60 years after a terrorist murder and Israel's Gettysburg address
Moadim l'Simcha.
It's just a few minutes until the holiday starts again, and then I will be offline until Saturday night.
60 years ago today (on the secular calendar), a young security guard at Kibbutz Nachal Oz on the Gaza border was murdered by Arab terrorists (Wikipedia and the Times of Israel notwithstanding, there were no Arabs who were known as 'Palestinians' in 1956). Roi Rotberg HY"D (May God Avenge his blood) had moved to Nachal Oz from Tel Aviv. He was eulogized by the IDF Chief of Staff, Moshe Dayan, in what Wikipedia calls Israel's Gettysburg Address.
In 1956, IsraeliChief of StaffMoshe Dayan gave a eulogy for a Roi Rotberg, a kibbutz security officer killed near the Gaza Strip,[1]
calling upon Israel to search its soul and probe the national mindset.
Dayan's eulogy is considered one of the most influential speeches in
Israeli history,[2] and has the importance in Israeli collective memory that the Gettysburg Address has in American memory.
Nahal Oz
became a kibbutz in 1953 and was frequently in conflict with Arabs who
crossed the nearby armistice line from Gaza to reap crops and conduct
petty theft.[3]
The previous few months had been relatively quiet on the Israel's
borders with Egypt and Gaza, but escalated with several cross-border
shootings in early April.[3] On April 4, three Israeli soldiers were killed by Egyptian forces on the Gaza border.[3] Israel responded the next day by shelling the center of Gaza City, killing 58 Egyptian and Palestinian civilians as well as 4 Egyptian soldiers.[3] Egypt responded by resuming fedayeen attacks across the border, killing 14 Israelis during the period 11–17 April.[3][4]
Rotberg, the Nahal Oz security officer,[3][5][6][7] was regularly involved in chasing off infiltrators, sometimes using lethal force.[3]
On 29 April 1956 he was caught in a prepared ambush; Arab harvest
workers began to reap wheat in the kibbutz's fields in a spot where
Rotberg would see them, he did, but as he rode toward them to chase them
off others emerged from hiding to attack.[3][8] He was shot off his horse, beaten and shot again, then his body was dragged into Gaza.[3] According to Jean-Pierre Filiu, Rotberg's attackers included, "an Egyptian policeman" and "a Palestinian farmer."[9] The body was returned on the same afternoon, badly mutilated, after United Nations intervention.[3][10][11]
Yes, even in 1956, before there was an 'occupation,' Arab terrorists mutilated his body.
Today's Times of Israel includes a translation of Dayan's speech by Mitch Ginsburg. There is a lot here with which one could disagree (Dayan demonstrates far too much sympathy for the Arabs, and we know historically that he did not follow through to reach the conclusions he should have reached). But I have no time to discuss that right now. I'm just throwing it out there for you to think about.
Yesterday with
daybreak, Roi was murdered. The quiet of a spring morning blinded him,
and he did not see the stalkers of his soul on the furrow. Let us not
hurl blame at the murderers. Why should we complain of their hatred for
us? Eight years have they sat in the refugee camps of Gaza, and seen,
with their own eyes, how we have made a homeland of the soil and the
villages where they and their forebears once dwelt.
Not from the Arabs
of Gaza must we demand the blood of Roi, but from ourselves. How our
eyes are closed to the reality of our fate, unwilling to see the destiny
of our generation in its full cruelty. Have we forgotten that this
small band of youths, settled in Nahal Oz, carries on its shoulders the
heavy gates of Gaza, beyond which hundreds of thousands of eyes and arms
huddle together and pray for the onset of our weakness so that they may
tear us to pieces — has this been forgotten? For we know that if the
hope of our destruction is to perish, we must be, morning and evening,
armed and ready.
A generation of
settlement are we, and without the steel helmet and the maw of the
cannon we shall not plant a tree, nor build a house. Our children shall
not have lives to live if we do not dig shelters; and without the barbed
wire fence and the machine gun, we shall not pave a path nor drill for
water. The millions of Jews, annihilated without a land, peer out at us
from the ashes of Israeli history and command us to settle and rebuild a
land for our people. But beyond the furrow that marks the border, lies a
surging sea of hatred and vengeance, yearning for the day that the
tranquility blunts our alertness, for the day that we heed the
ambassadors of conspiring hypocrisy, who call for us to lay down our
arms.
