If you’re raised on dogma and hate, can you choose a different path? Zak
Ebrahim was just seven years old when his father helped plan the 1993
World Trade Center bombing. His story is shocking, powerful, and
ultimately, inspiring.
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With all that's going on, Israel is continuing to allow humanitarian aid into Gaza via the Kerem Shalom crossing point. That means that no human shields will go hungry.
Despite the ongoing rocket fire by Gaza terrorists,
Israel has not halted the entry of trucks into Gaza – and on Thursday,
some 200 trucks carrying food and “basic supplies” entered Gaza. The
government said that the trucks were allowed to pass through for
“humanitarian purposes,” and were inspected and found not to be carrying
any items or equipment that could be used to attack Israel.
The trucks are said to be carrying a greater than normal
supply of food, officials said. According to sources, the IDF and
Defense Ministry officials urged the government's Coordinator of
Government Activities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza, Yoav Mordechai, to
allow an increased amount of supplies into Gaza, so that residents would
have enough to eat in case the IDF begins a ground assault against
Hamas.
The trucks enter Gaza through the Kerem Shalom crossing, which is
often targeted by Gaza terrorists for missile attacks. The workers at
the crossing are all Israeli, and have been given special safety
instructions by the Home Front Command, officials said. It should be
noted that one of the terror tunnels destroyed by the IDF several days
ago was located right next to the Crossing.
With that, officials said, the IDF has pulled two “gestures” granted after the conclusion of Operation Pillar
of Defense in 2012. Palestinian Arab farmers have been banned from
tending to their fields which abut the security fence around Gaza, and
cannot approach within more than a few hundred meters of the fence. In
addition, fishing boats have been restricted to within three kilometers
of the Gaza coast.
The IDF has also allowed 240 Palestinians with foreign citizenship to
leave Gaza, at the request of their governments. Among them are
citizens of the US, Sweden, Greece, Romania, and Serbia. They will be
allowed to leave the country, or to travel to Palestinian
Authority-controlled areas of Judea and Samaria.
It goes without saying that the IDF has not taken steps to cut off
Gaza's electricity, which is supplied by Israel, as numerous ministers
and MKs have demanded. IDF officials said that among the reasons for
allowing the shipments to continue and the power to flow was to prevent
Hamas from painting a picture of a “humanitarian crisis” in Gaza, in
which people have no food, water, or power.
According to former National Security Adviser Yaacov Amidror, the only way to stop the rocket fire is to retake Gaza.
"We’ve never had a crushing blow that hurt the other side’s the ability to launch missiles," Amidror told Channel 10 News,
adding that he believes the only way to achieve complete quiet is to
"retake Gaza and be there for six months to a year to clean it out."
Amidror, who in the past headed the Research Department of Israeli
military intelligence, explained that the extent of the IDF’s operation
in Gaza depends on “how much we are willing to pay for quiet in the
south.”
He estimated that an operation retaking Gaza would require three to
13 days. “Then we would have to remain there between six months and a
year, in order to clean up Gaza. Only then will we be in a situation
where they won’t fire at Israel,” said Amidror.
He stressed that the price of such a military operation would be
dozens of casualties, but added, "I think eventually there will be no
choice. If we cannot force Hamas to ask for a ceasefire by attacking
from the air, we may have to go into Gaza.”
Well, yeah, but it's not like they weren't shooting at all before we left Gaza either, although then most of the shooting was focused on the Jews who lived in Gaza. I'm not sure what he means by 'cleaning it up' but it's sure going to require a lot more than cleaning the streets.
So we have two choices: Rule Gaza or suffer from rocket fire from Gaza. Kahane was right. The only way to have real peace and quiet here is to pay the Arabs to leave. Maybe we need to admit that reality too.
Israel's 5th column favors new intifada but still wants to collect benefits from state
Many people refer to 'Israeli Arabs' as Israel's 5th column, and with good reason. They want all the social welfare benefits of being part of the Jewish state with none of the obligations. When I say 'obligations,' I'm not referring to the army or national service or anything like that. I'm referring to the most basic concept of 'do no harm.' Given the opportunity, most 'Israeli Arabs' would likely do us much harm, which has to make you wonder what they think would happen to all those benefits if God forbid they succeeded.
According to the report, the product of a joint venture between the
university and the Israel Democracy Institute, 62% of Arab citizens feel
it is impossible to trust most Jews, and 71% think the government
treats them as second-class citizens.
