew term, which means those, compelled.
I could go on and on, in fact many books could and have been written on the Marrano Jews. But the bottom line is even after the Spanish-Portuguese Inquisition many continued secretly as practicing Jews while outwardly claiming to be converts to the Catholic Church. And today there are many thousands of them that God is calling back to Israel. Marrano Jews here in Israel do not want to be called a Marrano; they want only to be called a Jew. I know this is a short and very incomplete explanation of who and what they are. But my point is they are Jews, and Jews who can prove their Jewishness through their mothers, and that is all that is required for Israel to accept them. And as the persecution is growing throughout Europe and the rest of the world, they will be looking for a way to come home. Connie and I have been in the Knesset and other places of importance speaking to those who can make things happen, and once again we are seeing the Ruach Ha Kodesh move before us as the path is being made clear for us to travel. It is by faith we know that the boat will be a reality and in this faith knowing God has spoken to us, we go forward with you as a partner in Yeshua.
Falash Mura of Ethiopia, Silvan Shalom the Foreign Minister of Israel is at this time in Ethiopia making arrangements to bring more of the remaining 24,000 Falash Mura Jews home to Israel. These are Jews who were also forced converted into Catholicism, with only two choices, convert of die. Now added to that they are being murdered because they were converted by force to Christianity. In fact, hundreds of thousands of Ethiopians have been murdered over the past few years because they were known as Christians. Many of these Falash Mura Jews have come back to Judaism over the past few years. And for those reading this who say they should have stayed Christians. I say to them, that forced conversion will not make a Christian out of anyone. For the Word says by one Spirit are we all baptized into one Body whether we be Jew or Gentile, bond of free. No one can be forced to be a Christian, but one is either born a descendant of Jacob or not. But then that brings up another subject, is a Jew a race or a religion? I will leave that for another day, so please save your emails on that.
Russian Jews, over a million Russian Jews have immigrated into Israel over the past 20 years. And it is well know that more than 70% of them are Christians. I was surprised to learn that when my son Joel graduated from his IDF basic training a few years back, everyone was given a choice when given the IDF Tenach (Bible) they could either get it with the New Testament or without. This change has been made to accommodate the Russian Jews who are Christians and they number in the hundreds of thousands here in Israel.
That leaves the Messianic Jews from places like American, UK, Australia, New Zealand and a hundred other places that are still discriminated against here in Israel, yet no one is bringing attention to it. I have seen dozens of Messianic Jews come to Israel and after being told they cannot be a citizen they simply pack up and leave, without a fight many because they found out in the mean time life here can be really rough. But times are changing and God is doing something because He wants this land “Israel” full of His people the Jews, and He is gathering them from far and wide. And not only the Jews mentioned in this report, but also the grafted in Jews. Adopted into the house of Israel, they are Jews in God’s eyes, and Israel and the Jewish world will come to understand that in time.
I hear it said over and over, the 10 lost Tribes cannot be found. But I say God knows where all of them live. He sent them through out Europe, Russia, China, and to all parts of the world. Many if not most of them are still in the Mediterranean area and He will bring them home. How do I know that because He said He would. Some are Marranos, Ethiopians, Russians, Turks, and many live in the USA and the UK, and God is speaking to all of them. Daily I receive emails and letters people who have discovered their Jewish roots, and others who simply say I know I must be Jewish for all I can think of is moving to Israel.
God has been speaking to this messenger and others to prepare to go after them. And for those who tell me not to ask for help in every email or report, they should stop reading them, for I will never quit until I am successful in the calling of God on my life. So I ask everyone reading this to please pray and ask God to speak to you concerning this need, many thousands of dollars is needed and we must be moving soon. There is today a little over thirty thousand dollars that has come in towards the purchase of the larger vessel. At least another hundred thousand is needed just for the purchase of the boat, and it will take a miracle to find what we need at that price. Pray, please pray God will speak to you for He loves His people and He would have it that none should perish.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem, for our son Joel and all the IDF soldiers, pray for those who have come to fight the Islamic enemy. Pray for this Ministry and your part in it. Shalom, jerry golden (Article)
The
next prime minister of Israel – Moshe Feiglin? – January 6, 2004
World Net Daily - Israeli
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon referred to them as "crazy extremist intruders."
Tommy Lapid, leader of the Shinui party in the Israeli Knesset, says they are "fascisizing
Israeli politics." "They" are the members of the Manhigut
Yehudit (Jewish Leadership) faction within the ruling Likud Party. Their leader
is Moshe Feiglin. As the Christian Science Monitor says, "Mr.
Feiglin has become an increasingly potent political force who, even his
detractors concede, can no longer be ignored."
Feiglin shouldn't be ignored – he should be encouraged. He embodies the future of Israel, a future in which true Jewish values will guide political decisions. It is Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit that have opposed Ariel Sharon's capitulation to terror in the form of a pullout from the Gaza Strip. It is Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit that have stood up against Sharon's unilateral withdrawal from Israeli territory through the Trojan Horse of the security fence. It is Feiglin and Manhigut Yehudit that have called attention to the fact that Sharon's government has broken faith with the Israelis who elected it by contravening the stated platform of the Likud Party.
Feiglin, age 42, has been a rising power in Israeli politics for the last decade. During the early days of the disastrous Oslo "Peace" Process, Feiglin organized Zo Artzeinu (This Is Our Land), a group dedicated to non-violent opposition to Oslo. Tens of thousands of Israelis joined him and held sit-down strikes to protest the Accords. Feiglin was jailed for "sedition" by the Yitzhak Rabin government, which would brook no dissent. In 1999, Feiglin decided to join the Likud and bring change from the inside. His Manhigut Yehudit is now the largest faction within the Likud Central Committee, the body that decides Likud Party policy.
I had the opportunity to speak with Feiglin on Dec. 29 by phone from Israel. What came across in our conversation was Feiglin's deep-rooted faith in God and in the eternal vitality of Jewish identity. Feiglin criticized Prime Minister Sharon, explaining that Sharon "has the wrong identity. You can't really ask why Sharon is giving in without asking why every Likud prime minister, from (Menachem) Begin to (Yitzhak) Shamir to (Benyamin) Netanyahu, has also given in. The reason is because they all have the wrong identities. To try to separate God from Israeli politics is a mistake, but the Israeli government has been doing it all along."
Feiglin cited the 1967 Six Day War to exemplify what he meant: When Israel liberated Jerusalem in 1967 from the Jordanians, they raised the Israeli flag over Har HaBayit (the Temple Mount). Two hours later, Moshe Dayan, the Israeli general, took it down ... His problem was that he was afraid of the re-establishment of Beit HaMikdash (the Holy Temple). He was afraid that if the Israeli flag stayed over Har HaBait, in 100 or 200 years, all of a sudden, the Beit HaMikdash would be standing again.
But Feiglin, unlike Dayan, is unafraid of a renewed, vibrant Jewish identity. "I have a different dream," he said. "I want to move toward the goal of Beit HaMikdash. I may not see it in my lifetime, but if you have the correct goal, you have the correct identity, and if you have the correct identity, you can take the correct means and measures." Feiglin feels that redefining Jewish identity is integral to building "not only a real Jewish state but also a free and democratic Jewish society in Israel." His clarion call for a fundamental redefinition of Jewish identity and the Jewish state intimidates many, including Sharon, who sees Feiglin as his chief political opponent. But Feiglin has what Sharon lacks: "that vision thing." While Sharon may be a masterful day-to-day politician, he lacks a long-term plan. Political machinations cannot overcome the simple fact that a weak-kneed Israel, an ashamed Israel, a self-loathing Israel is an Israel that cannot survive.
Feiglin recognizes that Israel's largest problem is not intractable external enemies, but internal identity. And he seeks a solution not in complacency and appeasement, but in that elite-scorned idea, national pride. "I'm calling for a complete revolution in Jewish identity," Feiglin stated. "We need to identify as Jews through the Torah (Bible), because you can't identify the enemy until you identify yourself. Once you know who you are, and once you know that what you are doing is justice, fighting the enemy becomes simple." It is a lofty goal. Feiglin remains unwavering in his pursuit of it. As he once wrote, "The Jewish people deserves leadership capable of extricating it from these dire straits and realizing its mission – putting the world to rights in the kingdom of the Almighty. It deserves leadership based on belief." And Feiglin deserves a chance to be that leader. (Article)
Judaism And Zionism Are Not The Same Thing – December 24, 2004
Jews United Against Zionism - We would like to take a few minutes of your time to prevent you from making a terrible mistake that may have disastrous results for many. You have always without a doubt heard and read much about the political crises in the Middle East in which the State of Israel plays a central role. This is, in fact, an ongoing series of crises with potential to bring the greatest misfortune on the entire world. Tragically many believe that Zionism and Judaism are identical. Thus they conclude that the entire Jewish people is responsible for the actions of the Zionist government and the world crises which emanates from it. This is a Grave Error! The truth is that the Jewish faith and Zionism are two very different philosophies. They are as opposite as day and night. The Jewish people have existed for thousands of years. In their two thousand years of Divinely decreed exile no Jew ever sought to end this exile and establish independent political sovereignty anywhere. The people's sole purpose was the study and fulfillment of the Divine commandments of the Torah.
The Zionist movement created the Israeli state. The latter is a persuasion less than one hundred years old. Its essential goal was and is to change the nature of the Jewish people from that of a religious entity to a political movement. From Zionism's inception the spiritual leaders of the Jewish people stood in staunch opposition to it. To this day Torah Jewry remains forever loyal to its faith. Zionists want the world to believe that they are the representatives of the entire Jewish people. This is false! The Jewish people never chose them as their leaders. The Zionists have deceived many well meaning Jewish people via terror, trickery and false propaganda. They have at their disposal the use of a nearly universally subservient media. Whoever attempts to criticize them puts his livelihood and, at times, his very life in danger. However, despite the media blackout and easy resort to terror the simple truth remains unrefuted and irrefutable: ACCORDING TO THE JEWISH FAITH AND TORAH LAW THE JEWISH PEOPLE ARE FORBIDDEN TO HAVE THEIR OWN STATE WHILE AWAITING THE MESSIANIC ERA!
The Creator gave us the Holy Land thousands of years ago. Yet, when we sinned, He took it away and sent us into exile. Since that time our task is to wait for Him to send the Messiah. At that time, the Creator alone, without any human being lifting a hand or saying a word, will bring us together and take us out of exile. He will likewise establish universal peace among all mankind and all will serve Him in good will. Some religious Jews, confused by Zionist propaganda quote Biblical verses that state that G-d gave the children of Israel the Holy Land. They overlook, unfortunately, those verses which say that He took it away due to our sins. They further ignore those prophecies which explicitly describe the last exile's conclusion as a Divine, not a human process.
The Creator has commanded every Jew to follow the ways of peace and to be loyal to the country where he lives. Torah true Jewry waits patiently for the Messianic redemption. They have nothing to do with any kind of pseudo "Jewish State" and its aggressions against other peoples. They have a deep sympathy for the plight of the Palestinians who have suffered the most from Zionism's false teachings and barbaric actions. The Zionist state is not a Jewish state. The Zionists alone are the only ones responsible for their actions. Authentic Jewry has and will continue to oppose the very existence of this blasphemous state. May all mankind witness the true redemption. (Article)
In goodwill gesture, Vatican allowing Jews to view priceless Maimonides manuscripts – January 13, 2005
There is no known recorded history showing exactly how or when the Vatican acquired the medieval writings.
Jewish World Review (KRT) The Vatican will loan the work of Moses Maimonides, one of Judaism's most celebrated rabbis and sages, to Israel this year in a gesture meant to improve relations between Catholics and Jews.
Jewish
community leaders said they are ecstatic to have the opportunity to study the
Maimonides document, and at least three other medieval manuscripts. Rabbi
Benjamin Blech, a professor at Yeshiva University in New York, said the gesture
by the Vatican "strengthens the bonds between Jews and Christians."
"We are asking a favor, they are showing us a kindness, to borrow these
items," he said.
A delegation of about 160 rabbis and cantors worldwide, including Blech, and
American laypeople will meet with Pope John Paul II this month to thank him
for years of goodwill, including working out an agreement to display the
priceless Jewish artifacts for the first time in Israel.
The work by Maimonides was written by a scribe in the 1400s, 200 years after
his death, and is cherished as a one-of-a-kind record that covers the rules
of life, such as marriage and other codes of behavior. Opponents who considered
Maimonides a heretic burned many of the original works.
