Iranian Aliyah

I've recently been very taken by the whole Iranian Aliyah issue that has popped up in the past week, sparked by the secret Aliyah of some 40 Jews from Iran to Israel.

I remember last year, in my English class (with the anti-semitic, anti-Israel teacher) showed us a slideshow of someone's trip to Iran, and tried to show it off as some moder, hip, really cool place to live.

The slideshow was of course sparked by the recent academic dialogue about whether the United States should attack Iran because of the influx of terrorists that are fighting American troops in Iraq, as well as their violation against stopping their nuclear weapons program.

So my teacher, always wanting to portray terrorists in a "equal" light, showed us this video in the hopes that we would think differently about Iran. As the video ended she asked us who we thought the video was aimed for, in my annoying habit of ALWAYS answering a teachers question, I answered "hardcore conservatives."

She said she didn't think so, and I realized she was right, the point of this slideshow had a much more dangerous consequence, the audience was everyone, and the goal of it was to make the idea of attacking Iran an unappealing option in the average American's eye.

Now to be honest with you I think what is going on in Iraq is just a pathetic quagmire, that will have the United States military there for a long time, all the while sucking money from China to pay for the high costs of it. But when it comes to Iran there's another agenda to consider, that namely being that they want to destroy the State of Israel.

It's funny, because they are planning to do it with nuclear weapons because of the "Zionist Occupiers," and to "save" the Arabs who live there, yet do they not realize that a nuclear weapon will kill the Arabs as well?

Oh, and regarding Iran's capability to destroy Israel with nukes, a report on Arutz Sheva last week discussed what a nuclear war with Iran would look like on the causalities side. If Iran were to C"L shoot a nuke at Israel, they would have maximum 800 thousand causalities (one Jewish life is too much but we're talking theoretically".

The response from Israel would be the complete annihilation of the entire Iranian population, and the Israeli causalities are assuming that Israel isn't able to destroy Iran's nuke while it's in the air, either way Iran would be completely wiped off the map.

But, regarding Aliyah. . .According the article posted above, the Jews of Iran left in secret under the dead of night, to escape, via a third country, to Israel.

One of the sick things that Muslim controlled countries do, and particularly to Jews, is that they do not let all the members of a family leave at one time. This enables the government to keep a hold of the tongue of the absent family member from telling what life, really is like under a Muslim leadership.

I know someone from Iran who is unable to speak about what life was like there, because he fears that if his statements were ever tied to him, the Iranian government would kill the family he has there,.

Some of the Jews who came this week, were the last members of their families to leave Iran and they explained what life is like in Iran know, they have shut down all Jewish schools, it is forbidden to learn/speak Hebrew, Jewish children are forced to go to Muslim schools and that includes Jewish holy days like Yom Kippur.

The Jewish leadership of Iran came out against the Aliyah, and were opposed to it. I think, and others agree with me, that they were just saying it to keep the dogs of the government at bay so they won't start an influx of antisemitism.

One day the curtain will fall in Iran, just like it fell in Germany, Russia, and various Muslim countries, and I'm telling you it will be just like other cases when Jews were being persecuted, just for being Jewish, and the world found out how they were being treated. They'll show sympathy for about a week, then it'll be business as usual, and they'll ignore that this ever happened.

Jews Need to Stand up for Themselves and Have Some More Jewish Pride!

Talking about the "lie" of Iranian Aliyah. And how the the source of lack of Jewish pride comes from this week's Parshah. Shabbat Shalom!


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Do We Care?

There's one thing I don't get. Why do people think that parts of davening are unnecessary, and don't require that they do them?

Take for instance Karbanot, the first part of davening. Why do people assume that it's OK to come late and that they can miss them. The truth is that this is the only part the people don't do that might have a legitimate reason, and that reason being that it's hard to get up in the morning. That's pretty much the only reason, and my response it to wake up five minutes earlier.

But there are other, more pressing things. I'm only going to highlight one today, and that's Tehllim after davening.

At about the start of the 2000 Terror War the Arabs started waging against Israel, Rabbanim in America decided that that instead of moving to Israel to show support (chas v'shalom) they would start saying 3 chapters of Tehillim after davening as a way to show support for the Jews who lived in Israel.

Over the years it's trickled down to one, and maybe they'd say an extra one if there's R"L an illness or other current serious threat.

So how's that support?

"Oh, it's optional."

That's right, leaving at the Tehillim and going home is more important than waiting, oh, about ONE AND A HALF MINUTES!!! And that's with saying two chapters of Tehillim. My Rav started saying the most common one Chapter 130 and more recently 122 for Yerushalyim.

As soon as we hit eithier the end of Kriat HaTorah, or Tachanun (depending on the day) there are people who have started to take of their tifillin and as soon as the last Kaddash finishes they are out the door ("come on, those Tehillim are optional right? They're not really part of davening right?")

YES! THEY ARE!!!

Think about it, you're saying to G-d, I've finished with my davening but I'm going to stay JUST A LITTLE BIT LONGER and prove to you that I'm sincere and am willing to say something extra to let you know that I CARE ABOUT YERUSHALAYIM!!

My rule is that you don't start taking off the tifillin until the Chazzan is completely done. And that means he has stopped talking as is able to take of his tifillin. That's just a common courtesy, to not take off you're tifillin unless the Chazzan is able to.

