UN General Assembly chief calls for Israel's destruction
This Saturday, November 29, will mark the 61st anniversary of the adoption of a UN resolution calling for the partition of the portion of the British mandate that is west of the Jordan River into a Jewish and a 'Palestinian' state. The Jews accepted the resolution; the Arabs rejected it. As a result, the State of Israel was born nearly six months later and was immediately attacked by five Arab armies.
The day is mourned by the United Nations each year as a day of solidarity with the 'Palestinian people.' This year, the festivities are starting early. On Monday, the chairman of the UN General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua, called Israel an 'apartheid state' and called on UN member nations to destroy it the way the apartheid state of South Africa was destroyed 20 years ago (Hat Tip: Red Tulips).
Brockmann made the apartheid allegation twice in one day, once in the morning at the annual meeting of the UN Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People, and again in the General Assembly in the afternoon. In his words:
"I spoke this morning about apartheid and how Israeli policies in the Occupied Palestinian Territories appear so similar to the apartheid of an earlier era, a continent away. I believe it is very important that we in the United Nations use this term. We must not be afraid to call something what it is. It is the United Nations, after all, that passed the International Convention against the Crime of Apartheid, making clear to all the world that such practices of official discrimination must be outlawed wherever they occur."
Bayefsky notes: "His remarks are especially offensive since the facts indicate the complete reverse. One-fifth of Israel's population is Arab with more democratic rights than in any Arab state. Arab states have been essentially rendered Judenrein since the creation of Israel. UN resolutions denounce Jews living in Arab-claimed territory as "Judaization," and no mention is ever made of "apartheid Palestine.""
"Brockmann's call," said Bayefsky, "was in effect, a call for the political destruction of Israel by means of the same strategy adopted against apartheid South Africa." Brockmann said:
"More than twenty years ago we in the United Nations took the lead from civil society when we agreed that sanctions were required to provide a non-violent means of pressuring South Africa...Today, perhaps we in the United Nations should consider following the lead of a new generation of civil society, who are calling for a similar non-violent campaign of boycott, divestment and sanctions to pressure Israel..."
The adoption of the 1947 partition resolution, accepted by Jews and rejected by Arabs, is now bemoaned by the UN. Former Secretary-General Kofi Annan described Palestinian Solidarity Day as "a day of mourning and a day of grief." This year, as in years past, the UN used the occasion to fly only two flags, that of "Palestine" and that of the United Nations. Though the resolution was ostensibly the UN's first commitment to a two-state solution, today the flag of the member state of Israel is left out.
The Palestinian flag is on the left, the United Nations flag on the right. Speakers from left to right who voiced no difficulty with the omission of the flag of Israel:
Riyad Malki, Minister for Foreign Affairs of the Palestinian Authority; Jorge Urbina, Representative of the President of the Security Council; Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, President of the General Assembly; Paul Badji, Chairman of the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People; Ban Ki-moon, Secretary-General of the United Nations; H.M.G.S. Palihakkara, Chairman of the Special Committee to Investigate Israeli Practices Affecting the Human Rights of the Palestinian People and Other Arabs of the Occupied Territories; and the Under-Secretary-General for Political Affairs.
The United States provides 22% of the United Nations' budget and hosts its headquarters in New York where this (not surprising) outrage took place. Under the administration of Barack Hussein Obama - who idolizes the UN - one can bet on that percentage increasing and on the UN remaining in New York for at least the next four years.
More on Resolution 181 - the partition resolution - here.
For those who need a reminder about what apartheid really was - and why it has no connection to Israel, where the Arabs are treated better than they are in any Arab country - go here.
And no - this is not the first time that only the 'Palestinian' flag has been flown at the ceremony. Remember the 2005 'celebration' and the map without Israel?
Outrageous? Sure. But who do you think is going to stop it? Read the whole thing.
UN General Assembly President compares Israel to Nazis
At a briefing on Gaza held on Thursday, January 8 at the United Nations, UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann told everyone that 'some of his best friends' are Jews and then compared Israel to Nazis. This is not the first time Brockmann has done something like this, but let's go to the videotape.