Two years ago, a similar delegation requested the Vatican loan out the four manuscripts, each containing hundreds of pages. Three of the books, including one written in 1435, are medieval Hebrew texts written by other authors not immediately identified. The most excitement, however, surrounds the work of Maimonides, also known as Rambam, the 12th-century doctor and sage in Egypt whose works include the first codification of Jewish law. He is considered one of the most influential of all Jewish thinkers. The Maimonides manuscript to be loaned includes his "major work on Jewish law, the Mishneh Torah, the source for all subsequent works on the codification of the entire oral and written laws of the Torah and Talmud," Blech said.
There is no known recorded history showing exactly how or when the Vatican acquired the writings, Blech said. Gary Krupp, a Jewish man from Long Island who
was knighted by the Pope in 2000, made the loan happen, Blech said. Krupp,
honored for his charity work for a hospital in Italy, worked with both
religious groups. "(The Vatican) has the largest repository of ancient
Hebrew and medieval Hebrew manuscripts in the world," said Krupp, one
of three living Jews to be knighted by a pope.
In gratitude for the Pope's reaching out to Jews by such things as
recognizing Israel in 1992, the delegation will meet with the pontiff at
the Vatican on Jan. 18 to thank him, Krupp and Blech said. The elderly pontiff
grew up in a heavily Jewish town in Poland and has visited a synagogue in Rome.
The Maimonides book has been on display previously, in Germany and elsewhere. Blech said the works could be turned over to the Israel Museum in Jerusalem as early as May, although Krupp said it may not be until September, to
celebrate the museum's 40th anniversary. Krupp said the manuscripts are written
in Hebrew and the Vatican has maintained them perfectly. The agreement says
that two of the manuscripts — including the copy of Maimonides'
— must be returned to the Vatican Library after being on display
for four months; the other two will be on display for six months, according to
Krupp. "The parties are committed to cultural cooperation," Father
David Jaeger, a Vatican spokesman, legal advisor to the Church and professor,
said in a telephone interview from Rome.
An initial Jewish delegation, including Blech, first got to see the
manuscripts in 2002 with the aid of Krupp. In January 2004, The Jerusalem Post reported that Pope John Paul II met with Israel's chief rabbis in Vatican City and that the rabbis considered asking to search Vatican storerooms for
artifacts such as the huge golden menorah that stood in the Temple in Jerusalem
2,000 years ago. But the rabbis decided not to mention the menorah,
which the Vatican has maintained is not there. Instead, they were shown the
work of Moses Maimonides and they asked for the documents to be lent to Israel. Rabbis at this upcoming January delegation, as well as Krupp, said it would be
counterproductive at this time to discuss other items of Jewish interest
being held in the Vatican's vault. "Things in the future are very
promising," Krupp added, however.
The loaning of the manuscripts is also viewed as an offering to resolve
other political and social disagreements in Israel, including Hebrew University's partial use of a convent since 1948 that the Vatican wants back, and
property tax exemptions for religious institutions. If the university
accedes to the Vatican's wishes and leaves, it could open the door to more
treasures being released, Krupp said. "The benefits will be
astronomical," he said. Jaeger of the Vatican also said he hopes the loan
of the work by Maimonides will lead to improved relations. "The idea is
any kind of a positive event might help to create a positive atmosphere,"
he said. Some members of the delegation say the items belong to the Jewish
people and are hoping Israel obtains other Judaic treasures hidden in the Vatican. Krupp observed, however, that the writings are the basis of both Judaism and
Catholicism. "It's just as much a part of their religion as it is of
ours." (Article)
Members of Reestablished Sanhedrin Ascend Temple Mount – December 9, 2005
Israel National News - In a dramatic but unpublicized move, members of the newly established Sanhedrin ascended the Temple Mount, Judaism’s holiest site, this past Monday.
Israel National News - Close to 50 recently ordained s'muchim, members of the Sanhedrin, lined up at the foot of the Temple Mount Monday morning. [The word s'muchim comes from the same root as s'michah, , rabbinic ordination.] The men, many ascending the Temple Mount for the first time, had immersed in mikvaot (ritual baths) that morning, and planned to ascend as a group. Despite prior approval from the Israeli police who oversee entry to the Mount, the officers barred the group from entering the Mount all together, and allowed them to visit only in groups of ten.
Given the newly-mandated restrictive conditions, many of the s'muchim refused to ascend at all, especially as a group of over 100 non-Jewish tourists filed past the waiting rabbis and up towards the holy site. “It is unconscionable that on the eve of Chanukah, which celebrates the rededication of the Holy Temple, we should once again be barred from worshipping – by our own people,” Rabbi Chaim Richman of Jerusalem’s Temple Institute told IsraelNN’s Ezra HaLevi.
Members of the Sanhedrin wait as police inform them of the conditions of their entry to Har HaBayit (Photos: Natan Gesher)
The
Sanhedrin, a religious-legal assembly of 71 sages that convened during the Holy Temple period and for several centuries afterwards, was the highest Jewish judicial
tribunal in the Land of Israel. The great court used to convene in one of the Temple’s chambers in Jerusalem. This past October, the
Sanhedrin was reestablished for the first time in 1,600 years, at the
site of its last meeting in Tiberias.
Rabbis on
the ramp leading up to the Temple Mount
“There
is a special mitzvah [commandment], not connected to time, but tied to our
presence in Israel, to establish a Sanhedrin,” Rabbi Meir HaLevi, one of the 71
members of the new Sanhedrin, told Israel National Radio’s Weekend Edition. “The Rambam
[12th-century Torah scholar Maimonides] describes the process exactly in the Mishna
Torah [his seminal work codifying Jewish Law]. When he wrote it, there was
no Sanhedrin, and he therefore outlines the steps necessary to establish one.
When there is a majority of rabbis, in Israel, who authorize one person to be a
samuch, , an authority, he can then reestablish the Sanhedrin.” Those
behind the revival of the Sanhedrin stress that the revival of the legal body
is not optional, but mandated by the Torah. “We don’t have a choice,” says
Rabbi Richman. “It is a religious mandate for us to establish a Sanhedrin.”
The
Sanhedrin was reestablished through the ordination of one rabbi agreed upon by
many prominent rabbis in Israel and approved as “fitting to serve” by former
Chief Sefardi Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef and leading Ashkenazi Rabbi Yosef Shalom
Elyashiv. That
rabbi, who is then considered to have received authentic ordination as handed down
from Moses, was then able to give ordination to 70 others, making up the
quorum of 71 necessary for the Sanhedrin.
‘Samuchim'
gathered in front of the entrance to the Temple Mount
“Even Mordechai HaYehudi of the Purim story was accepted, as it is written,
only ‘by the majority of his brethren,’ and not by everybody," Rabbi
HaLevi explained. "Anyone who deals with public issues can not be
unanimously accepted.”
The rabbis behind the Sanhedrin’s reconstitution claim that, like the State of
Israel, the old-new Sanhedrin is a work-in-progress. They see it as a vessel
that, once established, will reach the stature and authority that it once had. “The
first members requested that their names not be published, so as to allow it to
grow without public criticism of individuals,” HaLevi said. “We want to give it
time to develop and strengthen the institution, giving a chance for more rabbis
to join.” He added that each of the current members of the Sanhedrin has agreed
to be a conditional member until a more knowledgeable
rabbi joins, taking his place.
Members of the Sanhedrin enter the Temple Mount through the Mughrabi gate, above the Western Wall
Rabbi Richman, also a member of the Sanhedrin, hopes the body will bring
about a revolution in Jewish jurisprudence. Declining to discuss exactly
what issues are on the Sanhedrin’s agenda, Richman said that one of the main
long-term goals of the Sanhedrin is to reunify Jewish observance in Israel. The Sanhedrin includes members of Ashkenazi, Sefardi, Hasidic,
National-Religious and Hareidi communities. “We Jews went into exiles all over
the world,” Rabbi HaLevi said. “Every community established its own court. We
are talking about more than 50 different legal systems developing separately
from one another. Part of our return to Israel is the reunification of our
Jewish practices.”
A tradition is recorded in the Talmud (Tractate Megillah 17b, Rashi) that the Sanhedrin will be restored after a partial ingathering of the Jewish exiles, but before Jerusalem is completely rebuilt and restored. Another Talmudic tradition (Eruvin 43b; Maharatz Chajas ad loc; Rashash to Sanhedrin 13b) states that Elijah the Prophet will present himself before a duly-ordained Sanhedrin when he announces the coming of the Messiah. This indicates that despite common misconceptions, a Sanhedrin is a pre-, not post-messianic institution. (Article)
Bethlehem Holiday Pilgrims Pray for Peace – December 25, 2004
BETHLEHEM, West Bank (AP) - A Roman Catholic priest on Saturday led one of the first cheerful Christmas Day celebrations in Bethlehem in years, after fighting, military curfews and a general glum had kept most visitors away since the late 1990s. Latin Patriarch Michel Sabbah, the senior Roman Catholic official in the Holy Land, celebrated Mass with a small crowd of worshippers bundled against a morning chill inside the stone walls of St. Catherine's Church.
He also led a small procession to the front of the church overlooking Manger Square and the nearby Church of the Nativity, believed to be built over the grotto where Jesus was born. Outside the church, a handful of Asian tourists milled around in the rain, watching as residents cleaned up the stone-paved area that had been packed with revelers for the popular midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.
The emerging thaw in Israeli-Palestinian relations - prompted by the death of Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat on Nov. 11 - drew around 5,000 thousand pilgrims to the traditional birthplace of Jesus this Christmas Eve, Israeli officials said. It was a welcome change after four years of thin crowds for Bethlehem's Christmas celebrations. Although crowds were far smaller than during the town's heyday in the mid-1990s, they were also bigger than in recent years. St. Catherine's Church was so crowded for midnight Mass that some worshippers were forced to sit on the floor, and crowds overflowed into the square. With interim Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas looking on from the front row, Sabbah called on Israelis and Palestinians to put the violence of the past behind them.
The crowds and celebratory atmosphere was a welcome contrast to recent years. During the fighting, Bethlehem has been ringed by Israeli checkpoints and a massive separation barrier has been erected. However, on Christmas Eve, Israeli troops allowed pilgrims, including Palestinians from throughout the West Bank, to pass easily through the roadblocks and handed out candy at checkpoints. (Article)
Psalms 51:20-21 - May it please You to make Zion prosper; rebuild the walls of Jerusalem.
Then You will want sacrifices offered in righteousness, burnt and whole offerings;
then bulls will be offered on Your altar.
Target: The Temple Mount – December 24, 2004
Hareetz - Former chief Sephardi Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu wrote a few days ago in the journal Mayanei Hayeshua that the foundation stone of the Temple Mount gives strength and ability to whoever possesses it. He offered no elaboration of this remark. But among the Temple Mount movements, a similar understanding has taken hold.
The Temple Mount (BiblePlaces)
For years, many members of these
movements have believed that Israel's enemies draw their strength and
their ability to threaten and hurt the Jewish people directly from their
control over Judaism's holiest site - from their hold on the Temple Mount. According to this theory, the very existence of mosques on the ruins
of the Temple and the fact that the Temple Mount has been controlled for
decades by Muslim religious authorities permanently weakens Israel's ability to cope with threats and pressure, whether domestic or foreign, and at the same
time, gives strength to the enemy. Even Uri Elitzur, the editor of Nekuda, who
is not associated with any of the Temple Mount movements, once commented in
this vein that religious feeling is a powerful political force, both for
Jews and for Muslims, and anyone who ignores it demonstrates not that he does
not understand religion, but that he does not understand politics. "To
hold the Land of Israel without ownership of the Temple Mount is rather like
platonic love," he said.
But despite Muslim control over the
mount, which was allowed by Moshe Dayan in 1967, both Elitzur and Rabbi Eliyahu are far from thinking of blowing up the mosques. Even Rabbi Shlomo Goren, who died
about 10 years ago, rejected this idea, although in June 1967 he proposed it to
GOC Central Command Uzi Narkiss and Air Force Commander Moti Hod. Rabbi Goren eventually concluded that if the mosques
were blown up, the Israeli government would just have to solicit donations from
world Jewry to rebuild them, and there could be no greater desecration of God's
name than this. But among the extremists in the Temple Mount movements, a different wind is blowing these days. As the evacuation of the Gush Katif
settlements draws near, a return to the old beliefs - the ones that Rabbi
Yeshua Ben Shushan tried to put into practice 25 years ago, in the framework of
the Jewish underground - has become evident. On the eve of the evacuation of the Yamit settlement
in Sinai, Ben Shushan, basing himself on kabbalistic sources, concluded that
"Muslim control of the Temple Mount is the root of the corruption of the
Jewish nation, and this control gives Islam a spiritual wellspring from which
its believers draw the strength of their presence in Israel." Ben Shushan and some of his
comrades therefore reasoned that removing this "abomination" from the
mount by blowing up the mosques would halt the withdrawal from Sinai.
