BDS Movement: Barbarians Inside the Gates - Part II

by Denis MacEoin
May 8, 2014 at 5:00 am

http://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/4275/bds-movement-barbarians

These politically correct activists are all supposed to be anti-racists and multiculturalists. Yet when artists are banned just because they happened to be born in Israel, it tears apart the very basis of both anti-racism and multiculturalism.

As you doubtless know, many in Europe loathe the United States. Their invective down the years has been an assault on reason and emotional stability, whether directed against the Vietnam war, the response to 9/11 or to the Iraq war. Yet there is no boycott of the United States.

So, despite a hatred for America -- and a perverse love of Iran, Hezbollah, and the PLO -- we come back to the Israeli exception, to the singling out of just one country. However charitable we may try to be, it is hard not to detect the reek of anti-Semitism. Am I being unfair? To people who marched through the streets of European cities chanting, "Hamas, Hamas, Jews to the gas," (and here and here at Dutch football matches) was that just simple folly -- or proof of intention?

The international Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement [BDS] against Israel is so determined to hurt Israel abroad, that the boycotters also put pressure on performers who even consider holding concerts in Israel.

Carlos Latuff's cartoon calling on performers to boycott Israel.

The pressure works. An endless stream of artists, mainly musicians, have cancelled concerts or simply turned down invitations to play in Tel Aviv or elsewhere in Israel.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

What Are We Talking About When We Talk About Apartheid?

from the Tabletmag.com
Kerry and others talk in terms of demographics, but it’s a question of rights

By James Kirchick|May 2, 2014 4:00 PM

Secretary of State John Kerry’s remarks last week to the Trilateral Commission predicting Israel’s potential transformation into an “apartheid state” should it fail to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians raised howls of protest from American Jewish leaders.

In Kerry’s defense, a number of commentators have pointed to Israeli leaders who have argued the same point, including Ehud Barak, Ehud Olmert and Tzipi Livni. Indeed, many genuine friends of Israel—of which Kerry is undoubtedly one—have warned of the apartheid scenario, doing so often in service of specifically deflecting claims that Israel is already an apartheid state. Let the peace process fester, these pro-Israel voices warn, and that calumny could one day become true. But is this admonition accurate?

The apartheid regime in South Africa consisted of a white minority ruling over a non-white majority, and it is this feature that those who invoke the specter of apartheid over Israel cite as evidence for their claim. If Israelis and Palestinians do not reach a two-state solution, they warn, then a Jewish minority will eventually rule over a non-Jewish majority in the area spanning from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Jeffrey Goldberg quoted his own 10-year-old New Yorker article on this point:

By 2020, the Israeli demographer Sergio Della Pergola has predicted, Jews will make up less than forty-seven per cent of the population. If a self-sustaining Palestinian state—one that is territorially contiguous within the West Bank—does not emerge, the Jews of Israel will be faced with two choices: a binational state with an Arab majority, which would be the end of the idea of Zionism, or an apartheid state, in which the Arab majority would be ruled by a Jewish minority.

The problem with the logic is that relative population size has nothing to do with whether or not a system can be described as “apartheid.”  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Israel Pictures from israelthroughthelens

Click Here for PHOTOS!

Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel

 THE DECLARATION OF THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE STATE OF ISRAEL
May 14, 1948

On May 14, 1948, on the day in which the British Mandate over a Palestine expired, the Jewish People's Council gathered at the Tel Aviv Museum, and approved the following proclamation, declaring the establishment of the State of Israel. The new state was recognized that night by the United States and three days later by the USSR.

                                                                           
Text:

ERETZ-ISRAEL [(Hebrew) - the Land of Israel, Palestine] was the birthplace of the Jewish people. Here their spiritual, religious and political identity was shaped. Here they first attained to statehood, created cultural values of national and universal significance and gave to the world the eternal Book of Books.

After being forcibly exiled from their land, the people kept faith with it throughout their Dispersion and never ceased to pray and hope for their return to it and for the restoration in it of their political freedom.

Impelled by this historic and traditional attachment, Jews strove in every successive generation to re-establish themselves in their ancient homeland. In recent decades they returned in their masses. Pioneers, ma'pilim[(Hebrew) - immigrants coming to Eretz-Israel in defiance of restrictive legislation] and defenders, they made deserts bloom, revived the Hebrew language, built villages and towns, and created a thriving community controlling its own economy and culture, loving peace but knowing how to defend itself, bringing the blessings of progress to all the country's inhabitants, and aspiring towards independent nationhood.