Unfortunately, with the Obama administration coming to power next week, there is little chance that the United States will decrease its support for this despicable organization.
And for the record, the 'Jews' in the picture that Brockmann held up are Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's friends from the detestable Neturei Karta.
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UN General Assembly President accuses US of 'demonizing' Iran
UN General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann of Nicaragua has accused the United States of 'demonizing' Iran.
The outspoken UN General Assembly president on Tuesday accused the United States of demonizing Iran's president and criticized the International Criminal Court for issuing an arrest warrant for Sudan's leader on war crimes charges in Darfur.
Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, a Roman Catholic priest from Nicaragua with openly leftist views, also reiterated that the more he thinks about the conditions that Israel imposes on the Palestinians, the more he tends "to think about apartheid."
During a wide-ranging press conference, d'Escoto insisted he wasn't being divisive or promoting his own agenda — but was just fulfilling his duty as president of the 192-member General Assembly to uphold the UN Charter and promote peace and nonviolence.
But of course. He's only following ordersfulfilling his duty. But wait: There's more. Some of his best friends are Joooooos.
Asked whether he approved of Ahmadinejad saying he wants to wipe a UN member state — Israel — off the map, d'Escoto said "if he said that, it's lamentable," but he quickly added that "words as such don't kill" and it's the actions that have to be watched.
"I don't hate Israel, much less do I hate the Jewish people," d'Escoto added. "In fact they are very high on my list of people that I love."
And the US response?
Mark Kornblau, spokesman for the US Mission to the United Nations, when asked to comment on the criticism of the US, said: "It's hard to make sense of Mr. D'Escoto's increasingly bizarre statements."
Tuesday was Holocaust Memorial Day in the 'international community.' In the Wall Street Journal, Daniel Schwammenthal hopes it's the last such day outside the Jewish community (Hat Tip: Danny A.).
Anti-Semitism -- and not only when disguised as anti-Zionism -- is in vogue again in Europe. To scant media attention, and even scanter government criticism, the shouts of "Death to Jews" have filled the streets of the Continent in recent weeks, as protestors, mostly Muslims, voice opposition to the war in Gaza. Western trade unions and academics have intensified their calls for a boycott of Israel. In Italy, a trade union even called for boycotts of local stores owned by Jews.
The solemn speeches around Europe yesterday mourning those who died in the Holocaust hardly mentioned these developments. Citing the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe, the Central Council of Jews in Germany stayed away from yesterday's official ceremony in the German Parliament.
The United Nations also had a Holocaust memorial service yesterday. Yet just four months ago, the president of Iran was allowed to give an anti-Semitic speech at the General Assembly to enthusiastic applause from many delegations. Although talking about "Zionists," Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's use of classic anti-Semitic canards about a Jewish plot for world domination made it clear whom he really was after.
Although they "are miniscule minority," he said, the Zionists "have been dominating an important portion of the financial and monetary centers as well as the political decision-making centers of some European countries and the U.S. in a deceitful, complex and furtive manner." And so on. The secretary general of the General Assembly, Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann, embraced the Iranian after his hate speech.
That's the same d'Escoto Brockmann who is calling for a boycott of Israel. It's also the same man who was scheduled to open yesterday's U.N. Holocaust Memorial ceremony but backed down after Israel complained. It's easy to understand why he had wanted to be there: The more crocodile tears people like him spill for dead Jews the easier it is for them to demonize the living ones and avoid being tagged as anti-Semitic. In such hands, Holocaust memorials have become a cover to pound the Jewish state with greater moral authority.
In Europe, there were a few cancellations of yesterday's annual Holocaust Memorial Day events, along with comments suggesting that Jews are the new Nazis. In Barcelona, a city official told La Vanguardia that "marking the Jewish Holocaust while a Palestinian Holocaust is taking place is not right." People in Lulea, Sweden, said Israel's war in Gaza left it unable to mourn the six million dead Jews. "It feels uneasy to have a torchlight procession to remember the victims of the Holocaust at this time," Bo Nordin, a clergyman and spokesman for a local church, told Swedish National Radio. "We have been preoccupied and grief-stricken by the war in Gaza and it would just feel odd with a large ceremony about the Holocaust."