In recent years,
this simplistic outlook
has penetrated the extreme margins of religious society, particularly the group
known as the "Hilltop Youth" and small groups of the newly religious. The worldview of some of these
groups is characterized by uncompromising messianism, alongside an anachronism that almost blatantly
disconnects them from Israeli society and the state. Some of these young men "dropped out" of mainstream ultra-Orthodox
or religious Zionist society because of crime or drug problems. Another segment of the Hilltop
Youth stresses a connection
to the land and nature, but its worldview is ultra-Kahanist. In the past, hookups between
these two groups have given rise to attempts to attack the Temple Mount. The Lifta Gang, "nature lovers" who lived near the spring at the
entrance to Jerusalem, teamed up with a "newly religious" criminal of
the Shimon Barda type (January 1984) and almost succeeded in blowing up the
mosques on the mount. Uzi Mahsiya Ha'elyon and Yehuda Limai, members of the
Lifta Gang who were later acquitted in court, used to compare the two domes of
the Temple Mount mosques to two foreskins that had to be removed.
The only people capable of reaching such groups - or groups that are not
"kabbalistic," but view blowing up the Temple Mount as an effective
means of torpedoing the evacuation of Gush Katif - in order to prevent an
attack on the mount and the disaster that the Muslim world would wreak on us in
retaliation, are the rabbis
of the Temple Mount movements. Most of these rabbis understand that blowing up the
mosques would not only fail to hasten the redemption or prevent territorial
withdrawals and settlement evacuations, but would in fact accelerate the
withdrawals and evacuations. Most also understand that even though it might
have been possible to act differently 37 years ago and establish a significant
Jewish presence on the mount, the wall that separates the people of Israel from
the mount would only be reinforced by such a mad act, while the state of Israel
and its government would pay a much higher price, first and foremost on the
Temple Mount, if the mosques were damaged. There is no point in talking to them
about the risks inherent in such an act. But about the guaranteed collapse of
their dream, of which a small portion might still be obtainable via a
final-status agreement, there is most certainly a point in talking to them. (Article)
Historic Moment in a Half Empty United Nations – January 25, 2005
Lekerev Report - It was a historic moment highlighted by an impassioned speech delivered by Holocaust survivor and Nobel Peace Prize laureate, Elie Wiesel. However, disappointingly, the UN hall was less than half full, and Jordan was the only Arab nation to remain during Holocaust memorial speeches by UN Secretary-General Kofi Anan and Foreign Minister Sylvan Shalom. Thank you, Jordan.
As Holocaust survivors delivered their speeches , a group of Russian parliament members were demanding that several "anti-Semitic" Jewish groups be outlawed. They charged that the "democratic world is under the economic and political control of international Jewry." The final question of Elie Wiesel's speech hangs in the air: "Will the world ever learn?"
None of Monday's UN speakers referred to statistics, but FM Sylvan Shalom warned of rising anti-Semitism. The three-day long commemoration will end with a special ceremony Thursday, 60 years since the liberation of the Auschwitz death camp, and is to be attended by international leaders at Auschwitz, near Krakow, Poland.
Shalom told the United Nations Monday the "dry bones" of Holocaust victims live today through the establishment of the State of Israel and the UN. The foreign minister referred to the Biblical prophet's Ezekiel vision in the valley of dry bones which symbolized Israel. Ezekiel asked, "Shall these bones live?" Holocaust survivors participating in the ceremony are people "who have given life to dry bones," Shalom said. The special session was the outcome of extensive diplomatic efforts by the Israeli Foreign Ministry. Israel's UN ambassador, Dan Gillerman said Monday that the special session was the most meaningful UN event involving Israel since the state was founded in 1948. The climax of the session was a cantor chanting the Hebrew prayer of mourning "El Malei Rachamim" -- the first time a Jewish prayer has been uttered in the General Assembly. The cantor also sang Israel's national anthem, "Hatikvah," also the first time it was played there. (Newsletter)
Every Soldier Must Visit the Western Wall – January 13, 2005
Lekerev Report - A new regulation instituted by IDF Armory Commander, Colonel Ehud David, stipulates that every soldier under his command is to be brought on a visit to the Kotel, the Western Wall. Every Sunday, IDF soldiers are brought to different sites around Israel to learn about the history and culture of the nation of Israel from up close. Colonel David decided there was a need to revamp entire IDF educational program after it was revealed that half of the soldiers in the units under his command, many of them new immigrants to Israel, had never visited the Kotel.
He learned from talking to individual soldiers that many were lacking basic knowledge of Jewish heritage and Israel's geography and history. "I saw soldiers didn't know how to draw a map of Israel, didn't know how to recite Hatikva (Israel's national anthem) and didn't know the names of Israel's Prime Ministers," David said. "A soldier must know about all of Israel's wars and recognize the country's borders. There are soldiers that don't have any idea what our struggle with the Arabs is about and things like 'the Peel Commission' mean nothing to them." Because of this, the educational department prepared an educational program to combine heritage, history and geography to be taught to the soldier's in all the various companies under David's command. As a result, in recent months, soldiers from the unit have taken part in one-day trips to the Western Wall and the Kotel Tunnels, which run along the western wall for the length of the Temple Mount. (Article)
IDF to Dissolve Religious Only Hesder Yeshiva Units – January 25, 2005
Lekerev Report - IDF Chief of Personnel Branch Major-General Elazar Stern, himself an observant Jew, confirmed reports that he has given the order to dissolve the Hesder Yeshiva units serving in the IDF. Hesder Units are made up of soldiers who are religiously observant. Stern explained the hesder soldiers currently serving will be permitted to complete their service in their present framework, but the new inductees scheduled to arrive in March 2005 will no longer be assigned to the separate religious framework.
When asked if the decision is prompted by the reports of an increasing willingness towards refusal of orders vis-à-vis the Gaza Disengagement Plan, Stern stated emphatically this is not the case, insisting his decision is not politically motivated. Stern explained that today, unlike during the days when hesder was established, a Sabbath observant soldier can maintain his lifestyle, including daily minyan prayer quorums and other needs without necessitating segregated units. He stated that the large number of combatants who are graduates from pre military yeshivot do find at times they lack the religious atmosphere they desire, blaming this on the existence of the segregated hesder units. Stern explained that by integrating hesder soldiers, other orthodox soldiers from the pre-induction yeshiva programs, and non-observant soldiers, the religious needs of all will be satisfied without the segregation policies.
The highly motivated hesder soldiers have long been a source of pride for the IDF, combining military service and Torah study, producing an extremely highly motivated and professional soldier. Opponents to Stern's decision see his motivating factor stemming from the disengagement plan, accompanied by his fears that Torah observant Jews will indeed refuse to dismantle Jewish communities and expel residents. When asked by Barkai if his belief that 'mainstreaming' the observant Jews in the military will dilute the clinging to Torah values as they interpret them -- an unwillingness to execute orders such as the disengagement plan, Stern rejected the intimation outright. Reaction to this decision is coming in fast and furious. Another crisis is looming in the religious Zionist community. (Newsletter)
Shabbat Observers Becoming an Economic Force in Israel – January 13, 2005
Lekerev Report - A campaign entitled "Strengthen Shabbat in Israel" attracted thousands to Tel Aviv last night, including leading rabbis wanting to lend their support to the campaign organizer, ex-champion and businessman Rabbi Rafael Halperin. Rabbi Halperin, a former U.S. wrestling champion who later returned to his Orthodox roots, is also an author, editor of an encyclopedia, and owner of a successful nationwide optical chain store. He explained to Arutz-7 today why he called last night's rally at Yad Eliyahu Stadium: "I was out of the country for a few months, and when I came back, I was shocked to see what had happened to the Sabbath here. Stores and malls are open on Sabbath all over the country, as if it were just another day of the week. Maybe it had been like that before, but I was very shocked to see the mass public desecration and trampling of Shabbat."
According to Rabbi Halperin, four resolutions have been made in the effort to strengthen the observance of Sabbath. "First of all is a consumer boycott of all stores and malls that are open on Sabbath. So far, 324,000 people have signed petitions saying that they will not patronize businesses operating on the Sabbath. Rabbi Halperin told the crowd, "We will all unite as one on behalf of the holy Sabbath. Let us all go out as one, and every one of us should know that he's not working for himself, but rather for the Sabbath for generations... No more just yelling, 'Shabes!' This has no teeth. We are a strong economic force of half- a-million people."
Secondly, we will work to revive the Shabbat no- work laws, which as of now, are a paper tiger, with no teeth. We have to have non-Jewish inspectors give tickets and start levying heavy fines on establishments that remain open in violation of the law. This is not religious coercion, which we don't believe in, but rather coercion to observe the law. Even if Trade Minister Olmert is not interested in doing so, we won't give up the struggle, just like we've struggled for many centuries."
"The third thing," he said, "is that we will distribute stickers stating, 'We are a Sabbath observant facility,' so that the public will know which places to frequent and which not. Our final plan is a special Sabbath credit card (to be issued by Bank Leumi), which will operate only on weekdays and only in stores that are closed on Shabbat."
Among the participating rabbis at the event was the renowned Rabbi Shmuel Vozner of Bnei Brak, one of the most widely-respected Halakhic decision makers of the hareidi public. Rabbi Vozner told the gathering, "Our observance of the Sabbath is the secret of Israel's safety, while its desecration is the source of danger for all of us." "I'll be meeting tonight with Rabbi Elyashiv," he told Arutz-7, "and just like I signed up 113 rabbis, going to their homes, door to door, I will continue to go from door to door to whomever can be of help in this struggle, and join them all together to form one large force. All the strength and power in life is based on the idea of concentrating forces. If you put a piece of paper in the sun, nothing will happen. But if you use a magnifying glass, a fire will ignite in seconds. Why? Because of concentration, gathering together. I will concentrate (the forces). I know something about power of concentration, from the world of sport, and I know its strength. We will concentrate all our forces until we succeed in reviving the Sabbath law."
Observing Shabbat according to Torah is one of the primary responsibilities of the Jewish people for Shabbat is the sign of the eternal covenant between Hashem and His chosen people, as it is written, Speak to the Israelite people and say: Nevertheless, you must keep My sabbaths, for this is a sign between Me and you throughout the ages, that you may know that I the L-rd have consecrated you. You shall keep the sabbath, for it is holy for you. He who profanes it shall be put to death; whoever does work on it, that person shall be cut off from among his kin. Six days may work be done, but on the seventh day there shall be a sabbath of complete rest, holy to Hashem; whoever does work on the sabbath day shall be put to death. The Israelite people shall keep the sabbath, observing the sabbath throughout the ages as a covenant for all time; it shall be a sign for all time between Me and the people of Israel. For in six days Hashem made heaven and earth, and on the seventh day He ceased from work and was refreshed. Shemot/Exodus 31:13-17
The prophet Isaiah warns the Jewish people,
Isaiah 58:13-14 - If you refrain from trampling the Sabbath, From pursuing your affairs on My holy day;
If you call the Sabbath "delight," The L-rd's holy day "honored"; and if you honor it and go not your ways
nor look to your affairs, nor strike bargains; then you can seek the favor of Hashem.
I will set you astride the heights of the earth, and let you enjoy the heritage of your father Jacob,
for the mouth of Hashem has spoken. (Article)
Knesset Approves New Government by Slimmest of Margins - January 12, 2005
Lekerev Report - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's new government was narrowly approved by the Knesset last night despite no-confidence votes from 13 members of his own Likud Party. Support from outside the coalition by the left-wing Yahad faction saved the day for Sharon.
The so-called "disengagement government," comprised of Likud, Labor and United Torah Judaism, was approved by a vote of 58-56, with six abstentions. In addition to Yahad's support, Sharon owes the narrow victory to a decision by two Arab MKs, Talab al-Sana and Abdulmalik Dehamshe of the United Arab List, to abstain instead of joining the other Arab parties in voting against. Had they voted against, the tally would have been 58-58, and a tie vote counts as a defeat.
Even as the roll-call vote began, it was still not clear whether the new government would win a majority. In an effort to pressure Likud opponents of disengagement to abstain instead of voting against, Sharon declared the vote a confidence vote. But this maneuver failed: All 13 "rebels" voted against.
