KICIsraeI: Current Affairs & Israel Advocacy Training

MichaelOnIsrael replaces KIC

2007-02-18T22:28:00.000+02:00

The KICblog has done its duty. I am now sending out a Weekly Israel Report by email to my subscribers. You too can subscribe by sending a blank email to michaelonisrael-subscribe@googlegroups.com and then follow the instructions.
It is not a discussion list so no need to sweat about inbox flooding. It is just one Israel Report each week from me.

I'm still speaking to many groups visiting Israel - family, community and student groups.
Contact me at: michaelonisrael@gmail.com or skype: mikeejl to order a session.

Wherever you are, Chodesh Tov from Eretz Yisrael!
Michael Lawrence

Burger King from Beirut to Tel Aviv

2006-09-10T12:03:00.000+03:00

Amusing way to make light of a harrowing reality...

Shabbat of Trepidation

2006-09-08T18:26:00.000+03:00

As we stand at the entry of the Shabbat that precedes the fifth anniversary of September 11, is Israel playing the role of light unto the nations in respect of the war on terror. Are we standing tough or stepping back from our own self-created obligations and conditions for quiet? Are we doing any better than the world that claims to defend our right to exist in peace and security?
Here my view on this Shabbat - click below.

Yesterday... Olmert & His Troubles

2006-09-05T22:02:00.000+03:00

Yesterday, all my troubles seemed so far away - and so did those of Ehud Olmert. How the dice has landed differently of late. Click below and hear my KICview on our Prime Minister's sudden change of priorities in the face of the widespread reevaluation of national security.

Prisoner Exchange - Pleasure or Pain?

2006-09-03T21:32:00.000+03:00

I can not for a moment imagine the pain of the families of IDF soldiers who remain in the cruel hands of Hezbollah and Hamas enemies. Surely I have no right to deny the pleasure of a homecoming for their husbands, sons, brothers and themselves.

But at what price? Where do we strike a balance? Is it possible to find such a balance? Must we reward terror regardless and encourage it - for the sake of bringing our boys home?

Click below and hear my view on the issue and leave your comments. What would you do if you were sitting in Olmert's chair?

We Can Agree - Bring Our Boys Home!

2006-08-31T12:36:00.000+03:00

Israelis can stand together, united and determined. Tonight in Kikar Rabin (Tel Aviv) at 730pm, we'll see a huge display of support for our kidnapped IDF soldiers, Gilad Shalit, Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev. I encourage all Israel-based KICreaders to go and join the 100000s of others.

There's are a few things all Israelis agree on. Hear my view in the KICaudio post below.

Ron Arad alive?

2006-08-28T20:34:00.000+03:00

With the return of kidnapped IDF soldiers scolding hot on the mind of every Israeli, suddenly photos are revealed and a video appears and rumors are rife of a full video to show on Lebanese TV shortly. Is the most well-known of Israeli missing sons alive?

Austrian Miracle Girl

2006-08-24T23:58:00.000+03:00

A quite incredible true story broadcast on Sky News UK. You can watch the clip here and be amazed, saddened, angered and relieved. After being held for eight years in a basement in Austria, a teenage girl escapes and is remarkably reunited with her family.

It's stories like these that make you question humanity and yet thank G-d for small (and large!) mercies. When you see the father crying, one can't help but think of the tremendous pain and loss in our part of the world - of the Fox reporter and cameraman (a New Zealand citizen) held hostage currently by Gazan terrorists., for example.

Then of course I think of our Israeli soldiers (sons, brothers, husbands) who are, contrary to international law and all notions of human rights, being held, tortured no doubt, by Hamas or Nasrallah and their Iranian and Syrian cronies.

May we merit His mercy so that more families like these Austrians can live and laugh again.

Dead Sea Lessons

2006-08-23T13:10:00.000+03:00

A day soaking in the minerals of the Dead Sea has taught me a thing or two about the good we must take from hard times and life's challenges. Listen to my evaluation of life after death...

And once you've listened, have a read of this - it perfectly illustrates what I was explaining in the above KICaudio post.

Mohammed, Horses & Heaven - 22nd August?

2006-08-21T12:25:00.000+03:00

With Iran expected to give its response to the demands of the UN tomorrow, Tuesday 22nd August, some analysts have begun to play up the signifcance of Ahmadinejad's choice of date. This from Ha'aretz today:

While a response was required quickly, Tehran said that it would give its answer on August 22. Analysts originally explained the choice of dates as marking the month's end according to the Persian calendar.

However, the date has also led to speculation regarding its apocalyptic significance - this is the date on which Muslims commemorate Mohammed's ascention to heaven on a horse. The significance lies in the site where this supposedly took place: Jerusalem. The combination of the religious symbolism, the vitriolic statements of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad regarding the "surprises" his country is preparing, his messianic statements and beliefs in ridding Jerusalem of infidels, and the ongoing five-week-long military exercise have led some to attribute earth-shattering significance to this date.

DEBKAfile has had its run with this Aug 22nd Apocalyptic speculation too:

DEBKAfile’s intelligence sources report that information rated “highly credible” has reached US undercover agencies of a secret report presented to Iran’s supreme ruler Ali Khamenei by Abdollah Shabhazi, one of the heads of the Supreme National Security Council. He claims to expose a mega-terror plot against Jerusalem scheduled for August 22, which aims at killing large numbers of Jews, Arabs and Christians.

This atrocity will reportedly arm the United States and Israel with the pretext for hitting Iran’s nuclear installations, as well its capital, Tehran, and other big cities.

Shabhazi says the US and Israel need to launch a military campaign to restore the deterrent strength they lost in the Lebanon war.

The massive attack will reportedly focus on the Old City of Jerusalem and its eastern suburbs. The Iranian report claims that the plotters, who are not identified, are eager to recreate the divine white light whish spread over Jerusalem in the year 632. It does not rule out the use of a non-conventional weapon.

Any thoughts? In these days of no hand luggage flights...
Read more about Aug 22nd in this Haaretz article and in this Debka report

UNIFIL & Lebanon unwilling - let's blame Israel!

2006-08-20T10:43:00.000+03:00

The Europeans haven't turned up for duty and the Lebanese have made it clear that Hezbollah are their brothers-in-arms. It all makes the UN Resolution look like a bit of a joke in my mind. But maybe I'm a bit peculiar and in fact Israel still shouldn't have a right to stop the rearming of Hezbollah while world leaders and Lebanon decide which side of the 'war on terror' bed to get out of this morning.

Here's my audio view on the whole issue...

Jewish Hatred

2006-08-16T11:57:00.000+03:00

Neturei Karta... arghh! We have tanks and F-16s, but how do we deal with Jews who spew forth more anti-Israel hatred than the average Iranian-backed Hezbollah boy? Read their latest filth and then dive straight in for more.

And in the blue & white corner...

2006-08-15T20:51:00.000+03:00

The Mike Tyson matches against Evander Holyfield always made a good Sunday afternoon's viewing in New Zealand. I can't help thinking that we've just witnessed a boxing match with all the twists and talk that could only possibly exist in the Middle East. Like so often in boxing, we're amazed at the decision of the ringside judges... and then we're shocked by the post-match interviews with the managers.

Hear my KICaudio analysis on the local boxing match that hurt us so much over the last month.

1 Wedding and 30 Funerals

2006-08-14T00:14:00.000+03:00

As the region stands on the slippery doorstep to the Israel-Hizbollah ceasefire, my dancing at a Jerusalem wedding this evening had me contemplating far more than expected.

Have a listen to my thoughts on that uncomfortable Israeli fusion of mourning versus the need to continue life and to truly live.

Dershowitz & the United Nations

2006-08-13T23:34:00.000+03:00

Jewish World Review July 26, 2006 / 1 Menachem-Av, 5766

How the UN legitimizes terrorists

By Alan M. Dershowitz

If the UN cannot or will not distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

from --- http://www.JewishWorldReview.com

If anyone wonders why the UN has rendered itself worse than irrelevant in the Arab-Israeli conflict, all he or she need do is read UN Secretary General Kofi Annan's July 20 statement. Annan goes to great pains to suggest equal fault and moral equivalence between the rockets of Hezbollah and Hamas that specifically target innocent civilians and the self-defense efforts by Israel, which tries desperately, though not always successfully, to avoid causing civilian casualties. In his statement, Annan never condemns, or even mentions, terrorism, which is a root cause and precipitator of the conflict.

Even Annan was forced to acknowledge that "Hezbollah's provocative attack on July 12 was the trigger of this particular crisis"; that Hezbollah is "deliberate[ly] targeting ... Israeli population centers with hundreds of indiscriminate weapons"; and that Israel has the "right to defend itself under Article 51 of the UN charter." But he doesn't stop there. He goes out of his way to insist on equating Hezbollah's terrorists with Israeli military response, which he labels "disproportionate" and "collective punishment." He condemns both Hezbollah and Israel. He also criticizes Israel for its efforts at preventing Qassam rocket attacks against its civilian populations, noting that the Hamas rockets have produced no "casualties in the past month." (This, of course, is not for lack of trying.) He ignores Hamas' long history of terrorism against innocent civilians.

Annan then calls for an "immediate cessation of indiscriminate and disproportionate violence" on both sides, again suggesting a moral equivalence. Among the most immoral positions anyone can take is to suggest a moral equivalence between morally different actions.

Part of the goal of organizations like Hezbollah and Hamas is to gain moral legitimacy for their terrorist tactics by having them equated with the conventional military tactics used by democratic regimes. Only the morally obtuse or perverse cannot recognize the difference between a terrorist group that targets civilian population centers with anti-personnel weapons designed to maximize civilian casualties and a democracy that seeks to prevent terrorism by employing smart bombs designed to minimize civilian casualties.

Annan knows better than to suggest a moral equivalence. He is fully aware of the tactic employed by terrorists of launching their rockets from, and hiding behind, civilian shields, so as to make democracies have to kill some civilians to get at the terrorists.

But Annan heads an organization that is so anti-Israel that as the late Abba Eban, the early Israeli ambassador to the UN, once put it: "If Algeria proposed a resolution that the Earth was flat and that Israel has flattened it, it would pass by a vote of 120 to 3, with 27 abstentions."

Many such resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly, including the notorious one equating the Jewish national liberation movement with "racism." Other one-sided resolutions have been passed by the General Assembly legitimating terrorism. Only the U.S. veto — which does not operate in the UN General Assembly — has prevented one-sided resolutions by the Security Council.

If a space alien from a distant planet were to land at the UN, he would come away with the impression that Israel is not only the sole offender in the Middle East, but the worst offender in the entire world. He would single out Israel for condemnation and exclude it from membership on many UN bodies, on which Syria, Lebanon and Iran serve in positions of honor.

Annan himself has a long history of one-sided condemnations of Israel. In March 2004, Annan "strongly condemned" Israel's targeted killing of Sheik Ahmad Yassin, the terrorist leader of Hamas, without condemning Yassin for his murderous actions or his organization for the murder of Jewish civilians. In December 2003, Annan "strongly condemned" Israel's assault on a Palestinian refugee camp where two gunmen were thought to be hiding. And in 2005, he issued the most tepid of statements expressing "dismay" at threats by Iran's president to "eliminate" Israel, a member nation of the UN. The list goes on and on.

And even worse than the one-sided condemnations that ignore Hezbollah and Hamas are the numerous statements that perversely suggest moral equivalence.

The UN peacekeepers on the Lebanese border have turned out to be collaborators with Hezbollah, videotaping the Hezbollah kidnapping of three Israeli soldiers in 2000 and then refusing to release the video which could have helped in the rescue on the grounds that it might compromise their "neutrality."

This is a real test for the UN. If it cannot or will not distinguish between terrorists who target civilians and a democracy that seeks to stop the terrorism while minimizing civilian casualties, it has become part of the problem, rather than part of the solution.

Shavua Tov?

2006-08-12T22:02:00.000+03:00

To the satisfaction of some and the dismay of others, the United Nations Security Council passed a ceasefire resolution on Friday night. Olmert's office expresses satisfaction at its wording. Yet does the resolution resolve any of the basic causes of the Israeli-Hizbullah conflict and where does that leave battered Israeli people and a capable IDF which is finally making progress?

Listen to the KICreport as recorded by Michael Lawrence shortly after Shabbat.

KIC returns

2006-08-11T01:07:00.000+03:00

After almost 8 weeks away from home, I am back at the KIC computer. I have been working full time for the Koby Mandell Foundation so time for KICing has been limited. I apologize to the faithful readers who were left KICless for so long.

Of course, there hasn't been a shortish of breaking news and controversy to keep you current when it comes to Israeli Current Affairs. Similarly, we've all had to work overtime to advocate strongly for Israel during this unwanted Hizbollah war.

From Friday, this KICblog will begin to broadcast again from Israel through KICaudio. We invite you to visit often, listen to my view on things and then leave us your comments.

Of course, you're always welcome to tell your friends about us so that they too can benefit from keeping it current - either here online or by inviting me to run a session for their group in Israel.

Let's continue to pray for better news,

Michael

Where are our politicians hearts??

2006-06-21T17:05:00.000+03:00

Twice in the last couple of days our senior politicians, ministers no less, have shown absolute callousness for people that they should be worrying about.
First came Shimon Peres' statement about Sderot. “What's the big deal? Kiryat Shmonah was shelled for years," said the veteran politician, "Kassams, shmassams, we're not leaving."
This is insensitivity at its highest! Firstly, because there are thousands of people who have to run to bomb-shelters every day and are living in a nightmare that the government doesn't seem willing or able to solve. However, more importantly last year a 17 year old girl Ella Abuksis died from a rocket that was fired from the Gaza strip. The Abuksis family should demand an apology immediately from the thoughtless and emotionless minister.
Some other good op-eds on this subject are from Ynet News and Ha'aretz.
Yesterday, Interior Minister Roni Bar-On told the Jerusalem Post bringing the remaining Falash Mura to Israel is not necessarily a priority and the delay of their immigration is not simply a matter of money. This is one of the biggest tragedies in Zionist history. There are Jews out there who are being brought to Israel in a drip-drip manner with a few hundred at a time while many die waiting.
Israel has brought many other communities to Israel regardless of the cost or accumulation process. During the early years of the state, Israel brought hundreds of thousands of Jews from Arab lands without a thought for the cost or anything else. Then when the "Iron Curtain" fell and the Soviet Union let the Jews go Israel stepped up and took them in.
Why isn't the government responding the same way to the Falasha Mura?
Our politicians have forgotten who they are. They are there to serve the people's interests, not mock or dismiss the rason d'etre of their office. Israel is a safe-haven and home for all Jews, some of our politicians need to be reminded of that.

Sderot and the Zionist Congress

2006-06-21T00:56:00.000+03:00

As the leaders of world Zionist organizations debate resolutions and make plans for the coming years, Israeli leadership has appeared to tied its own hands. Meanwhile, Sderot residents live in fear.

Michael Lawrence (KIC Founder) gives his view on the Zionist Congress irony. Listen now and leave your comment on the KICblog - www.kicisrael.blogspot.com

KICaudio launched

2006-06-18T00:09:00.000+03:00

Tonight we have launched KICaudio - our new way to Keep It Current for worldwide KICblog readers. Whether you've been in a KICsession in Israel or you're just a KICfan, now you can hear KICupdates on Israeli news and Israeli Current Affairs whenever you want.

We invite you to listen in and leave us a KICcomment with your opinion.

Enjoy!

Un-Annan-Believable

2006-06-17T22:23:00.000+03:00

I'd laugh it it wasn't so tragically amusing. It's unbelievable in fact and something so unbelievable could only come out of the mouth of someone so UNbelievable, so United Nations!

What Kofi has Annan been drinking? Not the Israeli Elite that's for sure. Mr Annan finds it hard to believe that Hamas would plant mines or bombs on a beach populated by Palestinian civilians. What is so hard to believe about that, Secretary-General, sir?

For years, Hamas, Arafat and friendly others have placed their women, children and non-combatants on the frontlines and often used them cynically as human shields and protection of their own backsides from IDF anti-terror operations. Hamas the terror government, like Hamas the terror group have ruined the minds of a generation of young people and educated only toward hate, violence and martyrdom. Arafat did the same, only more quietly. Hamas follows the Iranian loud mouth theory of diplomacy.

So what's wrong with Kofi? It's hard to believe Olmert tour of Western capitals last week meant much even if we did witness of the backslapping, smiles and agreement on some issues. Should we all be excited that polls in Europe have done a flip-flop from 2004 when Europeans voted Israel (not Iran, North Korea etc) as the biggest threat to world peace? They say Europeans like Israel more now. They realize Hamas and the Palestinians have squandered a chance for peace or separation or agreement or something...

The 'protect the world from war" organization has again, via its leadership, failed once again to understand or to admit their understanding of Israel's enemies. Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Fatah - they all do it. They expose their friends and family to war for the sake of Palestine - a cause that loses more hope each day as a result. Whether its the smuggling of weapons into civilian homes through underground tunnels, shooting missiles from civilian areas, hiding in schools, ambulances and the like, transporting missiles (destined for Ashkelon) through crowded city streets or laying anti-IDF bombs across civilian beaches.

Whatever means, whatever it takes, Hamas has no problem sending families to die. Oh yes, for Palestine, a state that those dead civilians will never see. Their cowardice has never impressed me - pleased to pay 12-year olds twenty shekels to blow themselves up but never running for martyrdom themselves.

I am lying aren't I? KIC, lies and videotape? I must be lying because a man as intelligent as Kofi Annan couldn't really be as wrong and as naive (or skewed) as all this.

I wish I was wrong.

Can one be British and Jewish?

2006-06-14T16:39:00.000+03:00

Here is an op-ed I wrote for the Jerusalem Post. The interesting thing is part of my article was picked up by the Independent newspaper. However, contrary to how it looks I was never interviewed or questioned for this article. The journalist merely took parts of the original article and inserted it into his article to make it look like I was being interviewed.
Very Cheeky!!

Patience Exhausted

2006-06-13T23:16:00.000+03:00

We moaned and we groaned about him and his lack of experience but let's face it – having a left-wing 'land for anything' man as Defense Minister can be rather helpful. It does rather restrict the extent of the criticism heaved at Israel by other countries and by Israelis themselves.

Even when the Israeli Air Force has killed Palestinian civilians along with terrorists, like today, it's more difficult to waive the peace and human rights finger at Peretz and Olmert than it was once when Ariel Sharon (not a word about him anymore) and Shaul Mofaz (still kept tragically busy in the far less honorable, no less important Transportation Ministry).

Our Prime Minister is traveling Europe openly advocating Israeli withdrawal (bilaterally or unilaterally) from 90% of the West Bank. He is not promoting continued control over the lives of the Palestinians. He even approved weapons to Mahmoud Abbas as recently as last night. On Sunday, Amir Peretz rejected the IDF recommendation to "let the IDF win", wanting to give Hamas more time to come to its senses. I am sure they appreciated the extra time to mull things over. Iran's President is enjoying similar time to think. If only thinking was all these people do when we go into extra time.

All this, an Israeli leadership for separation and less confrontation and yet still a leadership, it appears… finally, that does want to fulfill its role of protecting the Jewish people from those who wish to hurt us. It's not an easy role and whether we are in fact the most moral army in the world as Olmert claims and whether we try our best to avoid civilian casualties – regardless - Israel, the IDF and Israelis will stand judged on the world stage by the harshest critics, the same armchair and other experts who judge American, British and other anti-terror action on a different diplomatic playing field.

Guilty before being heard? In the sad death of the family on the Gaza beach – yes! And now, when the media damage is done, will those who accused us stand up to withdraw those claims or at least pause and put away their knives until the case is closed? Muhammed al-Dura and Jenin revealed a world that requires no evidence in the court of world opinion. Will the world believe us when we say that only one IAF missie was fired, that the Kaytusha rockets themselves caused the civilian injuries after medics and civilians surrounded the van? Don't bet on retractions or apologies.

There are going to be more civilian deaths among Palestinians. It's unavoidable when terror cells transport, store and produce Qassam rockets and Kaytusha missiles in residential neighborhoods. We still have an obligation to do our utmost to strike only at those who wish to kill, injure and frighten our people. Those who do in fact threaten us should understand that even the Israeli left's patience has come to an end and that they, the terrorists will be responsible for the harm caused to innocent people, both in Israel and in their own hometowns.

Zionist Parties Awakening

2006-06-12T01:21:00.000+03:00

Quite the academics aren't they! Terror stars of the Palestinian Authority have come up with a new line recently. "You see", they exclaim, "there's no difference between the Likud, Kadima and Labor. They're all occupying killers and murderers".
Duh! Why did it take you so long to come up with that prognosis guys?

Though in fact there are significant differences between these three Israeli political parties, those differences can appear to disappear more or less when what Israel faces is a renewal of 2002-like terror actions and warnings across the state. Already tonight we've seen the murder of an Jerusalem Arab near the main highway between Jerusalem and Modiin (injuring 4 other Arabs too). With at least part of Hamas deciding to end its peculiar ("let's spend the time building up an arsenal") 'calm time', Israelis await the very worst and hope for the best.

On Friday night, while cruising through the OU's Torah Tidbits, (this being before I knew of the tragic events in Gaza), I was rather taken aback by a notice inviting people to show solidarity through visits to Sderot and other Western Negev communities. Suddenly it struck me. The right were right.

Here we are, almost a year after Disengagement and now we're invited to solidarity trips for Sderot? Last year it was Netzarim and Neve Dekalim that we were asked to show sympathy for. Now the kibbutzim and small towns in the Negev. Ummm... oops! There's something wrong with this picture.

And Kadima and Labor (the foundations of the new government) recognize this picture very well. They've been having nightmares about it for some time but woken each morning happy to discover that it was all just a bad dream. Dream no longer...

There's room for criticizing the Sharon and Olmert governments' lethargic almost timid response to the constant Qassam and Katusha fire. That's not to say they've done nothing but Sderot and environs are now living a frightening existence. Hamas has declared its ultimate aim to make Sderot a ghost town and they are matching words with actions.