Care. This is the Jewish people we're talking about, and it makes me wonder if there are Muslims who are skipping out early on their prayers so they can go home and check the sports scores, or whatever, before they have to go to work of school.

Something to think about.

From a guy who wants to get a Mac. . .

Adventure at the Israeli Embassy-Part 2

Well I got to the embassy a little bit later then I did on the previous time I'd gone, this meant I had to wait in a longer line at security, and then at longer line at "The Window."

So as I was standing there (for 2 hours and only 6 people in front of me) I once again got into some interesting conversation's with the people there including an American (non-Jewish) teenager who wanted absolutely nothing to do with me and a man from India who worked for the American Embassy and for the New Israeli Fund.

So after about an hour and 45 minutes I finally made it to "The Window," and presented the additional documentation to be added to my file.

There was just one problem.

They couldn't find my file!

Somehow my file had been misplaced in the clutter they called an office. So I took it in stride and asked what I needed to do to to replace whatever was in the file. It turned out not much. I had to go back to my high school and get a letter with the dates I was in HS, and there were two forms I had to fill out.

The good news is that this should be the last trip I have to make to Washington, I can email the rest to them.
Then with G-d's help I get stuff moving at the Aliyah Center and Nefesh B'Nefesh and I move to Israel!

Adventure at the Israeli Embassy-Part 1

The first part of doing my initial stages for Aliyah is to get my passport, and Israeli ID number so I can start to be processed for Aliyah. I am (supposedly) a citizen born abroad, which means that I don't lose any benefits but I can't go solely through Nefesh B'Nefesh, I have to actually deal with government offices.

For a new citizen making Aliyah from America, the steps to make Aliyah are rather simple. Contact your local Aliyah Shliach, fill out a few forms, contact Nefesh B'Nefesh, fill out a few more forms. Then go through 3-30 years worth of junk you've collected and see what's going to Israel with you, and what's being sold, thrown away, given away, burned, etc.

A citizen born abroad goes through similar steps as a regular Oleh. My problem is that, for some reason, I was never registered as a citizen. So something that usually takes 6 months to do when one is first born, will have to be done in 3 days for me know, because I need my ID number and passport to make Aliyah.

So yesterday I went down to the embassy in Washington to see what I had to do in order to get the required information, and what paper work was needed by me in order to get.

Well, as I was driving around in 'Embassy town' in Washington, I made a wrong turn and would up surrounded by the embassies of numerous Arab countries.

I quickly turned the car around and got out of there as fast as possible. I don't know if you actually have to be in the gates of the embassy to be considered on their territory, or just parked in front. either way I didn't hear any gunshots, so I guess it's OK. (Except for the fact that they for sure got a picture of me, my car, my license plate number, me entry into the Israeli embassy. . .let's just say I won't be going back there.)

Anyways I went through security in the embassy and got in line at the ONE window in the embassy. That's it, that's all they have, one window.

So I spoke with the woman behind the desk and proudly informed her I was an Israeli.

Just one problem I wasn't in the system. According the official registry of Israel I'm not a citizen.

Now if I were to just make Aliyah, I'll have a similar problem that my sister ran into when she made Aliyah, namely that a week before my flight they will call me and tell me that my father is Israeli and therefore I am also and I can't make Aliyah without my passport and ID number.

So I then had to proceed in proving to this woman that I existed and and that my father was my father and my sister was my sister, and that, yes, I was related to both of them, so could she please tell me what I needed to do to get my ID number.

She told me that I had to tell her both my sister's and father's tudat zehut (ID) numbers. So I called my dad who had no idea what his was, called my mom and was unable to contact her. So rejected I walked back to by car and planned to come back tomorrow, after I called my sister and asked her what her number was and if there was any chance she had my father's also.

For some reason, I'm not sure why, I called the Aliyah office, and would you believe it they had both numbers for me. So I turned around and had to spend another half an hour getting through securit and waiting in line for Cranky Lady to finish with the, oh ONE PERSON who was in front of me!

But before I finish there was one positive thing that happened to me while I was waiting in line. There were a few guys who were there to get visas for studying in college in Israel for a semester. One of the guys, a secular guy, was talking to me and he mentioned that "In Israeli, everything just seems to work out. If you don't know what you're going to do about something, don't worry, you'll figure it out!"

Well I know G-d runs the world and I just needed a little reminder that if I'm supposed to be making Aliyah this summer I will be, no matter what.

So after my talk with Crazy Lady, I now have on two more things to do, (which I'll do tomorrow when I go back) and that's giver her my letter of exemption from the army, and pay a precessing fee. After that I get my ID nuber and can start being processed for Aliyah.

(B"H)

The Obstacle to Peace

Don't these idiots in Washington have anything better to do? Maybe take precautions to the economic disaster that will soon happen in America, due to a corrupt political system?

Kudos to Tzvi Fishman for the picture

Life is Precious. . .

I was almost in a serious car accident.

I was waiting to turn onto another street and there was a car coming at me from behind at approximately 50 MPH.

He then swerved out of the way at the last second missing my car by about 6 inches, and did this all while cutting off a car in the lane that he switched to.

Why do people drive like this? Do they not understand that they are driving dangerous weapons that have the ability to kill people including themselves?

What very interesting about cars is that they are the first form of transportation that the driver has complete control over. If you're riding a horse, you can force the horse to go where you want it to, and the way to persuade the horse to do this is by causing it pain. If the desire to go in another direction overrides the pain it is receiving the driver can do nothing about it.