The report stated that Arab
distress over the current situation was expressed in the finding that
59% agreed with the statement that “it is justified that the
Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip start a third Intifada if
the political stalemate continues,” and the agreement of 58% that “it is
justified that Arab citizens in Israel begin an Intifada of their own
if their situation does not improve significantly.”
It also found
that 73% of Israeli Arabs prefer that Arab political parties would join a
coalition government, and a majority believe that their leaders truly
represent them.
That last byte is important because it's long been known that the 'Israeli Arab' leadership is more extreme than its constituency, but many pundits have claimed that the leadership is not representative of how 'Israeli Arabs' really think of the state. Apparently, most 'Israeli Arabs' don't agree.
Smooha has been charting Arab opinion since 1976.
Everyone in
academia is saying that the Arabs and Jews are on a collision course, he
said, adding that “it is avoidable, but it depends on the government’s
policies.”
He said Israeli Arabs are interested in receiving the
benefits that the state provides them – stability, democracy, services
and so on. Therefore, he concludes, they are still interested “in
playing by the rules.”
The Arab leadership is more critical of
Israel than the Arab public, which is “much more pragmatic than their
leaders,” Smooha said.
He noted that even though a large majority
of Israeli Arabs support Arab parties joining the coalition, no Arab
party today would join the government.
Due to this gap, many Arabs are not participating in the political process, he said.
...
Regarding the establishment of the State of Israel, 82% of Arabs
accuse the Jews of committing the Nakba (catastrophe of Israel’s
independence) and 48% said they have participated in Nakba commemoration
events.
Around 70% of Arab respondents said Israel was not
justified in maintaining a Jewish majority and 55% would prefer to live
in Israel rather than in any other country. Some 78% fear a grave
violation of their rights and 68% fear a population transfer.
Some
48% would vote in a referendum for a constitution that “defines Israel
as a Jewish and democratic state and guarantees full citizenship rights
to Arabs,” a drop from 71% in 2006.
Still, 42% favor living in Jewish neighborhoods and 37% would prefer their children go to Jewish schools.
Smooha
noted differences within the Arab population, saying Druse definitely
had the most positive views of Israel and that the Beduin were becoming
more religious and affiliated with the Islamic Movement.
One man who took the vow of 'Never again' more seriously than most was Rabbi Meir Kahane HY"D.
As a Holocaust Memorial Day 'treat,' I have four short videos of Rabbi Kahane fighting the Nazis in Skokie in 1976-77. Especially for those of you whose reaction is disgust, but who have never heard Rabbi Kahane (you know who you are), I urge you to listen to him at least once in your lifetime.
Here's video 1. Let's go to the videotape (Hat Tip: Dan F for all four of them).
Here's video 2. Let's go to the videotape.
Here's video 3. Let's go to the videotape.
Here's video 4. Let's go to the videotape.
For those of you who are wondering why there seemed to be so many old people in these videos, it's because there were. Mrs. Carl, who was a teenager at the time, has told me that the people who were most opposed to the Nazis marching - and therefore most in favor of Kahane - were the elderly who had survived the Holocaust. They had learned the lesson. Have we?
Exactly 20 years ago on this date, a terrorist attack at the World
Trade Center took the lives of six people and injured more than a
thousand others. The tragedy shocked the nation but, as with other
al-Qaeda attacks in the years that followed, the WTC bombing did not
alter the country’s basic approach to Islamist terrorism. For the next
eight and a half years, the United States carried on with a
business-as-usual attitude toward the subject. The lack of urgency
applied to the subject, as well as the disorganized and sometimes
slap-dash nature of the security establishment’s counter-terrorist
operations, led to the far greater tragedy of September 11, 2001 when
al-Qaeda managed to accomplish what it failed to do in 1993: knock down
the towers and slaughter thousands.
All these years after 9/11 and the tracking down and killing of Osama
bin Laden, are there any further lessons to be drawn from that initial
tragedy? To listen to the chattering classes, you would think the answer
is a definitive no. Few are marking this anniversary and even fewer
seem to think there is anything more to be said about what we no longer
call the war on terror. But as much as many of us may wish to consign
this anniversary to the realm of the history books, the lessons of the
day the war on America began still need to be heeded.
The truth is that the war on America didn't begin with the first World
Trade Center bombing. It began two and a half years earlier. El Sayyid
Nosair was an associate of those who carried out the bombing. He also
was the killer of Rabbi Meir Kahane.
