Alwaght- Egyptians were shocked when the Arabic
language newspaper, Youm7, revealed that the co-founder of Egypt’s
Salafist Nour Party has met with the Israeli Regime's former foreign
minister.
The influential daily revealed on the weekend that
extremist Nour Party's Nader Bakkar has hold secret meeting with
notorious Tzipi Livni in April at Harvard University.
The meeting that was reportedly held at Bakkar’s request has sparked a storm of controversy in Egyptian media.
...
Salafism is an ultra-conservative movement within Sunni
Islam that advocats a return to the traditions of the "devout
ancestors". The doctrine can be summed up as taking "a fundamentalist
approach to Islam".
The Nour Party's co-founder and deputy chairman, Bakkar,
Bakkar was awarded a scholarship to pursue a master’s in public
administration at Harvard’s John F. Kennedy School of Government.
Muslim Brotherhood accused the aspiring young politician of
unjustly winning a fellowship to attend the prestigious Harvard
University in return for his party’s betrayal of former President Mohamed Morsi in 2013.
The Salafi party sided with the Armed Forces against the
Brotherhood during Morsi’s ouster, and since then has continued to
support President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi’s administration.
...
A few months before his graduation, however, Livni visited
Harvard on 16 April to give a lecture on the Israeli-Palestinian
conflict.
Sources reportedly told the Egyptian newspaper that after
finding out that Livni was coming to speak, Bakkar contacted the society
to arrange a closed meeting with Livni.
She agreed and the meeting took
place inside the university after her lecture.
According to Youm7, Nader Bakkar’s meeting with Tzipi
Livini lasted around 40 minutes, in which Bakkar talked about the
strength of the Nour Party and its popularity, that he was the main
reason for the (Muslim) Brotherhood’s success after the 25 January
revolution…
Livni- who has reportedly conducted sexual relations with
Arab officials during her years as a Mossad agent in an attempt to
entrap them- did not reveal the meeting at the time, but sources close
to her confirmed to the Israel Broadcasting Authority (IBA) that the
meeting took place.
You gotta love Alwaght's style "Israeli Regime" and "Livni- who has reportedly conducted sexual relations with
Arab officials during her years as a Mossad agent in an attempt to
entrap them..." as if they were totally defenseless against her, even if you assume it's true (For many reasons, I don't believe Livni did this, and I won't allow comments discussing it).
And you thought Livni hated religious people... oh... wait... it's only religious Jews she hates.
But yes, I do believe Livni met with Bakkar. I doubt anything came of it. Much ado about nothing.
Netanyahu’s hard-line coalition partner, Education Minister Naftali
Bennett added: “Today a terrorist nuclear superpower is born, and it
will go down as one of the darkest days in world history.”
Yeah, but that's only because he's hardline, right? Hmmm. Maybe not.
Israeli social media accounts were filled with images of former
British prime minister Neville Chamberlain, who pushed a policy of
appeasement toward Adolf Hitler and the Nazis on the eve of World War
II.
Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders blasted the deal even as
negotiators in Vienna were still making the announcement and providing
details.
“Israel will defend itself,” Bennett warned, vowing
that military action is still an option for the Jewish State.
Like-minded Israelis feel they are in the crosshairs of a belligerent
enemy, where last week protesters in Tehran were chanting “Death to
Israel!”
Israel’s security cabinet unanimously rejected the Iran
deal, also saying that Israel reserves the right to take action to
protect the state.
But an Israeli attack seems unlikely right now....
Opposition leaders were united in condemning the Iran deal, but they
also called its signing a major diplomatic failure for Netanyahu.
Speaking
on Israel Radio, Efraim Halevy, former head of the Israeli intelligence
agency Mossad, said that perhaps it would have been better to avoid a
head-on clash with Obama and, instead, seek to apply pressure through
more discreet channels and have more of a role in shaping the
negotiations.
Because after all, former Mossad heads have just been so helpful in helping the government deal with this. Nearly as helpful as Israel's 'loyal opposition.'
Yair Lapid, a top opposition figure and leader of an Israeli
political party, said there is “no daylight” between Israelis in
condemning the Iran deal. But he said Netanyahu bungled the diplomacy.
On
the evening news in Israel, a rough consensus among political
commentators concluded that Netanyahu has been rendered irrelevant,
dismissed by the U.S. administration.