It remains to be seen what real accomplishments can be realized with such a divided Knesset. (Newsletter)
Gov't decision strips Palestinians of their East J'lem property – January 20, 2005
Haaretz - The Sharon government implemented the
Absentee Property Law in East Jerusalem last July, contrary to Israeli
government policy, since Israeli law was extended to East Jerusalem after the
Six Day War.
The law means that
thousands of Palestinians who live in the West Bank will lose ownership of
their property in East Jerusalem. Government officials estimate the assets
total thousands of dunam, while other estimates say they could add up to half
of all East Jerusalem property.
The government decision in July confirms a decision reached in the ministerial
committee for Jerusalem affairs a month earlier. The decision was presented to
the prime minister and attorney general and met with their approval, but the
decision was not publicized until now and is not listed on the Web site of the
Prime Minister's Office. The Absentee Property Law of 1950 stipulates,
among other things, that an absentee is someone who at the time of the War
of Independence "was in any part of the land of Israel that is outside the
area of Israel" - that is, the West Bank and Gaza Strip. According to the
law, absentee assets are transferred to the authority of the Custodian for
Absentee Property, without the absentee being eligible for any compensation.
When East Jerusalem came under Israeli law, then-attorney general Meir Shamgar
directed that the law not be applied to West Bank residents who have property
in the parts of East Jerusalem that became part of the State of Israel. Prime
Minister Yitzhak Rabin reissued that directive in 1993.
With the recent construction of the fence in the Jerusalem region,
Palestinian landholders from Bethlehem and Beit Jala requested permission to
continue working their fields, which are within Jerusalem's municipal
jurisdiction. The state's response stated that the lands "no longer belong
to them, but have been handed over to the Custodian for Absentee
Property." At stake are thousands of dunam of agricultural land on which
the Palestinians grew olives and grapes throughout the years. "These
people's property was always considered absentee assets, but so long as no
fence existed, these people could get to their property and everything was fine
from their standpoint," said a senior judicial official involved in the
case. "The fence is the result of terrorism. It's not fair that a man
becomes an absentee because his tie to his land has been cut without his doing.
But morality is one thing, and what is written in our laws another." The
Palestinian landholders and their Israeli lawyers term it a "land
grab," and also worry that nascent Housing Ministry plans will build on
part of absentees' land. (Article)
American Names Governor of Bank of Israel – January 10, 2005
Lekerev Report - Stanley Fischer, 61, an American Jew who is currently vice-chairman of Citigroup, has accepted the position of Director of the Bank of Israel. Fischer is known for his sharp monetarist economics. He has a long history of involvement with Israel's economy, first as an economics student at Hebrew University in the 1960s, and later as part of a US team sent to advise Israel during the economic stabilization plan of the mid-1980s, when hyperinflation reached 400%. "Fischer knows the Israeli economy in great depth, having spent a lot of time here," he said. "He is not far in ideology from [outgoing Bank of Israel Governor David] Klein and Frenkel, but he has a broader perspective then they, honed from his work stabilizing economies with the International Monetary Fund. He knows how to handle crises, and is a sympathetic and patient man who will set up and work with an advisory board at the bank."
Fischer has strong relationships with many of Israel's leading economic experts and academics, particularly former Bank of Israel governor Jacob Frenkel. A spokesman for the Prime Minister's Office said Fischer's Hebrew is "very good." Fischer, a strong Zionist, will be leaving his top post at the helm of the world's largest banking corporation for a job that will pay him an estimated NIS 56,000 a month, high by Israeli standards but a fraction of his current salary. He will take Israeli citizenship and have to renounce his US citizenship, due to the importance of the post. In a statement, Sharon called Fischer's willingness to take the job "a golden opportunity for Israel." Shlomo Maoz, chief economist at Excellence Nessuah Securities Ltd., concurred. (Newsletter)
Holocaust Survivors Make Aliya to Israel – December 28, 2005
Lekerev Report - A unique pair of sisters is among over 200 immigrants arriving in Israel tomorrow from North America. The flight carrying the new immigrants is the fourth such El Al flight from North America chartered by Nefesh B'Nefesh organization and the Jewish Agency for Israel this year. More than 3,000 Jews have immigrated from North America through the Nefesh B'Nefesh program.
While Nefesh B'Nefesh immigrants are generally young families and professionals, this week's flight includes two special seniors: Irma Haas, 97, and sister Hilde Meyer, 94, who both survived the Holocaust. Born in Germany, they fled to Holland during World War II, but were ultimately deported to the death camp at Bergen-Belsen. Miraculously, both sisters survived, although their husbands perished. Following the war, the two relocated to America, living the past 50 years in Manhattan and Englewood, NJ. This Wednesday, they will realize their lifelong dream of living in Jerusalem.
The 2004 olim (newcomers) come from 33 US States and five Canadian provinces. "As 2004 ends, our young organization has helped thousands of people to begin building new lives in Israel," said Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, founder of Nefesh B'Nefesh. "Our highly regarded absorption system is based on a philosophy of top service, sympathetic support and up-to-date professionalism. The system has helped assure a smooth landing for all our olim." Of the 1,600 immigrants on Nefesh B'Nefesh's premiere flights in 2002-03, 99% remain in Israel. 93% of the families have one or both spouses employed, 95 children were born to the new olim and 18 weddings were celebrated. (Newsletter)
Update on the Two Sisters’ Aliyah to Israel – December 31, 2005
Lekerev Report - Two German-born sisters in their nineties began the first full day of the rest of their lives Thursday, settling into an Israeli senior citizens home after negotiating a tortuous path that brought them from Holland, the Bergen-Belsen Nazi concentration camp and suburban New York City. Irma Haas, 97, and Hilde Meyer, 94, arrived at Ben Gurion Airport near Tel Aviv Wednesday after spending 58 years in the United States, all in metropolitan New York. On Thursday they appeared bright and smiling in their new home in Jerusalem, their barely lined faces reflecting implacable optimism.
They traveled to Israel together with about 200 other new American immigrants, on a special flight organized by Nefesh B'Nefesh, a partnership between donors and the quasi-governmental Jewish Agency that helps U.S. Jews relocate. "I feel very good to be in Israel," said Haas, whose piecing eyes and sprightly manner belie her age. "I already feel at home." (Newsletter)
Israel/USA Tensions over Arms Upgrades to China - December 26, 2005
Lekerev Report - The Bush Administration is blaming Israel for undermining its sustained diplomatic efforts to persuade Europe not to resume arms sales to Beijing after Israel recently upgraded a weapons system it had earlier sold ot China. Some Washington officials describe the rift as being less than "a big crisis," but one official said the dispute can now only be resolved "at a high level."
The US has been working through diplomatic channels for months to persuade the EU to leave in place its ban on military sales to China, in effect since the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre. "We have been in a huge campaign (toward the EU) to persuade them not to lift their embargo on lethal weapons sales," a senior Bush administration official said. "We are lobbying the Europeans as hard as we can not to, while Israel is selling the same kind of technology." Nine days ago, EU leaders declared their "political will" to lift the arms embargo on China by next June. Leading European arms exporters such as France and Germany declared the ban "outdated." The EU insists that lifting the embargo will not lead to a flood of weaponry to China, but rather would be intended as a "political move to recognize China's role in world affairs," the European diplomat said.
Industry officials in Israel said that Israel has not sold any weapon or weapons system "whatsoever" to China since the Americans vetoed a $2-billion deal in 2000 in which Israel was to outfit up to eight planes with its Phalcon advanced airborne radar system. Israel eventually paid China more than $300 million in compensation for canceling that deal, which threatened future Israeli military sales to China that Israeli officials worked hard to cultivate. (Newsletter)
Anti-Semitism rattles Moscow Jews – December 30, 2004
Moscow (Jerusalem Post) - The level of anti-Semitic acts in Russia remained stable and relatively low this year, but three violent cases in Moscow within two weeks in December, which went unreported in the local media, have rattled the community. On December 16, a Jew from southern Russia was stabbed on a Moscow tram. Mikhail Yusupov, 24, an Israeli citizen and native of Dagestan, was stabbed and wounded in his lung after three young Russians asked him about his ethnicity. Doctors say Yusupov, who underwent two surgeries and is recuperating in a Moscow hospital, is in stable condition. Yusupov was a member of the Marina Roscha synagogue and community center, the largest Jewish facility in Moscow. A source in the congregation said Jewish officials were following the investigation closely but didn't report the incident to Russian media out of fear it would hinder the investigation.
Two of the three attackers in the case are under arrest, but a local police source refused to tell JTA what charges the men might face.
In another incident on December 23, an Orthodox Jew from Israel was beaten up near Marina Roscha. Ephraim Malov, a teacher at a Jewish college for adult evening education, was beaten by three young men not far from the shul. Malov doesn't speak or understand Russian, but said he could distinguish the word "evrei'' – Russian for Jew – which his attackers kept repeating as they beat him.
In an another incident, police verbally and physically assaulted a driver employed by the Jewish community who had a menorah display on top of his car.
The incident took place December 12 when the driver, an Azeri Muslim, was leaving a Moscow airport and heading toward the city. A traffic policeman who stopped the car allegedly pushed the man in the chest while uttering anti-Semitic slurs. The man reportedly managed to escape in his car and reported the incident, along with the policeman's license plate and badge number, to a nearby traffic police station. To his dismay, however, another policeman backed his colleague's behavior and said it served the driver right, Vladimir Muterperel, a public affairs officer for Marina Roscha, which employed the driver, told JTA. Muterperel said the spate of anti-Semitic incidents this month involving people connected with his organization was unprecedented. He said he didn't think police could prevent such incidents from happening, and that his organization was considering creating a special security unit to provide additional safety measures in the neighborhood around Marina Roscha, where there is a large concentration of Orthodox Jews. (Article)
Russian Lawmakers: Ban All Jewish Groups – January 25, 2005
Lekerev Report - A group of nationalist lawmakers is calling for an investigation aimed at outlawing all Jewish organizations in Russia, accusing Jews of inciting ethnic hatred and provoking anti-Semitism. In a letter dated January 13, about 20 members of the lower parliament house, the State Duma, asked Prosecutor General Vladimir Ustinov to investigate their claims and, if they are confirmed, to launch proceedings "on the prohibition in our country of all religious and ethnic Jewish organizations as extremist." Arguing that Jews were to blame for anti- Semitism, the authors of the letter want Jewish groups outlawed based on legislation against extremism and fomenting ethnic discord. "The negative assessments by Russian patriots of the qualities and actions against non-Jews that are typical of Jews correspond to the truth, indeed these actions are not random but prescribed in Judaism and have been practiced for two centuries," says the letter, faxed in part to The Associated Press by the office of lawmaker Alexander Krutov. "Thus," it says, "the statements and publications against Jews that have incriminated patriots are self-defense, which is not always stylistically correct but is justified in essence".
The stunning call to ban all Jewish groups comes amid concerns of persistent anti-Semitism that continues to plague Russia. Jewish leaders have praised President Vladimir Putin's government for encouraging religious tolerance, but rights groups accuse the authorities of failing to adequately prosecute the perpetrators of anti-Semitic and racial violence. If you read the above carefully, you couldn't help but see the justification for anti-Semitism as "self- defense". Are we retreating to the 1930's? It certainly looks that way. This is a horrific development and diametrically opposed to everything that was said from the United Nations podium yesterday when the UN observed a Holocaust Memorial for the first time in history. (Newsletter)
Psalm 122:6 – “Pray for the peace of Jerusalem.”
Sharon’s Gaza Disengagement of Israeli Citizens
Yesha Council Steps Up Resistance Campaigns - January 23, 2005
The Yesha Council is stepping up its resistance campaign but members have stipulated three red lines, however: no violence, no organized refusal by soldiers to fulfill orders, and no orange stars.
Many people throughout Judea and Samaria have been making weekly trips to visit families in cities such as Be'er Sheva and Petach Tikvah, during which they try to make personal contact and explain to them the dangers and disadvantages of abandoning the Gaza area of the Land of Israel. The goal has been to open lines of communication with various sectors of the public. Of late, however, in light of the progress towards a Likud-Labor government and the quashing of most Knesset opposition to the disengagement plan, the sense in the anti-withdrawal camp has been that positive personal contact is not enough.
"Our intention is to call on the vast public and tell them to stop being closed up in their homes," said Yesha Council senior Adi Mintz, "and instead to take to the streets. They should scream in their thousands, and restore our democracy."