It was not clear to what extent the disciplinary action and the
reopening of the Kahane investigation were part of an effort to pressure
Mr. Nosair to divulge information that could help in the bombing case. A
senior law-enforcement official, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity, maintained that Mr. Nosair had been thrust into the bombing
investigation because of his contacts with others under investigation.
Federal agents, meanwhile, continued to trace the flow of foreign money
into bank accounts of two of the arrested suspects, Mohammed A. Salameh,
a 25-year-old illegal immigrant who was born in the West Bank, and
Nidal A. Ayyad, 25, a chemical engineer who was born in Kuwait.
...
Throughout the Nosair investigation, Chief Borrelli has insisted that
the assassination was the work of a gunman acting alone. While he said
yesterday that he remains convinced that no one else was directly
involved in the killing, he allowed for the first time that Mr. Nosair
might have been involved in a terrorist organization that had ordered
the rabbi executed for his hard-line approach toward Palestinians in
Israel.
And when Mr. Nosair was arrested on Nov. 5 in the Kahane shooting, a
search of his home in Cliffside Park, N.J., turned up formulas for the
construction of bombs, political tracts and documents, video and audio
tapes advocating the destruction of symbolic statues, tall buildings and
buildings of political significance, the indictment said.
Investigators have said that the reams of materials, all in Arabic, sat
in boxes untranslated until the bombing of the World Trade Center, and
that the emergence of associates of Mr. Nosair as suspects led them to
reopen the Kahane case.
Think about that. There was potential evidence at Nosair's house but no
authorities bothered translating it. There was an assumption that Rabbi
Kahane had brought his fate upon himself. It is incredible that many
documents at Nosair's house were not analyzed. Had authorities done that
they might have prevented the first World Trade Center bombing!
And yet despite this, there are those who think that authorities are too
aggressive in seeking to prevent terrorism. Matthew Continetti recently
wrote in the Matter in Handschu:
Elshafay, who pleaded guilty, was sentenced to five years in federal
prison in 2007. Siraj is serving a 30-year sentence. Their conspiracy is
just one of the 16 known terrorist plots against New York City that
have been foiled in the decade since nearly 3,000 men, women, and
children were murdered in Manhattan on the morning of September 11,
2001. Hard to argue, it would seem, with the NYPD’s 12 years of keeping
its city safe.
But people do argue, intensely, and with a lack of proportion and
context that is simply mindboggling. Consider: For years now, the
February 9 New York Times editorial page breathlessly informed readers,
New York police officers, “deploying an army of spies,” have been
“spying on law-abiding Muslims” and “targeting Muslim groups because of
their religious affiliation, not because they present any risk.” Such is
the allegation of a motion lawyers connected with the New York Civil
Liberties Union filed in federal court in early February. “New York City
police,” the motion details, “routinely selected Muslim groups for
surveillance and infiltration.” Which is “more than ample reason,”
concludes the Times, “to be concerned about possible overreach and
unconstitutional activity.”
...
At issue are the so-called Handschu Guidelines, an unwieldy set of
judicial protocols that limit NYPD surveillance of “political activity.”
These guidelines, named after Black Panther attorney Barbara Handschu,
are the result of a class action filed against the police in 1971 and
settled in 1985. “No other police department in the country is bound by
these rules,” notes former director of NYPD intelligence analysis
Mitchell Silber. And no other police department in the country has had
to deal with such a persistent and adaptive terrorist threat, while
assuring critics in activist groups and the media that no, sorry,
martial law has not been imposed on the five boroughs. A federal judge
recognized as much in 2003 when he modified the Handschu Guidelines to
allow the NYPD freedom to uncover and disrupt incipient plots.
The scrutiny given the NYPD would be comical if it weren't so dangerous.
There is still a hesitance among certain elites to acknowledge
religious based violence, when the perpetrators are Muslims. Tobin is
correct when he writes:
All these years after 9/11 and the tracking down and killing of Osama
bin Laden, are there any further lessons to be drawn from that initial
tragedy? To listen to the chattering classes, you would think the answer
is a definitive no. Few are marking this anniversary and even fewer
seem to think there is anything more to be said about what we no longer
call the war on terror. But as much as many of us may wish to consign
this anniversary to the realm of the history books, the lessons of the
day the war on America began still need to be heeded.
My only disagreement with him is that February 26, 1993 reflected one of those unheeded lessons.