The United States remains
Israel’s closest — and sometimes only — ally in the world, supplying
diplomatic cover and billions of dollars in military aid over the years,
including some of the most sophisticated U.S. arms technology.
In
an interview with Israel’s Army Radio, main opposition leaders Isaac
Herzog and Tzipi Livni both criticized Netanyahu for allowing the deal
to be reached.
“If you go to a deal, as bad as it may be, the way
to minimize its damage is by arriving at an agreement with the U.S. on a
very significant security package,” said Herzog.
And that could still happen after (and when and if) the deal is signed. But Obama wouldn't talk about that before the deal with Iran was done.
The Mossad is the secret intelligence agency of the State of Israel,
recognized globally as the most advanced in the world. With an extensive
network of agents located throughout the world – in every country
except Micronesia and Peru, the Mossad’s information-gathering capacity
is unprecedented.
For many years now, we have trained our agents to find every secret,
gather all details, and know what is happening not only in the local
government where our agents are assigned, but also on a global scale.
We are always looking to expand our secret base locations. For now, here are some of our bases…
ISIS releases video of 12-year old boy executing alleged Mossad spy
Unfortunately, this one appears to be real. The Mossad agent was an Israeli Arab (Hat Tip: Jack W via Gateway Pundit).
BREAKING NEWS: ISIS released a video showing a child executing alleged Israeli spy Mohammad Ismail. pic.twitter.com/3cMMwo266F
— Israel News Feed (@IsraelHatzolah) March 10, 2015
Gateway Pundit also posts a picture of Mohammed Ismail's Israeli identification card. Yes, what's on the left is what an Israeli identification card looks like, although it could still be forged. (Here's a blown up version).
What's odd here is that I highly doubt a Mossad agent would be carrying his Israeli identification card with him while on an assignment overseas (we're not even supposed to let those leave the country). Hmmm.
Spanning a period from 2006 until December 2014, they include
detailed briefings and internal analyses written by operatives of South
Africa's State Security Agency (SSA). They also reveal the South
Africans' secret correspondence with the US intelligence agency, the
CIA, Britain's MI6, Israel's Mossad, Russia's FSB and Iran's operatives,
as well as dozens of other services from Asia to the Middle East and
Africa.
The files unveil details of how, as the post-apartheid South African
state grappled with the challenges of forging new security services, the
country became vulnerable to foreign espionage and inundated with
warnings related to the US "War on Terror".
'Israeli sources': We killed Mughniyah, not the CIA
Who carried out the bombing in the video above? Seven years later, the denials have toned down, and there are now claims of credit. Two weeks ago, the Obama administration 'anonymously' told the Washington Post that the CIA was behind the Mugniyah assassination. That has apparently ruffled some feathers in the Mossad, who got word to Dan Raviv that it was really behind the terrorist's death.
One result was that some of those Israelis - apparently miffed that
the Americans were taking too much credit - went to the trouble of
speaking with Western officials and diplomats to offer corrections.
Basically,
using a phrase inspired by the blue-and-white flag of Israel, they
suggested that the assassination of Mughniyeh was "almost all
blue-and-white, and just a little bit red-white-and-blue."
Based
on what they told their Western contacts this month, the Israelis claim
that their Mossad and Aman (military intelligence) agencies managed to
pick up the trail of the elusive terrorist - despite plastic surgery
that changed his appearance. His biggest mistake was moving around
Damascus without bodyguards, and specifically an unguarded area in front
of his apartment building in the Syrian capital.
Contrary to the
recent reports, the Israelis claim to have designed and tested the bomb,
while respecting the CIA's insistence that it not be too large so as
not to kill any innocents.
According to this version, then-Prime
Minister Ehud Olmert kept track of the testing and - during a trip to
Washington - even showed some of the videos to George W. Bush, who was
impressed and enthusiastic about eliminating Mughniyeh. The CIA had
briefly withdrawn from the mission, but President Bush brought the
agency back in.
On the night of the assassination seven years ago
this week, the surveillance team in Damascus held off when noticing that
Mughniyeh was not alone. He headed into his apartment with his Iranian
handler and a Syrian general, Muhammad Suleiman, who was a senior
advisor to President Bashar al-Assad.