It is to us that
the blood of Roi calls from his shredded body. Although we have vowed a
thousand vows that our blood will never again be shed in vain —
yesterday we were once again seduced, brought to listen, to believe. Our
reckoning with ourselves, we shall make today. We mustn’t flinch from
the hatred that accompanies and fills the lives of hundreds of thousands
of Arabs, who live around us and are waiting for the moment when their
hands may claim our blood. We mustn’t avert our eyes, lest our hands be
weakened. That is the decree of our generation. That is the choice of
our lives — to be willing and armed, strong and unyielding, lest the
sword be knocked from our fists, and our lives severed.
Roi Rotberg, the
thin blond lad who left Tel Aviv in order to build his home alongside
the gates of Gaza, to serve as our wall. Roi — the light in his heart
blinded his eyes and he saw not the flash of the blade. The longing for
peace deafened his ears and he heard not the sound of the coiled
murderers. The gates of Gaza were too heavy for his shoulders, and they
crushed him.
There's more here. Chag Sameyach and Shabbat Shalom. See you on Saturday night!
In an effort to defend Prime Minister Netanyahu from charges of destroying the US-Israel alliance due to his 'prickly' relationship with President Obama, Jonathan Tobin almost turns relations between the US and Israel and the moderate Arab states, on the one hand, and the US and Iran, on the other hand, into a zero sum game.
But the U.S.-Israel crackup isn’t a tabloid romance gone sour. The differences between the two countries are rooted in the administration’s reckless pursuit of an entente with Iran at the cost of its friendships with both Israel and moderate Arab states. That pursuit began in Obama’s first months in office, and nothing Netanyahu could have done or said would have deterred the president from this course of action. His success was achieved by a series of American concessions on key nuclear issues and not by pique about Israel’s stands on the peace process with the Palestinians or perceived rudeness on the part of Netanyahu.
Despite the attempt to portray Netanyahu’s interventions in the debate about Iran as a partisan move or an insult to Obama, keeping silent would not have advanced Israel’s interests or made more U.S. surrenders to Iran less likely. At this point, Israel has no choice but to remind U.S. lawmakers of the terrible blow to American credibility and regional stability from the Iran deal. It is the White House that has turned the Iranian nuclear threat — which was once the subject of a bipartisan consensus — into a choice between loyalty to the Democratic Party and its leader and friendship for Israel.
It is almost a given that the next president — no matter who he or she might turn out to be — will be friendlier to Israel than Obama. But the president’s legacy may not only be the strengthening of a terror state in Tehran. It has also chipped away at the U.S.-Israel alliance in a way that will make it that much harder to maintain the across-the-board pro-Israel consensus in Congress in the coming years. Given the growing dangers that the deal poses to Israel this is something that should have both Republicans and Democrats deeply worried.
Coming into office, Obama had two independent foreign policy goals in the Middle East: To weaken or destroy the United States' relations with what he sees as 'neo-colonialist' Israel, and to bring Iran back into the fold of nations. Each goal has been pursued independently. The goal of weakening the alliance with Israel has been pursued through the Obama administration changing the terms of the 'peace process' as much as it has been played by making Iran a strong enough power to check Israel. The goal of bringing Iran back into the fold of nations has been pursued through the nuclear sellout. There is nothing Netanyahu or any other Israeli leader could have done to stop Obama on either front.
The moderate Arab states are collateral damage. For different reasons than Israel, they oppose a nuclear Iran and they oppose (although they cannot say so), the creation of a 'Palestinian' terror state in the Middle East. The fact that the two goals coincide on many levels doesn't mean that an alliance with Israel was traded for one with Iran. Each goal was pursued separately.
And none of this has anything to do with Obama's personal relationship with Netanyahu. Shimon Peres could have been Prime Minister and Moshe Dayan could have been Foreign or Defense Minister and they still would have clashed with Obama. Like the 'Palestinians,' Obama sees all of Israel as 'occupied,' and not just the territories liberated in 1967.
1967: Chief Rabbis said Israel should control Temple Mount
Despite the sign above, which stood at the entrance to the Temple Mount for many years (I'm not sure it does anymore), Israel's Chief Rabbinate advocated Israeli control of the Mount in the aftermath of the 1967 Six Day War.
According to the document, then chief Sephardi Rabbi Yitzhak Nissim
said that Jews should oversee the site – either alone or in cooperation
with other religions – because it belongs to the Jewish people.