2) Iran vs. Israel
Yesterday I cited a New York Times report that the Al Aqsa Martyr
brigades claimed credit for the recent rocket fired into Israel breaking
the three month old ceasefire that ended Operation Pillar of Defense.
However taking credit (and whatever that reflects) is not the same thing
as being responsible. Avi Isacharoff reports for the Tower, Iran Revolutionary Guard Corps Operating in Gaza; Grad Rocket Fired at Israel:
Members of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps are currently in the Gaza
Strip, high-level Palestinian security sources tell The Tower.
The Iranians, according to our security sources, are experts in missile
production, and are in Gaza to help Hamas and Islamic Jihad develop
long-range missiles. Israeli security and political officials declined
to elaborate, telling The Tower only that this isn’t the first time
delegates from Tehran had entered the Hamas-controlled territory.
...
This morning’s rocket attack was apparently not carried out by Hamas,
but by its rival Islamic Jihad, a smaller organization believed to be
largely, if not entirely, under Iran’s control. Two weeks ago one of
Islamic Jihad’s leaders in the West Bank, Sheikh Bassam al-Saadi, told
TheTower his group enjoys “warm and positive” ties with the Islamic
republic. There are also reports in Arabic media that Fatah has claimed
responsibility.
While it doesn't prove that the IRGC was behind the Grad attack, the
presence of the IRGC in Gaza is notable as Israel (apparently) recently killed an IRGC commander in Syria. It would appear that Iran - nuclear weapons or not - is attempting to project its power against Israel by its proxies.
3) Has the New York Times ever tried this?
Simply Jews and Honest Reporting note an excellent tactic employed by the New York Daily News. Pesach Benson of Honest Reporting explains:
Here’s something I never saw before: After Omar Barghouti was given op-ed space in the NY Daily News to explain the BDS movement, the paper itself slammed Barghouti with a staff-ed.
It’s one thing to present dueling op-eds. But responding with a sharply
worded staff editorial — which represents the paper’s official view — is
much stronger. I also liked the staff-ed’s style. Bloggers would refer
to the point-by-point refutations as a fisking.
A few years ago in defending the New York Times for publishing an op-ed
by a Hamas spokesman, the paper then-public editor wrote The Danger of the One Sided Debate:
Op-ed pages should be open especially to controversial
ideas, because that’s the way a free society decides what’s right and
what’s wrong for itself. Good ideas prosper in the sunshine of healthy
debate, and the bad ones wither. Left hidden out of sight and
unchallenged, the bad ones can grow like poisonous mushrooms.
This was silly on a number of levels. Fundamentally the problem is that
the New York Times, if it is one-sided any way, it one-sided against
Israel. The New York Times doesn't shine light on extreme anti-Israel
opinions as much as it reinforces them.
The behavior of New York Daily News is an admirable counterpoint to the
dishonesty of the New York Times.
Feiglin goes Kahane: Pay the 'Palestinians' to leave
While the Prime Minister continues to futilely attack the Jewish Home party, further down on the Likud list, Moshe Feiglin (officially no longer Netanyahu's 'rival') has the right idea. Feiglin says we should take the money we are spending on the 'two-state solution' and use it to pay the 'Palestinians' to leave Judea and Samaria. That's right out of Rabbi Meir Kahane's HY"D book. And you won't believe how much we can afford to pay: $500,000 per family (Hat Tip: Sunlight).
Despite the Likud campaign's instruction not to give interviews, Moshe Feiglin, continued to make controversial statements during a conference call in Jerusalem on Tuesday.
Women in Green, held a conference today attended by several Likud officials. Among the discussions were talks of ways to impose operational Israeli sovereignty beyond the Green Line.
Feiglin, who earlier on Tuesday was arrested by police after trying to pray on the Temple Mount, proposed paying Palestinians to leave the Palestinian controlled West Bank.
"The State of Israel is paying 10 percent of its Gross Domestic Product every year for the two-state solution and the Oslo Accords. Israel is paying for separation fences, iron domes and a guard at each coffee shop. Soon we will have to place iron domes at each school in Tel Aviv.
With this budget we can give every Palestinian family in West Bank, $500,000 to encourage migration to a place with a better future. Western nations are declining due to low birth rates, so they will surely be accepted into the West. The question is whether the world will want Sudanese migrants, who cannot build or Palestinians who know how to build.
Surveys conducted in Gaza and the West Bank show that 80 percent of the Palestinians in Gaza and 65 percent of the Palestinians in the West Bank want to emigrate. Here we have the perfect solution," Feiglin said.