If they were controlling a ship, they still don't have full control over what's going on, they are steering by using the currents that the water is taking them. If a hurricane comes along, they can't pull over to the side of the road and wait for it to pass, they have in effect completely lost control of their ship.

Now it is possible to lose control of a car but usually the cause is reckless driving, and the fact that someone is choosing to put the lives of both themselves as well as any passengers they have or other drivers says a lot about the person's view of the preciousness of human life.

In the states it is required to take a driver's ed course that supposedly educates you about how to safely control a vehicle, but I do not know what the requirements are in Israel. I do know that car accidents are, unfortunately, the cause of more deaths then terrorist attacks, and I think that some thought has to be put into teaching this as a way of preserving the preciousness of human life

Where the REAL Apartheid is

This from the Jerusalem Post:

This week the Bush Administration legitimized Arab anti-Semitism. In an effort to please the Saudis and their Arab brothers, the Bush administration agreed to physically separate the Jews from the Arabs at the Annapolis conference in a manner that aligns with the apartheid policies of the Arab world which prohibit Israelis from setting foot on Arab soil.

Evident everywhere, the discrimination against Israel received its starkest expression at the main assembly of the Annapolis conference on Tuesday. There, in accordance with Saudi demands, the Americans prohibited Israeli representatives from entering the hall through the same door as the Arabs.

At the meeting of foreign ministers on Wednesday, Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni called her Arab counterparts to task for their discriminatory treatment. "Why doesn't anyone want to shake my hand? Why doesn't anyone want to be seen speaking to me?" she asked pointedly.

Israel's humiliated foreign minister did not receive support from her American counterpart. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, who spent her childhood years in the segregated American South, sided with the Arabs. Although polite enough to note that she doesn't support the slaughter of Israelis, she made no bones about the fact that her true sympathies lie with the racist Arabs.

As she put it, "I know what it is like to hear that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are a Palestinian. I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness."

Rice's remarks make clear that for the Secretary of State there is no difference between Israelis trying to defend themselves from a jihadist Palestinian society which supports the destruction of the Jewish state and bigoted white Southerners who oppressed African Americans because of the color of their skin. It is true that Israel has security concerns, but as far as Rice is concerned, the Palestinians are the innocent victims. They are the ones who are discriminated against and humiliated, not Livni, who was forced - by Rice - to enter the conference through the service entrance.

The Bush administration's tolerance for discrimination against Israel was not merely ceremonial. Diplomatically, the conference was equally prejudicial. At Annapolis, the US joined the Arabs in placing the lion's share of blame for the absence of peace between Israel and the Palestinians on Israel. But you wouldn't know that from listening to Olmert, who is working steadily to hide what happened there.

Olmert obfuscates the truth because his political stability rests in the hands of his hawkish coalition partners Yisrael Beiteinu and Shas. Both warned before the summit that if Olmert made any concessions on either Jerusalem or the so-called outpost communities in Judea and Samaria they would bolt his coalition and so spur new elections.

Shas and Yisrael Beiteinu expressed satisfaction with the outcome of the summit. Both Shas leader Eli Yishai and Yisrael Beiteinu leader Avigdor Lieberman dismissed Annapolis as a pathetic joke and claimed that there is no reason for them to resign from the Olmert government. But these assertions are deliberately misleading.

The fact that the Israeli-PLO joint statement made no specific mention of Jerusalem, and that the government didn't announce a timetable for destroying the so-called outpost communities and expelling the hundreds of Israeli families who live in them, doesn't mean that Israel made no concessions on these issues. In fact, the Olmert government made massive concessions on these issues.

The Israel-PLO joint statement at Annapolis contains a joint pledge "to propagate a culture of peace and nonviolence; to confront terrorism and incitement, whether committed by Palestinians or Israelis."

Although Olmert, Lieberman and Yishai dismiss this Israeli acceptance of moral equivalence with Palestinian jihadists as a meaningless rhetorical concession, the government's move is rife with political and legal implications. US Ambassador Richard Jones's unprecedented meeting this week with Supreme Court President Dorit Beinisch made clear that the US demands that Israeli courts interpret Israeli law in a prejudicial manner in order to demonize Israeli opponents of Palestinian statehood and the ethnic cleansing of the Jews from Judea and Samaria.

Their meeting also signaled that the US expects Israel to treat lawful building activities by Jews in Judea and Samaria and even in sections of Jerusalem as criminal acts. Since the Olmert government accepts that Israel is morally indistinguishable from the Palestinian Authority, it is hard to foresee it preventing the criminalization of its political opponents. From now on, Israelis who oppose the diplomatic moves of the Olmert government can expect to be treated as the moral equivalents of Palestinian terrorists.

At Annapolis the Americans accepted the role of sole arbiter of Israeli and Palestinian compliance with their commitments to the so-called 'Roadmap' and the peace process. They also committed themselves to reaching a comprehensive peace treaty by the end of 2008. But as former US Middle East mediator during the Clinton administration Dennis Ross has admitted, these goals are contradictory. It is impossible to both ensure Palestinian compliance and the achievement of a peace treaty in that timetable.

Writing in The Washington Post after the Oslo peace process collapsed at Camp David and the Palestinian jihad had begun, Ross explained, "The prudential issues of compliance were neglected and politicized by the Americans in favor of keeping the peace process afloat….Every time there was a behavior, or an incident, or an event that was inconsistent with what the peace process was about, the impulse was to rationalize it, finesse it, find a way around it, and not to allow it to break the process."