Then-chief Ashkenazi Rabbi Isser Yehuda Unterman was quoted as saying,
“the site of the Holy Temple should belong to the rabbinate. As for the
mosque…we will not give up ownership of the land on which the mosque
was built.”
Chief Rabbinical Council member Rabbi Eliezer Goldschmidt suggested
that an honor guard made up of rabbis protect the entrance to the
Temple Mount.
“If supervision of the mosque will be in their [Muslims’] hands, it will mean it belongs to them again,” Goldschmidt said.
The rabbis agreed, however, that the site is too holy for Jews to enter.
What a surprise (not). Too bad Moshe Dayan decided on his own to give control of the Mount to the Wakf. This morning. Israel Radio reports that the Pope was treated to a speech by a Mufti on the Temple Mount who accused 'settlers' of breaking into the mosques and attempting to establish separate prayer times as has been the case in the Machpeila Cave in Hebron for the last 20 years.
Aside from the fact that the Mufti is lying, the hostility toward acknowledging any Jewish claim to the Mount shows that peace is most definitely not at hand.
I wonder if the Pope is sharp enough to realize that if Jews don't have a narrative on the Temple Mount, neither do the Christians (whose narrative presupposes a Jewish Temple on the Mount).
Two weeks after the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War, Aryeh Morgenstern visited the Lubavitcher Rebbe along with some colleagues from the Israeli Consulate. The Rebbe urged the Israeli government in the strongest terms to conquer Damascus. As usual, the Israeli government didn't listen. And once again it appears to have been Moshe Dayan who prevented it from happening.
New report shows Israeli government conspiring to maintain Wakf control over Temple Mount
I saw this report last week, and unfortunately thought it was just another report about about how the Muslims are destroying priceless Jewish archaeology on the Temple Mount (see picture above). Sadly, there's more to it than that.
In 2008, Israel's state comptroller produced a report that was highly critical of the State's handling of the Temple Mount. The issues involved included the aforementioned destruction, the prevention of Jewish prayer on the Mount (which as some of you may recall is not something my rabbis permit me to do), and the general control that the Muslim Wakf exercises on the Mount.
From 2008 (during the Olmert government) to 2010 (during the Netanyahu government), the government managed to force the comptroller to cut out two thirds of the report. In 2010, the Netanyahu government convinced a Knesset subcommittee that the report should be buried out of 'national security' and 'foreign policy' concerns.
The report has been buried for three years. Last week, it showed up on a website called The Jewish Voice of New York. Parts of the report have also been translated into English on that site, and they are truly shocking. Moshe Dayan apparently continues to determine Israel's approach to the Temple Mount from his grave.
This is from the first link.
The following report issued by the Israeli government is of a previously
classified nature. It reveals the terrifying truth about the Israeli
conspiracy to relinquish control of Jerusalem’s Temple Mount to hands of
the Muslim Waqf. Each past of this report provides a detailed account
of the methods taken by the Waqf to vanquish the inextricable ties that
the Jewish people have to Jerusalem. As a place that is of significant
holiness to Jews around the globe; the Waqf has strictly forbidden Jews
to pray there and they enforce their draconian decrees against Jews with
a palpable zeal. The photo that accompany this article graphically
depict the massive and well orchestrated Muslim campaign to maintain
sole autonomy of the Temple Mount; with the clandestine cooperation of
the Israeli government.
I'm embedding the parts that are in English for your convenience.
MK's from the Likud Beytenu and Bayit Yehudi parties - the two 'right wing' parties in the Prime Minister's coalition - are stepping up the pressure on Prime Minister Netanyahu not to make more concessions to the 'Palestinians.'
MKs on the Right said they were concerned that US Secretary of State
John Kerry would pressure Netanyahu to make more concessions, so they
felt it necessary to counter-act Kerry's demands to Netanyahu with
pressure of their own. To that end, 16 MKs in the coalition wrote the
prime minister as he was meeting with Kerry.
"Tell the secretary of state that Israel has no intention of
returning to the parameters of the Oslo Accords or relinquishing any
more of Israel's homeland to the Palestinian Authority," the MKs wrote
in the letter.
Among the 16 MKs were legislators from Likud
Beytenu and Bayit Yehudi, including deputy ministers Ze'ev Elkin
(Foreign Ministry), Tzipi Hotovely (Transportation), Eli Ben Dahan
(Religious Services), Avraham Wortzman (Education), and Ophir Akunis
(Knesset Liason).