The Iranian and the Syrian
left, and half an hour later the Hezbollah man walked out alone. The
button was pushed at Mossad headquarters - a privilege Israel wanted,
because Mughniyeh had killed dozens of Israelis and other Jews in car
bomb attacks - and the terrorist was blown to bits. No one else was
hurt.
Assad's aide, General Suleiman, was assassinated less than six months later by a long-range sniper. Intelligence sources said
Israel did that because Suleiman had been in charge of Syria's secret
nuclear reactor, which Israel's air force had destroyed the year before.
According to the Israeli version of events, Vice President Dick Cheney
phoned Prime Minister Olmert to exchange praise for the Mughniyeh
assassination.
The United States helped build
the bomb, the former official said, and tested it repeatedly at a CIA
facility in North Carolina to ensure the potential blast area was
contained and would not result in collateral damage.
“We probably blew up 25 bombs to make sure we got it right,” the former official said.
The
extraordinarily close cooperation between the U.S. and Israeli
intelligence services suggested the importance of the target — a man who
over the years had been implicated in some of Hezbollah’s most
spectacular terrorist attacks, including those against the U.S. Embassy
in Beirut and the Israeli Embassy in Argentina.
The United States
has never acknowledged participation in the killing of Mughniyah, which
Hezbollah blamed on Israel. Until now, there has been little detail
about the joint operation by the CIA and Mossad to kill him, how the car
bombing was planned or the exact U.S. role. With the exception of the
2011 killing of Osama bin Laden, the mission marked one of the most
high-risk covert actions by the United States in recent years.
Israel, of course, has said 'no comment.' So has the CIA. But over the past week we've been warned repeatedly about how Prime Minister Netanyahu would be 'jeopardizing' cooperation with the United States if he comes to Washington to speak to Congress in March. Cooperation like this? Well, maybe.
Really? This comes out right now? The “new” book by Robert B. Baer cited in the article was actually published in October — and it doesn’t say there was collaboration. Baer and unnamed others have been gotten to confirm it, apparently. But the timing is distinctly odd, given the recent dust-ups between Hezbollah and the IDF.
You might almost think someone was trying to add fuel to the fire.
Notice how the finger points at an event in the Bush years, and not at
cooperation since Obama took office, although there undoubtedly has been
such cooperation.
So Obama is burning the bridges between the US and Israel because he's ticked off that Netanyahu is coming to the US to tell Congress that Israel is opposed to Obama's weak policies on Iran. How short sighted!
Army Radio: @JoshRogin @EliLake story is Barack's revenge
Israel's Army Radio reports that the story by @JoshRogin and @EliLake in Bloomberg's that many are (falsely) interpreting as showing a split between Prime Minister Netanyahu and the Mossad on Iran sanctions is President Obama's revenge for Netanyahu's invitation to address a joint session of Congress.
Sources in Jerusalem told Army Radio Thursday that the story reported in Bloomberg about
disagreement between Netanyahu and the Mossad regarding sanctions on
Iran is US President Barack Obama administration's “revenge” for
Netanyahu's invitation to address Congress.
The invitation was extended by Congress without consulting Obama.
Sorry, but I don't buy this one. If the White House wanted to plant a story, it would have gone to Jeffrey Goldberg or Tom Friedman.
The above was just posted on TwitLonger by Israel Radio reporter Chico Menashe. Here's my translation:
Reaction of the Mossad Chairman to the new crisis with Washington:
On 19 January 2015, Mossad Chairman Tamir Pardo met with a delegation of American Senators. The meeting took place at the Senators' request, and with the Prime Minister's approval.
Contrary to the report, the Mossad Chairman did not say that he opposes additional sanctions against Iran. In the meeting, the Mossad Chairman emphasized the unusual effectiveness of the sanctions imposed on Iran a number of years ago in bringing Iran to the negotiating table.
The Mossad Chairman pointed out that the negotiations with Iran must be conducted using 'carrots and sticks,' and the 'sticks' are currently missing. The Mossad Chairman pointed out that without strong pressure, it will not be possible to bring about significant compromises on the Iranian side.
The Mossad Chairman did not relate to the use of the term 'hand grenade' with respect to the imposition of sanctions, because in his eyes, these are the 'sticks' that will help to obtain a good agreement. He used this term to describe the possibility of creating a temporary breakdown in the talks, at the end of which the negotiations will be restarted under better conditions.