An urgent meeting of local leaders from all around the country will be held in Jerusalem this evening, and the first item on the agenda is to canvass signatures of those who are willing to try bodily to stop the evacuation. "We will be sending people - adults, not youths - door-to-door to sign people up for this goal," Pinchas Wallerstein told Arutz-7 this morning. Wallerstein said that his recent letter calling for non- violent civil disobedience is exactly the approach that the Yesha Council is now adopting. "They will be called upon either to move to Gush Katif now, or to prepare for a massive sit-in outside the Knesset, or, when the day comes, to enter the closed-off areas and bodily resist the evacuation." (Article)
What if the Entire Israeli Community Staged a Mass Exodus from Gaza Now? – December 25, 2004
DEBKAfile postulates a fictional scenario and likely consequences.
Just imagine if the 7,500 Israeli dwellers of the Gaza Strip decided tomorrow to pack their portable possessions, abandon their homes, schools, synagogues, cemeteries, playgrounds, farms and the lives they built and moved out in unison – without waiting for Ariel Sharon’s evacuation axe to fall next year.
Tail of Palestinian Qassam missile fired Saturday at Neve Dekalim, Gaza Strip
They would leave their furniture and immovable property to the Israeli government and army to protect. This act would pre-empt prime minister Sharon’s disengagement/evacuation pledge to dismantle their villages by September 2005; it would cut short the furious national debate over the rights and wrongs of their case and their passive resistance campaign; even make redundant the behavioral psychology coaching given to police and soldiers to prepare them for the agonizing task of forcible evictions. Once settled in their temporary homes, the ex-settlers would send out two formal notices.
The first, would inform the Israeli government, president, Knesset and Evacuation Authority, that they had voluntarily evacuated their homes in the Gaza Strip in keeping with government and Knesset decisions. They and their families placed themselves henceforth in the care of the state, relying on its offer of enlarged compensation payments to voluntary leavers of the Gaza Strip. The state would be held responsible for their abandoned property.
The second, would petition the United Nations, more particularly the Refugees Commissioner and UNWRA – the Refugees Work and Relief Agency, on behalf of 7,500 men, women and many children, driven from their homes by round-the-clock mortar and rocket assaults, interspersed with sniper fire. They would note that Israel’s sovereign government and its army is not able or willing to protect them. As Jewish refugees from Gaza, they would claim from the world body the same relief as accorded any other group of refugees in flight from war zones. They would then sit back and see what happened next.
Why the inaction?
1. Because they have tried every possible publicity and campaign tactic and gimmick to promote their case - human chains, mass protests, house-to-house canvassing, lobbying party centers and parliament, urging servicemen to disobey orders and finally a non-violent campaign exhorting protesters to face prison rather than obey the evacuation law. If they stay put for Sharon’s timetable, they will continue to be sitting ducks for Palestinian mortars as well as targets of recrimination from the prime minister’s adherents and the unsympathetic PC media.
It needs to be said that the Israelis living in Gaza Strip villages which a former Labor government built for them in the 1970s have all but lost their battle for majority Israeli public support. They never won much understanding anywhere else. Therefore, pulling up stakes by an act of will rather than compulsion will give them a chance to recover the popular sympathy they enjoyed in a different era, as well as earning American, European, Egyptian and Palestinian approbation.
2. Because by this act, the former settlers will circumvent the political machine and its media mouthpieces to expose the full scope of the Jewish evacuation program ahead of the Sharon government – and not only in the Gaza Strip.
In the first place, the prime minister’s constant harping on the statement that, come what may, his withdrawal plan will be carried out according to his predetermined timetable, is less for local consumption that for the White House, which is pushing for the dates to be brought forward. The voluntary evacuees will have seized the initiative from both sides to this argument. This victim/outcast group (depending on outlook) will have shown they are capable of unpredictable actions and therefore a force to be reckoned with rather than pawns on a big power game board.
In the second place, the tumble of events after an all-in-one withdrawal will refute Sharon’s assertion that relinquishing Gaza has guaranteed Israel’s retention of large settlement blocs in the West Bank, lead to secure borders more generous than the pre-1967 lines and contribute to Israel’s economic recovery.
These high hopes are not endorsed in Washington - as the prime minister knows very well. On November 30 and December 20, Elliot Abrams, whom President Bush has designated next US ambassador to Israel, informed two audiences that Israeli settlements east of the current route of the defense barrier will have to be dismantled. He was not just referring to the four small villages to be removed under the Sharon plan, but much more: Ariel (18,000 inhabitants), Maale Adummim (30,000), Efrat (7,300), Kiryat Arba (7,500) and their nearby villages. Abrams’ mission will be primarily to ascertain that these Jewish sites are removed from the West Bank.
This Bush plan is no secret. Abrams’ words were carried on December 19 by the New York publication Newsday and the next day by the Los Angeles Times. A full account appeared in the last DEBKA-Net-Weekly. An American official noted to DEBKAfile: “The fact that hardly any Israelis know about this plan for lack of local media coverage will not stop the Bush administration from pushing it through as soon as Gush Katif is cleared.” But if Gush Katif is evacuated now and abruptly, it will force the hand of the Bush administration on the West Bank and Israelis will very soon witness the crumbling of Sharon’s central policy theme. Wrenching 100,000 unwilling Israelis from their West Bank homes in places adjacent to the country’s population and industrial heartland is quite a different proposition from forcing a few thousand to leave the Gaza Strip.
In the third place, there is the Palestinian factor to be reckoned with. DEBKAfile has learned from its Palestinian sources that the relentless barrage plaguing Israeli targets in the Gaza Strip is not the work of Hamas alone. The wires are secretly pulled by Mahmoud Abbas who is bent on proving to the Palestinian electorate that he has not forsaken Arafat’s doctrine of terror and is committed to the “struggle” against Israel. At the same time, to placate the Americans, the Europeans and Sharon, he is allowing the level of terror emanating from the main theater of the West Bank to drop for the time being.
The Israeli prime minister, committed internationally to helping Abbas get elected, is turning a blind eye to this tactic in the hope that, once at the helm, the Palestinian leader will apply the brakes on Gazan violence. Meanwhile, he is pretending the Hamas alone is responsible for the trouble in Gaza although top Israeli commanders have told him that Fatah and al Aqsa Brigades gunmen are shooting at Israeli locations together with Hamas.
Whereas in 2000, Sharon’s predecessor Ehud Barak let Jerusalem’s Gilo residents be held hostage by Arafat’s gunners, the incumbent prime minister is allowing Gush Katif to be held hostage by Abu Mazen’s missile and mortar crews. The argument heard in official circles in Jerusalem these days is: “It’s only until the Palestinian election on January 9 is over.” The assumption is that once in office, Abbas will rein in the terrorists. However, there is no guarantee that this will happen; it could be a misapprehension like the misreading by Barak and Shimon Peres of Arafat’s motives, when they expected him to respond to concessions by holding his fire. Who can be sure that Abbas will not activate violence on one Palestinian front or another to gain political rewards, such as Jerusalem as capital of the Palestinian state? He launched his election campaign in Ramallah Saturday, December 25, with the announcement that Israel’s pullback from Gaza was only step one of its full withdrawal to the pre-1967 lines including Jerusalem.
This hostage game, the Gush Katif settlers cannot win. It would be more sensible for them to set up house temporarily in Jerusalem and be ready for the last stand. The exodus of Israeli inhabitants would confront Sharon with a Palestinian rush to seize Gush Katif. It will then be up to him to decide whether to order the troops to fall back and thus surrender Israeli control of its border with Egypt on the Philadelphi route, or expel the Palestinians and drive them back into Rafah, Khan Younes and Deir al Balakh. It he opts of the first, the Palestinians will have the satisfaction of forcing Israeli troops to retreat under fire: if the second, combat will continue. In either case, little would be left of the illusion that the Palestinians have changed and that peace is around the corner. (Article)
Wanted: Israeli Neocons – December 17, 2004
Jewish World Review - Israel's passivity in the face of Palestinian corruption, authoritarianism and hate indicates that what Israel needs most desperately is for a movement of Israeli neoconservatives to arise and "take control" of Israel's foreign policy. Speaking at the Interdisciplinary Center's Herzliya Conference on Monday, IDF Chief of General Staff Lt.-Gen. Moshe Ya'alon said that Israel's "interest is to separate the general Palestinian population from those involved in terrorism." This, of course, stands at the core of all anti-guerrilla and counterterror operational thinking. Ya'alon noted the economic devastation that the Palestinian terror war has wrought on the general Palestinian population. Repeated suicide attacks at the Erez Industrial Park, where some 4,000 Gazans worked each day to support some 35,000 people, forced Israel to close the park. This week's attack against an IDF outpost on the border between Gaza and Egypt forced the army to close the border-crossing terminal, preventing Gazans from conducting business in Egypt. Suicide bombers disguised as ordinary workers have forced Israel to stringently limit the number of Palestinians working in Israel and to erect roadblocks throughout Judea and Samaria.
Israel has, over the past four years, and indeed since the first Palestinian
suicide bomber introduced himself to Israeli civilians back in 1994, tried to
develop methods of screening cargo and workers that would make Palestinian
economic activity possible while preventing the infiltration of human bombs.
Additionally, as Ya'alon noted, Israel has worked to ensure that the health and
education systems in Judea, Samaria and Gaza have continued to operate. This,
in spite of the fact that terrorists have hidden in maternity and cancer wards
from Bethlehem to Jenin and that the Palestinian school system teaches children
that their life goal should be to become a suicide bomber.
Yet, in spite of all of Israel's attempts to separate the broader Palestinian
population from the terrorists, Ya'alon admitted that support for the
terrorists had not waned, nor had enthusiasm for terrorism in general. In his
words, IDF counterterror operations over the past two years "have
decreased the ability, not the motivation" of Palestinians to carry out
attacks against Israelis. And so it can be said that the IDF, and Israel as a whole, have failed in the mission of separating the general Palestinian
population from those involved in terrorism. How can this be the case? After
all, Israel's leaders have never declared war on the Palestinians. To the
contrary, every time it seemed there was a break in the clouds, Israel moved
quickly to embrace any opportunity to begin discussions with Palestinian officials
— whether at the political level or among the various official Palestinian
militia commanders.
An answer to this seeming paradox was provided by The Jerusalem Post''s Khaled
Abu Toameh in a dispatch from Gaza earlier in the week. Toameh reported the
case of Dr. Hassan Nurani, a psychologist from Gaza City who wished to run for
the PA's presidency. Nurani composed a platform calling for the building of a
"civilized and moral society." He was able to collect the requisite
5,000 signatures to submit his candidacy but couldn't afford the $3000 needed
to register for the election. Desperate to run, Nurani tried selling off his
small parcel of land and his home furnishings. But he still wasn't able to
raise the sum, which is the rough equivalent of an annual salary in Gaza. It is possible that Dr. Nurani supports terrorism. It is possible that he is not
willing to live in a Palestinian society that exists alongside a strong and
vibrant Jewish state. It is possible that he insists that Israel allow millions of foreign-born Arabs to immigrate freely into Israel as a condition for
peace. But we'll never know, because he is too poor to tell us.
And then we have the frontrunner for the Palestinian presidency, new PLO
head Mahmoud Abbas. He's the only show in town. It doesn't seem to
bother anyone that Yasser Arafat's deputy of 40 years has refused to call
for an end to the Palestinian terror war, saying just Wednesday in Saudi Arabia that he didn't mean to offend anyone when he said the day before that violence against Israel is counterproductive. "All I meant," Abbas explained, "is that we are
in a phase that does not necessitate arms because we want to negotiate."
And in the meantime, he decried Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom's call
earlier in the day for the international community to build permanent housing
for the millions of Arabs, whose ancestors may have once lived in Israel, who have been interned in UN refugee camps in the Arab world for the past 55 years.
"Any proposal regarding the resettlement of the refugees is completely
rejected," Abbas, the soon-to-be-democratically elected Palestinian
leader, said.
Shalom's call for the rehabilitation of the residents of the UN refugee
camps was given in the course of his address to the Herzliya Conference.
Aside from daring to raise the possibility of letting these poor people finally
be free of the burden of living their lives as political symbols, his speech
was actually wholly supportive of the combative, rejectionist Abbas. Shalom
devoted much of his address to calling for the convention of a second Aqaba
summit with US President George W. Bush, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and Abbas
right after the January 9 elections. In his words: "The lead actors
from the first Aqaba summit, which took place in June 2003 — Sharon, Bush and
Abu Mazen [Abbas] — are the same actors today, but stronger."