Trine Lilleng, a Norwegian diplomat -- stationed in Saudi Arabia no less -- spelled it out more directly in an email that found its way into the Jerusalem Post: "The grandchildren of Holocaust survivors from World War II are doing to the Palestinians exactly what was done to them by Nazi Germany," she is reported to have written.
The lessons of the Holocaust are straightforward enough but they haven't been learned, as yesterday's events show. Let's stop pretending otherwise and put an end to these phony ceremonies.
Here in Israel, the sentiment is not a whole lot different. This is Noah Klieger in YNet:
However, the decision was one thing, but actions are quite another. Or more accurately, results are quite another thing. So the UN indeed holds a rather modest ceremony every year, although this year Holocaust survivor Rabbi Yisrael Meir Lau was invited to deliver a speech. Indeed, other countries in addition to Israel hold various ceremonies. However, all of this certainly does not rectify anything and does not promote the purpose behind this day.
In other words, in the absence of a serious, well-planned, and well formulated program for educating school children and raising awareness among all sectors of society worldwide, there would be no change in the perceptions and worldview of most nations. To put it bluntly, the UN's decision and the few ceremonies cannot curb the growing anti-Semitism.
They also cannot convince the various nations that six million people were indeed murdered in Europe just because they were Jewish; six million people who did not undertake any action against another people, who did not bear arms, and who did not carry out terror attacks. People who merely wanted to live, raise families, and make a living.
The UN decision in 2005 was indeed meant to mark the massacre of European Jewry, yet it has not changed a thing; neither attitudes nor views. Because if today, for example, an Italian cardinal can claim that Gaza is one giant concentration camp, the government of Catalonia can cancel a Holocaust Remembrance Day ceremony because of the "Gaza holocaust," and a Norwegian parliament member can say that Israel treats the Palestinians the way the SS treated the Jews, then clearly nothing has been learned and nothing has been changed.
I agree with both Schwammenthal and Klieger: the 'World community's hypocrisy in observing Holocaust Day while preparing the next Holocaust is shameful. But do we really want to let them off the hook completely by making Holocaust remembrance strictly a Jewish (and more specifically an Israeli or pro-Israeli) affair? Shouldn't we be educating the World's leaders regarding what distinguished the Nazi regime from other governments that have murdered their citizens?
Here in Israel, we tend to dismiss the United Nations. It is so hopelessly biased against us that Golda Meir once dismissed it by saying ooom shmoom, and the phrase stuck (ooom is an abbreviation for United Nations in Hebrew and I assume you can all now figure out why it's followed by shmoom). And in fact, the UN has done more than any government to undercut Israel's international standing - we're going to get to that in a minute.
But at least we're not paying $5 billion annually for the privilege of hosting the UN. And at least we recognize that we're its target. But if Little Satan is being targeted by the UN, so is Big Satan, and unfortunately, says Claudia Rossett, most Americans just don't get that yet.
Claudia's jumping off point was a long, rambling report this week by General Assembly President (and former Sandanista foreign minister) Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann in which he excoriated the United States for 'demonizing' his friend and colleague Mahmoud Ahmadinejad (yes, that's the two of them together at the top of this post). She notes that Ahmadinejad apparently paid Brockmann's plane fare to Tehran and then tells Americans why it matters.
It might be tempting to dismiss this performance as just one more case of the U.N. buffoonery to which Americans have become accustomed, just another item for the Turtle Bay scrapbook, a lesser variation on such historic histrionics as Nikita Khrushchev pounding his shoe and Yasser Arafat wearing a gun holster. After all, does the U.N. really matter?
Yes. The U.N. matters a lot. And it matters for reasons much bigger and more disturbing than America's billions in outsized contributions poured every year into the U.N.'s murky coffers, though it does bear noting in d'Escoto's case that the financial arrangements are intriguing. The U.S. pays the lion's share of the cost for his fancy facilities in New York, but apparently U.N.-sanctioned Iran picked up part of the tab for his trip to Tehran.
...