The Mossad Chairman explicitly pointed out that the agreement that is being reached with Iran is bad, and may lead to a regional arms race.
Where's the outrage over US spying? CIA agents instructed how to avoid secondary screening at Ben Gurion
Wikileaks has released a CIA document entitled "CIA Assessment on Surviving Secondary Screening at Airports While Maintaining Cover." The document, which is dated September 2011, has instructions for CIA agents traveling on false identities on how to avoid secondary screenings at Israel's Ben Gurion Airport.
"Secondary screening – a potentially lengthy and detailed look by
airport officials at passengers not passing initial scrutiny – can
significantly stress the identities of operational travelers," reads the
introduction. "Referral to secondary screening can occur if
irregularities or questions arise during any stage of airport processing
– immigration, customs, or security – and regardless of whether the
traveler is arriving, in transit, or departing. Officials may also
randomly select travelers."
...
The document details the reasons that could lead to security agents at
Ben-Gurion to refer a traveler to secondary screening. "A review of
clandestine reporting reveals examples of what various countries
consider to be suspicious," it is written.
"Israel’s security personnel focus on frequent travel to Islamic
countries," the document explains. "Security personnel at Ben Gurion
Airport in Tel Aviv, Israel, commonly refer military-aged males
traveling alone with backpacks to secondary screening, regardless of
their nationality or skin color."
The document includes a detailed description of secondary checks at Ben-Gurion.
"At Ben Gurion airport in Israel, the secondary screening room contains
trace-detection equipment for explosive residue; tools for dismantling
passengers’ personal items for inspection, particularly items unfamiliar
to security officers; and a disrobing area, divided by privacy
curtains, to conduct strip searches of individuals, if necessary,"
according to the document.
The CIA's internal guide book also refers to an internal manual from
2004 published by International Consultants on Targeted Security, an
Israeli-founded company, which provides security advice to various
governments on matters such as profiling techniques. The manual
reportedly "lists suspicious signs in passenger behavior, documentation,
tickets, or baggage." The document adds, "Although dated, the ICTS
guidelines probably are typical and remain valid."
Now imagine what would happen if a Mossad manual were released that showed how to avoid being stopped at TSA checks in the US.... I know - it would be laughable.... But you can bet the Americans would be outraged.
This line is particularly telling:
"With the exception of Israel’s Ben Gurion airport and a few others,
immigration inspectors conducting primary screenings generally lack the
time and tools to conduct in-depth examination of travelers’ bona
fides," according to the document released by WikiLeaks.
Sounds to this frequent traveler like a great argument for implementing Israeli-style security everywhere....
Report ties Parchin blast to Iran's nuclear weapons program
Israel's Channel 10 is reporting that there's a connection between last week's explosion at Iran's Parchin weapons testing facility and Iran's nuclear weapons program.
Despite the claims of an accident, chairman of Iran's national
security council Mohammed Saleh has summoned security sources to clarify
the cause of the explosion which reportedly killed a "nuclear expert,"
confirming suspicions it was not a simple accident.
The Iranian state-run Fars News Agency on
Monday in follow-up reports about the supposed ammunition explosion
admitted it happened due to a "private company" that was given a tender
to manage the transportation following government privatization.
Channel 10 reports that the inquiry apparently is focused on a private transportation company "Hamana," which roughly four years ago was
privatized and given given offices adjacent to the Parchin base
entrance, where it is authorized to transport dangerous materials in and
out of the base.
The public relations picture of Hamana features an image of a nuclear
explosion, hinting in a not-so-subtle manner that the company may also
be involved in transporting radioactive materials as part of Iran's
secretive nuclear program.
Suspicions that the blast was an act of sabotage by a foreign nation were strengthened by the reports, given that a cyber attack would be possible on Hamana's trucks.
Hamana reportedly owns five trucks allowed to enter Parchin, which
are equipped with GPS and AVL (Automatic Vehicle Location) systems. The
trucks' movements are supervised online, in a system that allows
distress signals to be sent out - and even allows remote control over
the truck's engine.
I wonder whether the Mossad has a company called Hamana. Heh.
The articles tells a story of a “worldwide network of friends
included over 150 members, speaking 20 different languages, who scanned
every post Steven has made on Facebook or Twitter and removed any
mentions of his Israeli or Jewish connections.” I can only think of one
Jewish organization that could facilitate such an grand scale operation
and it isn't JVP.