So, in the run-up to the Palestinian election, which is supposed to be the
first step toward the liberalization and democratization of Palestinian
society, the presumptive winner — who stands opposed to any action against
terror operatives or compromise on the so-called refugees that would enable
peace to be achieved — is embraced as a positive development, a window of
opportunity and a foregone conclusion.
In an interview with the Post''s Ruthie Blum appearing today, Palestinian
apologist extraordinaire Hanan Ashrawi assailed Bush for adopting "the
neocon agenda" in calling for the transformation of Palestinian society
from a terror-supporting and -engendering society into a peaceful democratic
one before the establishment of a Palestinian state. In her words,
"You don't use democracy for justifying the existence of states. You would
then have to remove many states. Self-determination for Palestinians is a right
that has to be implemented as a way of bringing peace and stability to the
region. Therefore, you don't make a state dependent on its system of
government." And Ashrawi isn't alone. In his speech at the conference on
Tuesday, Labor party leader and soon-to-be acting prime minister Shimon
Peres assailed the notion that democratic reform is a necessary condition for
peaceful relations.
Indeed, the very thought that Palestinian society must be democratized meets
its staunchest opposition from Israeli elites. In his column in Yediot Ahronot last Friday, Nahum
Barnea, Israel's journalistic supremo and proud socialist, wrote scathingly of
Bush's attachment to the notions of democracy and morality. Speaking of Bush's
reading of Minister-without-Portfolio Natan Sharansky's book, The Case for
Democracy, which argues that peaceful relations are contingent on individual
freedom and democracy, Barnea sneered, "The book publisher can now
advertise it as 'the only book the president has read in the last 10
years.'" He then went on to witheringly criticize Sharansky's book,
describing it as "clear, easily digestible, unburdened by doubt,
moralistic, very positive and totally simplistic."
Israel's elitists, like Barnea and Peres, and their sheep-like followers like
Shalom, no doubt took comfort in the obnoxious responses evinced toward the
Bush administration's policy doctrine of bringing democracy to the Arab world
during last Saturday's conference on the topic in Rabat, Morocco. There, US Secretary of State Colin Powell was barraged by angry statements from the Egyptian, Saudi and
Libyan foreign ministers, who claimed that the US can't talk about democracy
until "the peace process" goes forward and US occupation of Iraq comes to an end.
Even German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer, the champion of the Israeli Left,
said that progress toward peace between Israel and the Palestinians "will
lend all reform and modernization efforts in the Arab world unprecedented
momentum." It isn't surprising that the same people who demonize their
political opposition in Israel as warmongering extremists and potential
political assassins would have such a low opinion of the possibility that Arabs
might, if given the opportunity, choose to live freely and at peace with Israel and the rest of their neighbors.
And yet, as The Washington Post's editorialist noted on Wednesday, even as the Arab
potentates were berating the Americans for daring to discuss democracy with
them, Arab human rights activists who also participated in the conference
insisted that the Americans continue to pressure their governments and that
"Palestinian and Iraqi issues should not be used as excuses for not
launching reforms." And what did these people want? They demanded that
their governments "allow free ownership of media institutions and sources;
allow freedom of expression and especially freedom of assembly and meetings;
ensure women's rights and remove all forms of inequality and discrimination
against women in the Arab world; and immediately release reformers, human
rights activists and political prisoners."
The American neoconservatives, who have been the most visible proponents of
democracy in the Arab world and who Barnea, echoing Ashrawi, alleges
"control the foreign policy of the Bush administration," have often
been accused of working for Israel. Yet, as our elites' revulsion with
democracy and our government's silence on the issue shows, American democracy
advocates have almost no one to talk to in Israel. Indeed, Israel's passivity in the face of Palestinian corruption, authoritarianism and hate indicates that
what Israel needs most desperately is for a movement of Israeli
neoconservatives to arise and "take control" of Israel's foreign policy. (Article)
Can Settlers Raise Numbers to Resist Evictions? – December 22, 2004
Debkafiles - When is a crime not a crime? May a Holocaust symbol be used to promote any other cause? What is an illegal law? And what is an illegal military order?
These questions have been tossed back and forth since the mild-spoken Pinhas Wallerstein, a leading member of the Council of Jewish Communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza (Yesha Council), switched on a national roller coaster on December 19 by calling on all Israelis to resist Ariel Sharon’s plan to dismantle 26 settlements non-violently “even if it means going to jail.”
He called the disengagement/compensation law to remove all 21 Gaza settlements and four in the West Bank immoral, argued that ordering Jews to be uprooted from their homes, to which they were sent by Labor and Likud governments alike, was a violation of their human rights. If the measure were passed, they were entitled to break the law and refuse to leave those homes.
A day later, the entire Yesha Council, accused until now of pussyfooting by the potential evacuees, stood up and endorsed Wallerstein’s call for passive resistance. In many democracies, unjust or inappropriate laws are amended or repealed, they said. Some members pointed to the constitutional amendment rushed through the Knesset this week to provide Labor leader Shimon Peres with the post of second acting prime minister – his sine qua non for joining the government - after the first acting PM Ehud Olmert refused to step aside in his honor.
Next morning, December 21, campaigners turned out sporting Orange-flag badges. This called forth outraged condemnations from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial foundation and the Wiesenthal Center for daring to evoke the infamous Yellow-star badge forced on the Jews by the Nazis. But there was no backing down. One Gazan settler contended that the evacuation would open the door to a new national catastrophe and must therefore be resisted. The new justice minister Likud’s Tsipi Livneh took Wallerstein to task for telling people to break the law (which is still not promulgated). However, the attorney general declined to treat his words as criminal incitement without further study. Some legal experts opined that the application of criminal definitions and penalties to political protest was not healthy and could become a two-edged sword.
Wallerstein played his strongest card when he declared that if enough people were willing to follow his example and go to jail, there won’t be enough prisons in the country to hold them all. This struck a disturbing chord with police commissioner Moshe Karadi. On Monday, December 20, he warned that the evacuation of Gaza Strip’s Gush Katif could be aborted by massive resistance. “Our views on disengagement and evacuation do not matter,” he said. “However a government decision that is impossible to execute is a danger to any democracy.” He promised that the 5,000 police officers assigned with evicting the settlers would come to their task unarmed. They would start training in March and are meanwhile being coached by behavioral psychologists. If shooting or forcible resistance occurred, the army would be called in.
In a move to defuse the suspense, the Knesset’s Law Committee chaired by Likud MK Michael Eytan voted Tuesday, December 21, to cut out the penalty clause from the controversial evacuation/compensation bill. The clause stated that participants in groups of three or more gathered to obstruct an order given by a security officer charged with implementing the disengagement plan would be subject to up to five years in prison. When this clause was first presented to the cabinet last October, cabinet member Natan Sharanksy called it an exact copy of a law in force in Soviet Russia and under which hundreds of people were imprisoned. Its removal from the bill was therefore not generally mourned.
In any case, as the police commissioner sensed, it would have proved impossible to implement. According to DEBKAfile’s sources, the settlement leaders have drawn up a plan to pre-empt the evacuations by setting up around Gush Katif a tent city of 70,000 protesters, ten times its population and 14 times that of the police evacuation force. Already today, Palestinian mortar, shooting, bombing and missile attacks escalate daily – 14 on Tuesday alone. This mass of Israeli civilians in one place would present Palestinian terrorists with an irresistible target for massacre, forcing the army to fan out in Palestinian areas to quell any violence. The result would be havoc and the defeat of the prime minister’s pullback plan.
But Sharon, whose efforts to broaden his minority government keep on running into hurdles raised by squabbling Labor leaders, faces a further even more dangerous obstacle to his plans. Anti-disengagement members of the armed forces under the influence of Yesha leaders - and especially its rabbis - are collecting signatures from comrades willing to refuse “illegal” orders to evict settlers - even if they are punished with jail. They claim to have collected thousands of signatures. When the total reaches 10,000, the list will be posted to the IDF’s Manpower Branch, challenging the high command to find cells for that number of miscreants. To make their resistance plans work, the settlers’ strategists must command large numbers of selfless protesters. Do they have them? And how far are they committed to passive, non-violent resistance?
A mass sit-in demonstration has been called for next week outside the prime minister’s office in Jerusalem. It is due to go on indefinitely. The number of demonstrators will be an indicator of the scale of their support. Interesting pointers were also turned up by Maagar Mohot pollster Prof. Yizhak Katz who on December 19 surveyed a random sampling of 584 adult settlers in the West Bank and Gaza Strip (allowing for 4.5% margin of error).
He found that 45% support and 31% oppose Wallerstein’s call to disobey the “Jewish transfer” bill, that 40% are prepared to go to jail for passively resisting the dismantling of their homes, but 49% are not. A large segment of 76% is opposed to violent resistance to military and police eviction forces, while 14% would countenance force. Only 17% believe that uprooting settlements could result in a political assassination. A majority of 56% do not. (Article)
Senior officers in Southern Command say government is "tying their hands" – December 25, 2004
Israel Insider - An unprecedented wave of mortar attacks against settlements and army units continue in Gaza, and there is "deep frustration" in the IDF southern command over the refusal of the government to authorize serious action against the attacks. "Frustration doesn't begin to describe the real feeling here. There's a lot we could do against mortars, but our hands are tied by the political level," a senior officer in Gaza told ynet. "It can't go on for long like this."
A soldier on
a tank in Gaza (AP file photo)
The officers explain that short-term operations are not delivering the goods.
"The terrorists have learned this type of action and are encouraged to
continue." "We have here sufficient forces and no lack of operational
techniques which can shock the terrorist cells that are firing mortars. But we
have not received the 'green light' from the political echelon. The problem is
that the terrorist see these [IDF]actions for a few hours, see that they are
not serious, and are encourage to keep shooting."
Palestinian mortars continued to pummel Israeli communities and Israel Defense
Forces outposts in Gaza on Friday, just a day after the army completed its
second operation in a week in Khan Yunis. A few hours after the operation
ended, a resident of Gush Katif was lightly wounded Thursday as terrorists
continued shelling throughout the Strip. Eleven mortar shells hit Gaza on Friday alone, causing extensive damage but no injuries. Three shells hit Kfar
Darom, one landing on a caravan and damaging it severely. Another hit the roof
of a house. Three more hit the town of Neveh Dekalim, the largest Israeli
community in Gush Katif, one landing near a school. Two more hit the Erez
crossing area, between Israel and Gaza. Later in the afternoon, Palestinians
fired three shells that hit an IDF outpost and settlements.
The IDF says all terrorist groups in Gaza are involved in firing shells,
with Hamas leading the assault, which has increased in intensity as the week
has gone on. The army and settlers said the attack was the heaviest ever mortar
assault in decades, and the army's response was limited. To protest the
ongoing mortar fire, and the lack of response by the IDF, dozens of Gaza settlers blocked junctions between Gaza and Khan Yunis, and set tires on fire.
"The Arabs don't let us live in quiet, and we will not let them have
quiet" until the army does something, one resident told Channel 7.
Several residents of the town of Kfar Darom took over an Arab-owned building,
reportedly vacant, explaining that terrorists were unlikely destroy Arab houses
with mortar shells. They later were compelled to leave the house by the IDF. One
shell hit the home of Chana Bart, who was partially paralyzed three years ago
in a terrorist shooting on the main road to the Jewish communities in Gush
Katif. Her home suffered damage but she escaped further injuries. Shells
exploded next to a school in Neve Dekalim and a mobile home Friday morning, causing
damage but no injuries. Terrorists also hit the three Jewish communities in
northern Gaza. Since IDF soldiers moved out of Khan Yunis yesterday, more than
33 shells have exploded on Jewish communities in the Gaza coast areas in
southern Israel. The number of shells and rockets fired at Gush Katif since the
start of the Oslo War in September 2000 has now surpassed 5,000.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon "is trying to break Gush Katif residents and
achieve political results by not acting to prevent the shootings," said
Eran Sternberg, spokesman for the Gaza Coast Regional Council. Gershon Yona,
administrator of the Kfar Darom community where three shells exploded Friday
morning, charged Sharon with keeping the Army from retaliating because he is
more interested in not disturbing upcoming Palestinian Authority elections. Speaking
to Ynet, Yaki Yisraeli, treasurer of the Netzer Hazani community in Gush Katif,
said, "If there isn't a suitable response to the mortar fire, people will
start defending themselves. The residents serve in all the IDF units and the
fear is that they will take the law into their own hands. If the IDF evacuates
positions, the residents will take them over." (Article)
Israeli lawmakers say they'll help settlers resist Gaza withdrawal – December 24, 2004
Israel Insider - A dozen Israeli lawmakers
have signed a pledge to join Jewish settlers in resisting the dismantling of
settlements in the Gaza Strip and parts of the West Bank -- the latest sign
that protests could be fierce.