But for a handle on the larger problem with the likes of d'Escoto, and his activities under the U.N. logo, let us turn to an important essay published in 1989 by a former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick. Writing in Commentary, Kirkpatrick explained "How the PLO Was Legitimized." The gist of her eight-page article was that it was done through the U.N., by way of "international diplomacy--reinforced by murder."
In richly documented detail, Kirkpatrick chronicled how, when Israel's military victories in 1948, 1967 and 1973 "made the price of large wars too high," Arab states moved their struggle to the U.N.: "An arena whose chief activity is not conflict resolution (as is generally believed) but what has been correctly termed 'collective legitimization' and 'collective delegitimization.'"
Such exploitation of the U.N. proceeds by way of appropriating vocabulary (such as "holocaust"), twisting words or emptying them of any real meaning (such as "terrorist," for which the U.N. still has no agreed-upon definition), staging conferences that import select initiatives into the U.N. agenda and introducing resolutions that craft what is presented as "world opinion," to be translated into effect on policy and international law.
While Americans were prone to dismiss many of the U.N.'s doings as mere semantic battles, Arafat and his colleagues knew better. Kirkpatrick explains: "They recognized the U.N. as a political opportunity and knew how to grasp it. They devised tactics for practicing the distinctive brand of bloc politics that passes for diplomacy in multilateral organizations, and they worked relentlessly in the U.N. committees, commissions and agencies to deprive the state of Israel of legitimacy and to legitimize their own struggle and claim to power."
When Kirkpatrick wrote that, 20 years ago, such tactics had already borne considerable fruit. Since then, the process has continued. Thus do we have a U.N. in which democratic Israel is treated as a pariah state, repeatedly condemned, kept off a Security Council that in recent years has included Syria and is being chaired this month by Libya.
Thus do we have a General Assembly dominated by the Organization of the Islamic Conference, overseeing a Human Rights Council that spends most of its time condemning Israel and is now spawning a repeat of its anti-Semitic, anti-democratic 2001 Durban conference on "racism."
What's shifting today is that America, since defying the U.N. in 2003 over Iraq, now looks increasingly inclined to acquiesce to these tactics in the name of "engagement." President Obama, to his credit, recently declined to send delegates to the U.N.'s Durban Review conference this April in Geneva (though his administration has left the door open for further haggling).
But Durban II is just one skirmish in a broad front on which the U.S. and its most basic principles and values are under attack by the U.N. And from the U.N., thanks in great part to America's money, hospitality and trust, America's enemies derive a form of legitimacy and influence they would not otherwise enjoy.
That is the real meaning of d'Escoto's road show and ensuing press conference, framed with the baby-blue regalia of the U.N. draperies, stage and logo, in which he called for "A United States committed to respecting the sovereign equality of all member states." In this formulation, that "respect" for "sovereign equality," would erase vital distinctions between the free and democratic society of America, and the totalitarian, terrorist-wielding strategies and ambitions of a regime such as that of d'Escoto's pals in Tehran. It is not only Israel that today is the target of this campaign to delegitimize; it is the system and sovereignty of America itself.
Read it all. And wake up America, before you find your President and Vice President hugging those two buffoons in the picture at the top of this post.
UN sponsoring 'religious dialogue' with Ahmadinejad: No Jews invited
I received the following email today from a reliable (but unverified) source:
An invitation to an international dialogue between religious leaders and political figures:
"Has not one God created us?"
The significance of religious contributions to peace
It is an honor to invite you to participate with religious, cultural, and political leaders in a conversation about the role of religions in tackling global challenges and building peaceful societies at an Iftar - a dinner to break the Ramadan fast.
In the presence of
§ His Excellency Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
With contributions from
§ His Excellency Miguel D'Escoto Brockmann, President of the General Assembly of the United Nations
§ His Excellency the Rev. Kjell Bondevik, former Prime Minister of Norway and President of the Oslo Center for Peace and Human Rights
§ and distinguished religious leaders
This conversation is the fourth in a series of high-level bridge-building and reconciliation efforts that have helped to build mutual understanding between our peoples, nations and religious traditions. It is our hope that as religious and political leaders, this communal meal and exchange of views will enable us to explore faith perspectives for dealing with global issues such as poverty, war and prejudice while deepening mutual understanding.