We also learned yesterday that Sotloff spent 3 years at theInterdisciplinary Center in Herzliya. An institute that is linked to the Mossad according to some media sources.
Israeli press comes short of linking Sotloff to the Mossad but it
produces the necessary evidence that would make such a suggestion into a
valid option.
If God Forbid I was kidnapped by ISIS, I'd bet that 150 of my friends would immediately wipe out this blog and then go through Facebook and Twitter and make sure they can't find anything on me. And I don't work for the Mossad. And you can bet that if Sotloff worked for the Mossad, ISIS would be crowing about it.
Atzmon's writings are those of a paranoid lunatic.
Surprise: French police arrest French jihadi suspect in Belgian museum murders
I'm sure you'll all be shocked to hear that French police have arrested a French jihadi and charged him with the murders of four people - including two Israelis - at the Jewish museum in Brussels, Belgium last Saturday (Hat Tip: Shy Guy).
According to the report, the suspect was arrested in Marseilles on
Friday, carrying an AK-47 and a pistol of the same type used in the May
24 shooting which killed four people, including two Israelis.
The suspect, 29-year-old Mehdi Nemmouche from Roubaix in the north of
France, was active with jihadists in Syria in 2013, according to a
source close to the investigation.
He is being held on suspicion of murder and attempted murder for the
terror attack in Brussels, AFP quoted a judicial source as saying.
Israeli victims in Belgium were targeted for 'intelligence work'?
Haaretz is reporting that two Israelis who were killed in Saturday's terror attack at the Brussels Jewish Museum may have been specifically targeted due to their 'intelligence work.' Since Haaretz is behind a paywall, this is from the London Daily Telegraph.
"It's possible that the murder in Brussels was not a hate crime or an
anti-Semitic attack, but a targeted assault ... a battle in a covert war,
though perhaps there was a misidentification of the intended victims,"[Amir Oren]
wrote in Haaretz.
But he denied they were spies, and described their tools as "numbers and
computers, not cloaks and daggers."
"Both were accountants who were employed separately by government bodies."
Mr Riva, 54, had worked in the finance ministry as well as at an organisation
called Nativ – which was founded in the 1950s to covertly encourage Jewish
education in the Soviet Union during the Cold War, and to drive immigration
to Israel. Once accused by the KGB of spying, Nativ falls under the remit of
the prime minister's office.
Now Nativ's mission is to encourage immigration to Israel among
Russian-speaking Jews living in western Europe, particularly in Germany.
His wife Miriam, 53, worked for an unspecified "government agency,"
Haaretz said.
"There, and also when she was stationed at one of the agency's missions
in Europe, her post was solely administrative.
"She wasn't Mata Hari," it added, referring to the Dutch-born
dancer, seductress and spy who was executed by a French firing squad during
World War I.
...
The Israeli defence ministry denied the couple had been working for them,
while the prime minister's office declined to comment on the report.
The families of eight out of eleven Iranian Jews who went missing while
attempting to escape Iran two decades ago, received notifications from
the Intelligence Heritage & Commemoration Center that their
relatives were murdered while attempting to immigrate to Israel.
Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu said that he had ordered the
'Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations' (Mossad) to extend
the investigation into the disappearance of the eleven Iranian Jews.
...
In 1994 and again in 1997, eleven Iranian Jews in four separate groups
attempted to escape from Iran and cross the border into neighboring
countries. While making the attempt, all eleven Jews disappeared. Their
disappearances remained unsolved for years and their relatives remained
in the dark as to what happened to them.
The official information regarding the eight murdered Jews was passed on
to former Chief Rabbi Shlomo Amar, who concluded that the evidence was
sufficient to declare the eight Jewish persons as officially deceased,
by Jewish law, permitting the families to finally mourn and feel
closure.
...
The investigation into the fate of the remaining three Iranian Jews, who
disappeared in 1997, remains ongoing. The three men who are still
unnaccounted for are Nouralla Rabizade and two brothers, Syrous and
Ibrahim Ghahremani.
A report by the NYTimes in 2000 speculated that the three men were
detained by Iranian security forces while attempting to flee the country
through the city of Zahedan on the border Pakistan, a known rout for
drug trafficking. The report cited Israeli officials and Iranian Jewish
leaders saying that they believed at least some of the three men were
alive and in prison; where sightings by other prisoners had allegedly
been reported.