Effie Eitam
Lawmaker Effie Eitam, a leader of the group, told Israel Army Radio on Thursday
that the petition calls for nonviolent protests, but acknowledged that things
could get out of hand. "We must not carry out this evacuation. I think
the prime minister has to understand that this evacuation stretches ... the
limits of democracy," Eitam said.
Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's plan to dismantle 25 settlements and remove
8,600 settlers from their homes has infuriated Israeli hard-liners.
Protests escalated this week, after Sharon managed to stabilize his wobbly
coalition and the settlers' political options were dwindling. Some settlers,
comparing the evacuation of settlements to the Nazi Holocaust, began wearing
orange Star of David patches, similar to those the Nazis forced Jews to pin to
their lapels.
The campaign caused an uproar in Israel, which gave refuge to hundreds of
thousands of Holocaust survivors after World War II. Critics said the
settlers belittled the suffering of the survivors and caused them new anguish. Organizers
of the Star of David campaign said Thursday they would stop handing out the
patches, at the request of the Yesha Settlers Council, the main umbrella group
of settlements.
In Eitam's petition, lawmakers pledge to "prevent with our bodies the
immoral and inhumane expulsion of thousands of heroic pioneer settlers."
The petition has been signed by 12 of 120 lawmakers, including three from Sharon's Likud Party and the rest from far-right factions, Eitam's spokesman said. The
petition said protesters will not use violence against Israeli soldiers and
police officers ordered to carry out the withdrawal. The withdrawal plan
cost Sharon his parliamentary majority last summer, when Eitam's pro-settler
National Religious Party and other hardliners bolted the coalition. Expecting
possibly violent resistance, Israel's police have asked for additional money to
carry out the evacuation, said spokesman Gil Kleiman. The Yediot Ahronot daily
said police asked for an additional 370 million shekels (US$85.3 million). The
money will be used to call up reserve police officers and to purchase
equipment, including hundreds of batons, riot gear, horses and water cannons,
the newspaper reported.
However, at least one Gaza Strip settlement is ready to leave voluntarily,
the Haaretz daily said. The residents of Peat Sadeh, a settlement of 17
families, have agreed to move to a nearby community in Israel, Moshav Mavkiim, Haaretz said. Jewish settlers who leave voluntarily, before the official
evacuation begins in July, are set to receive cash advances from the
government. All settlers will be compensated for the homes, businesses and
other possessions they leave behind. (Article)
Abbas Wins with Landslide – January 10, 2005
Lekerev Report - Fatah candidate Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) has won 61.6 percent of the vote in the election for the chairmanship of the Palestinian Authority, officials announced late last night.
The figure was based on results in 14 out of 16 voting districts, said a member of the Central Election Commission. Independent candidate Mustafa Barghouti won 21%, the official said. The remaining five candidates scored in low single digits.
Abbas' victory held out the promise of a new era after four decades of chaotic and corruption- riddled rule by Yasser Arafat, who died November 11. Abbas, who has (more or less) spoken out against violence and has the support of the international community, promises to reform the government and the unwieldy security services. Israel's attitude is "wait and see".
By the way, as you can see from his photo, it's cold here today! (Article)
Palestinians Renew Incitement Against Israel and Jews – January 12, 2005
Lekerev Report - The Arab promise to Israel to stop incitement is once again meaningless. Moslem imams and the PA's president calling Jews a cancer, the Zionist enemy and the cause of the Tsunami disaster all add up to yet another misleading "promise".
Less than two months ago Prime Minister Ariel Sharon said he would not grant any concessions to the Palestinian Authority (PA) concerning security in Gaza unless there was an immediate cessation to hateful anti-Semitism in the Arab media that encouraged violence against Israelis. After that, the incitement changed format. It assumed a milder tone as Arabs shied away from calls for suicide bombings, concentrating instead on demanding the "return of refugees" while repeating their slogan that all of Israel is Palestine.
But now, "hate Israel" speeches have returned to the PA airwaves and are being heard in the streets. Several days before Sunday's elections in which Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen) was elected as successor to Yasser Arafat, he called Israel "the Zionist enemy." A Moslem cleric last Friday preached about the Arabs' "longing for the destruction of Israel and America," according to Itamar Marcus' Palestinian Media Watch. The cleric also blamed American and Israel for the Southeast Asia disaster which killed more than 150,000 people.
This morning intelligence sources here are reporting at least 55 terror attack warnings. Welcome to the presidency of Mahmoud Abbas.
The Boston Globe published an article about Abbas last Saturday which I encourage you to read by clicking below. (Article)
Israel Severs Ties with Palestinians; the “Honeymoon” is Over - January 16, 2005
Lekerev Report - Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon cut all contact with the newly elected Palestinian leader, promising that the silence would continue until Mahmoud Abbas moves to halt terror attacks. However, a day after Palestinians killed six Israeli civilians in a a bombing- and-shooting attack at a Gaza cargo crossing, Abbas insisted that he will continue to attempt persuasion in trying to rein in the armed groups.
"Israel informed international leaders today that there will be no meetings with Abbas until he makes a real effort to stop the terror," said Sharon spokesman Assaf Shariv.
It had been hoped that the election of Abbas to replace Yasser Arafat would bring a return to the negotiation table after more than four years of conflict. Israel and the U.S. had both refused to deal with Arafat, because of continued terrorism. Abbas, until recently, had been viewed as a 'moderate'.
Sharon decided to cut ties when intelligence indicated that the Palestinian Authority was directly involved in the attack on the Karni crossing, Gaza's main lifeline, by knowingly allowing the terrorists to use a PA base to launch the attack, Shariv said. Three armed groups claimed responsibility, including Hamas and the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, which has ties to Abbas' ruling Fatah movement. (Article)
Abbas: We will rule Palestine from Jerusalem – December 13, 2004
JERUSALEM (Jerusalem Newswire) - PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas Sunday reiterated his pledge to pursue Yasser Arafat’s goal of seizing control over eastern Jerusalem as the capital of a future Palestinian Arab state. Throughout the "peace" process, sovereignty over the ancient Jewish capital has been a red line issue for Israel. Abbas also said that, after a ten-year delay, the PA would finally fulfill its obligations under the "Oslo" agreements. Meanwhile, the Hamas terrorist organization rejected reports it was prepared to accept a ceasefire and recognize Israel’s right to exist within the Jewish state’s pre-1967 borders.
Target: Jerusalem - "The true fealty to Arafat's memory would be to pursue his path to achieve Palestinian national goals, namely the establishment of a democratic state, with Jerusalem as its capital, that would live in peace and security next to Israel," Abbas told reporters in Ramallah Sunday after meeting with German Foreign Minister Joschka Fischer. During the past decade, Arafat vowed on numerous occasions to "march on Jerusalem with one million martyrs" in order to wrest the city from Israeli control. Israel has declared Jerusalem its "eternal, undivided" capital, and has made sovereignty over the city a red line in its peace negotiations with the "Palestinians." When former Prime Minister Ehud Barak put Jerusalem on the trading block in 2000, nearly half a million Israeli Jews converged on the city in a mass demonstration against the change in policy. While Jerusalem was for thousands of years the capital of Israel, it has never served as the capital of a sovereign Arab entity.
Abbas attempts to justify non-compliance - Abbas went on to say the "Palestinians" fully intended to fulfill their "international" peace obligations. He then attempted to justify more than 10 years of non-compliance by pointing an accusing finger at Israel. "When we fulfill our commitments, and we are determined to do so, we expect the Israelis to halt all their acts of aggression against our people," Abbas said. In particular, the "Palestinian" leader slammed Israel for building a security fence and holding Palestinian Arabs in prison for murdering and planning to murder Jews. Abbas said Israel must halt construction of the fence and release all "Palestinian" prisoners in order to revive the peace process. He did not acknowledge that decades of Palestinian Arab terrorism against Israeli men, women and children is what had led to the need for a fence and the incarcerations. Also disregarded was the fact Israel has for years been implementing its commitments under the Oslo Accords, specifically the handing over of vast swaths of land and control over 99 percent of the Palestinian Arab population to the PLO.
Hamas says ‘NO’ to Israel’s existence - In related news, the Hamas terrorist organization denied reports that it had tentatively accepted an Abbas-brokered temporary halt to attacks on Israeli Jews. Hamas leader Mahmoud Zahar also said the group had in no way altered its policy of denying Israel’s right to exist. "The strategy of Hamas is to liberate all the Palestinian lands [sic]. This is a known strategy. We believe in the liberation of all the Palestinian lands [sic] as stipulated by the Koran. In order to achieve this, we must pass through a number of phases," the Jerusalem Post quoted Zahar as saying. Recent media reports suggested Hamas had decided to recognize Israel’s existence within the Jewish state’s pre-1967 borders. Regarding a halt to anti-Jewish terror attacks, Zahar said "not a word was mentioned about the [temporary truce]" during recent talks with Abbas in Gaza City. (Article)
Arafat's successor: Palestinian state will replace Israel – December 24, 2004
World Tribune - The new leader of the ruling Fatah movement said the Palestinians want to replace Israel with a state of their own. Fatah chief Farouk Khaddoumi said the Palestinian strategy toward Israel was two-fold. In the first stage, he said, the Palestinians would accept a Palestinian state alongside Israel. In the second stage, the Palestinians would seek to eliminate the Jewish state. In November, Khaddoumi replaced the late Yasser Arafat as leader of Fatah, Middle East Newsline reported. "At this stage there will be two states," Khaddoumi told Iran's Al Aram television last week. "Many years from now, there will be only one." Khaddoumi, who regards himself as Palestinian foreign minister, said he was confident that Israel would be eliminated. He said he always opposed Israel's existence and cited the Arab numerical superiority over the Jewish state.
"[There are] 300 million Arabs, while Israel has only the sea behind it," Khaddoumi said. Khaddoumi said his platform was endorsed by the PLO in 1974. He said the strategy called for a phased plan that would establish authority over any territory obtained from Israel, concluding with an Arab war to destroy the Jewish state. On Thursday, the Palestinian Authority launched the first municipal elections in the West Bank and Gaza Strip in more than 25 years. The PA has been promising such elections since 1996. The Fatah chief played down the powers of PA ministers. Khaddoumi said the Fatah Central Committee marked the source of authority for the PA and Cabinet. "The Palestinian Authority is a partial authority," Khaddoumi said. "It is a local government, just like any local government in any country. We shouldn't delude ourselves that these 'ministers' are actually ministers." On Thursday, Palestinian gunners fired 30 mortar rounds into the Gush Katif community in the central Gaza Strip. The attack was launched from the Khan Yunis refugee camp hours after Israeli forces left the area. (Article)
Abbas: There will be no peace until Israel tears down separation fence – December 30, 2004
Haaretz - Taking his
campaign to succeed Yasser Arafat to the foot of the West Bank separation
fence, PLO chief Mahmoud Abbas said on Wednesday there would be no peace until
Israel tore it down
"No (Middle East) peace can transpire with (Jewish) settlements and the
wall," Abbas said with his back to the separation fence around Qalqilyah
near the West Bank's boundary with Israel."We tell our neighbors: 'No
matter how many settlements, walls or obstacles you build, it will not bring
you security or peace," Abbas said.
The hearty welcome given Abbas at his first campaign rally in Jericho on
Tuesday carried over on Wednesday to Qalqilyah and Tul Karm. Crowds repeatedly
interrupted his speeches with cheers and people of all ages ran excitedly after
his convoy. Heavy security was draped around Abbas because of feared threats
from militants opposed to peacemaking. However, local members of the al Aqsa
Martyrs Brigades, an armed group in the mainstream Fatah faction that nominated
Abbas for president, greeted Abbas and said they would vote for him.
Abu Salem, commander of the Brigades in Tul Karm, said gunmen would be
receptive to Abbas's call for an end to armed violence, which has abated in
most areas since Arafat died in November. Abbas repeated his campaign theme
that he would follow in Arafat's footsteps by vowing to seek a state in all of
the West Bank and Gaza Strip with East Jerusalem as its capital and the
"right of return" of refugees to what is now Israel.