The dinner will be at the Grand Hyatt Hotel, 109 East 42nd Street, New York, N.Y., on Thursday, September 25, 2008, beginning with evening prayers from several religious traditions. Please arrive by 6:00 pm to clear security. Following dinner and presentations, the moderator will open the floor for comments and discussion.
Please note, entrance to this event is by limited invitation only. Some members of the media have been invited to cover the event.
RSVP by e-mail to sept25@us.mcc.org no later than Monday, September 15, 2008, confirming you interest in participation and sending us your mailing address. After confirmation of your participation, we will send a card explaining procedures for entry to the event.
The Sponsoring Committee welcomes your participation and appreciates the cooperation of the Permanent Mission of the Islamic Republic of Iran to the United Nations in co-hosting this event.
American Friends Service Committee
Mennonite Central Committee
Quaker United Nations Office
Religions for Peace
World Council of Churches - United Nations Liaison Office
Please direct further inquiries to sept25@us.mcc.org.
Iranian Ahmadinejad is going to be in New York for the United Nations General Assembly beginning on September 23.
Note: No Jews invited.
UPDATE FRIDAY 11:10 AM BOSTON TIME
Ahmadinejad held a similar meeting last year and apparently no Jewish representative was willing to come because they could not get any support for it (Hat Tip: Red Tulips.). CAMERA did a good job of ripping the participants.
UPDATE FRIDAY 11:22 AM BOSTON TIME
Abraham Foxman, the President of the Anti-Defamation League - the Jewish community's watchdog on anti-Semitism - has slammed the Mennonites for inviting Ahmadinejad.
"Ahmadinejad represents a rejection of everything these religious groups stand for," Abraham Foxman, national director of the ADL, said in a statement Wednesday.
"His speech at Columbia University a year ago showed the futility of attempting to dialogue with a dictator who makes crystal clear his antipathy toward the West, who denies the Holocaust, and who defends the Iranian regime's willful neglect of basic human rights."
Foxman said the dinner "tarnished" the reputations of the participating religious groups as peace-seekers.
A spokesman for the Akron, Pennsylvania-based Mennonite Central Committee, which is organizing the dinner, said no one was immediately available for comment.
Other groups involved in hosting the dinner - including the World Council of Churches, Religions for Peace and the Quaker group American Friends Service Committee - either did not immediately return messages left seeking comment or referred questions to the Mennonite organization.
Israel has come under attack by the UN and its 'human rights council' for barring 9/11 troofer Richard Falk from entering the country.
UN human rights chief Navi Pillay says Israel's treatment of Falk was unprecedented and deeply regrettable. Her office said Falk traveled to Israel on his U.S. passport and with a certificate proving he was undertaking an official UN mission to the Palestinian territories.
But that pales next to the outright war Israel is having with General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto.
United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto also condemned the expulsion, following his recent criticism of the Israeli delegation to the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights assembly.
...
United Nations General Assembly President Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann on Tuesday charged that the Israeli delegation has spread a "malicious lie" by asserting that he tried to bar its envoy from addressing a human rights session.
The accusations deepen an already existing rift with Israel. D'Escoto, the American-born former Nicaraguan foreign minister and a pro-Sandinista Roman Catholic priest who has chaired the General Assembly since September, also charged that he had received death threats following the assertion.
In a special statement read by his spokesman Enrique Yeves, d'Escoto denounced as a "criminal act" of "slander" the charge, reported in Israeli media, that he had tried to keep Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev from speaking at an assembly session marking the 60th anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
An Israeli spokeswoman condemned d'Escoto's remarks as "outrageous and ridiculous."
"This is a malicious and absolute lie that could best be characterized as slander and in any court of law this is a criminal act," Yeves said of reported remarks by Shalev, quoted last week in the Jerusalem Post accusing d'Escoto of trying to block her participation in the commemorative meeting.
According to d'Escoto, following the charges that he said were spread by senior officials in the Israeli delegation, "very serious threats have appeared on the internet" against his life.