The families of the eight had pressed the government to seek
information about their fate as part of its past prisoner swaps with
Iranian-backed Lebanese terror militia Hezbollah.
In a statement, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office said that
the Mossad had investigated and "received from a reliable source, privy
to the details, information that these Jews were captured and murdered
while escaping (Iran)."
The statement did not say who carried out the killings.
It described the eight as part of a group of 11 missing Iranian Jews,
but it did not name them or offer an explanation as to the discrepancy
with the U.S. figure of 12.
I can think of some other families who could use some closure about the fate of their loved ones.
'Most pro-Israel administration evah' systematically bars Shin Bet and Mossad agents, IDF representatives and defense industry execs from visiting US
In an earlier post, I reported that the 'most pro-Israel administration evah' has presided over an 80% increase in the rate of visa denials for Israelis traveling to the United States. Maariv on Tuesday reports on some of those being denied visas. Maariv reports (link in Hebrew) that the US has been systematically denying visas to Shin Bet (General Security Service) and Mossad agents, to representatives of the IDF and to executives of companies in Israel's defense industry. The denials have an economic cost to the United States, as Israel's defense industries do not place orders for American products unless they are able to travel to the United States to see them.
Neither government has commented on the report, but the defense industry has been discussing behind closed doors tens of instances in which visas to travel to the United States were denied.
In addition to the denials, many visas have been limited to three months once the applicant's workplace was disclosed.
Additionally, the IDF's representatives in the US (who usually work on defense procurement) have been given visas for one year, and then have to leave to Canada for weeks on end to await visa extensions.
Behind closed doors, Israeli defense officials reject the possibility that the denials are connected to Defense Minister Yaalon's sharp comments about US Secretary of State John FN Kerry. However, they believe that they may be connected to an attempt to prevent Israel's defense industries from competing effectively with US defense industries.
The US embassy in Tel Aviv would not comment, but they did say that each visa request is examined individually.
The Obama administration has decided that Israel is behind the liquidation of several Iranian nuclear scientists, and has demanded that the liquidations be stopped.
Recently, as I sought to update a book I co-wrote about the history of
Israel's intelligence agencies, sources close to them revealed that they
felt pressure from the Obama Administration - more than a hint - to
stop carrying out assassinations inside Iran.
Although
Israel has never acknowledged it, the country's famed espionage agency -
the Mossad - ran an assassination campaign for several years aimed at
Iran's top nuclear scientists.
The purpose was to slow the progress
made by Iran, which Israel feels certain is aimed at developing nuclear
weapons; and to deter trained and educated Iranians from joining their
country's nuclear program.
At least five Iranian scientists
were murdered, most of them by bombs planted on their cars as they drove
to work in the morning. Remarkably, the Israeli assassins were never
caught - obviously having long-established safe houses inside Iran -
although several Iranians who may have helped the Mossad were arrested
and executed.
In addition to strong signals from the Obama
Administration that the U.S. did not want Israel to continue the
assassinations, Mossad officials concluded that the campaign had gotten
too dangerous. They did not want their best combatants - Israel's term
for its most talented and experienced spies - captured and hanged.
Unbelievable.... Obama wants Iran to obtain nuclear weapons.
The Mossad has hired a rabbi to deal with issues raised by its religious recruits who have increased in number over the past few years.
So many religious recruits have joined the Mossad in recent years
that the organization has hired an official rabbi to advise agents and
employees on a wide range of issues, a report said Monday.
Among the questions the rabbi deals with are those relating to
religious practices, keeping kosher, Sabbath observance, and other
matters that may require compromise or adjustment regarding Jewish Law
on the part of an agent during a mission.
Speaking to Ma'ariv, a Mossad source said that “there are many
religious people in the Mossad, and that number has grown quite a bit in
recent years. In the past, the IDF Chief Rabbi would advise agents, but
with the larger number of employees here the Mossad realized that it
needs its own rabbi.”
Besides rulings on personal obligations of Jewish law, the rabbi
discusses tactics and methods of operation with agents, in order to
reassure them that they are operating as closely to the ritual and
ethical mandates of Jewish law as possible. “There are many questions
beyond the ritual ones that crop up,” the official said.
The rabbi's identity is - you guessed it - top secret.
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