Radical backing for Barghouti
The Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine said on Wednesday it would
back Mustafa Barghouti, a leading proponent of non-violence running in the election
of Arafat's successor. Mustafa is a distant cousin of jailed uprising leader
Marwan Barghouti who pulled out of the presidential race this month. The
endorsement of Barghouti by the militant group behind anti-Israel terrorist
acts highlighted a political shift after Arafat's death, as other militants
have decided to back Abbas. "We call on all members of the PFLP and the
Palestinian people to support and vote for Doctor Mustafa al-Barghouti,"
senior PFLP leader Rabah Muhana told a news conference in Gaza.
The PFLP, which has about 2 percent support in opinion polls, is a radical
group in the umbrella Palestine Liberation Organization led by Abbas and
opposes peacemaking with Israel in contrast with Fatah, the PLO's mainstream
faction. Barghouti, running a distant second to Abbas in the Jan. 9 election
race, is a prominent critic of Israeli army crackdowns in occupied territory
but, like Abbas, wants a halt to bloodshed and talks on a Palestinian state
co-existing alongside Israel. Muhana said the PFLP and Barghouti had agreed on
key issues such as stressing a "right of return" of refugees to what
is now Israel and rejecting any peace based on 1990s interim deals that did not
require full Israeli withdrawal from occupied areas.
Asked about being linked with a group that has killed Israelis in suicide
bombings and assassinated an Israeli cabinet minister, Barghouti said he
disagreed with some PFLP views but its move would foster Palestinian unity
after Arafat. "We will give maximum effort to strengthen the popular
(non-violent) nature of the struggle (for statehood). We will seek to unite the
vision of struggle through dialogue. "(The PFLP endorsement) can be the
start of a new democratic Palestinian coalition," he told Reuters.
Political analyst Hani Habib said the PFLP move would improve Barghouti's showing by attracting a number of undecided voters, although not enough to upset Abbas. It could also raise fear in Fatah, he said, that Islamists might back an independent like Barghouti "to at least prevent Abbas from achieving a big victory" that he needs for a popular mandate to rein in militants so he can negotiate with Israel. Senior Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar, whose group rejected to field a candidate for the election, said members of the group were free to vote - a departure from a general boycott declared by another Hamas leader earlier this month. "We asked nobody to go (vote) and nobody to boycott it. Everyone, even Hamas members, is free to either participate or not participate," Zahar said. Hamas won some municipal elections last week and may run in parliamentary polls next year. (Article)
The Problem With Mahmoud Abbas – January 10, 2005
Jerusalem (Israel Natioanal
News/Boston Globe) - The outcome of the election for president of the
Palestinian Authority was never in doubt. Mahmoud Abbas, Yasser Arafat's
longtime accomplice -- the two men co-founded Fatah, the largest terrorist
faction within the PLO, in 1965 -- was always going to win in a landslide.
The three other candidates were never going to get more than a sliver of the
vote. That they got any votes at all was impressive, given the virtual news
blackout on their campaigns by the Fatah-controlled Palestinian media and the
bullying of anyone tempted to support them. The New York Sun described
some of the arm-twisting on December 31: "One
of the reasons none of the three candidates has received much support is
intimidation by the PA [Palestinian Authority]. 'People are afraid to be seen even reading their campaign
literature,' says one Palestinian. ...The message that the people have received
from various leaders of the PA is that if they vote for a candidate other than
Mr. Abbas, they will either lose jobs they already have in the PA or will not
be hired by the PA in the future. Since the PA is the largest employer in the
West Bank and Gaza, the threat carries a great deal of weight. "Physical intimidation has also played a role.... On
Wednesday, shots were fired at [candidate Bassam El] Salhi's offices in
Ramallah...."
Surely this isn't what President Bush had in mind
when he said, in his seminal June 2002 address on the Arab-Israeli war, that the United States would support the creation of a Palestinian state if the Palestinians would
first "build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty."
Nor can Abbas, who spent decades at Arafat's side and who has been unyielding
in his refusal to crack down on Palestinian gunmen and bombers, be what Bush
meant when he insisted that Palestinians "elect new leaders, leaders not
compromised by terror." So why has the administration bent over backward
to support the election and give its blessing to Abbas?
On December 29, the State Department transferred
$23.5 million to the Palestinian Authority -- a mark, said assistant Secretary
of State William Burns, of American "confidence in the direction of the
PA's reform program." The absurdity
of such confidence was made clear one day later, when Abbas brazenly
campaigned with members of the Al-Aksa Martyrs Brigade in Jenin. A picture of
Abbas riding on the shoulders of Zakaria Zubeidi -- a notorious terrorist and
one of Israel's most wanted men -- was published around the globe.
Yet, when Colin Powell was asked about it, he
shrugged. The photo is "disturbing," he conceded, but "I don't
think it reflects Mr. Abbas's overall approach to governing."
Please. The embrace of Zubeidi was no anomaly. Abbas
is sometimes described as a "moderate" opposed to terrorism, but his
opposition is purely tactical. He has no moral problem with blowing up
buses and cafes, he simply thinks such methods are, for now,
counterproductive. Last week, Abbas hailed Palestinian gunmen in Gaza, but urged them to stop firing rockets at Israeli towns. Because deliberately
targeting civilians is wrong? No. "Because this is not the proper time for
such actions." Hardly the words of a moderate. Again and again, Abbas has expressed his solidarity with
violent extremists. Last month, he traveled to Damascus to meet with some of
the region's most implacable terror groups, including Hamas, Islamic Jihad and
the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command. Afterward,
Abbas' "foreign minister", Nabil Sha'ath, declared that between the
Palestinian Authority and the other groups, "there are no differences over
the objectives."
And what are those objectives? About that, Abbas has
been explicit. In recent weeks, he has promised to shelter terrorists from
Israeli arrest and vowed that there will be no PA crackdown on Palestinian
terrorism. He hews unswervingly to Yasser Arafat's hardline positions -- an
Israeli retreat to the 1949 armistice lines, Jerusalem as the Palestinian
capital, the elimination of every Jewish settlement, the dismantling of Israel's security fence and no limit on the "right of return" -- code for the abolition of
Israel as a Jewish state. Abbas
is no moderate. His election is not a step toward peace. What was true in Afghanistan and Iraq is true in the Palestinian Authority, as well: Without regime change, freedom
and democracy are impossible. Just as the defeat of the Taliban and Ba'athists
were a prerequisite to elections, so the dismantling of the corrupt Fatah
autocracy is essential to Palestinian reform. President Bush got it right in
2002: The Palestinians need "new leaders... not compromised by
terror." They still do. [This article
originally appeared in the Boston Globe on Sunday, January 9, 2005.] (Article)
Palestinians Return to the Knife – December 29, 2004
Debkafiles - The passivity of Mahmoud Abbas (Abu Mazen), frontrunner to succeed Yasser Arafat in January 9 election, in the face of Palestinian violence, is noted by Israeli defense chiefs. Last week, Israeli prime minister Ariel Sharon complained during his welcoming speech for British premier Tony Blair: the Palestinian Authority employs 30,000 security and police officers in the Gaza Strip. Yet they have not taken the slightest step to restrain terrorist attacks on Israel. Sharon and his government are committed not to make waves that might spoil Abbas’s run for election. But the relentless mortar and missile assaults on Israeli targets in the Gaza Strip are too egregious to ignore or swallow – particularly in view of charges from Israeli residents of the Gaza Strip that Sharon is deliberately throwing them to the wolves.
West Bank terrorists turn to silent killing
Furthermore, on December 12, a mixed Palestinian team blew up the Desert Reconnaissance Battalion’s post at the Rafah border crossing to Egypt, killing five Israeli soldiers. Discovered near the Gaza-Israeli crossing six days earlier was the Karni Tunnel which the Palestinians had designed for massive explosions across the Green Line inside an Israeli village - mostly probably Kibbutz Nahal Oz. The Israel officer who made the discovery was killed on the spot in a ferocious Hamas attack. All these episodes were dealt with at length in the special conference Sharon called Wednesday, December 29, of national security chiefs, defense minister Shaul Mofaz, chief of staff Lt. Gen Moshe Yaalon and senior generals.
But the resumed small-scale attacks by West Bank Palestinian knifemen were largely ignored. Palestinian groups based in West Bank hotbeds may present the appearance of having mostly turned away from their archetypical massacres of Israeli civilians. In this territory, the Palestinian Authority, namely Abu Mazen, demonstrates a remarkable capability for reining in or at least fine-tuning the level of Palestinian terror as and when it suits him, meaning when he needs international help to gain Arafat’s seat. This is a far cry from a commitment to dismantle the terrorist organizations, for which he has thus far not lifted a finger. It is a fact that Palestinian terrorism continues – not only in the Gaza Strip, but in mutated form from the West Bank too.
This December saw eight Palestinian stabbing attacks against Israelis. Two Israeli women were slashed to death and two Israeli men were badly injured. In the mixed Jerusalem suburb of Abu Tor, the Shin Beit caught a Palestinian preparing a suicide attack on behalf of the Hebron Hamas – not by himself; he wanted to persuade his 16-year old fiancée to “volunteer” for the deadly role. All these episodes were quickly brushed out of sight. DEBKAfile therefore lists them one by one:
December 6, two Palestinians stabbed a middle-aged Israeli man in Abu Tor. His assailants escaped after injuring him moderately.
December 21, Ariela Fahima, 39-year old mother of four, died of a slit throat and other knife wounds outside her home in Moshav Nekhosha, southwest of Jerusalem.
December 26, Ziona Spivak, 67, was slashed to death in her apartment at Assa St, Jerusalem. The type and number of her injuries indicated two killers. She is thought to have opened the door to them. There were no signs of a break-in or burglary, but the murderers left the bloodstained knife behind, a common practice of Palestinian terrorists.
Earlier that day, two Palestinians attempted to stab an Israeli guard at Jerusalem’s downtown Klal Center. He drove them off after sustaining light injuries.
December 28, a Palestinian youth was captured near Hebron’s Tomb of the Patriarchs armed with a “shabariya” dagger. He admitted he was about to attack an Israeli soldier or police officer protecting the shrine. Hebron police admitted two similar incidents had taken place previously this month, neither published. That same night, a young Palestinian woman turned herself into the Hebron police and surrendered a knife which she had intended using against an Israeli.
Some common features stand out from these episodes, aside from the use of a lethal blade. Most were carried out in the early afternoon on the assumption that then security and police officers take their midday meal and are therefore less alert. Moreover, the perpetrators mostly operated in pairs. And the knife offensive has so far focused on Jerusalem and Hebron, which is situated in the southern West Bank about one hour’s drive from the capital. The Palestinians are believed by DEBKAfile’s terrorism analysts to be testing the ground for Israel’s reaction. There has been none. In fact, the general official approach is to play down each separate incident by suggesting that all avenues, including criminal assault, are under investigation. This approach blurs the issue and conceals the hand behind the attacks. It also leaves the Israeli public unprepared for Palestinian knifemen on the hunt for victims in broad daylight and without the means to tackle the menace.
Since no one is stopping it, this form of low-grade terror may well multiply and spread to other places. Conspicuous terrorist operations in Israeli cities would damage Mahmoud’s international standing as a peacemaker and negotiator and jeopardize the flow of foreign funds lavished on him since Arafat’s demise. But small-scale attacks with blades rather than bombs permits Palestinian violence against Israelis to persist without compromising Mahmoud Abbas before voting day. This is in keeping with the fact that no Palestinian official or leader – from Abbas and prime minister Ahmed Qureia down to the lowliest Fatah-al Aqsa Brigades gang chief – has offered any commitment to give up terrorism or eradicate it. The shift to knives is merely a pragmatic tactic to keep world criticism off Palestinian backs.
It just so happens that 18 months ago, an Israeli couple was brutally hacked to death outside the Hadassah medical center in Jerusalem on the night of June 5, 2003, the same day that Abu Mazen, together with President George W. Bush, Israeli prime minister Sharon and Jordan’s King Abdullah, met in Aqaba to endorse the Middle East roadmap. That double murder went almost unnoticed in Israel and is still tagged unsolved by the Jerusalem police. Israeli authorities, by their low-key handling of these crimes, are helping to plant the illusion in Israeli minds that a new post-Arafat era has arrived and that Abu Mazen promises to lead the Palestinians to peace negotiations while stamping out the war of terror initiated by his predecessor. This is not the impression the Palestinians are getting from their future leader. They see Israelis continuing to die at their hands without interference and take it to mean that terrorism will persist under Abu Mazen’s rule too. (Article)
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