It's a shame that we are faced with an enemy again, the same enemy as 2002, that horrible year. Still, this realization may have finally awoken the Zionist giant and confirmed for the Palestinians what we pro-Israel folk always hoped was true - that is, that when it comes to Israel's right to exist in peace and security, each and every Zionist party will stand and deliver. While maintaining a sensible respect for Palestinian human rights, let's hope that Amir Peretz and crew let the IDF win - once and for all.

Confirmation, Panic Stations, Irritation

2006-06-11T08:02:00.000+03:00

When I went to bed at 2am last night, it had become rather clear that indeed an Israeli had been kidnapped and taken away to Shechem (Nablus), terror town of the northern West Bank. Apparently the Hebrew University student had been statched from Jerusalem which was a touch worrying but not particularly surprising.

More shocking was to awake not only to the news that US citizen (non-Israeli) Benjamin Bright-Fishbein had been released and that he'd actually created this whole saga himself by visiting Nablus on his own volition, apparently with kippah (skullcap) and all. He sat happily(!) in a Nablus cafe smoking Nargila before being invited to make a video to the world, with special guest star, Mr Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigade.

Should I refrain from further cynicism?

Which side of his brain convinced him that Nablus is nice at this time of year? No Palestinian town is nice for any Jew or Israeli (or really for any Westerner) even on a nice day. While it's not illegal for non-Israelis to visit there, one must say that Benjamin's latter admission that he made a horrid mistake doesn't quite cover the explitives that the security forces are saying under their breath right now.

What kind of 'orientation' and introduction to Israel do they give to foreign Jewish students at Hebrew Uni. How could it be that he had no inkling of what awaited him?

He's a lucky boy and as someone noted in a ynet comment, thank G-d no IDF soldiers were injured in having to rescue him and that no Palestinian terrorists had to be exchanged for him.
I do hope he'll be asked to pay some of the bills for his adventure - a little deterrent for others considering visiting our friendly neighbors.

I've had contact with other foreign born Israeli Jews who venture to Ramallah and other pretty towns for social activities and even to have their haircuts and the like. When they end up starring in the next Zarqawi-style video, I'll feel bad for them but I'm unsure that wilful stupidity deserves IDF risk & rescue.

One thing that did come out of all this is just how disorganized and splintered these terror gangs are and in fact how frightened they can become. Though controversial in the eyes of some, I maintain that the assaisinations of Palestinian terror leaders does in fact make terrorists think twice or three times before carrying out an action. Additionally, international pressure appears to take its toll at times. As has been noted several times in past hours, it appears the tough terror guys suddenly crawled into a hole when realizing Benjamin was an American. As one Israeli official put it, maybe Zarqawi's end might have made the cafe kidnappers imagine their own 72 virginless fate.

Israeli kidnapped - as yet unconfirmed by Israel

2006-06-11T01:12:00.000+03:00

West Bank militants say they kidnapped Israeli

NABLUS, West Bank (Reuters) - West Bank militants claimed on Sunday to have kidnapped an Israeli man who said in a videotaped statement that his captors would kill him if Israel did not free Palestinian prisoners.

Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, which issued a copy of the tape, said the man was kidnapped near the West Bank city of Nablus. The group said he was an Israeli.

There was no immediate confirmation of a kidnapping and the Israeli army was checking the report. Militants have made false claims about kidnappings before, but have never produced videos showing abductees.
T
he man in the tape appeared to be in his 20s and held up an identity card from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem which gave his name as Benjamin Bright-Fishbein. He wore the skullcap of a religious Jew.

"If the prisoners are not released, they will execute me," he said in Arabic.
Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is part of Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah movement.

© Reuters 2006. All Rights Reserved.

RE-KIC

2006-06-10T23:09:00.000+03:00

After some months away from the KICscreen, I am back KICing online and for groups in Israel. I want to thank my colleague Ashley Perry for his insightful and thought-provoking KICcontributions over the last several months. He's kept things more than ticking over and helped those who rely on their daily KIC for Israeli news and opinion and for advice on facing Israel advocacy challenges.

Now that the long days and night of legal studies for the Israeli bar are over, I am looking forward to renewed Israeli news and Advocacy discussion here at the KICblog and to being a part of your educational Israel experience while your group explores this land.

I want to take this opportunity to welcome the newest KICmembers - a group of Scandinavian Bnei Akiva year program participants to whom I guided through Israel Advocacy issues and a leadership discussion 2 weeks ago. With the KICdiary filling up fast, I am looking forward to getting back to sharing my views and current affairs interest with others again.

Things are forever changing in Israel so don't forget to pass over buying the monring's paper because things do change sooo fast here that the print versions are quite literally yesterday's news by the time day breaks.

We'll try to keep it current for you and we welcome your comments on Israel today, the Jewish World and beyond.

Michael

For those who say Hamas is against Israel and not anti-Semitic

2006-04-26T15:47:00.000+03:00

There have been many voices in the world who wish to white-wash Hamas and paint the terrorist organisation as peace-seeking or moderate. The fact is Hamas have never changed their line of absolutely no recognition of Israel. Western newspapers eat up the "occupation" line as they believe Hamas refers to the pre-1967 borders. When asked more specifically they say there is no room for any Israel, anywhere.
There are even those who paint Hamas as a liberation army who have no hatred of Jews, just of the Zionist occupation. Well, I think we can put all that nonsense to bed just by reading the Hamas charter.
For those who say it is out of date and irrelavent now Hamas have gained power it is interesting to note comments made by Jamal Abu Samhadana the newly appointed chief of the Palestinian security services to the British Telegraph earlier in the week.
Samhadana told The Sunday Telegraph: "We have only one enemy. They are Jews. We have no other enemy. I will continue to carry the rifle and pull the trigger whenever required to defend my people."
Note he uses the term Jew, not Israelis and not Zionists. This devout terrorist organisation seeks a religious war not based on boundaries. To Hamas there is no discussion of negotiations because they don't care about future borders, negotiating the status of refugees, water or Jerusalem. There is only one thing sought, to banish Israel and incorparet Palestine into a wider Muslim confederation. It is even a mistake to call Hamas a nationalist movement as they don't believe in national boundaries.

Israel must show self-respect

2006-04-26T15:11:00.000+03:00

An interesting dilemna has risen again, and as it does so often it is in the realm of sport. Israel's Fed Cup tennis team was drawn to host Indonesia in the World Group II playoffs set for July - but the team from the largest Muslim nation in the world is not planing on coming.
The Indonesian Tennis Federation said it would contact the International Tennis Federation on Wednesday to request that the tie be moved to a neutral site. Indonesia, which does not have diplomatic relations with Israel, does not object to facing the Israeli side, but hopes to avoid needing to travel here.
Israel has met Indonesia twice before, winning both ties at neutral sites. In 1974, Israel Tennis Center CEO Janine Strauss made her Fed Cup debut, guiding the team to a 2-1 win in Naples, Italy, and Rakefet Binyamini and Orly Bialistozky teamed for a 3-0 sweep in 1981 in Tokyo.
Israel has conceded its position many times in sport. In recent years, the Israel national football team and local club teams were forced to play their 'home' games in Cyprus and other places in Europe. The reason behind the moving of Israel's home games was fear of terrorism, which could be understandable. However, no other nation under terrorist threat or subject to terrorism (like Madrid, London or Istanbul) had their games moved. Also, in basketball, Israel continued hosting clubs and fans from all over Europe during the worst times of the Intifada. The situation in football was partially rectified with Israel allowed to host home games, but only in the Tel Aviv area.
A worse matter was with the refusal by Iran’s world judo champion to compete against Israelis in Athens is part of the Jewish State’s long tangle with political hostility on the playing field.
The first time Israel was involved in a political boycott was in 1956. Several countries, including Syria, Lebanon and Egypt, boycotted the Olympic Games in Melbourne that year after Israel invaded Sinai.
After decades of being regionally homeless on the sports field because Asian and Middle Eastern regional sports bodies refused to include Israel, the Jewish State was accepted in European soccer and basketball leagues — as well as other sports like track and field — in the early 1990s, Galily said.Indonesia was banned from playing at the 1964 Olympics in Tokyo for not inviting Israel to the Asia Games the year before. The last time Israel was invited to the Asia Games, held every four years, was in 1976 when the event was hosted in Teheran — before the Islamic revolution.Israel already had been kicked out of other Asian sports federations by 1973, following the Yom Kippur War.In the years following, Israel had to travel all the way to Australia, New Zealand and Fiji to find willing competitors.The reason there are not more flaps between Israeli athletes and their counterparts from Arab or Muslim countries is that they so rarely compete in the same arenas. It’s only in world gatherings like the Olympics or world championships that their paths cross.“It’s a matter of luck, coincidence, and the fact that there are not a lot of competitions where Arabs and Israelis meet,” said Haggai Harif, who teaches a popular course on sports and politics at Bar Ilan University.
So I hope in this instance Israel stands its ground and demands the Indonesians come to Israel for the Federation Cup. To give in to demands that the match be played at a neutral venue does nothing for Israel's self-respect and increases the chances of many nations following suit in the future.
Another disgusting example of Israeli sportsmen becoming isolated is when both West Ham United and Bolton Wanderers (English Premiership football teams) enjoyed breaks by accepting invitations for a few days R&R in sunny Dubai. All the players and management that is with the exception of the Israeli players, Yosi Benayoun, Yaniv Katan, and Tal Ben Haim. Dubai instructed the English clubs that the Jewish players would not be allowed entry into the Arab sheikhdom. So, the clubs complied with this discrimination and left their Israeli players behind. In a lame excuse, the press office of West Ham said that they had provided their Israeli players with a break in Spain. They might as well have sent them to Coventry
What happens on the field of sport has a massive bearing on how Israel relates to itself, especially as Israel is a very sporting society.

Israel's bloated government

2006-04-26T11:11:00.000+03:00

We have seem many manifestations of Israeli politicians not understanding their post in the past. There are countless examples of Israeli politicians caring more about their own positions than the good of the country. What many of our politicos seem to misunderstand is that they are representing the people. There sole job is to do what is best for the nation and not their ambition. An elected official does not become some holy person who when they reach the top of the political structure should forget their place and do what they see fit.
Sadly, this is a pipe dream. There are few politicians who understand their role here in Israel. The days of a Menachem Begin who lived in a two bedroom apartment while leading the country are gone.
The greatest debacle in recent years is the number of ministers debate. There used to be a law dictating that no Israeli government could have more than 18 ministers. The government of Binyamin Netanyahu of just a decade ago stuck to the legal limit of 18 ministers. Ehud Barak subsequently asked the Knesset to override the law, allowing him to appoint a government of 25 ministers. Ariel Sharon at one point presided over a government of 28 ministers, but he "only" had 25 at the outset.
Now the Ehud Olmert led Government will have 27 ministers. If this seems reasonable then perhaps it is in order to compare this with other nations. The Chinese government seems to do okay with a total of 28 ministers, just one minister more than the number
in the government being set up by Ehud Olmert. The new government will place Israel at the top of the list of developed countries in the world with the lowest number of residents for every government minister. The Chinese ministers, for example, can be jealous of their Israeli counterparts: While in Israel there is one minister for every 259,507 citizens – every Chinese minister is "responsible" for 47 million residents.
China is not alone. A Yedioth Ahronoth check found that countries with large populations make due with a minimal number of ministers. The United States runs itself as a strong power with 15 ministers in total. Every American minister has around 20 million citizens. In Russia there are just 16 ministers: One minister for every nine million residents.
Among developed countries there are not many countries which have more than 22 ministers. Together with Israel the list has only six other countries: France (32 ministers), South Africa, Australia, and China (each having 28 ministers).
One must not forget that the Israeli legislature is only 120 people, so to have almost a quarter of them sit in the executive makes a mockery of the system. Also, each ministry costs the taxpayers billions of Shekels to fund the extravagant financial package that ministers recieve with their post. This at a time when poverty in Israel is such an important issue. If I'm not mistaken didn't at least three of the new members of the coalition run on almost purely social platforms??
To be fair, Shas party leader Eli Yishai Monday called on Interim Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and Labor party chairman Amir Peretz not to appoint Cabinet ministers without portfolios. Such appointments often are made to satisfy political party demands for Cabinet posts even if there is no ministry.Yishai said that Shas would forfeit Cabinet posts without portfolios if it joins the coalition and if other coalition partners do the same.

An intersting PR ploy

2006-04-25T16:23:00.000+03:00

Many people outside Israel have various warped views of Israel. Some think Israel is all desert and camels, some long bearded fanatics and some think of Israel purely in military war terms. Apparently one person at the Foreign Ministry wants all of these perceptions to change....
It has been going on for years. The Foreign Ministry invites journalists from abroad to Israel, shows them the Western Wall and the Knesset, and introduces them to boring and suited officials who tell them how hard it is to live here.
Finally, someone at the ministry decided to break out of the mold and show foreign journalists another side of Israel, the side they don’t already know: the Israel of fun and recreation, hot clubs, gourmet restaurants and sunny beaches.
A delegation of journalists that will be exposed to “the other Israel,” as opposed to the terror- and poverty-stricken country they see on their TV screens at home, is arriving soon from the United States.
The delegation will include ten relatively young journalists, who work for the media outlets most popular among 18- to 25-year-olds in America. Writers from MTV, Seventeen, Cosmogirl, Wallpaper, City Magazine, Stuff and Metropolitan News, among others, will be hosted here.
The visit will last eight days, during which the journalists will be exposed to the young, “cool,” energetic and flourishing side of Israel. The Foreign Ministry’s Public Relations department, in cooperation with the Israeli-American PR organization Israel21C, prepared a rich and diverse itinerary for the delegation, that hopes to leave them with pleasant memories and wanting more.
And what is on the busy schedule? Extensive tours in Tel Aviv, including a visit to Sheinkin Street, the Nahalat Binyamin Mall, Neveh Tzedek neighborhood, drummers’ beach, old Jaffa and the Army Radio headquarters.
The nights will be no less wild: the guests will be hosted in Tel Aviv’s hottest bars and clubs, such as Haoman 17, G Spot, TLV, and will enjoy dinner at the Manta Ray restaurant.
But they won’t be in Tel Aviv alone. The U.S. journalists will visit Beit Yanai beach where they will meet surfer Amit Inbar; they will tour Safed, where they will participate in Kabbalah workshops, and they’ll visit the Rosh Pinah home that songstress Madonna is looking into buying.
Jerusalem is on the schedule too: The group will visit The Lab, an experimental music and performance art venue, as well as other bars
and restaurants, and will have time to walk the city’s streets and cobbled malls. Instead of meeting with dry politicians and officials, they will meet rappers, directors, chefs, restaurant critics, representatives of the gay community and “The Ambassador” Eytan Schwartz.
They will also drop in on a few Israeli Hi-Tech companies, visit Yad Vashem, and see a length of the security fence.
Deputy head of the ministry’s Public Relations department, Zehavit Ben-Hillel, said the delegation represents a demographic which Israel has a hard time reaching.
“Our goal is to present Israel through a different and less known prism. We want them to internalize that Israel is a progressive place, modern and youthful, that in its essence is similar to the United States," she said.
"Our hope is that every one of them will find ideas for articles here on the ‘other Israel,’” Ben-Hillel said.

Dear European ambassadors...

2006-04-25T16:14:00.000+03:00

The following is an excellent piece written by Tommy Lapid on why Israel acts as it does. Lapid explains to Europe and by extension the world that one only has to think of the Shoah, that is all...
'Why isn't Israel willing to take risks?" This question was repeated in numerous variations at a meeting with the ambassadors of the European Union held recently in Tel Aviv.
After all, they argue, Israel is so strong. And the Palestinians are so weak. And the threats voiced by Arab leaders are for internal consumption only.
Many countries take risks in order to settle disputes - why does Israel refuse to be satisfied with the guarantees supplied by the superpowers? Don't you know that if Israel does not agree to compromise there will never be peace in this part of the world?
When relating to Israel's actions or failure to act, you should factor in the same considerations you would be weighing were you in our place, I answered the ambassadors. That way you will understand how it is possible for a democratic, liberal and enlightened country like Israel to turn down offers of compromise from the United Nations, the Quartet and the European Union.
Quite rightly, you say that if you had received similar offers, under similar circumstances, you would have accepted them wholeheartedly.
We too would express confidence in them - were we in your place.
But there is one difference between us, and it is a difference that opens up an abyss. It does not permit us to rely on anyone other than ourselves, and it is the reason why we will not and cannot take chances.
That element is the Holocaust.
When you write reports to your foreign ministries, making an effort to explain Israel's position, when you seek to explain the difference between international logic and the behavior of Israel's government, when you try to understand the motives behind Jerusalem's insistence and suspicions, there is only one answer: the Holocaust.
If a new Holocaust were to occur here, you would surely protest and express regret and, in order to soothe your consciences, you would even establish an orphanage or two to take in the poor Israeli children that survive.
You might even set up a fund to commemorate the victims of the second Holocaust. You would shake your heads and cluck your tongues at the fate of the "poor Jews."
And, in your minds, you would be wondering why it's always the Jews that invite such catastrophes.
And after these sad thoughts about the Jewish fate, you would check your newspapers for the stock reports, have a last sip of coffee, drive off to work and forget all about the matter.
But we can't forget. We lost Six Million of our people in the Holocaust.
Israel currently has six million Jews living in it. We will not be deterred by the threats of our enemies; nor will we listen to the advice of our friends. We will not rely on anyone else.
For us, that is the most important lesson of the Holocaust. "

Hasbara Talk: The importance of facts

2006-04-24T15:57:00.000+03:00

One thing I stress to any group that I am talking about Hasbara (Israel Advocacy) to, is know some facts. One does not have to be armed with an intimate and photgraphic knowledge of every UN Resolution, peace agreement and every fact pertaining to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. However, one has to be armed with a few facts that will turn the average person's argument on its head. Many people will blurt out statements like "Why doesn't Israel just abide by UN resolutions to get out of Palestine?" The trick is to ask them which UN resolutions they are referring to at which point they probably won't know. If they do know the exact resolution they will probably misunderstand the meaning of the resolution. Just by reading the important parts of the resolution will mean you have more in your Hasbara armour than assumptions.
To even explain to someone that there never was an independent entity in the history of man called Palestine will raise a few eyebrows. That is a simple fact which can not possibly be disproved, but how many 'average Joe's' know that?
Even in the US where support for Israel is higher and sympathy for the Palestinians is lower than most of the world, there is still general ignorance of the facts. James D. Besser writes an interesting article in the Baltimore Jewish Times called "A disturbing peek at the private conversations liberal Americans have about Israel and American Jews" which is about America's middle classes and their knowledge and assumptions about Israel.
"At a recent dinner party, I found myself with a group of middle-class, middle-of-the-road liberals — all non-Jews. They dislike President Bush and believe the Iraq war is a disaster. They think Israel is a big problem, although that did not translate into admiration for the Palestinians. They were well-informed about world affairs, but their perspective on Israel had giant holes.
These were all college-educated professionals who regularly read The Washington Post and The New York Times, and yet their views of Israel and the Middle East were highly impressionistic — a jumble of facts and images, catalyzed by their inherent belief that every conflict can be resolved through reason and that every conflict had a good guy and a villain. And in their view, the villain was almost always the one with the power.
This is hardly a representative sample. Still, our dinner conversation reflected biases and a surprising ignorance characteristic of a political segment that remains the Jewish community's most reliable partner on domestic issues.
Here are some of the points revealed in a politely heated discussion.
Information about Israel was paltry. Few knew anything about the Israeli political system, which they believed was entirely dominated by far-right settler groups. Told that a majority support Palestinian statehood, most were skeptical.
"Israel doesn't have a free press," one insisted, ignorant of the robust diversity of views in Israeli media.
Their view of the Palestinian Authority was hardly any more detailed or more positive. Pro-Israel groups focus much of their hasbarah efforts on educating Americans that the Palestinian leadership has sanctioned horrific terrorism; these Christians all knew that already.
Some had heard Palestinian Christians speak at their churches and found their stories about the Israeli occupation compelling. Most, however, said that their only exposure to Palestinian lives was through news reports that they said did not leave them particularly sympathetic.
They accepted that Palestinian leaders have led their people to disaster, but their sympathy was still with a people they saw as weak victims of an all-powerful Israel.
In the end, pro-Israel outreach officials are right in thinking that liberal Americans badly need more information about an Israel that is much more textured and complex than common stereotypes hold. But they're wrong if they think heavy-handed, Israel-is-always-right propaganda will work with a faction that is smart, politically sophisticated but suspicious of power and often woefully uninformed."
This last point is important. I always stress to groups that it is not a weakness in Hasbara to criticise Israel, but always explain what lead to a certain action in the first place. We can all agree that curfews, checkpoints and detentions do not serve the aim of peace and arouse anger. What we have to explain is that they may be necessary and these measures were not always there. There was a time before these measures where Palestinians had almost complete freedom of movement (noone, even in the most liberal democracy has total freedom of movement) and that all had to change when the Palestinians launched their Intifada, which by definition means the Palestinians began the violence.

Israel's helping hand: Israeli embassy aids hurricane victims

2006-04-24T10:35:00.000+03:00

Every year in May, Israeli embassies across the world hold celebratory receptions in luxurious venues to mark Israel's Independence Day. However, the Israeli ambassador to El Salvador, Yonatan Peled, decided to mark the event a little differently this year, and instead
of spending the money allocated for the holiday on a fancy party, he chose to donate the event's budget to the victims of Hurricane Stan and the earthquake in the country.
The donation, as well as contributions by the local Jewish community, were transferred to the Medinat Yisrael school, which is attended by 1,600 students and located in the town of Nahuizalco in the Sonsonate region, an area that was struck by both the hurricane and earthquake six months ago.
"The order of the day in El Salvador compels us to mark our Independence Day in a different manner, in light of the serious socioeconomic distress in the country, which has worsened in wake of the natural disasters," Peled explained.
The USD 30,000 donation will be used to fund the renovation of classes and for building a roofed playground at the school. The Jewish community and the small Israeli community of El Salvador have also donated their engineering and architectural skills for the project.
The embassy's Independence Day ceremony will appropriately be held at the Medinat Yisrael school, and is set to be attended by the education minister, the governor, the mayor, local parliament members and other honoraries.