Deputy Defense Minister Danny Danon complained
that the Palestinians had upped their demands in the negotiations by
asking for the concessions made by former prime minister Ehud Olmert. In
September 2008 when he was prime minister, Olmert offered the
Palestinians 100 percent of the West Bank with land swaps, the return of
thousands of Palestinians to Israel's final borders, a Palestinian
state with its capital in eastern Jerusalem and the internationalization
of the Holy Basin of Jerusalem's Old City.
That's 16 out of 68 MK's or one shy of a quarter of the coalition. And you will note that the list doesn't include any ministers - only deputy ministers. That's because the ministers probably all fear Sharon treatment (Sharon fired all the ministers who voted against expelling Jews from Gaza in 2005).
But here's one Right wing minister who did not sign on.
Netanyahu receive unexpected defense from the most right-wing
minister in the cabinet, Construction and Housing Minister Uri Ariel.
"I
am strengthening the prime minister to withstand all the pressure he is
under the best way he can and maintain Israel's clear interests," Ariel
said. "I am sure that 20 years after the Oslo agreement was signed, he
learned the historic lesson to not accept false promises at the expense
of Israel's security."
I wonder what makes Ariel so sure. I'm not so sure.
The Knesset Committee of the Interior will hold a hearing on Monday
regarding preparations for Jewish visitation to the Temple Mount over
the upcoming Succot holiday.
Groups lobbying for Jewish prayer
rights at the site criticized the lack of access afforded to them over
the recent Rosh Hashana festival and are demanding that Jewish visits
over Succot be enabled by the police.
Access was restricted on the first day of Rosh Hashana and the site was
closed on the second day to Jewish and other non-Muslim visitors when
non-Muslims are generally not given access.
The second day of Rosh HaShana was a Friday....
Feiglin also intends to publicly question the legality of the Waqf and its authority to administer the Temple Mount.
He
recently sent a letter to the Israel Police asking for clarifications
regarding the legal authority of the body, and subsequently challenged
the reply that a government decision taken after the Six-Day War of 1967
authorized the Waqf to continue running the site.
“To the best of
my knowledge there is no such decision, and from a reading of the words
of the ministerial committee in 1968 it is clear that they thought
there was no such agreement,” Feiglin wrote to Israel Police Insp.-Gen.
Yohanan Danino.
He then quoted the comments of then Justice
Minister Yaakov Shimshon Shapira from a committee meeting in June 1968
as saying "We never announced that the entirety of the Temple Mount
belongs to the Arabs. We never announced that it is forbidden for Jews
to pray there, we never announced that it is forbidden for Jews to
establish a synagogue there.”
Feiglin wrote that in the absence of
such a decision, “all directives which discriminate between Muslims and
non-Muslims regarding entrance to the [Temple] Mount should be
immediately rescinded, and free entrance from all gates to the Mount be
enabled, in accordance with the law.”
The MK also demanded that
all Waqf stewards be removed from the site and raised questions about
the institutes legal status, questions that he will raise in Monday’s
committee hearing.
In particular, Feiglin claims that the Waqf is
not a registered institute in any state framework, and therefore does
not pay the appropriate taxes and national insurance contributions as
required by law.”
“It seems to me that this a badge of shame for
the Israel Police to cooperate with this criminal organization and for
its police officers to respond to the whims of its officials,” wrote
Feiglin.
It's a pity that it's taken 45 years for anyone to raise this. And that sizzling sound you just heard was MosheDayan rolling over.
Yom Kippur will mark the 40th anniversary of the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. While I knew that Israel had been warned via an Egyptian double agent that his country was going to go to war, I did not know that Jordan's King Hussein also met with Golda Meir and warned her that a war was in the works.
But a
particularly interesting meeting took place on Sept. 25, 1973 -- about
two weeks before the outbreak of the Yom Kippur War. The venue: an
intelligence facility in central Israel.
Because the meeting was
hastily arranged and held well inside Israel, it was considered an
extraordinary encounter. Hussein was the one who asked for the meeting.
He wanted to sound the alarm about the looming danger on Israel's
borders. The Syrians and Egyptians were planning an attack on Israel, he
warned. Their decision stemmed from the unraveling of the Rogers Plan, a
desire to undo Israel's hubris and a need to compensate for their
humiliating defeat in the Six-Day War. Hussein said Egypt and Syria
wanted to reclaim the territory they had lost six years earlier.