"What the peace process was about" for the Clinton administration was signing peace agreements. It was not about ensuring that the Palestinians were actually interested in living at peace with Israel. When Rice stated that "failure is not an option," in the coming peace process, she made clear that the same is the case for the Bush administration today. She wants an agreement. Whether the Palestinians are serious about peace or not is none of her business.

Although reporting on Palestinian non-compliance with their commitments to fight terror will harm prospects for speedy "progress," accusing Israel of filching on its commitments will actually speed things along. Alleging Israeli non-compliance will force the pliant Olmert government to make further concessions to the Palestinians.

In light of this, it is clear that contrary to Yishai and Lieberman's dismissive treatment of what happened at Annapolis, Olmert's acceptance of the Americans as both judge of compliance and guarantor of "progress" means that Israel already made massive concessions.

On Jerusalem, for instance, although Yishai is right that Jerusalem is not specifically mentioned in the joint statement, the fact is that Israel agreed to negotiate the status of its capital city by agreeing to discuss all outstanding issues. Since the Americans want a Palestinian state within a year and they know that Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas will not make any concessions on Jerusalem, they can be expected to pressure Israel to accept the Palestinian position. The thousands of Arab Jerusalemites now applying for Israeli citizenship are a clear sign that the Arabs understand that Israel has already made massive concessions on the city. And Yishai must know this.

The American status as arbiters of compliance has far reaching implications for Israel's ability to cope effectively with the security situation in Gaza and the Western Negev. Since Hamas seized control of Gaza in June, Abbas has opposed any wide-scale IDF counter-terror offensive on the area. Abbas has claimed - probably rightly - that an Israeli ground offensive in Gaza would weaken his position in Palestinian society since the Palestinians support Hamas's positions more than they support him. Given that the Americans are committed to strengthening Abbas, it is obvious that they will veto any Israeli plan to conduct an offensive in Gaza aimed at restoring security to the Western Negev.

Then there is Judea and Samaria. Lieberman claims that he can remain in the government because Olmert has yet to announce a timetable for throwing the Jews out of their homes in the so-called outpost communities. But that isn't Olmert's responsibility anymore. He ceded it to the Americans at Annapolis. They will set the timetable for expulsions, not Olmert. And it isn't only the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria that are now at risk.

By anointing the State Department arbiter of Israeli compliance, the Olmert government gave the Americans the right to veto IDF operations in Judea and Samaria. As the guarantors of progress in the peace process, the Americans will tell the IDF where it can - or more precisely where it cannot - erect roadblocks. The Americans will tell the Israelis what cities and towns to transfer to Fatah control. They will tell Israel what guns and armor to transfer to the Palestinians, what to do with terror fugitives and when and how many terrorists it must release from its prisons.

Actually, the US has been constraining Israel's counter-terror operations in Judea and Samaria for months now. That these American efforts have harmed the effectiveness of the IDF's operations is something that Ido Zoldan's widow can attest to. Zoldan, after all, was murdered last week by Fatah terrorists who owed their ability to move about freely to Israel's decision to bow to American pressure and dismantle 24 roadblocks and curb its efforts to arrest Fatah terror bosses.

In essence, what we see in Olmert's and Livni's machinations is a repeat of Ariel Sharon's and Livni's political maneuvering in the period that preceded the withdrawal from Gaza. In both cases, Israel's senior leaders abide by the basic political understanding that a fight postponed is a fight won.

In 2004 Sharon lacked the political strength to announce openly that he was going to completely withdraw from Gaza and destroy all the Israeli communities in the area. So he allowed the Likud to hold a referendum on his plan to withdraw and authorized Livni to draft the so-called compromise plan according to which the destruction of Israeli communities would take place in four stages over several months and that each stage would require separate government approval.

By the time the Likud rejected his plan, Sharon was strong enough to ignore the will of his party. And when the withdrawal took place, far from taking place in four stages, it took place in four days. Livni and Sharon could ignore their previous commitments because when the time came to pay the piper, they had already destroyed their opponents.

Today, by pretending that the joint declaration at Annapolis was a big nothing, Olmert and Livni are repeating the maneuver. By the time they start throwing Jews out of their homes, they won't need Shas or Yisrael Beiteinu anymore.

Lieberman and Yishai are under no obligation to leave the government. They can stay for as long as they like. But they cannot pretend that by staying they are not full partners in the government's policies. As Annapolis made clear, those policies include dividing Jerusalem, destroying the Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria and compromising the security of the State of Israel.

An "Only in Israel" Story

Kol HaKavod to David Bogner the writer of the blog Treppenwitz, with this incredible "Only in Israel" story:

My cab ride to Beirut

OK, truth be told, I didn't actually take a taxi to the capital of Hezbollah-land.

But when I tried to arrange a cab to take me from Beer Sheva to my home in Efrat the other night, you would have thought that Lebanon was my destination based on the number of cab drivers who refused to accept the fare.

It was about 10:00PM and I had long since missed my regular carpool home. Under normal circumstances I would have either stayed over in Beer Sheva at a local hotel or tried to hitchhike home. But seeing as it was really late and I needed to be in Jerusalem first thing in the morning, I decided to treat myself to a taxi ride home.

So far so good... until the fun began, that is.