Do apologies for behaviour during the Shoah matter?

2006-04-24T10:20:00.000+03:00

How does one apologise for killing six million people? Destroying one third of one of the most ancient and contributing civilisations around today is no easy task. Many individuals and governments have sought forgiveness and many have tried to make amends. Manfred Gerstenfeld attempts to answer the question' if apologies are still relevant...
More than 60 years after the Shoah official apologies from countries and institutions which collaborated with the Nazis during the Holocaust still trickle in. Eastern European heads of state have almost turned these into a ritual when they visit Israel.
Why are formal apologies for misbehavior during the Holocaust so important? Some critics stress that those who apologize are not the ones who misbehaved. While that is true, they do represent the same institutions. Other critics say that many of the apologies made - for instance those during the restitution negotiations - were not morally motivated, but rather represented political pressure or fear of economic boycotts in the United States.
Yet other critics of apologies say that the main thing is to tell the history as it was. Stressing the painful truth once again - earlier this month - Austrian President Heinz Fischer said that the 1955 Declaration of Independence of his country falsely represented Austria as a victim of the Nazis rather than as a co-perpetrator of crimes.
Despite all criticism apologies by governments, institutions and companies for their wartime behavior remain extremely important. Once these have not only recognized their guilt, but have also offered apologies, a common basis of what is normative has been established. They constitute a clear declaration of irrevocable guilt toward their Jewish counterparts. These apologies will remain well-documented for future generations, after all Holocaust survivors have passed away.
At a time when the president of Iran and others, not only in the Arab and Muslim world, unashamedly deny the Holocaust while at the same time promoting a new one, official apologies - and the historic mark they make - assume an even greater importance than in the past.

No matter what you say or do you will always remain a Jew

2006-04-23T17:31:00.000+03:00

It is a curious phenomenom that some Jews will always bend over backwards to besmirch other Jews and Jewish causes to attempt to find favour in certain gentile circles. They want to show the world that they are not "one of those Jews".
The interesting thing is that this has happened all throughout history and each and every one of them have never found favour in the eyes of those that they seek. To ceratin anti-Semitic circles, once a Jew, always a Jew. Karl Marx is a good example of this, no matter how much he lambasted Jews few forgot that he himself was a Jew.
One of the greatest examples of this today is that of Noam Chomsky. Chomsky is a Professor of Linuistics at MIT, but curiously is better known for his rabid anti-Zionism and even according to some anti-Semitism. There is even a good amount of evidence that Chomsky has agreed with many Holocaust-deniers and questions ceratin parts of the historical record on the Holocaust.
Recently there has been a big debate as to the role of the "Jewish-Lobby" in the US.
The brouhaha began in late March when two American academics published in The London Review of Books a paper critical of the Israel lobby. John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt argued that neither idealism nor hard-nosed practicality justified American support of the Jewish state. Nevertheless, a "loose coalition of individuals and organizations" has been steering US policy in that direction for years.
Writing in Z Magazine, the aging anarchist Chomsky commended Mearsheimer and Walt for their "courageous stand" but then attacked their notion of an informal, far-flung lobby as an empty label. "M-W focus on AIPAC and the evangelicals," wrote Chomsky, "but they recognize that the Lobby includes most of the political-intellectual class - at which point the thesis loses much of its content." However, this slight difference of opinion has won Chomsky few fans amongst his 'friends'.
Veteran pro-Palestinian activist Jeffrey Blankfort, has taken issue with Chomsky's early experiences in the Marxist-Zionist Hashomer Hatza'ir movement, saying that they somehow blinded him to the political machinations of his fellow American Jews.
Amazingly, Blankfort - himself Jewish - has lambasted Chomsky as "a boon for AIPAC" and, by extension, "Israel's position in the United States."
Like Blankfort (and post-Zionist historian Ilan Pappe), James Petras also disagrees with Chomsky on the M-W paper. In fact, the Marxist sociologist gets downright nasty in his critique, suggesting that Chomsky's analytic skills "are totally absent when it comes to discussing the formulation of US foreign policy in the Middle East, particularly the role of his own ethnic group, the Jewish pro-Israel lobby and their Zionist supporters in the government."
Once again, Chomsky is covering for the tribe.
One would think that the Jewish anarchist has already paid his dues. Chomsky has attacked Israel time and again; described French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson as "a relatively apolitical liberal of some sort"; commended the scholarship of the late Israel Shahak, author of the vile Jewish History, Jewish Religion: The Weight of Three Thousand Years, and claimed that the charge of anti-Semitism is used to stifle criticism of Israel.
The fracas with Chomsky proves that, if you're Jewish, no matter what you say and do, you're always just one essay away from being labeled a pro-Israel lobbyist. In the eyes of many, once a Jew...always a Jew.

Israel's helping hand: Israelis even help Iran

2006-04-23T17:07:00.000+03:00

Israelis have visited every corner of the globe to help those in need. Sometimes Israelis have even gone to places that do not have diplomatic relations with Israel. However, one nation above all has gone out of their way to show extreme hostility to Israel, Iran. Yet even in Iran, Israelis are still willing to offer a helping hand where it is needed.
While the Iranian regime has been engaging in public displays of hatred against Israel in recent months, with the country's president calling for Israel's destruction and denying the Holocaust, behind the scenes the picture seems very different.
In recent weeks the Muslim republic has been enjoying the skills of Israeli experts recruited to help with rehabilitating the country after recent earthquakes have caused massive damages and devastation.
Three Israeli infrastructure consultants who returned to Israel at the end of the week from a secret visit in Iran on the invitation of
a Tehran official, told Israel's leading daily Yedioth Ahronoth they were stunned by their stay in the country.
"We were amazed to discover the gap between Israel's public conflict with Iran, and the depth of the commercial cooperation between the countries, estimated at dozens of millions of dollars a year. We were greeted warmly and felt no hostility on the part of our hosts," one of the Israeli experts said.
The Israeli consultants were sent to Iran on behalf of a Dutch company that is partly owned by an Israeli. The company recruited the Israeli engineers and advisors, who specialize in infrastructure rehabilitation works, and flew them to Iran with special travel passes, after leaving their Israeli passports behind in Holland.
The head of the mission, a 47-year-old Israeli who visited Iran five times in the last 15 years, recounted the visit. "Upon arriving at the airport in Tehran we were greeted by a government employee… from there we were taken to a luxurious hotel located near the Jewish district. We were escorted by a security guard during our entire stay."
"The grand infrastructure works Israel has carried out here made a huge impression on us… we got there with the construction plans that were kept in Israel until today," he explained.
"In recent years trade relations between Israel and Iran have blossomed in certain fields, mainly agriculture. The Iranians indirectly buy from Israel spare parts for machines, vegetable seeds, and water filtering systems," he stated.
According to the Israeli consultant, the most exciting part of the visit took place when the mission arrived in the Busher region, which made headlines recently due to the nuclear reactor located in the area. "Our escort, an English-speaker, told us: There is something else here in Busher, but this will be a surprise for you'."

Other Massacres

2006-04-23T08:58:00.000+03:00

As we in Israel near the solemn day of Yom HaShoah it is interesting to note that it nearly coincides with another anniversary of a Jewish massacre. Last week was the commemoration of the 500th year since the Lisbon massacre of thousands of Jews. This in a time where a few thousand people was equivalent to tens or maybe even hundreds of thousands today.
The massacre took place in a most hoffific manner and the details that we have on record on that day are too grizzly to recount. Suffice to say the ovens of Auschwitz had a prelate in the massive bonfires in the Rossio Square in Lisbon where any Jew: Man, woman and child was literally flung onto the pyre. The commemorations garnered so little attention because there are so few Jews of Portuguese descent left in the world, to a large extent we can chalk this off as a victory for those that butchered, burned and literally ripped apart the Portuguese Jewish community; physically and spiritually. As a Jew of Spanish and Portuguese ancestry I am constantly met with blanks stares when I mention my heritage, history, culture and traditions.
My main point in mentioning all this is to garner attention to other massacres and events in Jewish history outside of the Holocaust. While we should not diminish the Holocaust one iota, time and space should be given to Jewish suffering in other places and other times. There is not a single monument in the whole of Israel to the massacres, inquisitions and expulsions from the Iberian Penninsular. One must not forget that before all these catastrophes, Iberian Jewry totalled over 80% of world Jewry and many vanished overnight. I have heard it mentioned from a few historians that the psychological effects from these events had greater reverberations for the Jewish people than the Holocaust.
Even leaving the travails of Sephardic Jewry aside, how many Jews are knowledgeable of the Damascus Blood Libel, the Chmielnicki massacres, the massacre of thousands in Fez, Morrocco and many many other sad and bloody chapters in Jewish historical suffering.
Throughout Jewish history there have been many expulsions and massacres and whole Jewish communities were wiped out within a blink of an eye. We would do well as a people to remember them because sometimes there were no survivors to carry the torch of memory.
As we enter the week of Yom HaShoah we should concentrate all our sadness to the attrocities of Nazi-controlled Europe, however it should behoove us all to spend a little time learning about the many other massacres and suffering of Jews not from our particular familial background.

KICHoliday

2006-04-13T23:16:00.000+03:00

Like the rest of Israel, the KICteam is taking a break for the week of Pesach. Israelis are out at the beaches and the national parks and frankly we all deserve to KIC back and relax just a little.

With coalition negotiations and battles between diplomatic and social policies in full swing, the IDF fighting off Gazan rocket fire, re-entering disengaged Gaza for the first time and Iran raising the stakes daily, there will be plenty for us to KIC you with come post-Pesach.

As well as Ashley-inspired analysis, Michael will be back at the end of April after months of law study. In addition, the KICteam will be back running sessions across Israel and have already received several invitations for the coming months. And if you want a bit of punch in your KIC, watch out for new online and session initiatives from the KICcrew which are due to be launched shortly.

We thank you for reading and look forward to your comments in the future. If you haven't subscribed to the KICblog you can do so at the top of this page. We would also welcome your placing of a KIClink on your blog or webpage.

Chag Pesach Kasher vSameach!

The Mystery of Jewish Survival

2006-04-06T22:52:00.001+03:00

Many people have pondered how the Jews, always remaining small in number have survived. I once heard the Jewish people described as an historical anomaly.
Dov Greenberg ponders the question further....
Imagine we could travel back in time and say to the great Pharaoh, “There’s good news and bad news. The good news is that one of the people alive today will survive and change the moral landscape of the world. The bad news is: it won't be your people. It will be that group of Hebrew slaves out there, building your glorious monuments, the Children of Israel.”
Nothing would sound more absurd. The Egypt of Pharaoh’s time was the greatest empire of the ancient world, brilliant in arts and sciences, formidable in war. The Israelites were a landless people - powerless and oppressed. The Egyptians believed that the Israelites were already on the verge of extinction. The first reference to Israel outside the Bible is an obituary of the Jewish people. It is inscribed on a huge slab of black granite, known as the Mernephta stele dating from the thirteenth century BCE, which stands today in the Cairo Museum. It reads “Israel is laid waste. His seed is no more.”
The story of Jewish survival is so exceptional that it challenges our imagination to the limit. In our own century, the two great powers that announced, “Israel is laid waste” – Hitler’s Third Reich and the Soviet Union - have been crushed. But the people of Israel live.
Many thinkers and social scientists have tried, and still try, to account for the survival of a people, a faith, and a heritage through three millennia of nearly impossible historical conditions. The Dalai Lama, leader of a group far removed from Judaism, who lives in exile with hundreds of thousands of Tibetan refugees, recognized that there is something unparalleled in the Jewish capacity to survive dispersion. Hence, in 1990, he invited a group of Jewish scholars to India. He felt that the Jews, experts in survival, would offer valuable advice to his own people.
Perhaps we can take our answer from the great empirical thinkers of our time, the scientists. They tell us that when a scientist seeks to ascertain the laws governing a certain phenomenon, or to discover the essential properties of an element of nature, he must undertake a series of experiments under the most varied conditions to discover those properties or laws which under all conditions are alike.
The same principle should be applied to Jewish survival. It is one of the oldest in the world, beginning its’ national history with the giving of the Torah at Mount Sinai over three thousand years ago. In the course of these centuries, Jews have lived under extremely varied conditions. They were dispersed across the world. They had multiple languages, absorbed a diversity of cultures. For example, Rashi lived in Christian France. Maimonides was born in Islamic Spain. Rabbi Akiva lived under Roman rule; the Talmudic sages under Babylonian power. Their societies were utterly different. All that linked them across space and time was a faith, a Torah way of life.

Israel's brain breaks world record

2006-04-06T22:52:00.000+03:00

Israel is the world champion in the ratio of the number of engineers per residents, with 13 engineers per 1,000 people compared to 10 engineers per 1,000 people in Japan and the United States, Israel's leading newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth reported Thursday.
The findings were reported during a conference on the topic of technological entrepreneurship which was held on Thursday at the Holon Institute of Technology (HIT).
Top professionals in the fields of manufacturing and high-tech participated in the conference.
Professor Avi Messica from the Management of Technology department at HIT, one of the conference organizers, said that "Israel is ranked third in the world when it comes to technological initiatives."
Messica pointed out that the ratio of engineers per residents in Israel is unique.
"The State of Israel's investment in start-up companies is one of the world's highest. The high-tech aspect in industrial exports in Israel is over 50 percent," he said.

Oblivious Peres

2006-04-05T17:21:00.000+03:00

Shimon Peres somehow managed to worm his way into power again. After being unceremoniously dumped by his party of decades in favour of Amir Peretz, a relative outsider, Peres has managed to position himself in power again as Kadima's number two. The man who gave us 'The New Middle East' and Oslo seems to still have hands dipped in the power chest.
Just in case anybody thought that Peres had re-found his sense of proportion and reality he makes an astounding comment.
Peres said that in order to achieve peace Israel should negotiate with anyone, including the Hamas-led PA government.
Still, he noted that a dialogue with the organization would be difficult, since, according to Peres, Hamas was a religious movement that was nearly oblivious to what was happening in the rest of the world, Army Radio reported.
This was stated on a day when the Foreign Minister of the PA said "Israel must not be recognized and the Palestinian Foreign Ministry should aim to establish a Palestinian State from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean, in place of the Jewish State."
While the vast majority of the world have labeled Hamas a terrorist organisation and cut ties with the PA, Peres wants to negotiate with a group who said there is no room for Israel AT ALL.
Who is "nearly oblivious to what is happening in the rest of the world"??

From union boss to top security post, feel safer?

2006-04-05T12:25:00.000+03:00

The recent news that the Defence Ministry will be handed to Labour leader Amir Peretz has struck me as shocking. The person most in charge of our nation's defences has abolutely no security background and his biggest achievements to date have been to shut down the country at least once a year as his role as Histadrut (Union) boss.
This is made all the more disasterous as our Prime Minister designate Olmert also has absolutely no security background. I am not saying that any civillian can be defence minister but surely one whose whole raison d'etre was social should not be given a portfolio so inappropriate to his background.
Not everyone agrees with me, apparently. Ofer Shelah of Ynet says, "the nomination of a civilian figure such as Amir Peretz to the defense ministry is a step in the right direction. We must provide him with a strong decision-making apparatus – a strong National Security Council that would weigh each cog in the wheel – and especially intelligence – and that would present the government with real options, so that the army's worldview and operational proposals are not the only issue on the table."
At first it seems that Shaul Mofaz, who held this position and was a Chief of Staff of the IDF was not too impressed with Olmerts decision. However, Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz distanced himself Wednesday morning from reports that his associates slammed the intention to hand over the Defense Ministry to inexperienced Labor Chairman Amir Peretz.
In a talk with Peretz, Mofaz said the headlines did not reflect his views, expressed his appreciation to the Labor leader, and said he was confident Peretz would perform well in any post assigned to him.
"The feeling is not a good one," one source was reported as sayingTuesday night. "How can the State of Israel have a prime minister without security and military credentials and also have a defense minister without any credentials for the post? This is irresponsible. This matter should very much disturb the public."
The associate said that the right thing to do is appoint a minister with proven experience at a difficult period on the security and diplomatic fronts.
"We're facing several serious threats, such as the Iranian threat and the Hamas regime, and are also facing the convergence plan in Judea and Samaria," the source said. "I have a feeling not enough thought is given to this move. It's a complex system. Amir Peretz will assume the post and they'll ask him to cut (the defense budget.) Does he know what to cut?"
Sometimes the politicians should stop and think about what they are doing. Is the nation's safety subservient to a stable coalition and appeasing certain members. Also, one has to ask what service Peretz will provide when he has promised his electorate a 'social revolution'. As we say in Israel....Y'hieh b'seder (it will be good)?!?!?!

Could you make Peace???

2006-04-05T12:20:00.000+03:00

Many people fancy themselves as extremely knowledgeable of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and the stalled peace-process. I have often heard the refrain "Why can't they just make peace, it's so simple!" well now everyone can have a go in a simulator video game.
A Palestinian suicide bomber blows up a bus, leaving the newly elected Israeli prime minister to puzzle over a response. A missile strike could ease security fears, or prompt more violence. A diplomatic approach might anger Israelis, leading to an assassination plot. The complex choices facing leaders in the Middle East have long confounded observers. But two graduate students at Carnegie Mellon University are hoping their video game based on the conflict will help players find solutions - and raise capital for their new company. Asi Burak and Eric Brown, along with a team of fellowr students, have spent more than a year building PeaceMaker, a computer game that attempts to simulate the violence and political turbulence of the Israeli-Palestinian struggle. With graduation just weeks away, Burak - a 34-year-old former Israeli intelligence officer - and Brown - a 29-year-old game developer with a degree in painting - recently formed a company, ImpactGames, to try to take the game to market. But will a video game focused on a sensitive geopolitical standoff attract both players and investors? Proponents of so-called serious games, an emerging genre of interactive games that tackle real-world problems, think so.
Unlike most serious games, PeaceMaker aims to bridge the gap between education and entertainment and reach players from diverse backgrounds. Burak and Brown hope to do that in a market hungry for games featuring death and destruction, but also receptive to the nonviolent themes featured in best sellers such as The Sims and Myst. "We had a challenge to make a peace game engaging," Burak said. "What we see out there is all of those war games. There is a reason people are making them - because they're engaging, there is a challenge, there is a conflict." In PeaceMaker, players choose between the role of an Israeli prime minister or a Palestinian Authority president. They make policy decisions, communicate with the international community and monitor opinion polls while coping with "black events" - bursts of violence that threaten to throw the game off course. "They might happen at any time, like a suicide bomb or an Israeli military attack, and they can ruin your progress in one day," he said. "You make progress, you build trust and suddenly everyone is upset again and it's chaotic." The game's objective is peace through a two-state solution, but players can wage attacks at any time. "We're not trying to say these things aren't available," Brown said. "We didn't want to restrict the player." PeaceMaker incorporates news footage of actual events "to pull you in" and make players "understand that you're connected to the real world."

The Hamas honeytrap

2006-04-05T10:54:00.000+03:00

The following is written by Zvi Heifetz, the Israeli Ambassador to London in the notoriously anti-Israel Guardian newspaper.
"Just a day after a terrorist atrocity in which four Israeli civilians were killed, an article appeared on these pages by the new Palestinian prime minister, Ismail Haniyeh. It was perfectly tailored for a liberal western readership, presenting his movement, Hamas, as advocates for peace. One should judge Hamas, however, by more than articles intended for western eyes.
Hamas's own charter declares that "liberation of Palestine is an individual duty for every Muslim wherever he may be ... Israel will ... continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it", while more recently Khaled Mashaal, Hamas's most senior leader, speaking in Syria after the Palestinian elections, had this promise for Israelis: "God willing, before they die, they will experience humiliation and degradation every day."
Which then portrays the more honest reflection of Hamas - a sugar-coated article in English, or a speech in Arabic in a Damascus mosque?
Perhaps, though, Haniyeh's more moderate message signals a genuine change in the Hamas position? If so, someone forgot to tell his foreign minister, Mahmoud al-Zahar, who remarked in an interview three days after Haniyeh's article: "I hope that our dream of having an independent state on the entire territory of historical Palestine will be realised one day, and I am sure that there is no room for the state of Israel on this land."
Hamas believes the land of "Palestine" is an Islamic waqf - territory once ruled by Muslims that must never be relinquished. This position leaves no room for compromise, and the sad truth is that even the "pragmatic" Hamas leaders' statements offer little hope of a peaceful solution to the conflict. The "moderate" Hamas rhetoric differs from the more extreme kind only in the method by which Israel is to be removed from the map. Haniyeh listed Hamas's non-negotiable demands: chief among these was an unconditional "right of return" of all Palestinian refugees and their descendants - not to a new state of Palestine, but to Israel itself. This is no blueprint for a two-state solution; these are the weasel words of someone who wants one Islamic state of Palestine from the Jordan river to the Mediterranean Sea. He did not say this openly, but the "just peace" he offers will mean the destruction of the Jewish state.
Haniyeh also called on the world powers to put pressure on Israel. But no such pressure is required. Last summer Israel voluntarily withdrew from the Gaza Strip and from four more settlements in the West Bank - a move that was applauded by countries around the world. Furthermore, last week Ehud Olmert clearly stated Israel's intentions for further territorial concessions: "We will try to achieve this [setting Israel's final borders] in an agreement with the Palestinians. This is our hope and prayer ... We are ready to compromise, to give up parts of the beloved land of Israel ... in order to create the conditions that will enable you [the Palestinians] to fulfil your dream and live alongside us."
This spirit of compromise and willingness to make concessions is consistent with the desires of the international community, but such sentiments were entirely missing from Haniyeh's remarks.
With his demands, he is turning back the clock decades, to the days before Israelis and Palestinians accepted the principle of a two-state solution realised through negotiation. This principle has been carried forward in the road map, sponsored by the Quartet and originally accepted by both Israel and the Palestinians. Hamas rejects negotiation, concessions, unilateral withdrawals and recognition of Israel. It seems the Palestinians are sticking to their tried and tested "policy" of never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity."