Yes, yes, yes. Let's send them all to Europe!
And if the Likud wants to gain some of those votes back from Jewish Home, it's not Feiglin they have to keep quiet: It's Netanyahu and his gang of Leftists.
By the way, if you want to see more about Rabbi Kahane's original proposals, go here.
World Trade Center bombing planner to be returned to Egypt with Kahane assassin for American democracy activists?
Citing an al-Arabiya report in Arabic, Robert Spencer reports that the United States has offered to trade Sheikh Omar Abdul Rahman, who is imprisoned in the United States for a conviction stemming from the first (1993) World Trade Center bombing, along with 49 other Egyptians being held in American prisons, for the 19 Americans currently being held in Egypt on charges of promoting democracy.
Al-Arabiya is reporting, in Arabic only so far, that the U.S. is talking with the Egyptian government to free the blind Sheikh and 49 other Egyptians currently imprisoned in the U.S. in exchange for the freedom of the 19 Americans the Egyptians are holding.
The blind Sheikh, Omar Abdel Rahman, is in prison for his role in masterminding the 1993 World Trade Center jihad terror bombing. If he is freed, it will be the apotheosis of Obama's policy of appeasement toward the Islamic world.
I pulled a Google translation of the Arabic article. No names are mentioned other than Rahman, although there is talk there about how Egypt should not 'miss the opportunity' (a phrase that ought to make the US State Department consider banning travel to Egypt) to free all 500 Egyptians being held in the US.
But I would assume that one of the 49 others to be included with Rahman is El Sayid Nosair, the man who murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane, and was later acquitted on a technicality (he has since admitted that he murdered Rabbi Kahane). Nosair is a disciple of Rahman and was also convicted on charges related to the 1993 World Trade Center bombing.
Nosair should never see the light of day (neither should Rahman).
Spencer is right. This 'exchange' would indeed be the apotheosis of Obama's Presidency. For now.
If you happen to be a Jew who believes in Maimonides' 13 principles of faith, one of which is a belief in the future coming of the Messiah, then Jeffrey Goldberg is really, really scared of you.
Jeffrey Goldberg, respected Jewish-American journalist, felt it was his duty to broadcast to humanity that Jews who believe in the coming of a Messiah - thus earning the "messianic" adjective - are a clear and present danger to world peace. That belief in the coming of a Messiah constitutes one of the 13 Principles of the Jewish Faith, adhered to by all observant Jews throughout history, without a single resultant incident of bloodshed or violence, is irrelevant. For Jeffrey, the important point was to draw a false equivalence between Islamist fanaticism and Jewish virtue; to ensure that civilized people learn to be frightened of Jews, particularly Jews who lovingly adhere to the statutes of their faith, no less than they are of Islamists, and preferably more so. Mission accomplished, indeed.
But wait, there's more! Who are these "messianic" Jewish terrorists, and where are they hiding?
"A few months ago," Jeffrey helpfully directs us, "I visited a building in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem’s Old City owned by a radical yeshiva." Aha! So that's where the "messianic" Jewish terrorists are encamped, biding their time to strike the blow that ends the world. Camped illegitimately, Goldberg likely wishes to add, it being the Muslim Quarter, and thus the dreaded and preferably Judenrein "West Bank".
To my knowledge, which I admit is limited (where's Yaacov when you need him), the only yeshiva of any prominence in the Muslim Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City is Yeshiva Ateres Cohanim. Here it is on Google Maps, in relation to the Temple Mount. Here's a brief video (click the link, I command you) about the yeshiva, encompassing the history of the place, which has been a center of Jewish learning since 1886, when it was known as Yeshiva Torath Chaim (pictured on the right, 1920s).
That's right, the building now home to Ateres Cohanim housed a yeshiva long before the international community decided that Jews should not be allowed to live in "East" Jerusalem, and longer still before Jeffrey Goldberg decided that any Jew who lives in "East" Jerusalem is a "radical". What's more, the building is the sole survivor of the Jordanian occupation, during which time the other 80 yeshivas and synagogues in the Arab controlled portions of the city were destroyed. The building laid empty after the Arab pogroms of 1936, entrusted to an Arab caretaker, until Israel reunified Jerusalem in 1967.
That wasn't the only effort by Goldberg this week to 'protect' the World from 'messianic Jews.' Earlier in the week, he went after David HaIvri (pictured above), executive director of the Shomron Liaison Office, and an occasional source of news for this blog.