The process would begin with a call to the taxi dispatcher:

Dispatcher: Hallow!

Me: Hi, I need a taxi to come to [name of my company].

Dispatcher: No problem, where are you going?

Me: Efrat... In Gush Etzion.

Dispatcher: No problem... someone will be right there.

Within a few minutes a taxi would pull up and the driver would ask "Where did you say you needed to go?" I would tell him, which would result in the him saying he had to speak to his dispatcher... getting back in his cab... and promptly driving away.

This was repeated several times. One or two drivers asked if it was possible to get to Efrat without entering the 'shtachim' (territories)... while others offered excuses ranging from not having enough gas in the car to never having heard of Gush Etzion.

I was shocked. At the risk of generalizing, the typical taxi driver here tends to be the salt of the earth... an Israeli 'everyman' of sorts. As a group they tilt heavily towards mizrachi (Sephardi and eastern) origins, and even more heavily towards the political right.

I don't know exactly what I was expecting, but it certainly wasn't the abject horror that crossing the green line seemed to evoke in these normally devil-may-care men.

Finally I got a driver who, after a few minutes of reassuring, agreed to take me home.

Once we were on our way he began peppering me with a string of non-stop nervous questions:

"How far is it?"

"Are you sure?"

What's that village over there... Jewish or Arab?"

"Arab!? Is it 'problematic'?"

"What about that one?"

"You really drive this road every day?"

"Have you ever had any problems... roadside bombs... shooting... rocks... Molotov cocktails???"

"What the h... that was a Palestinian license plate on the car that just passed us! I didn't know they were allowed on the roads?!"

Oh G-d!... I see headlights behind us. Should I be worried that it might be a terrorist following us?????!"

And on and on and on...

By the time we'd passed half a dozen sleeping Arab villages and were approaching the southern outskirts of Hevron, the driver had worked himself into a state of panic about terrorists who seemed to be lurking just around every bend to turn his wife into a widow and orphan his children.

Five or six times he reached for the same empty cigarette pack, each time tossing it back on the dashboard in disgust. So finally, as much as I loathed the idea of being trapped in a car full of smoke, I suggested we pull into Kiryat Arba where he could buy himself a fresh pack of cigarettes, thinking that it might help calm his nerves.

Once inside Kiryat Arba he visibly relaxed and stared in amazement at the neat streets lined with stone-clad apartment buildings, parks and playgrounds.

"All these buildings have people living in them?" he asked me in wide-eyed wonder. When I answered in the affirmative he just shook his head and kept repeating "I didn't know... I didn't know...". Apparently he had bought into the media version of 'the territories' where everyone lives in trailers on wind-swept hilltops.

When we'd finally parked and gotten his smokes, I suggested he take a short break from driving and just sit outside enjoying the cool night air. I figured that not only would this spare me from the stink of smoke inside the cab, but it would also give me the opportunity to point out a nearby feature I had a hunch might be of interest to him.

I pointed at an electric gate in a chain-link fence that was less than 100 yards from where we were parked. "You see that gate?" I began. "Just a minute or two beyond that gate is the Ma'arat HaMachpelah (the cave of the Patriarchs)".

He stared at me as though I'd just told him that Abraham himself was waiting in the dark just beyond the fence.

"Are you serious? I thought the Arabs destroyed that during the Intifada! It still exists?!"

I explained that it had been Joseph's tomb that was destroyed by the Arabs, and that the Ma'arat HaMachpelah - the tomb of the Patriarchs - was sill very much extant.

Apparently forgetting all about the previous 45 minutes of white-knuckled terror, the driver sprinted around the car, reached through the window for the radio microphone, and called his dispatcher.

"Itzik... ITZIK... you hear me?"

The click of a far-away mic was followed by a laconic, "Shome'ah" [I hear you]

"Itzik, you'll never believe where I am. I stopped for cigarettes in Kiryat Arba and I'm parked within a few meters of the Ma'arat HaMachpelah!"

The dispatcher's voice burst over the radio... this time full of excitement and now, apparently on the public channel: "Hey Dudu, tchacho, Zvika, Hezi... everyone! Yossi's calling from the Ma'arat HaMachpelah in Hevron!"

While this wasn't exactly true (since we were still technically in Kiryat Arba), the response was immediate and electric. The radio speaker began broadcasting a competing jumble of joyful salutations from his fellow drivers in 'far-away' Beer Sheva:

"Kol Hakavod [congratulations], Yossi!"

"Zachita!" [you won!]

"Yossi, you have to say Tehilim [Psalms] for my mother at the Ma'arah [cave]... she's having an operation tomorow. [Her name is]... Sarah Bat Shifra... Sarah Bat Shifra... you hear me... Sarah Bat Shifra!"

"Aizeh Gibor [what a hero!]"

"Yossi... Tell us what you see."

"Sarah Bat Shifra... Yossi, don't forget!"

"Yossi... Hazarta B'Tchuvah? [Did you become religious?]... Kol HaKAvod!"

"How did you get there... did you get lost"

What does it look like... is it beautiful in the moonlight?"

"Sarah Bat Shifra... Yossi... Sarah Bat Shifra!"

It was like a replay of Motta Gur's famous "Har HaBayit B'Yadainu!" [the Temple Mount is in our hands!] broadcast.

Apparently forgetting completely about how frightened he had been just minutes before, the driver turned to me and asked if we could go into Hevron to pray at the Ma'arat HaMachpelah.