Saudi Ambassador to US lauds the IDF

2006-04-04T14:16:00.000+03:00

It sounds pretty unlikely, but apparently Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States Turki al-Faisal expressed support for Israel's strike on the Iraqi Osirak nuclear facility in 1981.
Al-Faisal said that the destruction of the Iraqi nuclear reactor by Israel was certainly a positive step, during a speech on foreign relations in San Francisco.
The prince said that a region clear of nuclear weapons would also serve Israel and increase its security. He said that it was known that Israel had nuclear weapons, and that that Arab world felt threatened by Israel, rather than the other way around.
Faisal added that Israel possessed the best army, air force, and navy in the Middle East, and that these have been well used in the past.
After becoming aware that Iraq was planning to construct nuclear weapons, Israel launched a surprise aerial attack on June 7 1981 on the Osirak facility near Baghdad, and destroyed the Iraqi reactor.
The move was initially widely condemned, but was widely supported in subsequent years.

The Rotary Club and other Zionist plots

2006-04-04T14:08:00.000+03:00

The following is a good opinion piece by Mona Charen of the Washinton Times.
In Israel and the Palestinian territories, two new governments are taking shape. The Kadima Party, which will (just barely) head Israel's new coalition government, seeks simply to separate and insulate Israel from the homicidal intentions of its Palestinian neighbors. On the other side of the fence, Hamas is settling into its duties as government of the Palestinian Authority. Let's consider what Israel is dealing with. The Hamas Charter (available in full at www.mideastweb.org/hamas.htm) reads like a combination of Mein Kampf and the Unabomber's manifesto. Here is Hamas on the importance of women: "Her role in guiding and educating the new generations is great. The enemies have realized the importance of her role. They consider that if they are able to direct and bring her up the way they wish, far from Islam, they would have won the battle. That is why you find them giving these attempts constant attention through information campaigns, films, and the school curriculum, using for that purpose their lackeys who are infiltrated through Zionist organizations under various names and shapes, such as Freemasons, Rotary Clubs, espionage groups and others, which are all nothing more than cells of subversion and saboteurs. . . . The day Islam is in control of guiding the affairs of life, these organizations, hostile to humanity and Islam, will be obliterated." Elsewhere in the document, Hamas explicates Israel's ambitions, as they understand them: "After Palestine, the Zionists aspire to expand from the Nile to the Euphrates. When they will have digested the region they overtook, they will aspire to further expansion, and so on. Their plan is embodied in the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion,' and their present conduct is the best proof of what we are saying." Vladimir Putin may think that Hamas should be regarded as merely controversial, but he might want to consult their charter on the issue of negotiations. "There is no solution for the Palestinian question except through jihad. Initiatives, proposals and international conferences are all a waste of time and vain endeavors." As for the putative negotiating partner, "Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it." And finally, "The Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas) believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf (inheritance) consecrated for future Muslim generations until Judgment Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: It, or any part of it, should not be given up." The "Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion" is, of course, a Czarist forgery that has been used by Nazis, communists and now radical Muslims to inspire Jew hatred. Israel is the only country in the world that faced trial in the International Court of Justice for attempting to defend itself from terrorists. The ICJ declared that Israel's security fence violates international law. Where, one wonders, does Hamas -- which calls for Israel's "obliteration" -- fall within the confines of international law? Israel's thriving democracy produces ironies. The Likud Party is now reduced to 11 seats in the Knesset. The combined Arab Israeli parties hold 10 seats. There is not a single Arab country in which Jews are permitted to serve in government. Israeli Arabs are not unhappy with their lives. Some Israelis have floated the idea of a sovereignty exchange; that Israeli Arab villages should be offered to the Palestinian Authority in exchange for Jewish communities in the West Bank coming under Israeli control. Israeli Arabs hate this idea. If Israel were truly the apartheid state of leftist propaganda, wouldn't the Arab population welcome an opportunity to escape? Meanwhile, Israel's freewheeling parliamentary system tosses up peculiarities that resemble the California recall election of 2003. Among those contending for seats in the Knesset were the Green Leaf Party, which favors legalization of marijuana, and the Meretz Party, which favors Israeli withdrawal to the 1967 borders and dividing Jerusalem. The former won no seats, but even now, even in the face of the Hamas victory in the Palestinian areas, Meretz won four of the Knesset's 120 seats. Liberty includes the right to be stupid.

Israel's helping hand: Israeli company invents robots to do your chores

2006-04-04T13:55:00.000+03:00

Ok, so this isn't really a humanitarian thing (unless you are really dangerously lazy), but it definitely constitutes a 'helping hand'.
Slobs and housework-haters rejoice: If one company has its way, in the near future there will be robots to set the dinner table, clear it after dinner, shovel snow and mop the floor. In short, the robots will "move in and around the home, doing the mundane tasks that people don't like to do anymore," Friendly Robotics Chief Executive Officer Udi Peless told United Press International in a telephone interview. For its part, the Pardesiya, Israel-based company has already developed a lawnmower robot, the Robomow, and a vacuum-cleaner robot, the Friendly Vac. The other innovations are as close as five to 10 years down the road, Peless said, although he added that one of his company's competitors has already developed a robot to mop the floor. The Robomow barrels around the yard randomly, guided to stay on the lawn by a cable the user must install around the perimeter of his yard, similar to an invisible fence for dogs. At a hi-tech exhibition in Tel Aviv curious onlookers who wandered onto the demonstration patch of turf often had to jump out of Robomow's way. When the device does make contact with something, like a tree in the middle of the lawn, it backs up and changes direction. This may not be the machine for people who love neat stripes. Luckily, the newer Friendly Vac doesn't careen into furniture the way the Robomow bumps into obstacles. "Inside the home, it's done differently, to avoid contact," Peless said. The vacuum cleaner "senses furniture from a distance of half a meter." It also senses walls, meaning the Friendly Vac doesn't require a cable installment like Robomow.

Israel advocacy for the elderly

2006-04-02T15:47:00.000+03:00

With the pensioners party doing so well at PR to receive so many mandates for the Knesset, it is time perhaps to turn to the elderly for Israel advocacy work.
It appears that anti-Semitism, both on the Internet and in general, is growing daily, and websites rejecting Israel’s right to exist are operating unopposed. Although one cannot hope to extinguish these many flames of hatred, an Israeli initiative is trying to halt their
spread and hundreds of Israel’s elderly have taken on the challenge.
The pensioners, armed with a computer, keyboard and a lot of free time and goodwill, are running a pro-Israel propaganda campaign over the Web. And who knows, maybe the Pensioners Party’s surprising success in the 17th parliamentary elections will further encourage the public relations campaign initiated by the Israel Internet Association in cooperation with the Foreign Ministry.
On Thursday the project held its annual meeting in Jerusalem.
The campaign started two-and-a-half years ago proclaiming its intentions to employ the assets of the mature community (fluency in many languages, life experience, free time and goodwill) in an online public relations campaign.
“The State of Israel, a world leader in the hi-tech industry, has a weak and faltering operation when it comes to public relations on the Internet,” the Israel Internet Association wrote on its website in an effort to recruit the elderly to the project.
“Compared to thousands of pro-Palestinian Websites, there are only a few pro-Israeli websites. Despite their seriousness and depth, they do not put up an adequate fight in the virtual crossfire. It is necessary to create a deluge of Israeli sites that will show up in the top ten of every search engine.”
The flood rains haven’t fallen yet, but numerous elderly volunteers have completed training and have become involved in various aspects of the campaign, including translating PR material to various languages, responding to slanderous articles on-line, and writing personal memoirs to be posted on the Web.
Dotan Samhovitch, the Israel Internet Association’s project coordinator revealed that some 200 pensioners are participating in the program.
Shmuel Borosh, almost 90 years old, was born in Hungary. He had not touched a computer before joining the project, but now he emails regularly with his relatives, who like being updated on what goes on in Israel in order to answer anti-Semitism in Hungary. They also help him translate material into Hungarian.
What has the PR team done thus far? They have launched the "Israel Timeline" site, which boasts numerous articles translated by the volunteers into various languages containing information on Israel. The "Israel Technology" site exhibits the country’s successes in the hi-tech industry.
The volunteers also participate in writing a group blog called Land of Israel Stories, in which they relate personal tales of Israel throughout its history, in various languages.
“The site allows participants in the project to attain high quality information and materials in case of need, in order to present Israel to a public that doesn’t like us or doesn’t know us,” Samhovitch says.

A great story that shows that justice for victims of the Shoah should always be sought

2006-04-02T15:31:00.000+03:00

In 1943, at the height of World War II and the systematic annihilation of European Jewry, Gitl Lerner, a 45-year-old Jewish woman, hid with five of her children in the home of a Polish farmer. The six managed to escape a transport to the Majdanek death camp and found shelter along with two Jewish youths. On the night of October 30, Polish farmers in the area stabbed Lerner and the five children to death. Sixty years later Roni Lerner, an Israeli businessman and Gitl's grandson, set out to track down his family's murderers. In the course of his investigation, Lerner, pretending to be a historian, met the sole surviving murderer and uncovered the horrific case, which the prosecution in Poland has now reopened as a result. Under Polish law, there is no statute of limitations on murders committed during World War II or the country's Communist era. However, the director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Israel, Dr. Efraim Zuroff, who assisted Lerner in his contacts with the Polish prosecution, says that despite admirable Polish willingness to bring criminals to trial, the proceedings drag on and convictions have been exceedingly few, in view of the number of suspects still alive.
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With the help of an Israeli film crew and local researchers, Lerner managed to locate the last remaining suspect in the murder. The suspect, Joseph Radchuk, a 92-year-old farmer, led Lerner and his people to the place where the victims were buried 60 years ago. Lerner is going to Poland today at the head of a delegation to exhume the skeletons and bring them for burial in Israel, alongside his father's grave. "I won't leave my family members in that cursed land of Poland," he said before departing Israel. Researchers from Poland's Institute for National Commemoration (IPN) are slated to meet with Lerner tomorrow and to be present for the exhumation of the victims' remains, if found, at the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. The eight victims are Gitl and her five children (Miriam, 22; Hannah, 20; David, 17; Zvi, 15; and Haim, 13) and two young Jewish men known only by their surnames: Zefrin and Pomerantz. They were stabbed to death at their hideout in the small village of Pashgalini, near the family's hometown of Komarovka in eastern Poland, not far from the city Lublin. The family arrived at the hideout in April 1943, after a Polish farmer named Jan Sadovski found it for them. While the family was in hiding, Lerner's father, Yitzhak, was living in Warsaw under an assumed identity. He heard of his family's murder from a Polish friend who lived in the village. In November 1944, after the Red Army had conquered the area from the Germans, Lerner went to the village to investigate. His testimony, preserved in the Jewish archives in Warsaw, states that the murder was perpetrated by Sadovski and four other farmers - one of them being Joseph Radchuk. The testimony stated that the murder had been committed to steal the Lerner family's possessions and those of their two friends, who were wealthy people. Lerner Sr. met with Radchuk, who said he had witnessed the murder and admitted taking many of the family's possessions. Lerner Sr. filed several complaints with the Soviet authorities, but later learned that aside from Sadovski, who was tried and executed, nothing was done to his accomplices. After the war Lerner Sr. fled to Sweden and from there immigrated to Israel. He remarried, to a Holocaust survivor from a neighboring town in Poland and lived with her in Moshav Hibbat Zion. Lerner began investigating his family's tragedy in July 2003, when he accompanied his daughter's school trip to Poland and tracked down his father's testimony at the archives in Warsaw. On returning to Israel, Lerner decided to commemorate his father's life with a book and a documentary film, and headed back to Poland. He kept Israel's ambassador, David Peleg, and his deputy, Yosef Levy, apprised of all his movements there. He also made contact with the local Jewish community and Monica Kravchuk, chair of the Jewish heritage foundation in Poland. Research led to the home of the Ozdovski family, on whose land the Lerners' hideout had been located. The family, whose father apparently participated in the murder, said that the bodies were initially buried near the hideout, but were moved a year later to an unknown location because neighbors complained the place had become haunted. Lerner says that during an unannounced visit to the family's home, he spotted a Singer sewing machine that had belonged to his family and was mentioned in his father's testimony. Last October the researchers located Radchuk, who showed them where the bodies were reburied at the edge of the Catholic cemetery in Pashgalini. If the skeletons are found there, they will be flown to Israel on Tuesday and the funeral will take place in Hibbat Zion at the end of the week.

UN Reform Requires Non-Governmental Organisation Reform

2006-04-02T15:05:00.000+03:00

Israel advocates have long understood the problem with NGO's relating to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. KIC has frequently mentioned their inaccuracies inherent in a bias system of reporting which leads to more innocent bodies utilising information that is basically incorrect. NGO monitor is at the forefront of the fight against these organisation's and the lies that they proliferate. (If you are wondering the picture on the right is of a poster handed out at a UN NGO forum)
Yisrael Kasnett writes a good analysis this problem in the context of United Nations reform.
"On March 15, 2006, the network of powerful NGOs (non-governmental organizations) that includes Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, joined with recidivist human rights abusers such as Sudan, Libya, and Saudi Arabia to support the UNÂs new Human Rights Council. These regimes vehemently opposed serious reform knowing this would expose them to close scrutiny; and the debate on this reform was intense, with some countries Â primarily the U.S. and Israel Â arguing that the proposal did not go far enough in ensuring that the failures of the old Human Rights Commission would not continue in the new body.

NGOs have played a leading role under the old and failed Human Rights Commission and have long enjoyed direct access and influence to the various UN bodies. Protected by the ÂhaloÂ effect and their unaccountability, the NGO network was central to the disastrous 2001 Durban Conference on Racism, which was prepared under the auspices of the UNCHR. At Durban, NGOs largely ignored the issues for which the conference was called, focusing instead on intense anti-Israel advocacy, and initiating the ÂDurban strategy,Â an NGO campaign to undermine Israel that continues to reverberate in calls for divestment, sanctions and boycotts.

As part of this process, the unverifiable and biased reports published by the multi-million dollar NGOs HRW and AI, contributed to the disproportionate Israel bashing during the annual sessions of the UNCHR. As detailed research by NGO Monitor has shown, these NGOs often use human rights rhetoric to pursue political campaigns, systematically stripping the context of terror from their reports, and relying on eyewitness claims that lack credibility. HRWÂs institutional bias was clearly demonstrated by its highly disproportionate allocation of its Middle East resources in 2004 to attacks against Israel.

In other words, NGOs are not part of the solution Â they are part of the problem in the UN. With over 2,700 NGOs accredited with consultative status under the Economic and Social Council, the UN is a breeding ground for anti-Israel activity and bias. Guided by the superpowers such as AI and HRW, these influential NGOs use their consultative status in ECOSOC to disseminate false and unsubstantiated allegations against Israel. They highly misrepresent factual information and completely ignore the context of the Arab-Israeli conflict in order to promote their own ideological and political agendas.

It is therefore not surprising that these NGOs endorsed the new Council framework and failed to weigh in on behalf of serious UN reform. In criticizing the U.S. and Ambassador John Bolton for demanding more, Kenneth Roth, Executive Director of Human Rights Watch, and a frequent contributor to anti-Israel bias in the UN said, "It obviously doesnÂt do everything we hoped for, but it is clearly better than the Human Rights Commission.Â

Similarly, Amnesty International has also adopted this minimalist approach. The Secretary General of AI, Irene Khan stated "the U.S. administration should not jeopardize the best chance in decades to establish a more effective UN human rights body." Neither HRW nor AI showed any contrition regarding the role their organizations played in reinforcing the anti-democratic political biases under the previous UN Human Rights Commission.

NGOs fear diminished status in the UN and ultimately are afraid of losing the influence they currently enjoy. Thorough reform, NGOs argue, will hinder NGO efforts and lessen their impact on UN decisions and resolutions by reducing their accessibility to the various UN bodies. This may sound noble but in reality, NGOs have played a very negative role by exploiting the rhetoric of universal human rights to advance their own narrow ideological and political agendas. Largely as a result of campaigning by NGOs, Israel is consistently singled out for condemnation in the UNCHR, is the focus of disproportionate and biased resolutions in the General Assembly and is the only country in the UN that has not been given full membership to its regional group as obligated under the UN Charter.
Thus, the discussions on much needed UN reform must also include NGO reform. Serious NGOs can help the decision-making process in the UN in some cases but not when they merely exploit access to this body to promote conflict. Furthermore, NGOs must be held accountable and organizations that lack balance and use their funds for propaganda rather than for independent research, should not receive automatic access.
The NGOs most suitable for working in conjunction with the UN body and its subsidiaries are those that are objective, unbiased and have no ideological and political agendas. These organizations can positively contribute to conflict resolution in the UN, through fair and substantiated reports based on accurate knowledge using credible sources. The Human Rights Council will differentiate itself from its discredited predecessor not through minor inconsequential adjustments, but via a major break with the past and accompanied by serious NGO reform."

Hamas leader says 'There's no room for Israel on this land'

2006-04-02T14:48:00.000+03:00

Israel advocates have to be wary of a growing trend amongst media outlets to attempt to paint Hamas as a moderate force willing to compromise and to distance Hamas from its terrorism roots. On Friday I heard on BBC World Service a BBC correspondent joking with a Hamas minister about his new job, willfully forgetting that he belongs to an organisation that might have some social services but is overall steeped in blood and hatred. The latest comes from CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour where she tries to redefine Hamas.
Israel advocates have to make people listen to the subtleties in an interview with a Hamas representative. Constantly we are being told that Hamas want an end to the occupation, the reporter will never ask further what does the Hamas person mean, assuming that he is referring to 1967 borders. Well the cat is out of the bag.
Palestinian Foreign Minister Mahmoud Zahar was quoted in a weekend interview to a Chinese news agency defending Hamas' declared goal of eventually destroying Israel.Zahar, a prominent Hamas leader sworn into the Palestinian Authority cabinet last week, told the Xinhua news agency that he is certain the goal will be realized, because "There is no place for Israel on this land."According to the interview, Zahar maintained that Palestinians have no problem with the Jewish religion, only with the Israeli occupation, and said he does not rule out the possibility of Jews, Muslims and Christians living together in one Islamic state.
Reiterating Hamas' oppositions to negotiations with Israel, Zahar told his interviewer, "Israel doesn't want peace nor does it have any peace project. Therefore, we told our people and tell them that there will be no negotiations."
This is the crux that Israel advocates have to pay attention to. Zahar says Israel don't want peace and negotiations when he said earlier that there is no place for Israel at all. The problem is many news agencies will pick up on the "Israel doesn't want peace" part without mentioning it will be a peace without Israel. (Note: The actual article only mentions Zahar saying "I dream of hanging a huge map of the world on the wall at my Gaza home which does not show Israel on it," half-way through the article, while up to then the article has focused on Israeli recalcitrance.)

Leading UK TV personality: Israelis are far, far better at killing each other than Hamas

2006-04-02T14:21:00.000+03:00

This is a very shocking statement, but sadly it is very true. Nick Ross, a leading UK television personality and a former chairman of the National Road Safety Committee of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents in the UK, believes that Israeli drivers should be compared with Hamas.
Israel has deplorable statistics when it comes to road deaths per motorists in this country. Many more people are killed as a result of road accidents than terrorism or war. Israelis are very concerned over any death due to terrorism and we remain glued to the television screens to find out all we can about the victims, and rightly so. But there is a bigger killer out there we have to stop.
"If you want to get Israeli public attitudes more focused on the priorities of road safety, one has got to recognize that Israelis are far, far better at killing each other than Hamas," Ross told The Jerusalem Post.
"Hamas... is relatively ineffective compared to Israeli drivers," he said, noting that more people die in road accidents than in terrorist attacks.
Ross is the grandson of the country's first justice minister, Pinhas Rosen, and is here this week for a conference organized by road safety organization Metuna.
He has become a national institution on British television through his long-running and award-winning show Crimewatch UK, which appeals to the public for help in solving crimes. In addition, he presented a road-safety program called The Biggest Epidemic of Our Times in the 1980s and a series called So You Think You're a Good Driver! several years ago.
Ross used the word "epidemic" to describe Israel's road fatalities, noting that while traffic deaths in other countries have been halved, the figures in this country have dropped very little in recent years. This, he believes, is because Israel is forced to worry about security at the expense of other issues.
"Israel's security, in a grand sense, is the most pressing issue. But on a day-to-day basis, if you're worried about your kids, the real campaigning issue in Israel ought to be road safety more than any other disease. It is a disease as far as doctors are concerned. As a plague that can be solved, that is the one that ought to be concentrated on," he said.
"It is a paradox, because Israel, out of all the nations on Earth, treasures individual life. What Israel will do to save one life," he exclaimed. "And yet there's this extraordinary psychological blindness to all these lives that are being lost."One problem, he said, is that drivers have become unjustifiably fatalistic about road accidents. "We just assume this will happen," he said. "Nonsense. If accidents are about to happen, how come in the UK, with more traffic going faster for more miles, we've got our fatalities down from 6,500 to 3,400. We've just engineered it down. We decided that's what we were going to do."