"This matter is being looked into by the pertinent authorities," Yeves told reporters. "Also the security staff at the UN is taking it very seriously." Yeves said D'Escoto was already taking unspecified "extra security measures" for protection. It was not immediately clear who was behind the reported threats.
In response to d'Escoto's remarks, Israeli UN delegation spokeswoman Mirit Cohen issued a heated press release.
"The president of the Assembly must act as a unifying force, fostering the common values and interests of all member states," Cohen said in the statement. "Despite this, since entering his position, Mr. d'Escoto has exploited his post , voicing unacceptable declarations, which have prompted criticism from much of the international community.
"Following the outrageous and ridiculous declaration issued by the Assembly president, Israeli Ambassador Gabriela Shalev cancelled the meeting with him which he had initiated."
Meanwhile, Falk is regarded as such a lunatic that on Sunday even the moonbats at the San Francisco Chronicle called for his dismissal.
I talked with [UN Watch Chairman Hillel CiJ] Neuer, and with Falk. In any conversation about Falk, Neuer's fundamental concern is on a different plane. The Human Rights Council, he notes, has fired its special representatives for Cuba, Liberia, Uzbekistan - even Congo. But one state has a permanent monitor not subject to debate or renewal. That is Israel, and Falk holds that position. "He has a very serious mandate," Neuer said. "People who question whether 9/11 happened are not serious people. No one in the United States or the West could be in positions of authority if they engaged 9/11 conspiracy talk."
Falk, of course, disagrees. He notes that his position is part-time - and unpaid. "I've been trying to balance different agendas and roles. I am an academic and a citizen. And I don't think those roles reflect on my position as special rapporteur."
Fair enough, but these 9/11 conspiracy theorists remind me of the people who used to think that Neil Armstrong didn't really land on the moon 40 years ago; the entire exercise was actually carried out in a water tank. It's a free country; you're entitled to think whatever you like. But this is fringe stuff. Would we ever have appointed an advocate of the water-tank theory to a senior position in government? The Human Rights Council is already an embarrassment to the United Nations. Certainly reasonable people can criticize Israel, just as they can find fault with the Palestinians. But the council's pathological obsession with Israel is its defining characteristic, and Falk is its embodiment.
I wouldn't have cared that an academic wrote the foreword several years ago for a book that is the conspiracy advocates' bible. But I do care that the man whose job now is to help the Islamic states pursue their vendetta against Israel also believes that the U.S. government is capable of such unspeakable evil. What does that tell you about his frame of mind for his United Nations job?
Maybe even the American left is starting to understand - and become uncomfortable with - the world's pathological obsession with Israel (as columnist Joel Brinkley wrote above)? Or is that too much to hope for?
Ranking Minority House Foreign Affairs Committee member Ileana Ros-Lehtinen says that the appointment of Cuba as Vice Chair of the United Nations 'Council on Human Rights' is the last straw and that the United States should withdraw in protest.
“‘Shameful’ is the only word that can describe any organization that would promote Cuba as a defender of human rights, while naming an anti-American, anti-Israel former Sandinista mouthpiece as an advisor.
“The world has witnessed outrageous behavior by the UN Human Rights Council time and time again, from its rabid anti-Semitic and anti-Israel bias to the blind eye it often turns towards brutal regimes.
“The U.S. was wrong to join and legitimize this rogues’ gallery in the first place. The Cuban tyranny’s elevation to vice chair of the Council should be the final straw that prompts all responsible nations to finally end their participation and support.
“I call on the U.S. to stand up for all of the victims of the Cuban regime – and those suffering under the boot of repressive regimes worldwide – by withdrawing from the so-called ‘Human Rights Council’ and cutting off U.S. taxpayer support for it.”
Ros-Lehtinen also cited the naming of Miguel D’Escoto Brockmann, former Sandinista foreign minister of Nicaragua and former president of the United Nations General Assembly as grounds for withdrawal.
I don't expect anything to happen on this before January, but if the Republicans gain majorities in both houses of Congress, I would look for this to be on their agenda.
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