In the year 5657 (1897), at the summons of the spiritual father of the Jewish State, Theodore Herzl, the First Zionist Congress convened and proclaimed the right of the Jewish people to national rebirth in its own country.

This right was recognized in the Balfour Declaration of the 2nd November, 1917, and re-affirmed in the Mandate of the League of Nations which, in particular, gave international sanction to the historic connection between the Jewish people and Eretz-Israel and to the right of the Jewish people to rebuild its National Home.

The catastrophe which recently befell the Jewish people - the massacre of millions of Jews in Europe - was another clear demonstration of the urgency of solving the problem of its homelessness by re-establishing in Eretz-Israel the Jewish State, which would open the gates of the homeland wide to every Jew and confer upon the Jewish people the status of a fully privileged member of the comity of nations.

Survivors of the Nazi holocaust in Europe, as well as Jews from other parts of the world, continued to migrate to Eretz-Israel, undaunted by difficulties, restrictions and dangers, and never ceased to assert their right to a life of dignity, freedom and honest toil in their national homeland.

In the Second World War, the Jewish community of this country contributed its full share to the struggle of the freedom- and peace-loving nations against the forces of Nazi wickedness and, by the blood of its soldiers and its war effort, gained the right to be reckoned among the peoples who founded the United Nations.

On the 29th November, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly passed a resolution calling for the establishment of a Jewish State in Eretz-Israel; the General Assembly required the inhabitants of Eretz-Israel to take such steps as were necessary on their part for the implementation of that resolution. This recognition by the United Nations of the right of the Jewish people to establish their State is irrevocable.

This right is the natural right of the Jewish people to be masters of their own fate, like all other nations, in their own sovereign State.

ACCORDINGLY WE, MEMBERS OF THE PEOPLE'S COUNCIL, REPRESENTATIVES OF THE JEWISH COMMUNITY OF ERETZ-ISRAEL AND OF THE ZIONIST MOVEMENT, ARE HERE ASSEMBLED ON THE DAY OF THE TERMINATION OF THE BRITISH MANDATE OVER ERETZ-ISRAEL AND, BY VIRTUE OF OUR NATURAL AND HISTORIC RIGHT AND ON THE STRENGTH OF THE RESOLUTION OF THE UNITED NATIONS GENERAL ASSEMBLY, HEREBY DECLARE THE ESTABLISHMENT OF A JEWISH STATE IN ERETZ-ISRAEL, TO BE KNOWN AS THE STATE OF ISRAEL.

WE DECLARE that, with effect from the moment of the termination of the Mandate being tonight, the eve of Sabbath, the 6th Iyar, 5708 (15th May, 1948), until the establishment of the elected, regular authorities of the State in accordance with the Constitution which shall be adopted by the Elected Constituent Assembly not later than the 1st October 1948, the People's Council shall act as a Provisional Council of State, and its executive organ, the People's Administration, shall be the Provisional Government of the Jewish State, to be called "Israel".

THE STATE OF ISRAEL will be open for Jewish immigration and for the Ingathering of the Exiles; it will foster the development of the country for the benefit of all its inhabitants; it will be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel; it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion, race or sex; it will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, language, education and culture; it will safeguard the Holy Places of all religions; and it will be faithful to the principles of the Charter of the United Nations.

THE STATE OF ISRAEL is prepared to cooperate with the agencies and representatives of the United Nations in implementing the resolution of the General Assembly of the 29th November, 1947, and will take steps to bring about the economic union of the whole of Eretz-Israel.

WE APPEAL to the United Nations to assist the Jewish people in the building-up of its State and to receive the State of Israel into the comity of nations.

WE APPEAL - in the very midst of the onslaught launched against us now for months - to the Arab inhabitants of the State of Israel to preserve peace and participate in the upbuilding of the State on the basis of full and equal citizenship and due representation in all its provisional and permanent institutions.

WE EXTEND our hand to all neighbouring states and their peoples in an offer of peace and good neighbourliness, and appeal to them to establish bonds of cooperation and mutual help with the sovereign Jewish people settled in its own land. The State of Israel is prepared to do its share in a common effort for the advancement of the entire Middle East.