Muhammed cartoons 'outrage' led to racism and intolerance

2006-04-02T14:07:00.000+03:00

We witnessed many scenes of Muslim 'outrage' over the Danish cartoons depicting Muhammed, deemed offensive to Islam. Rioting, kidnappings and killing showed the world how sensitive the issue is to the Muslim world. One would have expected as a result of Muslim offense for many to better understand offensive imagery in the Muslim press. However this has been far from the case. As has been showed many times by certain parts of the Muslim world, if the West offends Islam or Muslims we will take it out on Israel and the Jews.
The Muhammad cartoon controversy greatly increased the amount of anti-Semitic material in Arab and Muslim newspapers, according to a report issued by the Anti-Defamation League over the weekend.
The report highlighted cartoons and opinion pieces that demonized Jews, Israel and the Holocaust in media across the Arab world and in Iran.
The publications cited depicted Jews in "outrageous and deeply anti-Semitic caricatures and themes, including anti-Semitic conspiracy theories of Jews plotting to control US foreign policy and dominate the world," the report said.
For example, in the government daily Al-Ittihad from the United Arab Emirates, a cartoon of a Jew holding the world at bay with a gun labeled "the Holocaust" was published on January 24. And, in an apparent reference to the Muhammad cartoons, on February 16 the Bahraini Akhbar al-Khalij ran a picture of an inkpot marked with a Star of David accompanied by a pen writing "cartoons harming Allah's messenger."
While anti-Semitic tropes have long filled the Arab media, ADL Israel office spokesman Arieh O'Sullivan said the intensity of such material "skyrocketed" when Muslim rage exploded over the controversial Muhammad depictions carried in the Danish press and elsewhere.
"Suddenly it caught on like wildfire and every newspaper started to print content that was anti-Semitic or Holocaust related," O'Sullivan said. He added that the worst of the conflagration seemed to be over, as the Muhammad cartoon uproar has died down.
The report also included content from newspapers published before the Danish cartoon controversy erupted at the end of January - though the Muhammad cartoons were published in early fall - but the turning point came when an Iranian newspaper aped the Danish newspaper's Muhammad contest by sponsoring a competition for Holocaust cartoons, according to the ADL.
ADL national director Abraham Foxman said that Muslim and Arab leaders have a "blind spot" and a "level of tolerance" for "blatant anti-Semitism" in the media.
"While the Muslim world acts out violently in response to the Muhammad cartoons and suggests that Western freedom of speech has gone too far, the plain fact is newspapers in the Muslim and Arab world continue to engage in vicious stereotyping of Jews."

Houmous v Felafel - The great debate?

2006-04-02T12:17:00.000+03:00

An interesting story was brought to my attention this morning about a new course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for BBC staff, introduced by Jeremy Bowen. This is of double interest to me as I sat in the dentist chair on Friday right after Jeremy Bowen and my dentist told me that he was a very fair observer of the conflict here.
According to an article in the Telegraph, "if the BBC's Jeremy Bowen is to be believed, understanding the origins of houmous - mashed chickpeas with oil, lemon juice and garlic - and falafel - deep-fried chickpea balls - provides the key to unlock the Middle East."
Bowen says houmous and falafel are national dishes for Palestinians and Israelis. "They both claim to have invented them. There are two versions of the truth," he says.
"Now, what about the life-and-death issues here that really matter? Jerusalem; the Holy Places; the control of land and water; the future of Palestinian refugees? Well, just like houmous and falafel, there are two competing narratives."
One BBC employee said that the course was an insult to staff who risked their lives covering the conflict. "It has not gone down well with staff who have spent a lot of time in the Middle East. "
A BBC spokesman said the courses had seen a positive response. "The course on the Middle East introduces some very serious issues."
My reaction to this is that is a good attempt to give an analogy to the wider conflict, but at some point, unlike food there are answers. In the origins of food worldwide, many foods which are national dishes are actually created elsewhere and sometimes differing parts are taken from different previous recipes. Sometimes to claim any dish as native and home-grown is largely incorrect.
The wider Israeli-Palestinian issues do have a factual basis. Although history can be argued there are certain facts that are beyond refutation. Just as a example: Jerusalem has never been the capital of any other people since the Jews were exiled (apart from a brief Crusader presence in the Medieval period). I have never heard anyone seriously claim that Jerusalem; was ever a Muslim capital despite it being in Muslim hands for hundreds of years.
So as the great the great Houmous-Felafel debate continues, Israel advocates will understand that there are opinions, half-truths and assumptions but there are also stone-cold facts and these we have to bring to the attention to the outside world.

Israelis invited to join UN peacekeeping forces

2006-04-01T21:35:00.000+03:00

Yes, you did read correctly.
The Israeli foreign Ministry has published for the first time an announcement on its website urging IDF and police officers to apply for vacancies at the Department of Peacekeeping Operations at the United Nations Secretariat in New York.
The positions are intended for standing officers, who hold the ranks of captain to colonel, or alternatively for comparable ranks in the police service. The positions offered are relatively senior jobs at the U.N. forces, of ranks P-4 and P-5.
Each state's U.N. employee quota is determined in advance and is calculated according to the annual membership fee it pays, which is determined by the state's gross national product (GNP) compared to the global GNP.
According to this key, Israel should have 18 employees in the U.N. However, the "officer lending" procedure is calculated separately, and therefore the Foreign Ministry encourages officers to leave for the mission in order to enhance the number of Israeli workers in the U.N.
Ronny Adam, director of the Foreign Ministry's U.N. Department, told Ynet: "We would like our employee quota to be filled with Israelis. As far as we are concerned, every employee is in fact an Israeli ambassador to the U.N. Every country naturally desires its quota to be filled, and thus we encourage Israelis to take the tests and man the jobs."
"We also encourage this because of the fact that the 18-employee quota costs the State a lot of money and should be manned. We encourage those who are interested in the offered position at the U.N. Department of Peacekeeping Operations to apply and propose themselves," he said.
"It should be mentioned that Israel has a relative advantage on the military issue in these specific jobs. Apart from that, we call on the entire public to visit the U.N. website and take an interest in open vacancies at the organization," Adam added.

Protestants for Peace

2006-04-01T21:14:00.000+03:00

Bucking the trend of many Protestant churches in recent times, one Protestant organisation in North America has gone against the trend of divesting from Israel.
A mainstream Protestant church has won kudos from Jewish community leaders for urging its national governing body to invest in Israel.The resolution responds to Jewish concerns over the divestment strategy passed in July 2004 by the Presbyterian Church USA.
This week, the Presbytery of the Western Reserve, an umbrella organization of 52 Presbyterian churches in Northeast Ohio, passed an “overture” asking its parent organization to invest in businesses and nonprofit groups in Israel that promote peace, justice and reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.The overture also encourages Presbyterian congregations to develop projects locally and in the Middle East that foster dialogue between Jewish and Palestinian American communities and promote peace, says the Rev. Louise Westfall of Fairmount Presbyterian Church. While not unanimous, the approximately 150 voting representatives passed the overture by a “substantial” margin, adds Westfall.

It's time to come out from behind Ariel Sharon

2006-03-31T13:53:00.000+03:00

If you were an alien from Mars and came down to watch the lead up to the election you would be convinced that a very healthy Ariel Sharon was running in the elections. Every Kadima advert showed more Sharon than anyone else, Olmert the man who is running the country was an afterthought.
What does this tell us about the state of our new leadership that they had no confidence in presenting themselves, so they presented their party as being run by a man in a coma.
What is more scary is that Kadima officials have been constantly stating their own policy as that of Sharon's. Time and time again we have been told that this or that one was told by Sharon before his coma that he would have done this or that. The latest is Otniel Schneller, who told the Jerusalem Post that just before Sharon had his stroke he gave the OK for Schneller's withdrawal map.
Schneller, a religious settler from Ma'aleh Michmash turned centrist politician, said he was commissioned by Sharon to create a plan for Israel's future borders following the Gaza withdrawal last summer.
The two men meet in Jerusalem for more than an hour late on the afternoon of January 4, said Schneller. "I showed him my plan. He said, 'It is very interesting. I would like to go with this principle and to work on this plan. Otni, I would like to meet you next week,'" Schneller recalled the PM saying.
"We finished our meeting at 4:30 p.m.," he said. The massive stroke Sharon suffered later that day cut short any future discussions about the map.
This is all very curious as, Ariel Sharon said he would not embark on any unilateral withdrawals. I think it is about time our new leaders from Kadima had the strength of character to say goodbye to Ariel Sharon as a specter above their heads. They should have the strength of their convictions and claim policies for themselves. Kadima have been voted to lead the country, albeit on the back of a leader no longer leading, so it is time for them to come out of the shadows and lead.

Does Olmert have the authority and support for his plans?

2006-03-30T18:01:00.000+02:00

Many have spoken about the Israeli elections as a referendum on Olmert's 'convergence plan'. After the election results have been tallied the question has not been resolved. Kadima are the largest party but having garnered less than a quarter of the votes of only 63% of Israeli citizenry it is very unclear what mandate Olmert has received.
Nadav Shragai seems to go further and claims that those against the convergence plan, led by the right-wing have actually gained the moral victory. Shragai writes in 'The right's moral majority' that those against unilateralism won the elctions.
"It is true that the right does not have a blocking majority, but it definitely has a moral, and perhaps even a practical, majority against the one-sided, unilateral element.
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The parties opposing any unilateral withdrawal straddle the right-left line, and they are as follows, with their Knesset seats: Likud 11; Avigdor Lieberman's Yisrael Beiteinu 12; National Union-National Religious Party 9; Shas 13 - party spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadia Yosef has not reversed his rejection of unilateral measures; United Torah Judaism 6. In addition, there is Labor, 20, which does support a massive withdrawal from the West Bank but only by agreement and not as a unilateral measure. All in all, 75 Knesset members. The apparent common denominator between left and right on the sole issue of unilateralism, together with the fact that the Palestinian Authority is now controlled by Hamas (and apparently there is no partner for peace talks), led as early as Tuesday night to an informal invitation to Amir Peretz."

Israel shuns victory

2006-03-30T17:53:00.000+02:00

Daniel Pipes writes an interesting piece called 'Israel shuns victory' in which he describes how no Israeli politician seeks to win the war on terror, only manage it.
Excerpts from the piece.....
First, some background. Wars are won, the historical record shows, when one side feels compelled to give up on its goals. This is only logical, for so long as both sides hope to achieve their war ambitions, fighting either continues or potentially can resume. For example, although defeated in World War I, the Germans did not give up their goal of dominating Europe and soon again turned to Hitler to try again. The Korean War ended more than a half century ago, but neither North nor South having given up its aspirations means fighting could flare up at any time. Similarly, through the many rounds of the Arab-Israeli conflict (wars in 1948-49, 1956, 1967, 1973, and 1982) both sides retained their goals.
Those goals are simple, static, and binary. The Arabs fight to eliminate Israel; Israel fights to win the acceptance of its neighbors. The first is offensive in intent; the second is defensive. The former is barbaric, and the latter civilized. For nearly 60 years, Arab rejectionists have sought to eliminate Israel via a range of strategies: undermining its legitimacy through propaganda, harming its economy through a trade boycott, demoralizing it through terrorism, and threatening its population via WMD.
While the Arab effort has been patient, intense, and purposeful, it has also failed. Israelis have built a modern, affluent, and strong country, but one still largely rejected by Arabs. This mixed record has spawned two political developments: a sense of confidence among politically moderate Israelis; and a sense of guilt and self-criticism among its leftists. Very few Israelis still worry about the unfinished business of getting the Arabs to accept the permanence of the Jewish state. Call it Israel's invisible war goal.
Rather than seek victory, Israelis have developed a lengthy menu of approaches to manage the conflict.
And so, they experiment with compromise, unilateralism, enriching their enemies, and other schemes. But as Douglas MacArthur observed, "In war, there is no substitute for victory." The Oslo diplomacy ended in dismal failure and so will all the other schemes that avoid the hard work of winning. Israelis eventually must gird themselves to resuming the difficult, bitter, long, and expensive effort needed to convince the Palestinians and others that their dream of eliminating Israel is defunct.
Should Israelis fail to achieve this, then Israel itself will be defunct.

A Palestinian talks about "Palestinian Occupation"

2006-03-30T09:40:00.000+02:00

There are pitifully few voices from the Palestinian world that ever attributes even a miniscule amount of their suffering to themselves. Every person of decent moral character can see the Palestinian suffering, but who is to blame?
Ray Hanania, a Palestinian writes a column for the Ynet site titled 'Occupied with occupation'. Hanania writes that for too long the Palestinians have just blamed Israel for everything, but the fact of the matter the problem goes far deeper.
"We all know about the Israeli military occupation, which began when big-mouthed, loser Arab leaders played to the emotions of their people by rattling cardboard sabers and threatening to "drive the Jews into the sea."
The Israelis are no dummies. When they faced off with the triumvirate of "impotentates" who led Egypt, Syria and Jordan back in 1967, they knew exactly how to respond. They exploited the Arab World bombast and overran everything in a few hours.
That the war actually lasted six days is a miracle.
But the real occupation that holds back Palestinians is not the Israeli military. It is the occupation they impose on themselves.
It's a societal occupation driven by rising extremism, religious fanaticism, and living in a dream world of self-pity and failed leadership.
When your leaders fail as leaders for so long, you begin to blame yourself and feel hopeless and pathetic, too. That helps the leaders to avoid accountability because the public starts to blame itself and others for its problems.
That societal occupation took a major step forward with the election of Hamas terrorists and religious fanatics. These fatalists hide behind the suffering of their people to cover up their own failure as leaders.
Their answer to a problem is to create a bigger problem. It's like an older brother's prank on a younger brother who complains that he bumped his hand and it hurts. The older brother hits the younger brother on top of his head hard, and says, "I bet you don't feel the hurt hand any more."
The other occupation is the self-imposed occupation. This is the most dangerous. Here, instead of thinking for themselves, Palestinians simply accept whatever they are told.
"We have to use suicide bombings because we don't have jet airplanes," one popular but ignorant rationalization goes. They find excuses for failure instead of developing answers or real solutions.
Let's blame the Israelis for our own problems. That's not reasoned.
The reasoned person recognizes the truth of a problem, even when that truth hurts. Even when the truth points to yourself as being as much a part of the problem as the people (Israelis) whom you blame for everything.
Instead of addressing the problem, we then address the emotion. Because it is so much easier to hate someone than it is to accept blame and then correct the problem."

An overview of the Israeli elections

2006-03-29T14:46:00.000+02:00

Israelis were promised a big-bang in their political scene, what ensued was more akin to a medium to small sized bang. The formation of a new party that would garner the largest amounts of votes and break the stranglehold of the two ruling party system did materialize, but to a much lesser extent than its members would have hoped.
When Ariel Sharon first broke away from the ruling Likud party to set up Kadima, opinion polls predicted the new list would win 44-45 seats in the 120 seat Knesset. With Sharon incapacitated, Ehud Olmert took the reins of the party and the country. In the three months since Olmert took over the leadership of Kadima, the new party was hemorrhaging voters. Many voters were initially attracted to Kadima purely because they trusted Sharon at the helm and equated Sharon with Kadima and vice versa. Olmert has never held the same presence, authority and trust as the man now in a coma on the seventh floor of a hospital in Jerusalem.
In Tuesday's general election, the first piece of history was the voter turnout. Voter turnout in the elections for the 17th Knesset dropped to an estimated 63.2 percent, a decrease of 5.7 percentage points compared to the previous general election in 2003. The drop on Tuesday was a continuation of the downward trend that has marked participation in elections ever since the State of Israel was created.
"Not good," said Haifa University political scientist professor Asher Arian in response to the figures. "The percentage of voters went down in 2003 and now it has gone down even more." Arian added that the trend in Israel was similar to developments in the rest of the world and appeared to reflect disenchantment with the ability of the state to solve problems. "It is a general unease, not one that is directed at the democratic system per se."
The second piece of history in these elections was that neither Labor nor Likud were the party with the highest amount of votes. Kadima, the party headed by Olmert, took only 28 seats but were still declared the largest party and thus the winners of the elctions, albeit in a weaker than expected position.
Kadima's leader, Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, declared victory early today and said he was confident that the party would be able to move forward with its plan to disengage Israel from more territory.
''For thousands of years we have carried the dream of Greater Israel in our hearts," said Olmert, wearing a yarmulke though he usually goes bareheaded, told cheering supporters at his election headquarters. ''But, because of our recognition of the realities of the situation . . . we are prepared to compromise."
The second place in the elections was taken by Amir Peretz's Labor party. The Labor party had attempted to re-establish itself as a social issues party and tended to focus on these issues rather than security in the lead up to the elction.
According to Ha'aretz commentator Yoel Marcus "While the Labor Party increased its share of the pie by just one seat, thanks to Amir Peretz, it is a new Labor - fresh, full of aspirations to succeed when it comes to both peace and social issues. Anyone who took note of Peretz's development during the election campaign can see him not only as a partner for Olmert, but also as the individual who can restore Labor to its former glory in the future."
For many, the true revolution was not in Labor's success among the voters, but in where those voters came from. "We have seen a drastic shift in the map of constituencies in Israel," said MK Shalom Simhon. "Areas that have never voted Labor are voting nearly unanimously for Peretz, according to some early results."
Simhon, who represents the moshavim on the Labor list, said that many development towns in the South which have historically voted Likud were coming out in droves to support Peretz.
According to the results after 99.5% of the voting counted, Likud has sunk to fifth largest party with a paltry 11 seats in the Knesset. The once mighty Likud Party, the dominant force in Israeli politics for almost 30 years, had fallen to its knees.
"We have no doubt the Likud has suffered a tough blow," Mr Netanyahu told a crowd of supporters shortly after exit polls had shown the fate of the Likud. Netanyahu, however, remained defiant and declared that he will remain as party chairman and declared he will make Likud relevant again. "I intend to continue along the path we have only just begun in order to ensure this movement is rehabilitated and takes its rightful place in the nation's leadership," Netanyahu declred.
Many attributed Likud's fall from grace to Netanyahu's stint as Finace Minister. The 56-year-old pushed through swingeing benefit cuts that hurt Israel's poor working class, many of whom are natural Likud supporters. "We didn't pay enough attention to the people," admitted Reuven Rivlin, a Likud parliamentarian.
The most likely to have gained from Likud's fall were the great surprise of these elctions, Avigdor Lieberman's "Yisrael Beiteinu. Amassing up to 14 seats, Yisrael Beiteinu has replaced the Likud as the standard bearer of the right-wing.
"We have a lot of work ahead of us. This is just the beginning of our fight for Israel's future," said the 47-year-old Lieberman, as he stood with his family in a reception room of a Jerusalem hotel an hour after the exit polls. Lieberman was not resting on his laurels and pledged to supporters that this was just the beginning for his party.
"After the next election, we will be the ruling party," pledges the former Russian hard-liner.
The other great winner in the election was also the biggest shock. With nearly all votes counted on Wednesday morning, the Pensioners' Party appears to have secured seven seats in the next Knesset. The Pensioners' Party has never had one seat in the Knesset before and many had forecasted the same fate in these elections.
The Pensioners' Party platform deals entirely with advancing the rights of the elderly, including ensuring pensions for all citizens and placing medications for the elderly in the health basket of medications and medical treatments subsidized by the state. Party chairman Rafi Eitan, a former senior official in the Shin Bet security service and Mossad espionage agency, has a brief political history dating back to when he helped Ariel Sharon establish the Shlomzion party in the 1970s.
The Pensioner's Party relied heavily on young disillusioned voters who weren't intending to vote. According to author Linda Grant, who recently wrote a best-selling book about Israeli society, these voters turned to their elder family members as a means of political protest.
"Two days ago, word started to spread that something really odd was happening in Tel Aviv: the urban young, committed not to voting at all, convinced that all politicians were corrupt and that they should grit their teeth, do their army service, chill out at the beach on weekend leave and then head straight off to Thailand or Goa when they were demobbed, had started to campaign on behalf of their grandparents."
Many see the Pensioners Party as possible king-makers in the future coalition building process. As a party with a heavily weighted single issue, the party is seen as a good coalition partner to carry out security related policies at the cost of paying the pensioner's their desired issues.
Other results saw Shas retain pretty much the same Knesset representation, but the amalgamation of two right-wing parties, National-Religious and National Union, did not bear fruit. After months of anticipation over the merger of the two, the National Union and National Religious Party were stunned Tuesday night by exit polls that showed them losing from their strength in the last Knesset, and the unequivocal failure of the Right to attain enough votes to block an Olmert-led government.
The remaining parties, Meretz, United Torah Judaism and the Arab lists were expected to remain at similar strength to their representation in the last Knesset.
Shunui, the secular party, which took the political map by storm in the last elections were not expected to have enough votes for a single Knesset seats, perhaps an ominous warning that the new centrist Kadima party should not think that it is now invincible for future elctions.
However, Olmert as the leader of the party with the most votes will be invited in the coming days by President Moshe Katsav to form a coalition for a government. The coming weeks will see political horse-trading between a large number of the parties as each one will tell Olmert what it desires to become part of his government. This period is sometimes just as interesting as the period up to the elctions. The people of Israel have had their say, now the politicians get to work to present a sound government to represent Israel for the next four years.
The results after 99% of the voting can be viewed here.

KICPoll Results - Israel Vote 2006

2006-03-29T08:36:00.000+02:00

KICPoll - Israel Vote 2006

Which party receives your support on March 28?

RESULT

Kadima 28.0% (14)
National Union - Mafdal 18.0% (9)
Yisrael Beiteinu 16.0% (8)
Other 10.0% (5)
Likud 8.0% (4)
Labor - Meimad 8.0% (4)
United Torah Judaism 4.0% (2)
Shas 4.0% (2)
Arab Parties 2.0% (1)
Meretz 2.0% (1)

Total votes: 50

Elections for the 17th Israeli Knesset

2006-03-28T08:41:00.000+02:00

With election booths open, many questions will be answered by the end of the day. These elections, seemingly pivotal have been met with large measures of apathy and a lack of focus on issues. Some are calling these elections a referendum on the ideas of disengagement, past and present, some are not.
There are those who see Kadima's ascension to power as a foregone conclusion, and there are those who are not so sure.
My predictions are as follows....
Voter turn-out will not be as low as expected, I don't think they will be that high, but I do not think they will be as low as 55%. Kadima will not do as well as expected with about 32-34 mandates. Labour will come second with 19-20 mandates and likud a more distant third with 15 mandates. The surprise will be Yisrael Beiteinu who will come fourth with 12 mandates followed by Shas and NRP/NU.
Olmert will have a workable coalition and the right will not have enough for a blocking vote. Netanyahu will step down as Likud party head and will probably be succeeded by Silvan Shalom, who it is not inconceivable to be part of a Kadima led coalition that will redraw Israel's borders.
My only impartial advice is to get out and vote. These elections are crucial for all Israelis across the political spectrum. During the coming years if someone is unhappy with Israel's policies and didn't vote, they will have no excuses and their opportunity will be lost.