I looked at my watch and noted that it was after 11:00PM already... but he misunderstood the gesture.

"Don't worry", he assured me. "You're not on the meter. I have a flat-fee voucher from your company so nobody will mind if we take a short side trip."

I quickly reassured him, "No, it's not that. I'd actually love to go the the Ma'arah... I haven't been there in a few months [last time I was there was with Jameel and Psychotoddler]. But I'm almost sure they close it to visitors at 9 or 10PM."

He looked crestfallen. He stared longingly towards the closed gate leading into Hevron and into the darkness beyond, and asked, "Are you sure?"

I just shrugged and said, "Look, that's what I remember. But don't take my word for it. There's an army Jeep parked by the gate... let's go ask them."

We quickly jumped into the taxi and drove the short distance to the gate and pulled up alongside the idling Jeep. Yossi got out and had a brief conversation with the soldiers. There were some animated hand gestures from Yossi, but they were of the disappointed sort... such as one might see in the aftermath of a natural disaster. Lots of breast beating and placing of hands on the head as if in despair.

A few minutes later the driver came dejectedly back to the taxi... but instead of getting in he reached over to the recess under the radio and fished out an embroidered velvet kippah (yarmulke) and a well-thumbed book of Psalms with an ornate silver cover. Without a word he strode back towards the gate and upon reaching the chain link fence, began reciting out loud into the darkness beyond:

"Shir Lamalot... Esa Einai el heharim... mayayen yavo ezri..."

[A song of ascents. I raise my eyes to the mountains... from where will my help come? My help comes from the Lord who made heaven and earth... He won't allow your foot to be moved... He doesn't sleep... The protector of Israel neither slumbers nor sleeps! ... ]

I sat there in the front seat listening to the taxi driver recite the 121st Psalm into the darkness beyond the fence. Although he occasionally glanced at the small silver-clad book in his hand, it was clear to me that he knew the verses by heart as there was certainly not enough light to see the small print there by the fence.

I seemed to be the only one taking any notice of the goings on. The soldiers sitting nearby in their idling jeep barely looked up from their coffee and conversation... and the two or three people standing outside the store where Yossi had bought his cigarettes didn't even glance in our direction.

I thought to myself, 'what a funny country we live in'. We're all terrified of the unkown / unfamiliar, but completely un-phased by the things we know.

The secular and religious experience emotions about each other ranging from distrust to hate because they no longer know one another. The urbanites and settlers experience similar emotions about one-another due to the same sort of unfamiliarity and disconnect.

The non-political Jews and Arabs are just as wary of each other as their more 'active' counterparts, again, due largely to the scariness of the unknown strangers. Those that live and travel in the territories are (mostly) at ease with commutes and ambulations that, for some reason, fill the hearts of Israel's city-dwellers with dread.

When my driver, Yossi, had finished reciting a few more psalms - presumably with his fellow driver's mother in mind - we resumed our journey, and within 20 minutes arrived outside my house in Efrat. I asked him if he wanted a cup of coffee for the ride back to Beer Sheva, but he shook his head and said he'd be fine.

I reviewed the return route with him and gave him my cell phone number in case he lost his way... but I could see he was writing it down mostly to humor me. Gone was the cloud of hesitancy and fear under which we'd begun our trip together. In it's place was a confident, macho mizrachi cab driver who was completely at home in his surroundings.

Almost as an afterthought I asked him if he was glad he'd taken the fare. Without hesitating he answered that he'd lived his whole life in Israel... most of it in Beer Sheva... and had never realized how close Hevron was. He told me that on his next day off from work he was going to bring his family to pray at the Ma'arat HaMachpelah. "My son's going into the army this year" he confided with a shrug. "If not now... when?" *

I couldn't agree more. As I watched him drive away I couldn't think of a better way to sum up the need for people's perspectives to change; 'If not now, when?'

* He was quoting Hillel from Pirkei Avot. The full quote is "If I am not for myself who will be for me. If I am only for myself, what am I. If not now, when?"

Bush-Who the HELL is Abbas you idiot?

Well Annapolis is over and it didn't have the dramatic effects that everyone was expecting. The fact the PM of Israel is ONCE AGAIN sitting down offering more land to a leader who's sole purpose in being there is to eventually be able to kill as many Jews as possible.

But this "Palestinian leader" is probably the most interesting in all of the leader's who have come to the White House before to solve "The Situation," (oh wait there was only one, Arafat. There was nobody before him).


The brainchild of Bush was that we would throw the Jews out of Gaza and then have the Arabs come in a create a stable, functioning society that would bring prosperity to the world.

I don't know who he was kidding but the fact that it's turned into a terrorist nest I think has burst Bush's bubble.

But Bush is a man who is obsessed with democracy. Democracy in Afghanistan, democracy in Iraq, and "Mr. Palestine" wants democracy in these new terror states that he stays up at night dreaming about. How do we make a democracy? Oh, I know, we have elections! Then the people will vote in a leader who I can then negotiate with.

There's just one problem with that, the Arabs voted in a terror group which was inevitable because both parties that were running were terror groups. Those STUPID people! They voted in the WRONG terror group!

There's a key difference between Hamas and Fatah, Hamas is a devoutly religious group and they answer to no one except "Allah." Bush doesn't speak that language so he can't negotiate with them.