WE APPEAL to the Jewish people throughout the Diaspora to rally round the Jews of Eretz-Israel in the tasks of immigration and upbuilding and to stand by them in the great struggle for the realization of the age-old dream - the redemption of Israel.

PLACING OUR TRUST IN THE "ROCK OF ISRAEL", WE AFFIX OUR SIGNATURES TO THIS PROCLAMATION AT THIS SESSION OF THE PROVISIONAL COUNCIL OF STATE, ON THE SOIL OF THE HOMELAND, IN THE CITY OF TEL-AVIV, ON THIS SABBATH EVE, THE 5TH DAY OF IYAR, 5708 (14TH MAY,1948).

David Ben-Gurion

Daniel Auster Mordekhai Bentov Yitzchak Ben Zvi Eliyahu Berligne Fritz Bernstein Rabbi Wolf Gold Meir Grabovsky Yitzchak Gruenbaum Dr. Abraham Granovsky Eliyahu Dobkin Meir Wilner-Kovner Zerach Wahrhaftig Herzl Vardi

Rachel Cohen Rabbi Kalman Kahana Saadia Kobashi Rabbi Yitzchak Meir Levin Meir David Loewenstein Zvi Luria Golda Myerson Nachum Nir Zvi Segal Rabbi Yehuda Leib Hacohen Fishman

David Zvi Pinkas Aharon Zisling Moshe Kolodny Eliezer Kaplan Abraham Katznelson Felix Rosenblueth David Remez Berl Repetur Mordekhai Shattner Ben Zion Sternberg Bekhor Shitreet Moshe Shapira Moshe Shertok

* Published in the Official Gazette, No. 1 of the 5th, Iyar, 5708 (14th May, 1948).

Why it is hypocritical to boycott Israel

Jake Wallis Simons in the Telegraph May 5, 2014 

NOTE: This is a great, great article. A "keeper"! 

We're not normally called upon to justify a decision to travel abroad. Few people would challenge me if I were visiting China, despite that country’s appalling human rights record, repression of free speech, and colonisation of Tibet. If I was travelling to America, even though Predator drones kill thousands of innocent people each year, and even though Guantanamo Bay still holds 154 detainees, nobody would complain.

I would not be criticised for travelling to Egypt, which has become a police state that imprisons journalists, attacks protesters, and sentences political opponents to death. Nobody would suggest that I boycott India; or Pakistan; or Venezuela; or Saudi Arabia; or indeed Britain, which – I seem to recall – ignored the United Nations and attacked Iraq.

I could go on. But later this month, I am planning to travel to Israel to appear in the Jerusalem literary festival. As surely as night follows day, I have received an “open letter” from a group of 71 activists calling themselves the British Writers in Support of Palestine (BWIP), led by a poet and “professional Tarot card reader”. They were, I was informed, “extremely disappointed” by my decision, and “respectfully encouraged” me to boycott the event. But I am honoured to have been invited to Israel, and will be proud to attend. Here’s why.

It is my strong belief that Israel is, relatively speaking, a force for good in the world. I’m not saying that it is free from controversy, and I’m not saying that I have no sympathy with Palestinians. But every country that abides by the democratic process, enshrines in law the rights of women and minorities, and conducts itself with compassion both in war and in peace – or at least aspires to do so – deserves our support and respect. Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

RELATED: CLICK HERE

Netanyahu: The State of Israel is the Nation-State of One People Only – the Jewish People

Netanyahu: The State of Israel provides full equal rights, individual rights, to all its citizens, but it is the nation-state of one people only – the Jewish People.

By: Jewish Press News Briefs

Published: May 4th, 2014

PM Netanyahu’s statement at Sunday’s cabinet meeting:

“The State of Israel is a Jewish and democratic state. Our basic laws give full expression to the democratic side of the state. We do this by providing full equal rights to every citizen in Israel. The basic laws do this via two main laws – Basic Law: Human Dignity and Liberty and Basic Law: Freedom of Occupation.