LIVE on Election Day with KIC

2006-03-26T23:17:00.000+02:00

I have been invited to host an incredible online event that will span eight hours of Israeli Election Night coverage this coming Tuesday. Among other things, I will be co-hosting the first four hours of the event and I will be facilitating LIVE discussion and debate of the policies, personalities and campaigns.

What a way to KICstart Israel Elections 2006!

As the first exit polls reach us, I will be there to KICoff the analysis of the results, the possible coalition ramifications and so on.

Don't miss out on seeing this LIVE and being a part of the event which will host several well-known world Jewish leaders and well-known personalities from the media and beyond.

More than 4000 others are already registered - sign up now and be there when history is made!

Michael Lawrence

Anyone who is under occupation would react with suicide bombs

2006-03-26T16:05:00.000+02:00

How often have we heard those words from people who seek to justify terrorism? This statement of course makes no sense. The Palestinians are not the first people to ever feel like they are being occupied, and I always say to people what did the Jews do in Europe during WW II?
A Syrian-born psychologist has reached similar conclusions and has had the courage to say it to the Arab world on Al-Jazeera TV.
Since a single interview on Al-Jazeera on February 21, Wafa Sultan, a psychologist now living in the US, has become an overnight sensation. The link to the clip on http://www.memritv.org/ has received over a million hits, and Sultan has been interviewed by The New York Times, The Sunday Times and Le Monde. Sultan, in her original five-minute interview, became the Rosa Parks of the global struggle against jihad: the catalyst whose stubborn courage marks a turning point.
"The clash we are witnessing around the world is not a clash of religions, or a clash of civilizations," Sultan said in that interview. "It is a clash between civilization and backwardness... between barbarity and rationality... between human rights on the one hand and the violation of these rights on the other, between those who treat women like beasts and those who treat them like human beings."
Then she went even further.
"The Jews have come from tragedy and forced the world to respect them," she said, "with their knowledge, not with their terror; with their work, not with their crying and yelling.
"We have not seen a single Jew blow himself up in a German restaurant... Only the Muslims defend their beliefs by burning down churches, killing people and destroying embassies. ... The Muslims must ask themselves what they can do for humankind before they demand that humankind respect them."

"Israelis are racists"

2006-03-26T08:56:00.000+02:00

Israel advocates have a hard time with statements like these written in the international press in the form of an opinion piece. The problem is that even if they make no sense, the statement is left hanging for all to see and a statement like that is sometimes more powerful to the naked eye than a hundred facts.
However, Israel advocates do not expect those sort of meaningless statements from within the mainstream Israeli press. Gideon Levy of Ha'aretz has made such statements in an opinion piece titled 'One racist nation'.
Upon further perusal of the article one can see that like so many articles of the same tilt it stands on very shaky foundations, although I have to be honest and say that I didn't even find one foundation.
Levy writes "Contrary to appearances, the elections this week are important, because they will expose the true face of Israeli society and its hidden ambitions." (Starts pretty ominous, so I am expecting something big).
"More than 100 elected candidates will be sent to the Knesset on the basis of one ticket - the racism ticket." (I can only really think of about twenty seats that will be taken by parties with race as a main platform, Arab and Jewish).
"An absolute majority of the MKs in the 17th Knesset will hold a position based on a lie: that Israel does not have a partner for peace." (Wait a minute, that is the proof that Israelis are racist? Having been bombarded for five years, being fearful to step foot in a cafe or bar, hearing Palestinians cheer the deaths of our loved ones and finally electing a party which bases itself on the Koran that Jews are evil and should die. Because we don't trust the Palestinian leadership, we are racist????
In the Second World War, if the Jews of Europe didn't trust their German leadership when they enacted the Nuremburg Laws, and worse, was that racist too????)
"Only one ambition unites everyone - to get rid of them, one way or another. Transfer or wall, "disengagement" or "convergence" - the point is that they should get out of our sight. The only game in town, the 'unilateral arrangement," is not only based on the lie that there is no partner, is not only based exclusively on our "needs" because of a sense of superiority, but also leads to a dangerous pattern of behavior that totally ignores the existence of the other nation."
(This beggars belief, Israelis think their superior because they want to say to the Palestinians, you want a state, have it???)
"Then came the major terror attacks and Israeli society withdrew into a sickness of apathy never before known to it." (Do you understand the ramification of what he is saying? The more we were attacked the more we should have extended a hand in peace. In fact Levy calls Israeli society sick for being wary of a people who were sending people to kill us. Go figure!!)
So there is Levy's preposterous suggestion. To any sane mind, the article is a contorted piece of nonsense. The problem is the catchy title is very magnetic to some and you can bet your last dollar that this will find it's way onto an anti-Israel website as proof that Israelis are racist.
If anyone sees it on any other website, please let us know.

Double Standard Exists on Terrorism

2006-03-24T08:43:00.000+02:00

Oscra winning documentary-maker Arthur Cohn is fed up of people always redeeming terrorism if it is against Israel. Cohn writes an article called 'Double Standard Exists on Terrorism' and decries this stance, while also providing good solid arguments for Israel's case.
Unfortunately, Jewish media people — among them many Israelis — have a strong share in this unjust and dangerous distinction. There is one word that is the basis for the acceptance of Palestinian terrorists, a word used again and again in all political discussions around the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. That word is “occupation.”All land that was not part of Israel until 1967 is termed “occupied territory.” By that definition, it is stolen land, and all means seem to be justified to force Israel to return the theft.
Those who declare that great parts of Israel are occupied territories also indirectly support the Arabs claim that the Jews really don’t have any true roots in the Holy Land, as it is written in Palestinian school books and Arab propaganda.
By declaring that all these areas are part of an illegal occupation, we also support the peculiar idea that all these areas must become judenrein, an idea that is not conducive to real peace. If more than 1 million Palestinian Arabs live in Israel, why is it unthinkable that Jews will live under Palestinian Authority?
In this connection, it must be stressed that almost all Jews who settled beyond the green line of 1967 built their homes on public land and not on privately owned Arab property.
If our demand for security lacks a basis of law, justice and morals, if we don’t stress our rights in the land of Israel, if we basically justify the Arab position that large parts of Israel belong only to them and are forcefully stolen, we cannot wonder when we see so many young students on American university campuses accepting the Palestinian propaganda against Israel.
We cannot wonder when so many writers and media people speak out against Israel politics; we cannot wonder when large churches tell their congregants not to support Israel economically; and we cannot wonder if a prestigious award is given to a film that shows understanding, even a certain admiration, for anti-Israel terrorists."

Palestinian achievements=Israeli achievements

2006-03-24T08:19:00.000+02:00

A Palestinian American columnist Ray Hanania wrote an article about Israelis and Palestinians called 'Changing the Israeli-Palestinian paradigm'. In it, Hanania describes how "ThereÂs going to be more violence. More killing. More frustration. More parents crying over the death of their children. More families weeping at the loss of their land. More communities despondent as violent events darken their hopes for peace."
Hanania basically raises the old calumny of the "cycle of violence" and morally equalises the share of blame equally between both sides. Israel advocates have heard this story manyy times before.
Martin Sherman writes an answer to Hanania called "False Symmetry". In it, Sherman describes the major differences between Israeli and Palestinian society.
"Hanania does bemoan the loss of life but blithely obscures real differences between the attitudes and conduct of the two sides. While Palestinian civilians have been hurt by the actions of Israel's armed forces, they are never the purposeful target such action.
By contrast, Israeli civilians are almost invariably the intended victims of Palestinian violence. When Palestinian bystanders are inadvertently hit during Israeli operations, which without exception are planned to preemptyt, or respond to, terror attacks, there are always official expressions of regret and contrition. Frequently, there are official inquiries into alleged misconduct of the IDF and security services, and offenders have been punished.
No such similar conduct is evident Â or even imaginable - on the Palestinian side.
Likewise, the image of " Âparents crying over the death of their children" fails to differentiate between the universal grief expressed in Israel at the loss of life; and the ever more pervasive culture of death in Palestinian society, including the glorification of homicidal suicide "martyrs," as well as expressions of pride and joy from parents of those who chose "plastique" as the preferred pathway to paradise.
Hanania expresses a yearning for "an Israeli leader who has the courage to do what needs to be done", but one can but wonder what he dreams of. Over the past few months an Israeli leader unilaterally withdrew from the entire Gaza Strip, removed the IDF from the border with Egypt and obliterated all the settlements there, turning thousands of Israelis citizens into refugees in their own land.
The Palestinian response to all these: the election of Hamas Â a terrorist organization who's founding Charter calls for the elimination of Israel. This fact gives lie to the myth that settlements are at the root of Palestinian animosity toward Israel.
There is, however, a final thought regarding the essential asymmetry between the national endeavors of Israelis and Palestinians: Against all odds, Israelis succeeded in establishing a state despite ferocious Arab and Palestinian opposition. On the other hand, the Palestinians, have failed to establish a state despite manifest Israeli acquiescence (and at times even active endorsement) and massive international support.
While it is true that Israel has received a great deal of foreign aid, conditions in this country have remained dauntingly difficult. Yet Israelis have built an advanced industrialized country, with the world's highest per-capita rate of scientific publications and patents filed. The county is a world leader in agriculture, hi-tech and medicine.
Sadly by contrast, despite being the world's highest per capita recipients of international aid the Palestinians have excelled at producing crazed martyrs, corruption andÂ well, little else."

Israel's helping hand: Israeli doctors to assist Vietnam in heart surgery for children

2006-03-23T17:41:00.002+02:00

A group of Israeli heart doctors from the Save a Child's Heart (SACH) organization arrived in Vietnam on March 22 to give educative training on children's heart surgery to Vietnamese doctors. The training encompasses teaching Vietnamese surgeons at Israel's Wolfson medical centre and sending Israeli experts to Vietnam to exchange experiences with Vietnamese colleagues give treatment to poor Vietnamese children. The Israel-based humanitarian organization has since 1996 conducted heart operations for 1,400 children in 24 countries and just recently successfully operated on a Vietnamese child with heart disease.

Should Israel publish an annual report on respect for Jewish rights worldwide?

2006-03-23T17:41:00.001+02:00

A very interesting idea posited by Michael Freund in an article titled 'Prove Israel cares about world Jewry' is for Israel to publish an annual report on respect for Jewish rights worlwide. The report would be modelled on US State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
Freund writes " As the state of the Jewish people, Israel has an obligation to stand up and defend Jewish rights wherever they are trampled, and to speak out forcefully on their behalf.
A simple, yet compelling, step that the government could take would be to compile and publish an annual report on respect for Jewish rights worldwide, modeled on the US State Department's Country Reports on Human Rights Practices.
For nearly three decades the human rights report issued by Washington has served to raise public awareness about the state of freedom worldwide, placing many governments under the glare of international scrutiny and criticism.
Of course, Israel does not have the diplomatic or economic clout of the US. But it most certainly has the moral standing and historic duty to press other countries when it comes to protecting the rights of Jews everywhere.
An annual Israeli government survey chronicling the state of Jewish rights worldwide would serve as an effective tool for monitoring and exposing abuses, as well as for pressuring other countries to take stronger steps to ensure the safety and freedom of their Jewish populations. It would underline and reaffirm Israel's commitment, centrality and responsibility for Jews around the globe and serve to focus the nation's attention on the fate of our brethren in the Diaspora.
So whatever new government may come to power after next week's elections, here's hoping it will devote a little more time and effort to looking out for our fellow Jews. That, after all, is our raison d'etre."

Israel's helping hand: Israel Providing Palestinians With Drugs Against Bird Flu

2006-03-23T17:41:00.000+02:00

Israeli Agriculture Minister Ze’ev Boim has ordered the transfer of 300,000 doses of Tamiflu, a drug to combat flu, to the Palestinian Authority (PA). The transfer of the drug doses will be handled by the IDF district coordinating office, via Erez Crossing in northern Gaza. Agriculture Ministry officials report the decision to transfer the drugs was made in response to an appeal from a World Health Organization official.Earlier on Thursday, it was reported that avian flu was detected in Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled Gaza, in the area of the former Jewish community of Netzarim.

London Mayor is an anti-Semitic fool

2006-03-23T16:59:00.000+02:00

London Mayor Ken Livingston has done it again, fresh from being censured and almost banned for making anti-Semitic and offensive comments to a Jewish reporter. This time he has told two Jewish Iranian developers to "go back where they came from."
Now on top of this Livingston has branded London Assembly member Brian Coleman "Dr. Goebbles." I say he is an anti-Semitic fool because firstly he only seems to make these kind of remarks to Jews and secondly he keeps on saying and doing the same things that got him into trouble last time.
On Tuesday, Livingstone said of the Reuben brothers, Jewish members of the syndicate building the 4 billion pound Olympic City in East London for the 2012 Olympic Games, "perhaps if they're not happy they can always go back [to their own country] and see if they can do better under the ayatollahs."
Asked by reporters to clarify his remarks, he said, "If they're not happy here, they can go back to Iran and try their luck with the ayatollahs, if they don't like the planning regime or my approach."
On Wednesday Livingston did not apologise, saying ""I would offer a complete apology to the people ofIran to the suggestion that they may be linked in any way to the Reuben brothers. I wasn't meaning to be offensive to the people of Iran."
I have to ask the question, why is Livingston only making these sort of comments to Jews? Would he have the nerve to say to a British Pakistani or African to go back to where they came from?
I doubt it as he knows that would be the quickest way to a removal from his position. It should not be any different for a Jew. Livingston has to go now!

Why has Israel gone from 'Hero' to 'Outcast'?

2006-03-23T10:42:00.000+02:00

Israel advocates have long been scratching their heads about this issue. How has Israel gone from a nation seen as the underdog, or a nation that has risen from the flames to world pariah and outcast?
Ron Fraser attempts to answer this question with a detailed overview of the history of the issue in an article titled 'Israel—From Hero to Outcast'.
Excerpts below...
The world sees the images, nightly, beamed in from Israel, while remaining largely ignorant to the effects of other major crises on the world scene which pale, by comparison, the skirmishes in Israel into relative insignificance. This is due in large part to the inability of news services to establish themselves within the extreme-level danger zones of these other largely closed societies. So images of the extreme gruesomeness of these major crises never reach the living rooms of the masses.But there is another element to this media distortion of the situation in Israel. It’s the element of often deliberately choreographed events on the ground, funneled through generally leftist reporters “dumped on the ground with little prior knowledge … forced to condense and ‘package’ terribly complex and crucial events,” which are then deliberately constructed to reflect the bias of media moguls by “producers sitting in carpeted, climate-controlled studios in New York and London” who are “making war their subject”
One of the more chilling of examples of the extent to which certain groups will go to block the truth given by Gutmann relates to reaction of the Palestinians to the 9/11 attacks on New York and Washington. Gutmann relates how Palestinians took to the streets to publicly celebrate al Qaeda’s attack, with an estimated 3,000 celebrating in Nablus alone. An AP photographer filmed the celebrating masses in that city and forwarded his footage to his bureau in Jerusalem. The footage never made it to air. “Before it hit the wire, the photographer called his bureau … [while] sitting in the Nablus governor’s office with guns to his head. The reporter lived, but the truth did not. The AP was told by the Palestinian Authority that it ‘could not guarantee their safety’ in the future unless the AP learned to be ‘more careful’”
Another case which Gutmann exposes is that of two Israeli reservists who made a wrong turn when driving home and found themselves arrested by Palestinian police. Taken to the local police station, the two were then mob-lynched, their bodies brutally battered and set on fire. Again, this instance was witnessed by two press representatives, the one having his camera torn from his grasp and smashed by the mob, the other managing to capture a now-infamous image of one of the murderers of the two Israelis holding his bloody hands aloft to the cheering of the crowd. Death threats from the Palestinians quickly followed to those who manned the bureau for which the cameraman operated. This forced the flight of the bureau chief for his own protection.

Peace trek prevented from entering Libya

2006-03-22T16:38:00.000+02:00

A peace trek that intends to break down barriers by sending Israelis, Arabs and many others on a gruelling desert trek has hit on a snag. The event is part of an effort by an organisation called 'Breaking the Ice' which is currently trekking from Jerusalem to Tripoli and has been a success so far as Arabs and Israelis have broken down barriers and got to know each other beyond the conflict.
However, there is one nation that is not entering into the spirit of the event. The group was refused entry into Libya due to the participation of three Israelis who were flatly denied entrance at the border.
The group of people from around the world, including four Americans, was welcome in Libya, a special representative of Libyan leader Mohmar Qadaffi told the mission as it stood on Libyan soil just five meters from the formal border crossing. But not the Israelis.
"Israel does not exist as a country, it is Palestine. We don't allow occupiers into our country," the official said. "Now I order you all to leave Libya."
Earlier, the group had decided it would not cross into Libya unless everyone was allowed in.

The Season's Top 10 Conspiracies in the Arab and Iranian Press

2006-03-22T16:24:00.000+02:00

Those involved in Israel advocacy are constantly reading about bizarre conspiracy theories, I have outlined some in previous postings. Steven Stalinsky of the New York Sun describes the 'Season's Top 10 Conspiracies in the Arab and Iranian Press'
Here are some Israeli and Jewish related conspiracy theories.....

10) "Israeli security organizations are in efforts to spread flagrancy and corruption among young [Iranians] to harm the Islamic establishment" and Israel has been behind the smuggling of liquor into Iran, the Islamic Republic News Agency quoted an Iranian police commander, Colonel Hossein Abdi, as saying on January 31. A Syrian government daily, Teshreen, on January 8 quoted the Iranian foreign minister condemning an unnamed Zionist company "that published certain cards insulting Muslims and their religious traditions in Iran."

7) An article in the Egyptian government Al-Ahram Weekly of March 2-8 by Khaled Amayrch reported on Israeli religious political party platforms for dealing with the Palestinian Arabs: "enslavement whereby non-Jews living under Jewish law are forced to become 'water carries and wood hewers,' expulsion, or outright extermination."

4) The Mossad has planned terror attacks in Lebanon, the January 31 edition of Teshreen quoted President Lahoud of Lebanon as saying, while a Qatari daily, Al-Raia, on January 26 quoted a former Syrian defense minister, Mustafa Tlas, as saying Israel assassinated a former Lebanese prime minister, Rafik Hariri.

2) "The Jewish Walt Disney Company" created the Tom and Jerry cartoon to improve the image of Jews, because Jews were called "Dirty Mice" in Europe, an Iranian government adviser, Hasan Bolkhari, said February 19 on Iranian TV Channel 4.

1) Israel created the avian flu virus in order to damage "genes carried only by Arabs," a January 31 column by Abd Al-Rahman Ghunwym in a Syrian government daily, Al-Thawra, said. Another possibility given was that the virus was created to attack "the yellow race - especially in China and Vietnam" that are "rising powers" threatening "American hegemony over the world."

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach

2006-03-21T12:02:00.000+02:00

Taking the old adage, the Foreign Ministry has been sending leading Israeli chefs on missions around the world in a bid to boost the country's international image.
"The Ministry, which is charged with exporting Israeli culture to the world, views food as another aspect of art that presents Israel beyond the conflict," said Nurit Tinari-Modai, the Foreign Ministry's cultural cooperation director.
Under the initiative, the Ministry announces an "Israeli food festival" and invites leading locals across the world to a gourmet meal at the Israeli ambassador's house or at a leading restaurant or hotel. Meanwhile, leading Israeli chefs brought from Israel are tasked with cooking for the guests.
Such events enjoy media attention, and on some occasion Israeli chefs are interviewed or make a guest appearance on a local cooking show. As a result, Israel receives some positive press amid the difficult images regularly aired about the region.
"Our ambassador in Portugal told me he has been fighting the media in order to get several positive lines about Israel into the newspapers, while we had whole pages dedicated to us," chef Shalom Kadosh says proudly.
Chef Nir Tzuk, who cooked meals in Kazakhstan over the course of a week, says "there's a strong desire to promote Israeli products, be it our olive oil or our wines."
"I feel we can touch many audiences through food," he says. "For most people Israel is a rather vague concept, and the food allows me to preset Israel as a fashionable place with gourmet food," he says. "The moment people taste Israeli wines and eat delicious, fun food in a cool atmosphere, they don't even think about asking about terror attacks."

Israeli politics and the environment

2006-03-21T09:24:00.000+02:00

We who came to live in the Land of Israel really should take better care of our land. The observant amongst us are constantly praying about the Land of Israel, the secular have written poetry about its beauty and most Israelis love nothing better than a 'Tiyul' (a walk in nature or hike). There are numerous Israeli environmental groups, Israel Union for Environmental Defence, The Arava Institute for Environmental Studies, Society for the Protection of Nature in Israel and many others. So why is it that we don't seem to have factor enironmental issues in to our voting choice?
Micael Cohen asks why none of the main political parties is addressing the green issue in an article 'The environment and Israel's politics'
Below are some excerpts...
Many Israelis are focused on the March 28 elections, but one wonders how aware they are that in the campaign itself environmental issues have largely been ignored.
"None of the candidates at the head of the major parties has made a reasoned and professional announcement on environmental matters," says Alona Sheafer-Karo, director of the environmental umbrella organization Life & Environment.
Such a state of affairs is appalling. For too long the Jewish value of caring for the environment has, when it comes to the Land of Israel, been put on the back burner as we wait for the conflict between Israel and her neighbors to finish. This is the reason for the formation of the Green Zionist Alliance. We can nolonger afford to allow environmental concerns to be lost in the shuffle of the other important issues.
Paraphrasing the Zionist philosopher Ahad Ha'am, one might say, "More than the Jews have kept the Land of Israel, the Land of Israel has kept the Jews."
One of our most important decisions, made at the moment we were expelled from the land, was to keep our connection to the land strong. The Romans knew this when, hoping to sever that connection, they changed the name of the land from Israel to Palestine.
We made the connection strong by making it tangible, real and full of meaning. It is not surprising that when the Dalai Lama asked to be taught the secret of our maintaining our identity over thousands of years of exile - anticipating that the Tibetan exile will be long as well - the rabbis and teachers he met told him: Maintain a real connection with your land.

