"Our history began from Jerusalem" said [Education Minister Naftali] Bennett this morning. Forgive the pettiness, but the Education Minister should know that according to the Torah, we came here from Egypt.
Labels: bible, morons, Naftali Bennett, Stav Shaffir
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:35 PM
2 comments
All of the extravagant promises and claims–of “Yes We Can!” and “we’re the ones we’ve been waiting for;” of hope and change and slowing the rise of the oceans; of claiming his candidacy would “ring out across this land as a hymn that will heal this nation, repair this world, make this time different than all the rest”–lie in ruin. (I’d urge you to watch this short video clip from the 2008 campaign to more fully appreciate the crushing disappointment that results from what Mr. Obama said he would achieve versus what he’s been able to achieve.)
In all of this one is reminded of the wisdom of the Book of Proverbs, which warns that “pride goes before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.” The president has been shown to be a man out of his depth time and again. But here’s the problem: Mr. Obama’s failures have inflicted great and durable harm on the United States. This may be worth keeping in mind the next time an eloquent community organizer decides he’s ready to be commander in chief.Indeed.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, bible
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 8:42 AM
0 comments
As much as the Cairo speech upset many Israelis and their most ardent U.S. supporters, it was Obama’s next move that raised even more alarm.
After the speech, the president flew to Germany to visit the Buchenwald concentration camp. He did not stop in Israel on his way — a visit that his predecessor, George W. Bush, also put off until his second term.
During a haunting wind-swept afternoon at the hilltop camp, Obama highlighted the suffering of the Jewish people. But to many Israelis, the visit appeared to locate the modern state of Israel’s legitimacy in the Holocaust rather than in the period outlined in the Bible — an argument that some Arab political leaders also make.
Even to many moderate Arabs, the modern Jewish state was created in historical Palestine to assuage European guilt over the Holocaust. Senior administration officials have said this was not the argument Obama intended to endorse.But there was suspicion of Obama even before that incident and before the Cairo speech (I concluded that Obama was anti-Israel by January 2008 after trying not to jump to that conclusion through most of 2007). And the fact that Obama was waited four years to correct that 'misimpression' has not helped.
Working with the White House in the run-up to this week’s visit, Israeli officials suggested a few cultural visits that, in the words of one senior Israeli official, would correct that impression by emphasizing Israel’s “pre-Holocaust claim to a national state.”
The first was the wreath-laying ceremony at Herzl’s tomb. Israeli leaders also suggested that Obama visit the Shrine of the Book, a wing of the Israel Museum that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls. That, too, is on Obama’s itinerary.
“The key and core of the conflict is whether the Palestinians and Arabs will accept Jews as a people with a legitimate claim to the land,” said Michael Oren, Israel’s ambassador to the Washington.
But Obama will not venture into Jerusalem’s Old City, which was seized by Israel in the 1967 war and holds some of the holiest sites of the world’s three major religions within its ancient walls.And Obama needs a lot of help when it comes to convincing Israelis. In a poll published by Maariv on Sunday, 79% of Israelis wanted him to show up with Jonathan Pollard and 11% wanted Pollard to come without him. Only 10% of Israelis want Obama to come alone. Probably the same 10% that told the same poll that they 'like' him. 52% of Israelis find him either threatening or indifferent. 51% oppose 'gestures' to the 'Palestinians' in response to Obama's arrival, while only 27% favor such 'gestures' (usually things like releasing terrorists from Israeli jails).
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, bible, Holocaust, US-Israel relationship
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:30 AM
0 comments
So it would seem that Obama finally could be on the right historical track if, during his Jerusalem visit later this month, he substituted the Bible for the Holocaust as the real genesis of Zionism.
Well, not quite. Pointing to the Bible as the fundamental undergirding of Jewish nationhood would be a big step forward for Obama. But as history, it would still fall short -- at best a single or a double, to use baseball jargon. If Obama were aiming to score a homer, he would have to add evidence more attuned to secular minds in the 21st century. And there's plenty of that as well -- especially in Jerusalem where archeology and the Bible validate each other.
Or Obama could point as far as Rome and the Arch of Titus with its frieze of Roman legionnaires returning triumphantly from their destruction of the Jewish Temple, carrying the Temple's golden seven-branch menorah. That happened 2,000 years before the Holocaust.
Why is all this crucial as addenda to the Bible to support Jewish sovereignty? For one thing, from Mahmoud Abbas on down, Palestinians keep denying any historic Jewish ties to Jerusalem, clinging instead to the anti-Jewish Ahmadinejad formula that Israel is a recent colonial implant. For another thing, physical archeological evidence is as crucial as -- if not more so than -- biblical accounts in an increasingly secular world. If non-believers shrug off biblical evidence, they cannot avert their eyes from a profusion of graphic empirical evidence.
When Obama delivers his major address in Jerusalem, it will be interesting to hear whether he realizes the huge errors of his 2009 Cairo speech and how far he is willing to go to give the world a full account of Israel's sovereignty claims -- backed up not only by the Bible, but also by irrefutable empirical evidence.