Fatah on the other hand are not as religious when it comes to Allah, they are more religious when it comes to something that Bush can give them, MONEY!

So we have a group that has been given the opportunity to democratically vote the leader they want in order to represent them in the pathway for them to acquire a state, which they never did anything to actually deserve. They can't ever vote for the right party!

So it should make sense that you take the party that lost and that's who you're going to invite to Annapolis to make a new Middle East, because this guy is obviously backed by the people he's supposedly representing right?

Mr. Bush, get you're head out of your tush and go read a Bible (after you've spent about 2 days underwater in a mikve to cleanse yourself of all of the sins you've done)

EDITOR'S NOTE: I am going into finals and will probably not be able to post for the next 2 weeks or so.

"The Last Jew"

I found this very disturbing, yet it gives you something to think about.

From the Milkshake and the Flood blog:

My name? My name is not important.

Who am I? I am the last Jew. The year is 2124, the place is the Smithsonian Institute is Washington D.C. I am in this museum, in a cage on exhibit. People pass my way, day in and out, staring, pointing, and even sometimes laughing. On the walls surrounding my exhibit are the remnants of a Jewish culture; a talit, a Torah, the books of the Talmud. Each day, as I sit here watching the people pass, I wonder to myself how six and a half million people who existed as Jews a little over a century ago could have possible vanished. My father and grandfather used to talk with me about the Jewish communities in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries; about the large populations in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Pittsburgh, and world-wide organizations like United Synagogue, B'nai B'rith and so many others. I recall my father telling me how successful and prosperous the Jew in America was. And about a land called Israel. And yet, all this has vanished--all this has disappeared. I contemplate the reasons, I recall the events, and I search for an answer. I now believe that I know how the Jews in America and in the world disappeared. Small things at first, things that happened gradually. Jewish families stopped attending Shabbat services, the parents stopped sending their children to religious schools, Hebrew High School, day schools and Bar Mitzvah classes. The Shabbat candles were never lit. My grandfather told me that they were still good Jews--some of them spoke Yiddish, they attended Yom Kippur service, they held a Passover Seder each year. Some of them were Jewish by heart; others by tradition and others by stomach. However, the books tell me that in time, this too, ended. To attend a Kol Nidre service became a chore, not an honor--to hold a Seder became a task, not a joy. The rituals and observances of Judaism began to vanish, and this I believe was the first step. Intermarriage was in order. The Rabbi became a businessman, not a teacher. Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform were quarreling. I was reading of a Rabbi, Mordecai Rosenberg, who demanded that Jews fight for emancipation between the American community and the Jewish community, to put aside all difference. In time, the Jew did become equal. He attained material success, and he achieved sustained equality. The Jew was at the same level socially as any Christian. Hatred toward the Jew soon died off, and nowhere was there heard a shout of bigotry towards the Jew. And with this fight for equality, all differences were put aside, including religious differences. Jews stopped hanging mezuzot on their doors, as it merely proved them different. Jews when asked if they were Jewish, would either give a brisk "no" or no answer at all. They were Americans first. A non-religious Judaism was established in America. Why didn't these people see that a non-religious Judaism couldn't exist? Judaism obviously needs Jews, but also, Jews need Judaism. Without one, the other is dead. Why didn't those people see it? Why did Ashkenazi and Sephardic Jews fight?

And then, the final blow to the Jew came. It occurred about 50 years ago, and so I can recall it vividly. The Arab nations around the Jewish state of Israel grew restless and strong. As they have since the beginning of recorded history, the Arab nations wanted Israel destroyed. And they acted. With two nuclear pellets, three and a half million Israelis were obliterated, and the land that had once flowed with milk and honey was now charred beyond fertility. When the news of the incident flashed across the globe, the Jew in America turned his head, denied concern and replied, "Really, what could I have done?" Yet, little over 150 years ago, a man in World War II was supposed to have slaughtered six million Jews in Germany, and my father told me that people swore they would never forget. They promised that they would always support the Jews across the continents. They pledged their donations towards the development of Israel, and they vowed their allegiances were forgotten. Any responsibility of the American Jew to Israel was ignored. How forgetful a people can be! When the people lost their pride in themselves, their religion, and their Israel, they lost everything. As it was once said, "If I am not for myself, who will be for me?" I am the last American Jew. In less than twenty years, I too, will die. And never again will another Jew set foot on this planet.

My G-d, my G-d, where did we forsake you?

How Great Stories Are Made

I had an interesting experience at the chiropractor's office this afternoon. My chiropractor is a frum Jew, and has mezuzot on all of the doorposts in his office.

I had just sat down to wait for the doctor when I heard the following dialogue between a father and son:

"Dad, look there's another one! What does it say on it? Sin? Shin? Daled? What is it?
"It's something that religious Jews put on their doorposts. It has verses from the Bible in it."
"Wow! I guess he really does keep the law!"

The conversation ended there, and I poked my head out a spotted a kippa-less father walking out with his inquisitive son. I figured that they were Jewish, because the kid recognized the Hebrew letters, so I'm going to keep that assumption.

I wonder how much of a Kiddush Hashem my chiropractor realized he had created. That kid is probably going to go home and walk around his house and ask "why don't we have anything on our doorposts?" Which will lead to the parents making very uncomfortable gestures at each other ("He picked this up from you!)

They might decide to stop using my chiropractor, and eventually the kid will forget about the whole experience.