Bird Flu: Jewish killer or killer of Jews?

2006-03-21T09:00:00.000+02:00

The thing with paranoia and conspiracy theories is that they rarely make sense, anti-Semitism is a good example of this. In history the Jews have been accused of everything and its opposite.
Jews are too capitalist, Jews are too communist.
Jews mix in too well, Jews don't mix at all.
Jews are rich, Jews are poor.
Lately we have been hearing some extremely bizarre statements from the Arab world surrounding bird flu. Firstly, last month the state-run Syrian daily al-Thawra lately hinted that Israel developed the bird flu virus to harm the genes of its Arab neighbors.
An article published by the newspaper argues that Israel spread the virus in the Far East to mislead the world.
The newspaper backed its suspicions by citing a 1998 report in the Sunday Times that Israel is developing a biological Âethnic bombÂ that would kill Arabs and not Jews.
According to the Times, Israeli scientists are trying to identify genes characteristic to Arabs and then develop viruses that attack these genes. The newspaper said the program is being carried out at the Institute for Biological Research in Nes Tsiona near Tel Aviv.

Then the bird flu virus found in Israel last week was sent by Allah to punish the Jews for being "the worst of humanity" and is the beginning of the outbreak of other diseases meant to destroy the Jewish state within the next 20 years, a Gaza preacher said at mosque services this weekend.
Sheikh Abu Muhammed, an imam at the popular Al-Tadwa mosque in Beit Lahia north of Gaza City, went on to ask Muslims at his Friday night
sermon to pray for the sexual organs of Jews to "dry out" so they cannot reproduce, a Palestinian in attendance at the mosque services said.
"Praise Allah the bird flu has hit the Jews. It came because of their sins against the Palestinians; because they are the most cruel enemy of humanity; because they are themselves the enemy of humanity; because they don't believe in Allah; because they falsify the book of Allah; because they cheated the prophet Muhammed; and because they cheated Allah and even their own prophet, Moses," Sheikh Muhammed was quoted as saying.
The sad fact is that there are people whbelieveve either or both of these stories. Anti-Semitism seems to have no boundaries, not least sensical and logical.

"An infection called International Jewry"

2006-03-20T16:47:00.000+02:00

There have been many calls recently from various quarters not to take Iran so seriously. The theory is that it is all bluster and rhetoric. Firstly, let us say as Jews we have heard that excuse too many times in our history and sadly believed it. Secondly, there is something strange in the obsession Iran has with Israel and Jews.
A good opinion piece in the New York Times called 'The Ghost of Purim Past' by Jeffrey Goldberg shows that this is no mere rhetoric. Also, interestingly and contrary to what many think, Iran ties Jews, Zionists and Israelis altogether.
Three years ago, while visiting Tehran, I was introduced to a charmless man named Muhammad Ali Samadi, who, I was told, would parse for me the Iranian theocracy's peculiar understanding of Judaism and Zionism. Mr. Samadi said that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, held no brief for anti-Semitism. Then, a moment later, he deployed an epidemiological metaphor to explain the role of Jews in history. "There are always infections and diseases in man," he said. "In the world there is an infection called international Jewry."
A year later, Mr. Samadi became the spokesman for the Esteshadion, or Seekers of Martyrdom, a group that has as its mission the training of young Iranians to kill Salman Rushdie, commit acts of suicide terrorism against Americans in Iraq and blow up Jews everywhere. "The Zionists should know that they aren't safe so long as they are an affront to God," he said. I asked him if, by "Zionists," he meant Israelis or, more generally, Jews. "Jews, Zionists, Israelis," he said, only semi-ambiguously.
I was not visiting Iran in order to collect the anti-Semitic leavings of second-tier terrorists, though I did buy a knapsack's worth of Jew-obsessed pamphlets and books, including a copy of "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion" in Persian. I was in Iran mainly to cross over into Iraq, whose dictator was about to be deposed by the United States Army. Saddam Hussein had once promised to "make fire burn half of Israel" Â and he tried, ineffectually, to do so in the 1991 gulf war.
The terminology of disease control has now thoroughly infiltrated anti-Semitic discourse in the Middle East. Four years ago, a Hezbollah leader in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley named Hussein Haj Hassan told me that Jews function "in a way that lets them act as parasites in the nations that give them shelter." The leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad speak in much the same manner.
One worries about overreacting, but such language echoes the passage of "Mein Kampf" in which the Austrian Haman compares the Jew to "a sponger who like a noxious bacillus keeps spreading as soon as a favorable medium invites him."
Nevertheless, a great many people, in Iran and beyond, believe that the Jewish state is a cancer, and it is foolish to believe that this is an idea without consequences. As one Islamic Jihad leader told me not long ago, "Everyone knows that the cure for cancer is radiation."

Schoolbooks have to change for any future peace

2006-03-20T15:21:00.000+02:00

Future peace between Israel and the Palestinians has to rely heavily on education. The kids of tomorrow will be the decision makers of tomorrow and we have to look at what they are learning. A recent book called 'Three Wishes' interviewed Israeli and Palestinian children to ask them what they hoped for. While the Israeli children talk about peace and humanity some of the Palestinian children dream of becoming suicide bombers and venting hatred.
One Palestinian girl, Wafa, 12 twelve years old said “Killing an Israeli will make me feel glad. It will make me feel strong."
Another Palestinian girl, Maryam, 11, said “there are women martyrs who do the suicide bombings. They are very brave… I have only one wish. I would like to go to heaven. Maybe in heaven there is happiness after we die. Maybe then.”
Salam, the 12-year-old sister of suicide bomber Aayat Al-Akhras, who killed herself, a security guard and 17-year-old Rachel Levy at a Jerusalem market, said she would have made her sister a special breakfast on the day of her attack, had she known about it.
“I don’t think it would hurt if I blew myself up. I don’t think it hurt my sister. I think she was very brave, not scared at all. I think she was probably very happy,” Salam said.
These comments should come as no surprise to someone familiar with the Palestinian educational system. Whether on TV, radio or in the classroom the Palestinian child is constantly bombarded with talk of martyrdom, death and hatred. On this blog I have detailed an internet site by Hamas designed for children.
A report from the Intelligence and Terrorism Information Center of Tel Aviv's Center for Special Studies (CSS) which examines new Palestinian fifth and tenth grade Palestinian school textbooks shows that the Palestinian Authority (PA) is educating Palestinian youth for conflict with an Israel it does not accept. The CSS examined 29 new textbooks, published by the PA Education Ministry for the 2004-2005 school year, which are still in use, examining their content on issues related to Jews, Judaism and Israel. The findings of the review of that year's books, compared to books from previous years, indicated a consistently hostile attitude. In particular, the CSS made the following findings:
Israel is rarely mentioned by name in the textbooks examined and then only in some negative context;
A fifth grade geography textbook included a 'Political Map of the Arab homeland' on which Israel did not appear;
The signed agreements between Israel and the PA under the Oslo peace process are not mentioned, let alone explained;
Israeli cities and towns, wherever they may be, are described as "settlements";
World War Two is covered but no mention is made of the Holocaust;
The history of biblical times is falsified, the Jewish historical experience is not discussed and Israel's ancient inhabitants are described as Arab peoples; and
The anti-Semitic forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, is cited, reiterating anti-Semitic myths on the Jews' intention to take over the entire world.

"How I Learned to Love the Wall"

2006-03-19T13:30:00.000+02:00

The following is a fair article by Irshad Manji titled 'How I Learned to Love the Wall'. This article is swimming in a sea of articles which only talk about the barrier and its hardships on Palestinians. While not dismissing the Palestinian hardships, Manji gives the barrier context and gives both sides. Like all people of good faith, she looks forward to a day when there will be no need for a barrier, until is reconciled to it.
Below are excerpts...
"this barrier, although built by Mr. Sharon, was birthed by "shaheeds," suicide bombers whom Palestinian leaders have glorified as martyrs. Qassam missiles can kill two or three people at a time. Suicide bombers lay waste to many more. Since the barrier went up, suicide attacks have plunged, which means innocent Arab lives have been spared along with Jewish ones. Does a concrete effort to save civilian lives justify the hardship posed by this structure? The humanitarian in me bristles, but ultimately answers yes.
That's not to deny or even diminish Arab pain. I had to twist myself like an amateur gymnast when I helped a Palestinian woman carry her grocery bags through a gap in the wall (such gaps, closely watched by Israeli soldiers, do exist). It made me wonder how much more difficult the obstacle course must be for people twice my age, who must travel to one of the wider official checkpoints nearby.
For all the closings, however, Israel is open enough to tolerate lawsuits by civil society groups who despise every mile of the barrier. Mr. Sharon himself agreed to reroute sections of it when the Israel High Court ruled in favor of the complainants. Where else in the Middle East can Arabs and Jews work together so visibly to contest, and change, state policies?
I reflected on this question as I observed an Israeli Army jeep patrol the gap in Abu Dis. The vehicle was crammed with soldiers who, in turn, observed me filming the anti-Israel graffiti scrawled by Western activists — "Scotland hates the blood-sucking Zionists!" I turned my video camera on the soldiers. Nobody ordered me to shut it off or show the tape. My Arab taxi driver stood by, unprotected by a diplomatic license plate or press banner.
Like all Muslims, I look forward to the day when neither the jeep nor the wall is in Abu Dis. So will we tell the self-appointed martyrs of Islam that the people — not just Arabs, but Arabs and Jews — "are one"? That before the barrier, there was the bomber? And that the barrier can be dismantled, but the bomber's victims are gone forever?

Dance Magazine boycotts Israel, justifies terror

2006-03-19T11:52:00.000+02:00

A new more sinister type of boycott is emerging against Israel, an unofficial boycott of everything Israeli bred from absolute ignorance. The latest case is that of a British-based dance magazine called 'Dance Europe' which has recently turned down an article about an Israel dance company.
The editor, Emma Manning said in response to a question as to why she boycotted Israel, “as an editor, I am entitled to choose what to print. It is my prerogative.” Head of advertising Naresh Kaul was more forthcoming saying: “We are opposed to the occupation. If any company in Israel co-operates with us by adding a disclaimer saying it is opposed to the occupation, settlements and everything else, we will co-operate with them.”The website of the 17,500 circulation magazine includes a link to the website of the Palestine El-Funoun Popular Dance Troupe. Asked why the Palestinian company was not required to provide a disclaimer against suicide bombings, Mr Kaul responded: “There’s a reason for people to become suicide bombers. Their land has been occupied.”
Two points stand out here as totally outrageous. Firstly, what does Ms Manning mean by "everything else", she has mentioned the occupation and the settlements. Could she mean Israel itself? It seems like she obviously has a big problem with Israel, so it is not such a large stretch to say.
Secondly, Mr Kraul openly condones suicide bombing and feels no particular problem in making such a statement. The sad fact is it is becoming far too de rigeur to make such statements and get away with it. Many like Kraul may say they are not condoning or justifying terrorism, but they 'understand' it. To me that is just the same.

A truly remarkable story

2006-03-19T10:11:00.000+02:00

The following is part of an amzing story written by Barbara Sofer in the Jerusalem Post....
Shoshana Greenbaum, 31, taught elementary school in Long Beach, New York. As part of her master's program, the dark-haired, pretty teacher was offered an all-expenses-paid summer program in Israel. She and her husband, Steven Greenbaum, were delighted. Steven accompanied her to Israel for four weeks, and then returned to his job. The idyllic summer in Jerusalem brought an additional cause for joy: Shoshana and Steven were expecting their first child.
On the Thursday morning after he'd returned to their home in Passaic, New Jersey, Shoshana phoned Steven, missing him, happily anticipating their reunion. A friend invited her for lunch, but Shoshana didn't want to trouble anyone. She'd just grab a slice of pizza after classes. So she stopped at the corner of King George Avenue and Jaffa Road on the afternoon of August 9, 2001, just before a Palestinian with a guitar case packed with explosives and nails entered the Sbarro pizza restaurant. The terrorist murdered Shoshana and 14 others.
May her memory be for a blessing, we say in our Jewish tradition. But how do you make sure that memory is a blessing?
Greenbaum gathered friends and acquaintances to brainstorm. They came up with a modest idea: Let's exchange stories of kindness. Everyone could use a daily dose of kindness. These wouldn't be grandiose heroic deeds like leaping into a fire to save a child or like Bill Gates donating millions of dollars to eradicate malaria, but reports of letting someone go ahead of you in a bank line, returning a lost notebook, or surprising a plumber by offering a compliment for arriving on time.Not headline-catching enough for the media, the stories could circulate in e-mail messages. At first there were a dozen or so participants, but within the first two months the numbers grew to 300. He eventually set up two organizations - two organizations in Shoshana's memory - a Jewish one called "A Tradition Of Kindness" and a general one called "Partners In Kindness."
Greenbaum wanted to encourage people everywhere to do kindnesses each day.One reader wrote about buying a beggar a small bottle of water, and another about sharing a Metrocard so that someone could get to a parade. One writer recalled the joy of filling a neighbor's refrigerator with food before they returned from vacation, and another recalled a moment from the past when he gave his socks to a cold, barefoot Vietnam War veteran.Today Greenbaum has 40,000 subscribers, with several hundred new subscribers every week to his daily doses of kindness. His own Web site has become a springboard for other Web sites promulgating niceness. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has started a kindness public-awareness campaign among employees. He speaks in New York City schools and to groups.
THIS WEEK, Greenbaum was delighted with a story of someone in Israel who was giving bus drivers Purim food gifts to thank them for providing transportation on a day that so many other Israelis enjoyed as a holiday.
"This is just the beginning," Greenbaum promised by phone from his New York office.
The stories, he said, remind readers of experiencing or witnessing kindness.
"When they relive that feeling, remembering kind deeds, they're infused with a sense of gratitude, which is a tremendously spiritual experience. Generating this feeling is what being Jewish means to me."
Steven Greenbaum knew he could have drawn a crowd by spewing anger and hatred. Who could have blamed him? "But that's not the way I look at our purpose in this world," he said. "We're supposed to bring light to the world, not allow ourselves to become the tools of darkness."
Purim, named for a lottery to choose a day of destruction and not Redemption, marks one of the darkest moments of Jewish history. Redemption comes not only with dramatic acts of bravery, but also with simple kindnesses, such as giving credit to the doer of a worthy act. It ends with a promise of light and joy and gladness.
If Steven Greenbaum is right, we might just get there, one kindness at a time.
Greenbaum's Web sites are: http://www.traditionofkindness.org/ and http://www.partnersinkindness.org

Sumo and Wrestling are coming to Israel

2006-03-19T09:58:00.000+02:00

Part of the everyday normality in Israel is that we should be just as quirky, strange and fascinated by bizarre things as any other people.
Firstly, Sumo is coming to Israel soon. Sumo's Sadogatake Stable, to which popular wrestler Kotooshu belongs, will perform in Israel in June, the first such event in the Middle East, officials of the Israeli Embassy in Japan said.
Sumo is becoming popular in Israel, and the embassy asked the Sadogatake Stable to visit Israel, saying it would do much to promote the reputation of Japan. The stable readily accepted the invitation.
During the event slated for mid-June in Tel Aviv, more than 10 sumo wrestlers from the Sadogatake Stable will compete. They are also expected to meet with their Israeli counterparts.
I'd love to know who the "Israeli counterparts" are. I've seen some fat people in Israel, but never heard of an Israeli Sumo wrestler.
Secondly, the more bizarre is the WWE is coming to town. Something called 'Smackdown' is coming to Tel Aviv in the summer.
So it is official, Israel has Sumo wrestlers and WWE wrestling fans......we are a normal country!?!?!

The black hats and beard syndrome

2006-03-19T09:32:00.000+02:00

Has anyone noticed that whenever there is a photo of Israeli society, or a clip on the news showing Israelis going about their daily routine there is almost always a black hat and a beard on the men. People who have never been to Israel might believe that the majority of people in Israel are black hatted and bearded. This obviously isn't true.
Linda Grant came to Israel to write a book called 'The People on the Street: A Writer's View of Israel'. She writes a good article in The Guardian about how most journalists are guilty of showing Israel through the prism of Jerusalem and are keen to show only a certain representation of Israel.
Grant writes that in her book "I lamented the habit of foreign correspondents of heading straight from the airport to Jerusalem......It struck me that one has as much chance of comprehending what is going to be the outcome of this election by illustrating it with pictures of bearded black-hatted Jerusalemites, as one would understand the riots in the French banlieu with photographs of men with berets and baguettes under their arm, cycling past the Eiffel Tower."
Israel is trying to change these images of Israel, especially for tourism purposes.
It is a good thing to look out for next time. See how regular Israelis are portrayed on TV and in the papers and online.

Jimmy Carter and UN Security Council Resolution 242

2006-03-19T08:49:00.000+02:00

Regular readers will be familiar with my disdain for former US President Jimmy Carter. There really seems no end to his nonsense. Carter has been voted the most unpopular ex-President, Dr. James Laney of Emory University said "I mean, it wasn't just that he was unpopular. People avoided him... he was a loser." Yet today, the same man is an admired figure in America and around the world, an elder statesman whose name is synonymous with honesty, integrity, and service to others. For some reason his words have resonance, I would love to know why.
Carter's latest nonsense is titled 'Colonization of Palestine precludes peace', where Carter claims that an absence of peace has been purely the fault of the Israelis. Of course Carter is allowed to voice his opinion, but when his opinion becomes intertwined with faulty facts we must be concerned.
The opening paragraph says it all and sets the tone, Carter recants "For more than a quarter century, Israeli policy has been in conflict with that of the United States and the international community. Israel's occupation of Palestine has obstructed a comprehensive peace agreement in the Holy Land, regardless of whether Palestinians had no formalized government, one headed by Yasser Arafat or Mahmoud Abbas, or with Abbas as president and Hamas controlling the parliament and cabinet."
Carter then says "universally adopted UN Resolution 242 has mandated Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories."
Now lets take that statement apart.......
The most consistent rejection of Resolution 242 came from the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), which from its inception in 1964 refused a peaceful settlement with Israel.
Now for a list of all those who disagree with Carter's interpretation of UN Security Council Resolution.
1) Arthur J. Goldberg, U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations (1965-1967)- "the resolution speaks of withdrawal from occupied territories, without defining the extent of withdrawal." ("The Meaning of 242", June 10, 1977)

2) Lord Caradon, author of the draft resolution that was adopted as U.N. Resolution 242, U.K. Ambassador to the United Nations (1964-1970)- ""We didn't say there should be a withdrawal to the '67 line; we did not put the 'the' in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately." (MacNeil/Lehrer Report - March 30, 1978)

3) Eugene V. Rostow, U.S. Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs (1966-1969)- "It is, therefore, not legally possible to assert that the provision requires Israeli withdrawal from all the territories now occupied under the cease-fire resolutions to the Armistice Demarcation lines." (American Journal of International Law, Volume 64, September 1970, p. 69)
"The USSR and the Arabs supported a draft demanding a withdrawal to the 1967 Lines. The US, Canada and most of West Europe and Latin America supported the draft which was eventually approved by the UN Security Council." (American Society of International Law - 1970)

4) The Russian delegate Vasily Kuznetsov acknowledged before the adoption of Resolution 242- "there is certainly much leeway for different interpretations which retain for Israel the right to establish new boundaries and to withdraw its troops only as far as the lines which it judges convenient."

5) The Brazilian delegate Geraldo de Carvalho Silos, told the Security Council after 242's adoption- "We keep constantly in mind that a just and lasting peace in the Middle East has necessarily to be based on secure, permanent boundaries freely agreed upon and negotiated by the neighbouring States."

6) George Brown, British Foreign Secretary in 1967 commented- "I have been asked over and over again to clarify, modify or improve the wording, but I do not intend to do that. The phrasing of the Resolution was very carefully worked out, and it was a difficult and complicated exercise to get it accepted by the UN Security Council. I formulated the Security Council Resolution. Before we submitted it to the Council, we showed it to Arab leaders. The proposal said 'Israel will withdraw from territories that were occupied', and not from 'the' territories, which means that Israel will not withdraw from all the territories." (The Jerusalem Post, 23.1.70)

7) Lyndon B. Johnson, U.S. President (1963-1968)- "We are not the ones to say where other nations should draw lines between them that will assure each the greatest security. It is clear, however, that a return to the situation of June 4, 1967 will not bring peace." (September 10, 1968)

So there we have Carter's "universally adopted UN Resolution 242 has mandated Israel's withdrawal from the occupied territories." Quite universally un-mandated for Israel to withdraw from the occupied territories.
You will find lower in the blog that the BBC Board of Governors has actually reprimanded its own online news service for saying exactly what Carter has repeated in his 'opinion' piece.
There is so much more that is faulty with Carter's article, but time and space does not permit me to rip every falsity that is spun from Carter's pen.

Congratulations to Michael

2006-03-19T07:56:00.000+02:00

On behalf of the whole KICIsrael team and readers I would like to wish Michael and his wife Lisa, a Mazal Tov on the birth of a son.