I would only note that the person Rep. Gohmert is standing next to, David Halvri, is someone I met in the 90s when he still called himself David Axelrod (no relation, as far as I can tell, to the other David Axelrod), and when he was a leader of the Kach movement, founded by the late Rabbi Meir Kahane, and of Kahane Chai, the successor organization to Kach. Kach men, of course, are fascist fundamentalists. HaIvri was arrested in Israel for celebrating the death of Yitzhak Rabin; he was also jailed for six months for desecrating a mosque. He has also been associated with groups that have been included on the State Department list of terrorist organizations. Just noting this for the record.
In the paranoia of the 1990's, lots of people were arrested for 'celebrating the death of Rabin' (something that absent a threat to someone else would probably constitute free speech in the US by the way). In one apocryphal story I recall from that time, a Jerusalem barber asked "who is next in line" and someone responded "Shimon Peres." Someone called the police and the person was promptly arrested. So I don't put much stock in saying that someone was arrested for 'celebrating the death of Rabin.' Most of them weren't.
As to Kach/Kahane Chai, one of the deep, dark secrets of this country is that many Jews believe Kahane was right about a lot of things (although most of us - including me - would not support the use of violence to induce Arabs to leave). Consider our national anthem, the possibility of Israel having to choose between being a democracy or being a Jewish state (something about which Goldberg himself has expressed concern), and the fact that three years ago, 76% of Israeli Jews surveyed said they favored transferring 'Israeli Arabs' to a 'Palestinian state' if one is ever - God forbid - established. Kahane never envisioned a 'Palestinian state,' but he did favor transferring 'Israeli Arabs' to Arab countries. If you think that's unreasonable, go here and see what the very mainstream Daniel Gordis has to say about it.
As to Goldberg's claims about Kach/Kahane Chai being 'terrorist organizations,' they were in fact so designated, but at the request of an ally of the United States: The Government of Israel. The Israeli government feared that - given the opportunity - many Jews would vote for Kahane, and that just didn't fit in with the branja's plans. So they excluded Kahane from the 1988 elections (something which has never been done to any anti-Zionist Arab parties) and went around the world asking that his organizations be declared terrorist organizations.
By the way, the MEK in Iran and the PKK in Kurdistan were also both designated as terror organizations at the request of then-US allies Iran (under the Shah) and Turkey, respectively. Today, James Jones, formerly President Obama's National Security Adviser, favors removing the terrorist designation from the MEK. Sometimes designation as a terrorist organization is politically influenced.
For those who know little or nothing about Kahane (who was murdered in 1990 a few blocks from my office at the time), here's a video of a 1984 debate between Kahane and Ehud Olmert on ABC's Nightline. Who do you think won?
Let's go to the videotape. More after the video.
But for the record, I am told by mutual friends that David has been squeaky clean since he got married - no arrests, no Kach/Kahane Chai activities and no more youthful indiscretion. And there's a good chance that Congressman Gohmert (R-Tx) had no idea who David is or what his background is, before during or after that photo shoot.
And in another cheap shot, the normally pro-Israel Harry's Place asked why HaIvri was allowed into the US. As it happens, unless he's given it up, David is a US citizen (who has dual citizenship with Israel, just like I do).
Whatever you think (or thought) of Rabbi Meir Kahane HY"D (may God avenge his blood), is there anyone who can deny this is true? (Hat Tip: Dan F).
When the Israeli Arab is told to rise for his national anthem, “Hatikvah” (the hope), and sing of “the Jewish soul yearning” and “the hope of 2,000 years,” can he be expected to feel empathy? ... the song’s motif of Jewish longing for Israel is not acceptable to Israel’s Arabs. When the Israeli Arabs looks upon the happy revelers on Israeli Independence Day, celebrating, in effect, the Arab defeat and the displacement of an Arab majority of Palestine by a Jewish majority of Israel, can he be seriously expected to join us? When, in the words of the Declaration of Independence, the Law of Return opens the gates “for Jewish immigration,” and not Arab influx, for the cousins of the residents of Tel Aviv and not those of Nazareth, is it surprising that the Arab feels alienated from the state?
--Rabbi Meir Kahane (OBM), 1981
And then there's this from Zev Jabotinsky, the mentor of the Likud, including Menachem Begin and Binyamin Netanyahu's father:
As long as the Arabs feel that there is the least hope of getting rid of us, they will refuse to give up this hope for either kind words or bread and butter.
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