On the other hand, that the State of Israel is the nation-state of the Jewish People is not sufficiently expressed in our basic laws, and this is what the draft basic law is meant to provide. It will define the national right of the Jewish People over the State of Israel, without infringing on the individual rights of any Israeli citizen in the State of Israel. It will reinforce the status of the Law of Return as a basic law. It will anchor in a basic law the status of the national symbols – flag, anthem, language and other aspects of our national experience. These aspects are under a constant and increasing assault from abroad and at home. But the foundation of the existence of the State of Israel stems from its being the national home of the Jewish People and from the Jewish People’s deep links to the Land of Israel.

Of course, there are those who do not want the State of Israel to be defined as the nation-state of the Jewish People. They want a Palestinian nation-state to be established alongside us and that Israel should gradually become a binational, Arab-Jewish state inside shrunken borders.

But I simply say that one cannot hold the national stick at both of its national ends. They cannot say that they want to separate from the Palestinians in order to prevent a binational state, which has a certain logic, and also sanctify a binational, Jewish-Arab state within the permanent borders of the State of Israel.

The State of Israel provides full equal rights, individual rights, to all its citizens, but it is the nation-state of one people only – the Jewish People – and of no other people. And therefore, in order to bolster the status of the State of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish People, I intend to submit a basic law that will anchor this status. The new law will be formulated in dialogue with all components of the coalition so that the values of the State of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state are preserved.

I would like to make it clear that this is not a political matter. When the opposition, during the previous government’s term, proposed a draft law on this issue, I announced immediately that I would support it. And today, on the eve of Remembrance Day for the Fallen of Israel’s Wars, I would like to cite ‘The Silver Platter’ by Natan Alterman , which was originally published in the newspaper Davar in 1947: ‘We are the silver platter on which the Jewish State has been given you.’ This is clear; the time has come for us to legislate it.”  LINK HERE

Am Yisrael Chai!

Israel Observes Yom Hazikaron in Memory of Fallen Soldiers and Terror Victims

A unique aspect to the Jewish State is the observance of a somber Yom Hazikaron, Israeli Memorial Day, followed by joyous Independence Day festivities.

Yom Hazikaron – Israel’s Memorial Day – begins on Sunday evening. It is a somber annual event that Israelis observe seriously.

Yom Hazikaron began with the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 and was enacted into law in 1963. The annual date is the fourth of the Hebrew month of Iyar, which this year falls on the evening of May 4.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara visit the grave of the Israeli leader’s heroic brother, who fell defending the Jewish State.

Sirens will be heard throughout the country at 8 p.m. Citizens will stand for two minutes of silence in memory of the 23,169 soldiers and security personnel who died protecting the Jewish state.

Shops, restaurants and places of entertainment will be closed. Radio and television programming will be geared to the observance of Yom Hazikaron.

The main Yom Hazikaron ceremony will take place at the Western Wall, where President Shimon Peres will light the traditional memorial candle together with IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz. Several other, smaller programs will happen throughout the country, such as prayer services, poetry readings.

On Monday morning, sirens will sound at 11 am.

There is hardly an Israeli who has not lost a close relative or friend in Israel’s wars or in a terror attack, and hundreds of thousands traditionally attend memorial events at military ceremonies.

A major service will be held at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem on Monday evening, ending at 8 p.m. and immediately followed by intense Yom Haatzmaut – Independence Day – festivities.

This ability to both remember and grieve for the fallen and to rejoice in the miracle of the Jewish State is unique to the People of Israel, who value life and do not give up. Such is the success of the State of Israel.  LINK

In Memoriam IDF http://www.idfblog.com/in-memoriam/#

Another tack: It’s a rotten line

in the Jerusalem Post by Sarah Honig May 1, 2014

Lord Caradon: ‘I know the 1967 line, and it’s a rotten line. you couldn’t have a worse line for a permanent international boundary.’

NOTE: Excellent article with key points. Bookmark this one and use in your debates. 

On the eve of our Independence Day, an ultra-antagonistic independence – one that manifestly threatens to replace ours – is fast gaining ground. Many Israelis are appalled to see the Ramallah and Gaza splinters officially welcomed in UN-affiliated forums as the “State of Palestine.” However, given relentless global trends, this travesty was all but inevitable.

“Palestinian independence” had already been declared in Algiers on November 15, 1988, and within mere months the utterly fictional entity was recognized by 134 of the UN’s 193 then-members. All this took place before Oslo proved how a previously bad situation could be made disastrously worse.