Hussein confided with
Meir that two weeks prior to the meeting he had met with Syrian
President Hafez Assad and Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. They told him
that they were running out of patience and that they would like to
initiate a flare-up with Israel on two fronts. Assad and Sadat asked
Hussein if he would be willing to open a third, eastern front, but he
refused.
Hussein told Meir about
Syria's preparations and the military maneuvers it was planning. He
also shared information on the deployment of its armored units and the
locations of its aircraft. He expressed concern how things might unfold
and inquired whether Israel was duly prepared.
Meir said she would look
into the matter. Hussein also said that he had promised Syria that he
would send two armored brigades to the frontline to show Arab
solidarity.
The details that
emerged from those meetings were shared among American, Israeli and
Jordanian policymakers, with both Israel and Jordan updating the
Americans about the events leading up to the meetings and their
aftermath, as well as on what transpired behind closed doors. The
conversation that was held just prior to the war did not frighten Meir,
but she couldn't stop thinking about what she had been told.
Killed because he was about to expose preparations for the Yom Kippur War?
Nearly 40 years ago, an Israeli military attache in Washington was gunned down outside his Bethesda, Maryland home. The family was flown back to Israel with the body in Air Force 2. Then-Secretary of State Henry Kissinger asked for daily updates into the investigation of the murder. But the murderer(s) was never found. The investigation was closed three years later and the FBI destroyed all the evidence. Why?
One possibility is that Alon was about to expose an agreement between Moshe Dayan and Henry Kissinger to have Israel absorb a first strike in the Yom Kippur War (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).
“This was a political assassination, the kind of case that I would have extensive files about. But we later discovered that the FBI destroyed all the evidence in the case,” later closing it – for lack of evidence, says [Fred] Burton. “How does evidence of a political assassination get destroyed three years after the event – after all, the FBI keeps evidence back from the days of Al Capone.”
That, in and of itself, he feels, is a clear indication that “something” was amiss.
That “something”, Burton claims, was the likelihood that Alon was about to “spill the beans” about what Burton believes to be one of the biggest secrets in Israeli history – a possible “deal” between Israel and the U.S. to allow the Arabs to attack first in an upcoming war, in order, Burton says, to test the efficacy of American weapons versus what the Soviets had supplied Arab countries.
...
Burton, however, bases this belief on information supplied to him by Alon's wife Devora, who told Burton of experiences that he believes are part of a classical counterintelligence operation.
“She received strange phone calls, what are called 'ruse calls,' to see if they were home,” as well as “wrong numbers” from people speaking Hebrew - a very unlikely scenario in Maryland, long before the internet made it easy to find people, says Burton. “There was a strange visitor from the phone company' who wanted to get into the basement to do work that could easily have been done from the street.”
The FBI opened an investigation into the murder, but a rather halfhearted one, says Burton. Meanwhile, Henry Kissinger – who, he believes, worked out the deal whereby Israel would let the Arabs attack first with then Israeli Defense Minister Moshe Dayan – took what Burton said was an unusually active interest in the investigation. “
"Kissinger requested daily upates on the investigation. I can't recall another example of such a high level official being so involved in a murder investigation like this,” said Burton, adding that the fact that Alon's body was sent home for burial in the Vice-President's plane. “I couldn't find another example of that plane for such a purpose. This set off some bells in my head,” he said.
In the end, the FBI theorized that Alon was killed by a Black September agent, although the case officially remains unsolved. In the end, it appears that it really was a Black September agent who pulled the trigger (Burton believes that the Mossad eliminated Alon's murderer earlier this year).
But, he asks in his book, just what was a Black September operative doing in Maryland? That is another mystery that remains unsolved, since it was the one and only time that the terror group carried out an operation like that in the U.S.
Was the terrorist recruited by one of the interested parties to “shut Alon up?” It's not clear, but Devora and her daughter received generous “hints” of their own on why Joe was killed from some of the elites of Israel's political and military establishment, according to Rachel Alon-Margalit in the documentary film “Who Killed My Father?”
Rachel tells of a conversation her mother had with former President Ezer Weizmann, who, when Devora asked for his help after years of stonewalling by Israeli officials whenever she asked for information about the investigation, said “Devora, I can't tell you anything. If I open my mouth there will be an earthquake. Go home and take care of your daughters.”