I wouldn't bet on it. I think he'll just skip the Holocaust reference and try to fudge it.
In other words, will Obama finally deliver a historically kosher speech?
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, bible, Holocaust, Israel is a Jewish state, Israel's right to exist
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:12 PM
3 comments
While the Shoah has a central role in Israel’s identity, it is not the reason behind its founding, and it’s not the main justification for its existence. That extreme characterization of that mistaken view is that Western powers established Israel in 1948 based on their own guilt; at the expense of Arab peoples who lived there. Therefore the current state is illegitimate and should be wiped off the face of the map. This flawed argument is not only in defiance of basic humanity dignity, but in plain defiance of history. It is in defiance of ancient history as told in biblical texts and through archaeological evidence. It ignores the history of millennia. Several thousand years of history leads to an undeniable conclusion: the establishment of the State of Israel in modern times is a political reality with roots going back to King David and the time of Abraham and Sarah. The argument for Israel’s legitimacy does not depend on what we say in any speech. It has been made by history; it has been made by the men and women who made the desert green; by Nobel prizes earned; by groundbreaking innovations and enviable institutions; by lives saved; by democracy defended; by peace made; by battle won. There can be no denying the Jewish people’s legitimate right to live in peace and security in a homeland to which they have a connection for thousands of years.I hope that President Hussein Obama was listening.
Labels: Barack Hussein Obama, bible, Holocaust, Israel is a Jewish state, Robert Menendez
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:09 PM
0 comments
Labels: bible, Campaign 2012, Joe Biden, Paul Ryan
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 2:47 PM
1 comments
Those of you who are Jews and Christians should keep in mind that any time the 'Palestinians' and their supporters deny the right of Jews to the land of Israel, they are denying the Bible.Labels: bible, biblical Israel, bus advertisements, hasbara, StandWithUs
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:22 PM
1 comments
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:51 PM
2 comments
Diana West writes that the real Jihad is against the Bible (and against Israel). Why Israel? Ye'or asks. "Given the immense territories conquered and Islamized over thirteen centuries of expansion and war," she writes, "why would Muslim countries keep plotting to destroy Israel?" And further: "Why does the immense oil wealth of Muslim nations nourish a flood of hatred that poisons the heart of humanity against such a small nation? Why is Israel considered so alarming?"Read the whole thing. It makes sense of the worldwide obsession with Israel.
The well-read global citizen might regurgitate something about land, modern Zionism and the post-1948 "plight of the Palestinians," but these are stock narratives overwriting the age-old reason. "What Israel possesses," Ye'or explains, "is the Bible."
To appreciate the depth and breadth of this perhaps obvious but seldom pondered explanation, it's essential to realize that Jewish and Christian Bible characters, from Abraham to Moses to Jesus, pop up in the Koran as Muslim prophets who actually preach Islam, not Judaism or Christianity. This is the time-wrinkling, religion-morphing way in which Islam repudiates what it regards as falsifications in both the first (old) and second (new) testaments. Given that the Jewish and Christian religious books long predate the Islamic religious book, it's not surprising that in their Koranic guises the biblical characters "wander," as Bat Ye'or writes, "in uncertain space with no geographical or temporal references." Still, Muslims claim that these same "Muslim" characters lived in "Palestine," Bat Ye'or writes, on the basis of the "Jewish and Christian scriptures that they reject."
It follows from this highly unstable construct that Islam sees the biblical past as Islamic history "usurped" by Jews and Christians. Thus, "the land in which it took place -- though ... never mentioned in the Koran -- is (considered) a Muslim land, and Jewish and Christian holy sites are all (considered) Muslim," writes Ye'or, the pre-eminent modern historian of "dhimmitude," the diminished condition of non-Muslims under Islamic law (Shariah).
The land of Israel itself -- whose "every region, town and village is mentioned in the Bible with historical and chronological precision" -- is thus "sacrilegious" to Muslims, she explains. "They observe with destructive rage this unfolding return of history that they claim as their own. ... Any confirmation of the veracity of the Bible is seen as an attack on the Islamic authenticity of the Koranic figures taken from the Bible."
Labels: bible, Global jihad, Islamic indoctrination, Koran, Sharia law
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 7:32 PM
2 comments
Labels: bible, Koran, Palestinian, Temple Mount
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 12:42 AM
4 comments
Yoram Ettinger talks about the differences between how Israel treated Jerusalem and how the Muslims treated Jerusalem when they controlled it. According to Professor Har-El's 55 years of research, the Jews were the first to coalesce the various regions of Canaan into a unified country. They settled in the mountain ridges of Judea and Samaria rather than along the coastal plain, introducing agricultural innovations into barren, rugged mountains, developing irrigation systems, establishing stone and metal shops, ushering advanced architecture and construction, building roads from the Mediterranean to Jerusalem, which became the crown jewel of the Jewish People.Jerusalem is our moral high ground. We can never consider dividing it.