By now, of course, few abroad challenge the popular axiom that a Palestinian state had existed in this country from time immemorial and that it was cruelly overrun in an act of unprovoked aggression by Israel on June 5, 1967.

Even since, it’s alleged, the state of Palestine had been under occupation.

In other words, Israel had violently extinguished Palestine’s flourishing sovereignty. This is today’s self-evident, universally worshiped gospel. No substantiation thereof is necessary and any deviation therefrom is sacrilege.

In fact, the truth is remarkably unwanted in this context lest it expose the entire fable as fake. No one wants to know that there never- ever was a Palestinian state – not in the entire annals of mankind. There are advantages to deception, especially when it yields realpolitik perks.

Thus the dysfunctional family of nations is more than happy to clasp to its selectively loving bosom another fabricated Arab addition.

The corollary to the much-censured Israeli conquest of an independent Palestine is that independent Palestine had thrived in all the territory that Israel took after June 4, 1967. The demand that Israel retreat to the June 4 lines is, consequently, endowed with moral authority.

Each time the Ramallah honchos and their jihadist partners in Gaza repeat the 1967-borders mantra, it packs greater punch. It matters little to cynical propagandists, sanctimonious fellow travelers, gullible do-gooders and know-nothing dupes that there never were 1967 borders (but only 1949 armistice lines, which don’t remotely resemble fixed borders).

The current bogus standard for elementary justice is that these 1967 borders (that never-were) must form the basis for any deal between Israel and the callously conquered Palestinian state (that never was).

This is the bedrock dictum. Zealous enforcers and sanctifiers of dogmas suffer no skepticism. Whatever they promote as incontrovertible principles must be accepted as incontrovertibly unassailable. Whatever serves their interests and/or belief system cannot be challenged – otherwise it might undermine the paradigm of whatever they present as an absolute.

And so we’re left with an assertion that a preexisting Palestinian state is oppressed by Israel and that to redress this injustice Israel must withdraw to the June 4, 1967, lines. This, we’re told, has been the position of the whole international community from the outset and this position had already been enshrined in UN Security Council Resolution 242 (adopted unanimously on November 22, 1967).

That resolution was hardly Israel- friendly. It began by laying down a rule that applied exclusively to the Jewish state. That rule determined that “acquisition of territory by war is inadmissible.” All other acquisitions of territory by war were expectedly overlooked. Just as expectedly, the UN also overlooked the fact that east Jerusalem, for example, had been under Arab rule solely because it was acquired in 1948 by an act of war launched to thwart UN Resolution 181 (the Partition Resolution of 1947).

Likewise, there was the minor matter that Israel was defending itself in 1967 against the coordinated and hoarsely broadcast belligerence of all its Arab neighbors who unabashedly vowed to annihilate it.

For weeks, the intention to destroy Israel was proclaimed vehemently and vociferously, but the international community wasn’t overly perturbed by the prospect of extinguishing Jewish independence. Indeed the UN shamefully pulled out its peacekeeping forces from Sinai to facilitate an Egyptian attack.

Nonetheless, all that appeared to pale before 242’s demand that Israel withdraw “from territories occupied in the recent conflict.” This was seized upon by the Arab world, its many accomplices and cheerleaders to unequivocally mean a full return to Square One. Israel had to plainly hand over all it gained in a classic war of self-defense.

This became one of the most blatant (and successful) distortions ever, even when judged by the distorters’ dishonorable record.  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Rand Paul on Israel: Flip, Flop?

The possible 2016 Republican presidential candidate used to call for ending US aid to Israel. Now he's targeting aid to the Palestinians. Hmmm, why might that be?  Mother Jones David Corn May 1, 2013

NOTE: Maybe file this under "with friends like this...."

This week, the top headlines on GOP Sen. Rand Paul's official website ostentatiously proclaim his support for Israel. On Monday, the lead item noted that Paul, a foreign intervention skeptic who's been accused of isolationism by the Dick Cheney/neocon wing of the Republican Party, intended to introduce legislation that would end US aid to the Palestinian government until it recognizes Israel's right to exist. The next day, Paul's websiteannounced that the senator had introduced the "Stand with Israel Act of 2014," which would make all future aid to the Palestinians conditional on the new unity government—the result of the recent deal struck by Hamas, which controls the Gaza Strip and does not recognize Israel, and Fatah, which is based in the West Bank—acknowledging the right of Israel to existand to exist as a Jewish state. The bill was widely regarded as a brazen effort by Paul to get right—or somewhat less wrong—with the GOP's foreign policy mainstream. But the reporting on Paul's bear-hug of Israel left out a rather relevant fact: Not too long ago he was calling for cutting off funds to...Israel.