Other officials left Devora with a similar feeling - that Joe had stumbled onto a great truth that he was somehow not supposed to know, and that this information may well have gotten him killed, according to the documentary.
In April, Burton released a book about the murder. In an interview by email at the time, he told Haaretz:
Who do you think was negligent in conducting the investigation, and why?
"In my opinion the FBI and the local police did their best under the circumstances of 1973. None of them was equipped back then with tools for solving an international terror operation. There were plenty of extremist organizations at the time in the U.S. - the Black Panthers, the Weather Underground, and Palestinian radicals - that drew the FBI's full attention. The counterterrorism division I headed did not exist at the time. The information gaps and the lack of ability in terms of recruiting sources and agents were substantial and undermined every effort to solve the murder."
And what about Israel?
"Israel relied too heavily on the FBI to solve the case. It seems that in Israel, too, they were too busy hunting Palestinian terrorists. Let me remind you that the same month that Joe was murdered there was the Mossad fiasco in Norway [the killing of Ahmed Bouchiki, a waiter who was mistaken for the terrorist Hassan Salameh ]. The investigation into Alon's murder was neglected, and unfortunately the case simply petered out over the years. Solving the murder of a single person just wasn't top priority."
Well, maybe. At this link (in Hebrew), a senior IAF officer (unnamed) claims that Israel agreed to Alon's murder.
Here's a preview of the book. Let's go to the videotape.
More here, here and here (first and third links in Hebrew).
Nice country you got there in Britain. I wouldn't want to see anything bad happen to it. But if you keep electing moronic MP's who compare wimpy, peace-mongering Israeli 'opposition leaders' to Islamic terrorists, you don't stand much chance of surviving to the next century. Take British MP Ann Clwyd (Labor) for instance. Please, take her, away....
Speaking in the House of Commons on Tuesday, Clwyd said, “I find it particularly ironic that we are prepared to change the law to protect one Israeli opposition leader when another opposition leader, the Palestinian Sheikh Salah, comes here and is put straight in jail. Where is the justice in that?”
Clwyd, a member of the Labor Party, was referring to a proposed bill making its way through the UK parliament which would make it harder for private parties to obtain arrest warrants citing the principle of universal jurisdiction.
In December 2009, an arrest warrant was issued against Livni on allegations of war crimes.
Salah was convicted in 2005 of, among other offenses, aiding terrorist organizations, and served two years in prison for the felony.
Speaking to The Jerusalem Post, Clwyd refused to distance herself from the comment.
“I don’t know Raed Salah,” she said. “All I know is that he came to the UK to discuss Palestine and to promote peace and justice for Palestinians, and all of a sudden he was arrested.”
Asked whether someone convicted of aiding terrorist organizations should be excluded from the UK, Clwyd said “it’s not for me to judge.”
Is that what 'opposition leaders' do in Britain too - foment rebellion and attempt to turn the country into a Muslim Caliphate? Useful idiot.
Speaking of wimps, in an earlier post I reported on AmirComrade Peretz's escape from Britain this past weekend. (By the way, Israel Radio just reported that Peretz escaped by taking the train to Paris). It turns out he's not the only 'dovish' Israeli who was nearly arrested this weekend. This is from the first link again.
Dovish Maj.-Gen. (res) Danny Rothschild was forced to cut short his trip to the UK following reports from the Israeli embassy in London that pro-Palestinian groups were planning to petition the county court for his arrest.
Rothschild coordinated IDF operations in the Palestinian territories in the early 1990s, during the first intifada. The attempted arrest of Rothschild allegedly came in response to Salah’s arrest last week, Army Radio said.
If these people could, they would exhume Moshe Dayan from the grave and arrest him too - after all, he was Defense Minister in 1967 and 1973, so he must have committed some warcrimes too, right?
I am an Orthodox Jew - some would even call me 'ultra-Orthodox.' Born in Boston, I was a corporate and securities attorney in New York City for seven years before making aliya to Israel in 1991 (I don't look it but I really am that old :-). I have been happily married to the same woman for thirty-five years, and we have eight children (bli ayin hara) ranging in age from 13 to 33 years and nine grandchildren. Four of our children are married! Before I started blogging I was a heavy contributor on a number of email lists and ran an email list called the Matzav from 2000-2004. You can contact me at: IsraelMatzav at gmail dot com