On the other hand, Har-El notes, Jerusalem was severely neglected during the Islamic rule of the area, overshadowed by the town of Ramlah (half way between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem), which was the provincial Muslim capital. The Muslim attitude toward Jerusalem - the Capital of the Jewish People since 1,000BC - reflected the negligible priority accorded by Islam toward the Land of Israel, which was devastated by Muslim rule. In 1867, Mark Twain attested to the state of the area in Innocents Abroad: "…Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, Palestine must be the prince…It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land…Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes…Palestine is desolate and unlovely…."
The 1949-1967 Jordanian occupation of East Jerusalem sustained the Muslim attitude toward Jerusalem. Jordan oppressed Jerusalem's Christian community, which was reduced from 25,000 in 1949 to 10,000 in 1967. The Hashemites coerced Jerusalem's church schools to teach the Quran and prevented Christian expansion. Jordan defiled and vandalized over 50 Jewish synagogues, using some as cowsheds, stables or public latrines. Over 75% of the tombstones at the holiest Jewish cemetery, on Mount Olive, were ripped out and used for pavements and public urinals.
Jerusalem was never a capital of any Arab entity. It was not mentioned in the 1964 PLO's Covenant. However, Jerusalem is highlighted in each synagogue, each Jewish prayer and holiday and during every Jewish wedding and other Jewish rituals. Jerusalem is a pillar of Judaism, but it is not included among the five pillars of Islam. Jerusalem – and its synonym, Zion - are mentioned 821 times in the Bible ("Old Testament"), but not even once in the Quran. Muhammed never set foot in Jerusalem or in the Land of Israel. In contrast to Jews, Muslims pray toward Mecca and Medina and not toward Jerusalem and there is no Muslim pilgrimage to Jerusalem, but to Mecca.
Labels: bible, Jerusalem, Koran, moral high ground
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 3:00 PM
0 comments
In an earlier post, I described a meeting between then-Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin and then-British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. Rick Richman brings a different perspective, quoting from Yehuda Avner's account of the meeting.Then Begin turned to Thatcher:Read the whole thing.“Madame Prime Minister, your foreign secretary dismisses my country’s historic rights and pooh-poohs our vital security needs. So I shall tell you why the settlements are vital: because I speak of the Land of Israel, a land redeemed, not occupied; because without those settlements Israel could be at the mercy of a Palestinian state astride the commanding heights of Judea and Samaria. We would be living on borrowed time. And whenever we Jews are threatened or attacked we are always alone. Remember in 1944, how we came begging for our lives — begging at this very door?”Carrington abruptly challenged Begin again: “And what does this have to do with the settlements?”
“Is that when you wanted us to bomb Auschwitz?”
“No, Madame, not Auschwitz. We asked you to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz. In the summer of 1944, Eichmann was transporting to their deaths a hundred thousand Hungarian Jews a week along those lines to Auschwitz.”“Lord Carrington, please have the goodness not to interrupt me when I am in the middle of a conversation with your prime minister. … As I said, whenever we are threatened or attacked, we have only our own fellow Jews to rely on.”
“Peter,” said Mrs. Thatcher softly, “I think an admission of regret is called for.” …
“Quite right, Prime Minister. … Somehow, your little country, Mr. Begin, evokes all sorts of high emotional fevers. Stirs up the blood, so to speak.”Begin, his composure regained, smiled at him, the smile not reaching his eyes. “The story of our people is very much a tale of having to defend ourselves against bouts of irrationality and hysteria. It happens in every generation.”In 1979, Begin signed a peace treaty with Egypt, returning land exceeding the size of Israel. He offered Palestinians a quasi-state autonomy; they rejected it. Thirty years later, we know, five times over, that settlements were not an obstacle to peace; to the contrary, their removal in Gaza resulted in a new rocket war.
Labels: bible, Margaret Thatcher, Menachem Begin, Palestinians
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 9:35 PM
2 comments
British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher feared that Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin would use nuclear weapons if he felt threatened, according to a report attributed to Wikileaks and to the British National Archives. A diplomatic cable from the UK embassy in Tel Aviv, dated May 4, 1980, warned "the situation in the region is deteriorating and with it Israel's dangerous mood of isolation and defiance will grow. If they are to be destroyed they will go down fighting this time. They will be ready to use their atomic weapon. Because they cannot sustain a long war, they would have to use it early."I wonder if any Israeli Prime Minister other than Begin has ever laid claim to Judea and Samaria based upon the bible. I cannot recall one who did that.
Documents released from the British National Archives also show then prime minister Margaret Thatcher's frustration with her Israeli counterpart at the time, Menachem Begin.
Thatcher said of Begin that she "had never had a more difficult man to deal with."
When she told Begin that his West Bank settlement building policy was "unrealistic" and "absurd" his reply had been "Judea and Samaria had been Jewish in biblical times and that they should therefore be so today."
Thatcher relayed the conversation with Begin to then French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing.
Labels: bible, Margaret Thatcher, Menachem Begin, nuclear weapons
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 1:41 PM
5 comments
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
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