Just weeks after Paul was sworn in as a senator in early 2011, he proposed a budget plan that would end all US aid to Israel. The US supplies about $3 billion in military assistance to Israel annually. And Paul wanted to zero it out with all other foreign aid. He explained that he didn't have anything against Israel: "I'm not singling out Israel. I support Israel. I want to be known as a friend of Israel, but not with money you don't have." He added, "I think they're an important ally, but I also think that their per capita income is greater than probably three-fourths of the rest of the world. Should we be giving free money or welfare to a wealthy nation? I don't think so."  Please CLICK HERE to keep reading

Zionism Denial

from the Daily Beast April 17, 2012

NOTE: GREAT! Article from the archives. Says it all. H/T to Petra, @WarpedMirrorPMB 

As Israel marks its national Holocaust Remembrance Day, many around the world will secretly roll their eyes. 'There they go again the Zionists, using their precious Holocaust to justify their state, their power, their faults, reveling in a world guilted into silence.'

There are those who believe, too many, that without the holocaust there would have been no Israel. Most of them make this assumption in good faith. The American President himself, in his June 4, 2009 Cairo speech, spoke of "the recognition that the aspiration for a Jewish homeland is rooted in a tragic history that cannot be denied."

But when so many believe that without the Holocaust there would have been no Israel, those who want Israel erased from map and memory, or isolated as an illegitimate state come to resent the Holocaust, or at least its association with Israel.

The American President wanted to make an important stand against Holocaust denial in the capital of the Arab world. He did not understand that by reaffirming the dangerous equation that the global legitimacy for Israel is rooted in the Holocaust, he fanned the motivation to engage in Holocaust denial for those who continue to believe, as they always have, that Israel is not a legitimate state.

Holocaust denial, Holocaust minimization ('6 million is an exaggerated number') Holocaust 'equalization' ('there were other genocides and ethnic cleansings, the Holocaust was no different'), Holocaust reversal ('what the Nazis did to the Jews is what the Jews are doing to others'), Holocaust marginalization ('other people were also killed in the War') and Holocaust by association ('the Palestinians are the secondary victims of the Holocaust'), are all but different facets of the same effort—to rob Israel of what seems like a powerful and indisputable source of legitimacy.  Great, huh? CLICK to KEEP READING

Driving Mr. Yarkoni #Yalla

by Yael Steinber April 17, 2014 Times of Israel Blogs

NOTE: This is great. "just do it" or YOLO? Its #Yalla

Earlier this month I had the pleasure of touring with Itzik Yarkoni, founder of BOMAH: The Brand of Milk and Honey, and social media consultant to Hasbara Fellowships.  This was the second of two tours that I have done with Itzik, the first was in October 2013. It is BOMAH’s mission to rebrand Israel through personal stories. Our tours have been with the purpose of helping pro-Israel student groups gain a grasp of social media, helping them rebrand the perception of Israel throughout Southern California. I had expected that the many hours and hundreds of miles traveled together would give me an education in Facebook, Twitter, and marketing; and they certainly did! What I did not anticipate was that one little hashtag would gift me a peek into the Israeli work ethic: #Yalla

Read more: Driving Mr. Yarkoni | Yael Steinberg | Ops & Blogs | The Times of Israel http://blogs.timesofisrael.com/driving-mr-yarkoni/#ixzz308WwBcWB
Follow us: @timesofisrael on Twitter | timesofisrael on Facebook

Click to read the article

The Jewish People will never stand defenseless again

thanks to chutzpahnational.org

Not the Same Old, Same Old

NY Times Thomas Friedman April 15, 2014

At first, the article in The Jerusalem Post last week seemed like the same old, same old: A picture of a ransacked Israel Defense Forces post in the West Bank. Then a quote from Defense Minister Moshe Yaalon: “The State of Israel will not tolerate such criminal activity, which is terrorism in all respects.” Those Palestinians will never quit.