“TIME WE STARTED TO STICK UP FOR ISRAEL”

2006-03-17T11:15:00.000+02:00

This is one of the best articles I have read in a long time, from Virginia Blackburn of the Daily Express (UK). I have reprinted it in full below....
Just what has the world got against Israel? Possibly the most maligned country on the planet is in the news again: this time round it’s being castigated for the capture of Ahmed Saadat. Saadat, a Palestinian terrorist who is accused of ordering the assassination of the Israeli tourism minister Rehavam Zeevi in 2001, was being held in a Palestinian prison in Jericho.
Even before the election of the Hamas government, concerns were being voiced over the security of the jail. Under the new government and the new president, Mahmoud Abbas, it looked almost certain that he would be set free. So Israel was forced to storm the prison and capture Saadat, who will now face trial.
But does the world thank Israel for capturing a known terrorist and bringing him to justice? No, it does not. Instead, you’d have thought Israel itself was in the wrong.
There’s the usual tutting about heavy handedness and upsetting the rest of the Middle East, much of which, if truth be told, wants to see not only Israel but also the West smashed to smithereens.
Not that you would gather that listening to some people, especially those on the Left: in their eyes, nothing Israel does can ever be right. In a moment of ever greater than usual stupidity, [senior British politician] Clare Short once compared Israel to Saudi Arabia on human rights grounds. As a woman, in which of the two countries do you think she’d prefer to live?
Why do people think like this? Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and the only true friend of the West. Some of the Arab states may present themselves as Western allies but that is only because they want Western money for their oil.
Saudi Arabia may have strong trading links with the UK and the US but it’s an open secret that massively anti-Western propaganda is rife in that country. If you doubt this, remember that the majority of the September 11 hijackers were Saudis, as is Osama Bin Laden. Some friends to the west.
Yet Saudi Arabia doesn’t get an ounce of the vitriol directed towards it that Israel has to take. Israel has had to deal with suicide bombers for years now and has been routinely denounced for its reaction – yet look what happens on the one and only occasion Britain has had to deal with suicide bombers to date: an innocent man is shot dead.
The police have rightly been castigated for this but can you imagine living in a country where suicide bombers are a part of the fabric of daily life? Can you imagine the fear and mistrust this must breed among people who, every day, must mingle with potential murderers in the street?
This is what Israel has had to deal with and have we been sympathetic? Have we hell. The left even sided with the bombers until they got active on these shores, too.
The reason for this appalling attitude, alas, is because Israel is a Jewish state. Anti-Semitism is as strong as it ever has been: it’s just that, after the events of 60 years ago, most anti-Semites have been shamed into shutting up. So they take out their disgusting little prejudices by blaming Israel for all the world’s problems instead.
They should wise up. Israel has, more than once, saved our ungrateful necks. It is Israel that stopped Iraq from becoming a nuclear power by bombing its armaments factories, and the way things are going, it looks as if it may do the same to Iran, too.
And will it be praised by a world it has made safer? You guess.

Usual UN bashing of Israel

2006-03-16T18:31:00.000+02:00

To regular Israel advocates, Israel bashing at the UN is nothing new. Pretty much since the international body was formed the UN has singled out Israel for undue criticism, u nfair treatment, wiping Israel off the map and has even been a haven for anti-Semitism.
A United Nations body dealing with women's rights has singled out Israel for its treatment of Palestinian women, ignoring other U.N. member states with questionable records on women's rights.The Commission on the Status of Women, which is part of the U.N.'s Economic and Social Council, suspended its 50th session last week with a draft resolution addressing five subjects, including the situation of Palestinian women in relation to Israel.The resolution called for "tangible improvement" in living conditions faced by Palestinian women and their families; and it said the Israeli "occupation" is a major obstacle to the advancement and self-reliance of Palestinian women.The resolution called on Israel to "facilitate the return of all refugees and displace Palestinian women and children to their homes and properties."
Professor Anne Bayefsky, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a U.S.-based public policy research organization, noted that out of the 191 U.N. member states, only Israel was criticized for allegedly abusing women's rights."There was no resolution on Saudi Arabia and the million female migrant workers living in slave-like conditions there," Bayefsky said. Nor was there any mention of Jordan, home to "honor killings," where females are murdered for various transgressions to protect the family's name.Nothing was said about China, land of forced abortions and sterilizations, Bayefsky said. "Nothing on Mali's appalling record on female genital mutilation. No mention of Palestinian women who volunteer to be suicide bombers in order to kill Jews. And of course, no mention of the Israeli women and girls who are their victims," Bayefsky wrote in comments on her "Eye on the UN" website."The Commission on the Status of Women makes it abundantly clear that the victims of the U.N.'s obsession with demonizing the Jewish state go far beyond Israelis. They are the billions of women around the world who cannot garner the attention of this organization because it is otherwise occupied," Bayefsky said.

Take some responsibility, Israel's Foreign Minister tells the Palestinians

2006-03-16T18:18:00.000+02:00

I have to admit I like new Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni. She seems very put together, extremely well informed and perhaps unusually for an Israeli government minister doesn't go looking for sound-bites to make the news.
In response to the Palestinians blaming Israel for the Jericho raid, Livni was straight to the point. The classic Palestinian concept is blaming Israel," she said. "The Brits warned they were about to leave (the prison) and informed him (Abbas) about it, but he did nothing. On the deciding date he found himself in Vienna, called on the international community to intervene, and blamed Israel."
"The person responsible for Abu Mazen's (Abbas) status is Abu Mazen himself," Livni said. "His position is not only dependent on Israel. His status hinges on his deeds, or failures."
Livni is correct, for too long if something goes wrong in the PA, the reflex reaction is to blame Israel, even when Israel is not at all related. Their is such a culture of victimhood amongst certain Palestinians that they believe every single occurrence in the PA is a result of Israel.
If the Palestinians want their own state one day they have to resist the temptation to build it with a chip on its shoulder. Israel was born out of the one of the worst atrocities in human memory, but Israel never blamed Europe every time something went wrong.

Another UN body to bash Israel with

2006-03-16T09:39:00.000+02:00

Yesterday a new UN human rights body was established. The new UN Human Rights Council will replace the controversial Human Rights Commission. Almost every single nation voted for the changes that were made, and only four nations stood against it. Israel and the United States were two of them.
The US has argu ed that right abusers could still be elected to the new body under the proposed rules. World leaders at September's UN summit decided to create a new council to replace the commission, which has been criticized for allowing some of the worst rights-offending countries to use their membership to protect one another from condemnation. In recent years, members have included Sudan, Libya, Zimbabwe and Cuba.
The Americans want members of the council to be elected by a two-thirds vote, not the simple majority now called for, to help keep rights abusers out. They also want the text to explicitly bar any nation from joining the council if it is under sanction by the United Nations. The current draft says only that such measures would be taken into account when deciding membership.
Foreign Ministry spokesman Mark Regev explained Israel's opposition to the new proposal saying that UN bodies designed to deal with human rights have, over the years, become "vehicles for singling out Israel, and for Israel bashing."
Regev said that although Israel welcomed the pursuit of a new human rights framework at the UN, it feels that "some of the problems in the previous structure are present in the current structure as well. We are concerned that it could still be manipulated to advance an extremist anti-Israel agenda, instead of promoting human rights."
Will the Human Rights Council be any better than the Human Rights Commission? Human rights groups had long been critical of the Commission for not dealing with some of the most egregious human rights abuses around the world. With members such as Cuba, Sudan, Syria and China, and under the Chairmanship of Libya, Human Rights Watch referred to the commission as an "abusers club" of governments who are hostile to human rights.
The Commi ssion on Human Rights routinely adopted totally disproportionate resolutions concerning Israel. Of all condemnations of this agency, 26 percent refer to Israel alone, while rogue states such as Syria and Libya were never criticized. The biggest losers again stand to be the people whose human rights are really being affected. If the new body gets bogged down in the politicisation of constantly attacking Israel, then people will suffer who look to the UN for help.
It is completely understandable that Israel and the US should have a problem with this new body with memories of the old commission fresh in their minds. The United States was kicked off the U.N. Commission for Human Rights in May 2001, despite being one of the most outspoken advocates for human rights and a founding member of the Commission. It was replaced by Sierra Leone and the Sudan, both of which have records of abuses of human rights, including slavery and the forced use of children as soldiers.
Let us hope there is going to be change and the new UN Human Rights Council really does look at the true human rights abusers in this world. I would like to be optimistic that it will, but I doubt it.

Israel shows once again that justice must prevail

2006-03-15T20:11:00.000+02:00

Although not quite in the same league, many people have suggested yesterday's raid on the Jericho prison can be talked about in the same breath as the daring raid on Entebbe and Israel's bombing of the Iraqi nuclear facility at Osirak in 1981.
However, like those two events Israel did what it felt was necessary regardless of world opinion. Israel has long been in a state of stupor where every Israeli move has to be seen in the context of world opinion. Israel has deliberately stayed her hand many times in recent history when a reaction was necessary to mollify terrorism or violence meted out to its citizens. Many people talk of the might of Israel's military, so they must know that the IDF does not even use a small fragment of its firepower because it understandably and morally does not want to kill innocents. A few years ago we had an almost farcical scene of one of the most technologically advanced armies in the world going house to house in an anti-terrorism operation using tactics more reminiscent of decades ago. This was all because Israel did not want to shed innocent blood so did not fire on targets from the air or from a safe distance. Because of this tens of Israeli soldiers lost their lives, when only double that number of Palestinian terrorists were killed.
So to yesterday, Israel saw a situation that was intolerable and decided to act, world condemnation be damned.
Speaking during a visit to the destroyed jail, Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas said the raid was a blow to the Palestinian Authority.
"What happened is an ugly crime which cannot be forgiven and a humiliation for the Palestinian people and a violation of all the agreements. Their arrest by Israel is illegal," Palestinian MrAbbas said, referring to Saadat and other militants detained.
Of course none of this would have been necessary if the PA Chairman had not confirmed the intention of Hamas to release these prisoners - and his intention to do nothing about it - by stating that he should not be held responsible for the result.
The whole situation of these prisoners was ridiculous from the start (timeline) with an Israeli government minister gunned down in a hotel. The prisoners were convicted by a 'Kangaroo court' only because of international pressure mounting on the Palestinians to act.
This latest Israeli act has righted those wrongs. While the UK, Belgium and many other nations reserve the right to try Israeli leaders and soldiers who have never perpetrated a crime against anyone of that country, Palestinians who murdered a member of the Israeli government were never going to face Israeli justice.
Although a long way from the daring of Entebbe and Osirak, yesterday's mission went a long way in telling the world that Israeli can mean business again, especially when it means justice for one of its slain.
Now the Israeli Prime Minister has stated that the prisoners will finally face an Israeli court.

Jewish Footballers must wear Kippot (skullcaps)

2006-03-15T18:23:00.000+02:00

Following on from a posting as to whether the Israel national football team should play on Shabbat, a Jewish football league in the UK has gone one step further.
Jewish footballers could be required to wear skullcaps during all competitive Maccabi league matches from next season as league chiefs bid to improve player behaviour. The Maccabi League is a Jewish footballers league, where every sunday hundreds of Jews play in a competitive league, sometimes too competitive. Recently there have been a lot of complaints of foul play and violence.
Officials at the Maccabi Southern Football League admit that incidents of scuffles between players and dissent towards referees has become an increasing problem during games.
But they believe that the proposed “Knock it on the Head” scheme, which will require all MSFL players to wear official kippot or face fines and suspensions, will inspire teams to treat opponents in a more considerate manner.Maccabi GB’s Stuart Lustigman said: “Too often we have received complaints from referees about player behaviour and the time has come for something had to be done.“We don’t expect this to be popular with all our players but we really feel this will help return the league to its founding principle of promoting strong Jewish values among our young people.”Following a trial match on Sunday afternoon between London Maccabi Lions A and Marshside and Glenthorne, league chiefs are set to vote on whether to introduce the scheme at the annual general meeting in June.Lustigman said: “First of all, we wanted to see how the players would react to the idea. But we’re also trying to decide whether to go with a traditional skullcap, held on by hairclips, or a more sporty number attached to a waterproof chin strap.”Lions joint-manager Ben Winston, whose team ran out 3-0 winners, said: “I’ll be honest, there were mixed reactions from the players but the game was certainly played in a great spirit and if anything the kippot improved our play. At times it felt like there was a twelfth man out there.”

Campaign on Behalf of Jews From Arab Lands

2006-03-15T17:02:00.000+02:00

For many in the world Israel is made up of Jews from POlnad, Russia, Germany and the like. The fact is that there are just as many Jews in Israel formerly from Arab or Muslim countries. These Jews fled or were expelled from their homes shortly after the State of Israel came into being. Some of these Jews had been there millenia, way before Islam and the Moslem conquest began. These people, some of who left behind great wealth, desreve our attention, justice and conpensation.
To this end 14 different Jewish communities in countries around the world are undertaking international advocacy campaign this month to bring the rights of Jewish expellees from Arab lands into the public eye and before world leaders. The month will also see an intensified effort to catalogue losses suffered by the Jews expelled from Arab states. Generating the idea for the campaign were the World Association of Jews from Arab Countries (WOJAC), in association with Justice for Jews from Arab Countries (JJAC). A JJAC spokesman said that two-thirds of the Jewish refugees from Arab states and their offspring live in Israel, where the ministry of justice has created a database to collect testimony of refugees and document the assets they were forced to leave behind. So far, Israeli officials have collected the case histories of some 3,000 families. As part of the effort, the Canadian Jewish Congress will be pushing for a Canadian government statement in the House of Commons on Jewish refugees. In June 2005, then-Prime Minister Paul Martin acknowledged in an interview that as many as 850,000 Jews fled Arab or Muslim countries and that Jewish refugees claims should be taken into consideration.

The 6 wanted fugitives who surrendered

2006-03-15T16:50:00.000+02:00

For those who are not aware of who these prisoners that Israel went to great length to capture are, here is a good breakdown. These are not just random Palestinian prisoners, but murderers, assistant to murderers and those that planned to murder.
Ahmed Sadaat,53.
Saadat, was appointed the secretary general of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine in August 2001, and allegedly gave the orders to murder an Israeli government minister in 2001. Since 1994 he has been declared a fugitive by Israel after he instructed operatives in Ramallah to shoot at an Israeli car, resulting in the murder of an Israeli woman and her son. In charge of the movement's military wing, Sadaat issued instructions to launch a car bomb attack at Meah She'arim in Jerusalem in February 2001, a car bomb attack at Jerusalem's Russian Compound in May the same year and additional attacks in Yehud, Atarot in north Jerusalem and in the Malha Mall the same year which resulted in wounding scores of Israelis.
After he was appointed as secretary general, he pledged to continue attacks against Israel. With the outcome of the recent Palestinian elections in January this year, he ran on behalf of the PFLP and was appointed a member of the Palestinian legislative council. He embarked on intensive discussions with Hamas in order to join the government.
Ahed Gholami, 38.
A veteran member of the PFLP military wing, in 2000 Gholami was considered a senior commander of the movement, and initiated and was responsible for numerous attacks against Israeli targets in Ramallah, Nablus and Jerusalem. When Saadat was appointed secretary general in 2001, Gholami took his place as a senior West Bank commander. According to security officials he gave direct orders to murder Ze'evi and after the attack fled to Nablus where he orchestrated a number of car bomb attacks, including the attack at a Karnei Shomron pizzeria in which an Israeli girl was killed and scores wounded. According to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) Gholami was directly involved in the murders of two young Israeli hikers in October 1993 and the murder of an Israeli civilian in Jerusalem in March 1993.
Majdi Rimawi,41.
A veteran member of the PFLP, Rimawi worked side by side with Gholami and dispatched a number of suicide bombers to Jerusalem and Yahud, after providing them with the bombs and cars. He commanded the cell that murdered Ze'evi and dispatched them to Jerusalem to assassinate the minister.
Hamdi Koran,31.
Koran was recruited to the PFLP in October 2000 by Rimawi who taught him how to launch attacks inside Israel. In July 2001 he received bombs from Rimawi which he placed in a car that was used in an attack in Yahud in which 6 Israeli civilians were killed. On October 17, 2001, under Rimawi's instructions, Koran together with Basel al Asmar reached the Hyatt Regency Hotel in Jerusalem and pulled the trigger, pumping three bullets into Ze'evi..
Basel al Asmar,30.
Asmar stood guard in the corridor of the hotel while the other cell members murdered Ze'evi.
Fuad Shubaki, 64.
Up until September 2001, Shubaki who was the treasurer of the Palestinian security forces, enjoyed special VIP status granted to him by Israel that allowed him freedom to travel between the West Bank and Gaza. His position did not stop him from directly providing funds to terror groups to purchase weapons and ammunition for attacks against Israel. He also transferred funds to terror groups abroad enabling him to purchase stockpiles of weapons that were smuggled into areas under PA control.Israel accused Shubaki of bankrolling an attempt to ship 50 tons of weapons from Iran to the Gaza Strip that was foiled by Israeli naval commandos.

Israel's helping hand: Helping eradicate poverty in Africa

2006-03-15T16:41:00.000+02:00

As part of the international community's effort to eradicate poverty, the State of Israel and American-Jewish organizations have contributed $118,000 to assist the starving in Africa. Israel has decided that the funds donated will be distributed by the World Food Programme (WFP) to the countries of Mauritania, Malawi and Kenya.
Israel was among the first countries to respond positively to the appeals of UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and the Head of the World Food Programme which were directed to the Foreign Minister. At the same time, Jewish organizations in the United States responded positively to Israel's appeal, and enlisted to provide joint humanitarian assistance. The Jewish organizations are: UJA - Federation of New York, American Jewish Committee, United Jewish Communities of Metro West (NJ), UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey.
The decision to allot the donations to the aforementioned three countries was based upon the joint assessment of Israel and the UN, since the countries are located in a region which has the most pressing humanitarian needs.
The UN Secretary-General, Kofi Annan, has prioritized the eradication of poverty and hunger, as part of the UN Millennium Development Goals. The UN has therefore expressed its appreciation to the State of Israel, which together with the American-Jewish organizations, confronted one of the most pressing issues on the UN agenda - starvation in Africa.
Israel's readiness to share its experience and know-how, and its contribution to the UN Millennium Development Goals, reflect the importance it attaches to its enlistment in humanitarian activities which top the international community's agenda.

Israeli FA bidding to host 2008 UEFA Cup final

2006-03-15T16:16:00.000+02:00

Sports like most things seems to get bogged down in politics and Israeli sport has long been seen as a conduit of its political image. Israel has long been banned from certain tournaments, like the 2004 World Chess Federation championship and in other tournaments competitors refused to compete with Israelis.
Rarely has an international sporting event been played in Israel, partly due to some nations ostracising Israel and partly due to security concerns. So it is refreshing to hear that Israel is lodging a bid to host European football's second most important occasion. Israel's FA has lodged a bid with European soccer's ruling body to host the 2008 UEFA Cup final in Tel Aviv, the association said on Wednesday.
A Hebrew report on the IFA's website said it had proposed the 44,000-seat National Stadium and that all the relevant bid paperwork was being sent to UEFA.
The deadline for bids is Friday, March 17. The IFA said England, Germany, Spain and Turkey were also hoping to host the match, though their list could not be confirmed by UEFA.
IFA chairman Iche Menahem said the relevant Israeli authorities, including Tourism Minister Avraham Hirschson, backed the bid for the final - which the Jewish state hopes to host as part of its 60th anniversary celebrations.
"The minister's letter has been attached to our bid request. The very fact that we are included in the candidates list is important. We hope we will have the honour of hosting the match," Menahem said.
The daily Yedioth Ahronoth said Hirschson committed "any amount" of government funding should the stadium, originally built in the 1950s but renovated several times since, needs a further upgrade to host the final.

Time to break the 'chains'

2006-03-13T17:24:00.000+02:00

Throughout recent Jewish history, one issue above many others has been a source of discontent and sadness. That issue is the status of 'Agunot' (literally: Chained), which is a painful situation where a woman remains unable to remarry after a marriage has collapsed even though her husband has no such limitations. The greatest abuse is that people use Jewish law to hold their ex-wives literally captive. Jewish law allows for many ways that this situation can be rectified but we have a situation today where many on the Rabbinate are too timid or chauvinist to use them.
This issue has to be rectified to free these women who are unable to carry on with lives. The answer is not, as some suggest, to just do away with this Jewish law. This shows extreme disrespect to our laws and traditions which have kept us for millennia. It has become all too easy in our age to just see a problem and wish it away, we have to face the problem and work for a way to solve it. We have had great rabbinic minds in the past who have dealt with issues far more complicated and far more consequential. We need someone in our generation to step forward and deal with this issue.
Jewish communities all over the world are marking National Agunah Day, raising the struggle of tens of thousands of women asking to end their bad marriages respectfully.
It is no coincidence that National Agunah Day is marked on the same day as the fast of Esther.
ÂIt is the only day on the Jewish calendar dedicated entirely to the commemoration of a womanÂs work,Â Ruth Halperin-Kaddari, the chair of the Ruth and Emanuel Rackman Center for the Advancement of the Status of Women said.
"Esther (the heroine in the Purim story) swept an entire nation after her. The hope is that we will be successful in raising the same amount of awareness.
As we in Israel end the Fast of Esther and begin the festivities of Purim, spare a thought for the Agunot. May there be a resolution to the problem by next years Purim and we won't need a National Agunah Day.
Purim Sameach to all our KICIsrael readers!!!

Sharon Stone asks forgiveness for 'Basic Instinct 2'

2006-03-13T17:07:00.000+02:00

Sharon Stone visited the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem Saturday and prayed to God, asking His forgiveness for appearing in“Basic Instinct 2.” Stone flew to Israel last week immediately after seeing a finished cut of the movie. With photographers surrounding her, Stone bowed her head before the Western Wall, and burst into tears, asking for God’s forgiveness for not only “Basic Instinct 2,” but also 2004’s “Catwoman.”The sequel comes 14 years after the famous leg-crossing scene in “Basic Instinct” where Stone became the most talked-about actress in Hollywood. She returns to the big screen as ice-pick-wielding nymphomaniac Catherine Tramell in the sequel.
“I came here to the Western Wall to ask for forgiveness,” said an emotional Stone. “This is not about the sex scenes. We were born nude. Adam and Eve were nude. I’m not ashamed of showing my 48 year old vagina to millions of people around the world in this movie. This is simply about me asking for forgiveness for what I now believe to be an awful sequel to a great movie everyone loved. The truth is that I think it was a mortal sin to do this sequel to ‘Basic Instinct.’ I’m also asking for forgiveness for my role in ‘Catwoman.’ Also, I asked for forgiveness for deliberately putting a Komodo dragon on [former husband] Phil [Bronstein] and encouraging the dragon to bite deep into his foot.”
Stone says she invited actress Halle Berry to join her on the trip to Jerusalem, but Berry declined, maintaining that “Catwoman” was a cinematic achievement.