Haredi women fill women's section at Western Wall
Haredi women once again filled the women's section at the Western Wall (Kotel) Plaza on Wednesday morning, Rosh Chodesh, forcing the self-proclaimed '
Women of the Wall' to do their thing elsewhere.
The Women of the Wall prayer rights activist group was holding its
monthly prayer service at the Western Wall on Wednesday, and the
Jerusalem Police said there were around 250 activists present.
The
WoW group was forced to congregate in a different area because the
women's section of the Western Wall was too packed, the police said.
Around one to two hundred shouting and whistle blowing haredi men and
women were protesting close to the WoW prayer area but police had made
no arrests.
The Jerusalem Police accompanied the group members from the complex’s entrance to the
Western Wall plaza so as to prevent anyone from interfering with their
prayers.
The Women of the Wall have the merit that they are bringing thousands of Haredim out for sunrise prayer services (the best way of saying morning prayers under Jewish law) every Rosh Chodesh. Next month, Rosh Chodesh is Rosh HaShanna, and I don't believe they come there on Rosh HaShanna (there is no public transport in Jerusalem and no cars are allowed near the Western Wall). In two months, Rosh Chodesh is on the Sabbath (again, no public transport and no cars), so unless they're going to show up on the first day of Rosh Chodesh (which is not the first day of the month), there may not be a clash then either. That means the next clash is 2-3 months away.
Labels: Kotel plaza, media, Western Wall, Women of the Wall
Obama's buddy Mohammed Morsy to Senators: 'Jews control US media'
Egyptian President Mohammed Morsy, President Obama's best friend in the Middle East after Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, told seven US Senators (John McCain (R-AZ), Chris Coons (D-DE), Kelly Ayotte (R-NH), Lindsey Graham (R-SC), Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), Richard Blumenthal (D-CT), and Kirsten Gilibrand (D-NY)) last week that
the American media is controlled by Jews.
But inside the meeting, the discussion
over Morsy's 2010 remarks was much more heated than either side publicly acknowledged
afterwards, according to Coons. Addressing the comments was the first item on
the senators' agenda, and the discussion did not go well, he told The Cable in an interview.
"We tried to give President Morsy an
opportunity, now that he is the president, to put his comments in a different
context because he was claiming that he was taken out of context. On their face
they seemed to be very offensive and inappropriate," Coons said. "It was a
difficult conversation."
Morsy told the senators that the values
of Islam teach respect for Christianity and Judaism, and he asserted repeatedly
that he had no negative views about Judaism or the Jewish people, but then
followed with a diatribe about Israel and Zionist actions against Palestinians,
especially in Gaza.
Then Morsy crossed a line and made a
comment that made the senators physically recoil in their chairs in shock,
Coons said.
"He was attempting to explain himself ...
then he said, ‘Well, I think we all know that the media in the United States
has made a big deal of this and we know the media of the United States is
controlled by certain forces and they don't view me favorably,'" Coons said.
The
Cable asked Coons if Morsy specifically named the Jews as the forces that
control the American media. Coons said all the senators believed the
implication was obvious.
"He did not say [the Jews], but I
watched as the other senators physically recoiled, as did I," he said. "I
thought it was impossible to draw any other conclusion."
"The meeting then took a very sharply
negative turn for some time. It really threatened to cause the entire meeting
to come apart so that we could not continue," Coons said.
Multiple senators impressed upon Morsy that
if he was saying the criticisms of his comments were due to the Jews in the
media, that statement was potentially even more offensive than his original
comments from 2010.
"[Morsi] did not say the Jewish
community was making a big deal of this, but he said something [to the effect] that
the only conclusion you could read was that he was implying it," Coons said. "The
conversation got so heated that eventually Senator McCain said to the group, ‘OK,
we've pressed him as hard as we can while being in the boundaries of
diplomacy,'" Coons said. "We then went on to discuss a whole range of other
topics."
Irony alert: In the US elections, the 'Jewish-controlled' American media was
in the back pocket of Morsy's good friend Hussein Obama, who continues to
shower Egypt with expensive gifts. So do the Jews control the media or does Obama control the Jews? And if Obama controls the Jews, why would the media they control be attacking poor Mohammed Morsy? Hmmm.
Labels: anti-Semitic stereotypes, Egyptian anti-Semitism, media, Mohammed Morsy, Muslim Brotherhood