 Oh, wait a minute. Yaalon wasn’t talking about Palestinian terrorists. He was talking about Jewish terrorists, renegade settlers, who slashed the tires of an I.D.F. jeep parked in the settlement of Yitzhar, after Israeli soldiers came to demolish illegal buildings. “Settlers clashed with security forces during Monday night’s demolition and lightly injured six officers,” The Post reported. “A group of 50 to 60 settlers then raided an army post located to the west of the settlement, destroying generators, army equipment, heaters and diesel fuel tanks.” Israel’s justice minister, Tzipi Livni, warned that extremist settlers had crossed a line: “An ideology has flourished that does not recognize the rule of law, that does not recognize us or what we represent.”

These small stories tell a bigger one: We’re not dealing anymore with your grandfather’s Israel, and they’re not dealing anymore with your grandmother’s America either. Time matters, and the near half-century since the 1967 war has changed both of us in ways neither wants to acknowledge — but which the latest impasse in talks only underscores.   PLEASE KEEP READING

IDF Chief Rabbi: Passover is the People of Israel’s Gift of Freedom to the World

Brig. Gen. Rabbi Rafi Peretz, Chief Rabbi of the IDF, shares his thoughts for Passover.

This week, we will all sit at the Seder table –  some of us in our homes with our families, some of us on IDF bases, and some of us in the field, protecting the people of Israel so that we can celebrate the Festival of Freedom in peace.

3,326 years ago, our nation celebrated its miraculous release from slavery in Egypt, an event which marked the beginning of the journey to the land of Israel. The journey was long and arduous, and full of ups and downs, but in the end an entire nation walked to freedom.

There are those who see the exodus from Egypt as something much more than the salvation of a people from cruel oppressors. This event sent a message of hope that echoed across the world, because for the first time in history, the idea of living as a free people in our land became a possibility.

Brig. Gen. Rabbi Rafi Peretz, Chief Rabbi of the IDF

Egypt did not accept our legitimate claim to freedom, out of a concern that the Egyptian economy, which was based on slavery, would collapse. For many generations afterwards, slavery was perpetuated by regimes and cultures around the globe. But the people of Israel’s cry continued to be heard throughout the world, and turned the world into a better place. It wasn’t for nothing that the leaders of the anti-slavery movement in the United States chose as their rallying cry the eternal words of Moses: “Let my people go” (Exodus 5:1). The torch of freedom that was carried by the people of Israel is to this day still the source of inspiration for enslaved nations, who aspire to freedom and liberty.  CLICK TO KEEP READING

What We Can’t Learn From the Passover Story

The incompatibility of Manichean moralizing and the modern Middle East

By Yair Rosenberg|April 11, 2014 9:02 AM

NOTE: Obviously we'll be posting a lot of Passover Themed articles. This one is wonderful! 

There are many distinctive colors which Jews encounter at the Passover seder. There is red for wine and blood, green for the plague of frogs, and black for that of darkness. But there are no shades of grey. Nuance is a scarce commodity in the Passover account. In fact, the story of the Exodus is the prototypical black-and-white moral narrative. There are the innocent and enslaved Israelites, and then there are the cruel and literally baby-killing Egyptians.

There are not two sides to this story. There is no “Egyptian narrative.” Though Jews do briefly note the tragedy of the loss of human life during the seder, pouring out drops of wine for each plague inflicted on their tormenters, this commemoration in no way excuses or sympathizes with the biblical Egyptians themselves. We are presented with an oppressed and an oppressor—a right and a wrong.

The inadequacy of this foundational Jewish narrative to address certain fundamental Jewish questions today was brought home to me as a college student several years ago. Mere hours before the onset of Passover, an email was sent to my school’s Progressive Jewish Alliance listserv with a link to the news that the Israeli government would be closing off the West Bank border for the duration of the holiday. The author of the email appended one question: “What does it mean if on Passover, the celebration of freedom, we lock in the people living under our control?”  CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING

Government needs peace, not Bennett, senior minister says

BY TIMES OF ISRAEL STAFF April 12, 2014, 9:02 pm 0


A senior Israeli minister on Saturday attacked Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett, saying his “hypocritical” right wing party was the sole impediment to extending peace talks, and noting that the prime minister could form a government without its 12 members

In an interview Saturday with Channel 2, Environmental Minister Amir Peretz (Hatnua) called Jewish Home the “national hypocrisy party” and said that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu could weld together an alternative government without it in order to keep the peace talks with the Palestinians afloat.

“The time has come for Netanyahu to decide whether this government is an extreme right-wing government or a government that continues the peace process,” Peretz said. “One thing is clear: there is an alternative to the [current] government without Bennett. There is no alternative to the government without the peace process.”

Peretz’s statements came after Bennett threatened that his 12-seat nationalist-Orthodox Jewish Home would bolt if the government reached an agreement with the Palestinians to release Israeli-Arabs from prison in a bid to salvage the faltering peace talks.

“If the proposition of releasing Israeli murderers is brought before the government, Jewish Home will oppose it,” Bennett said in a statement late Thursday night. “If the proposal passes — Jewish Home with leave any government that releases murderers who have Israeli citizenship.” That stance was formally endorsed by Jewish Home MKs on Friday. 

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Read more: Government needs peace, not Bennett, senior minister says | The Times of Israel http://www.timesofisrael.com/government-needs-peace-not-bennett-senior-minister-says/#ixzz2yhJnyWZp 
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"There Has Never Been a Palestinian State - That's a Lie"

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 Date Posted: 2014-04-10 09:24:06


Economics Minister and Jewish Home party leader Naftali Bennett has continued his calls to annex parts of Judea and Samaria, in response to the repeated failure of peace talks with the Palestinian Authority.

Following a letter yesterday to Prime Minister Netanyahu, in which he urged the PM implement his "Plan B" alternative to a "two-state solution" with the PA, Bennett took his message to the international media last night, in an interview with CNN.

Dismissing suggestions that Israel was responsible for the collapse of peace talks by building homes in Jerusalem, Bennett pointed out that the talks had already ground to a halt after PA leader Mahmoud Abbas refused to even recognize Israel's existence as the nation-state of the Jewish people, while simultaneously demanding Israeli recognition of a "Palestinian homeland."
 
"The reality... is that the era of these negotiations is over - it's time for plan B... a new approach," he said. "The approach that we've been applying for 20 years now clearly has reached its end."

Bennett rejected out of hand calls for Israel to freeze construction in Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem, as part of proposals to eventually partition the city between the Jewish state and a future "Palestinian state".

"Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital for just about 3,000 years, and just like I would never suggest to freeze building in London, where you're sitting" Israel should not be expected to "freeze our own building in our own state", he said.

Responding to his interviewer's claim that "there has been Palestinian life in Jerusalem for thousands of years," he retorted: "You're talking about a Palestinian presence? Has there ever been a Palestinian state? Show me what its flag was, show me what its anthem was, show me who its leader is - show me anything that mentions the word 'Palestinians' more than 65 or 80 years ago. CLICK HERE TO KEEP READING

What would Moses Do?

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Congressman "Shocked" by Anti-Jewish Measures on Temple Mount

 Date Posted: 2014-04-08 19:13:26 Virtual Jerusalem On Line

NOTE: Keep reading to the end. This congressman really got an education and came away with great insight. 

An American Congressman has expressed his "shock" after witnessing anti-Jewish discrimination on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, during a recent fact-finding mission to Israel.

US Rep. Bill Johnson, (R-OH) was joined by Congressman David McKinley (R-WV), on a tour of the State of Israel organized by the Israel Allies Foundation, "to see the situation there for ourselves".

The trip took them to all corners of the holy land; from the southern towns of Sderot and Ashkelon, where they met with local residents and heard their accounts of life under rocket-fire from the Gaza Strip, to Judea and Samaria, central Israel and the Golan Heights.

Rep. Johnson (2nd R) on the Temple Mount, flanked by his Waqf escort Dan Schneider

The trip, Johnson said, left him with the indelible impression that "the people - especially the Jewish people - are very interested in peace."
He noted, for example, how in the Golan Heights Israel is treating Syrians injured by the civil war there without discriminating between the sides.

"Many of these are the very same people that on any other given day would want to kill the Israelis!" he remarked.

His visit to Judea and Samaria was extremely enlightening, he said. "When people talk about 'settlements' you think plywood and tents... but these people live just like us. There are schools, houses, shopping centers - these are real communities with real people."

'Shocking and disturbing'

But he said his experience on the Temple Mount stood in "stark contrast" to the rest of his time in Israel.
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