I'm guessing the kid was about 8, so fat forward 12 years. This kid is a between semesters of his Junior year and he's signed up to go on a Birthright trip to Israel. He will walk the streets of Yerushalyim, (free, because the Arabs decided to pack their bags and go home to Arabia) and notice the various mezuzot that line the doorposts and entranceway's all over the city.

He will then be reminded of this experience at the chiropractor he used to go to. He will go back to America and start asking questions. The summer following his graduation, he'll head to Israel trying to find himself, somehow wind up at Aish and start learning.

He'll realize that, as a Jew, he belongs in Israel, and will send his parents an email telling them that he's not coming back.

They will of course be outraged, ("This isn't the kind of son we raised!") and will immediately hop on a plane to come to Israel to try to knock some sense into their son.

He will convince them to take the Discovery seminar, take them on some trips all over the country, and they will eventually come around to his way of thinking.

They'll then go back to America, where they will spend the next 3 years watching their son grow on the other side of the world.

On his wedding day they will also decide that they also want to stay in Israel and make Aliyah with Nefesh B' Nefesh the following summer.

They will then somehow run into Rabbi Spiro, who right a book about their story.

This all Mashiach pending of course.

Good luck kid.

The PA Arabs Real Motives Have Been Revealed!

There really are some advantages to reading Al Jazeera, it really lets you see what your enemies true motive are.

Olmert has made a condition for the upcoming summit in Annapolis.

The Arabs have to accept a Jewish state.

I mean what do the Arabs have to do in whatever agreement is going to be made? Let's pretend that G-d didn't run the world for a second, Olmert is offering to give the Arabs half of Yerushalayim, and all of Judea & Samaria. They are offering to accept and help with the creation of an Arab state in the heartland of Israel.

What do the Arabs have to do?

Well, it hasn't been discussed as much as what the Jews will have to give up, but I'd imagine that it's along the lines of previous agreements, stop terror activities, (but the definition "terrorists" is never defined. When was the last time you heard the head of a country or news reporter refer to suicide bombings as "terror attacks?") arrest terrorists, and other aspects of, you know, creating a functioning, thriving society?

Israel has to evacuate hundreds of thousands of Jews who live in the Israel's heartland, and will probably supply this theoretical country with water, electricity, food, other staples so "international war crime" is not thrown at Israel (which it probably would anyway).

Well I'd imagine that this attempt will breed about the same results as other's have. Namely Israel will agree to every single part of its agreement while the Arab leaders take all of the money that has been given to them by the international community, and pocket in their Swiss bank accounts. What hasn't been pocketed will go into buying weapons to shoot at Jews.

So given that history is repeating itself, why should the Arabs accept Israel as a Jewish state? They'll just deny it and they'll still get everything they want.

Olmert's condition threatens to undermine a US-hosted Middle East conference later this month.

Really?! The condition, which is nothing more than a simply saying empty words in Annapolis is what will "undermine the US-Hosted Middle East conference"?!

You know what this means right? As soon as the Arabs which up until this time have only been pushing for the West Bank, will, after they get it, want the rest of Israel.

Differences over the issue emerged this week when Saeb Erekat, the Palestinian negotiator, said Palestinians would not accept Israel as a "Jewish state".

This assertion is seen by critics as a way for Olmert to argue against a return of refugees in a final deal.

I hope that's not Olmert's reason for making the Arabs comply with is demands. I would think that, as the Prime Minister of Israel, he'd have the common sense to see that 7 million Arabs coming into the country would destroy it.

"We do not accept conditions of this type, not at all," Salam Fayyad, the Palestinian prime minister, told Al-Arabiya television.

Of course because if they do accept Israel as a Jewish state they'd have to (horrors) have to admit that the Jews actually belong in the Land of Israel!

Meanwhile is bending over backwards to try to appease these terrorists. I don't agree with what they're doing, but they are doing it. I don't see any Arab countries saying, "Well we've played this whole "Palestinian" game long enough, I guess we should open out borders to allow them to return to their native lands."

An Israeli spokesperson refused to comment.

Now on a side note I've always wondered, from a journalistic ethics perspective, is this ethical? Couldn't anyone put something along the lines of "A un-named commander in the military told me that Canada is planning an invasion of Japan?" There's no way to check statements like these.

"A man who won't die for something is not fit to live."
-Martin Luther King Jr.

What are YOU willing to die for?

Read This if You Are A G-d Fearing Jew!

This is today's Shmirat Halashon halacha of the day. Please forward this to as many people as possible, and thank you to the Chofetz Chaim Heritage Foundation for all of their phenomenal work!

Talking During the Torah Reading

Unfortunately, idle conversations often begin with stories that are filled from beginning to end with loshon hora. When held in the synagogue, such conversations usually begin prior to the Torah reading, but when the reading commences, the speaker continues his narrative so that he speaks loshon hora even as the words of our holy Torah are being read. Often, this person is among the distinguished members of the congregation whose seat is at the eastern wall, so that his sin is committed in full view of everyone. In this way, one is guilty of desecrating Hashem’s Name in public, meaning, in the presence of ten Jews, a most severe form of chilul Hashem.

Note how many prohibitions this man has transgressed:

(1) The prohibition against speaking loshon hora, aside from numerous other commandments both positive and negative [which one might transgress when speaking loshon hora].

(2) The sin of “You shall not desecrate My Holy Name” (Vayikra 22:32), which, as mentioned above, was transgressed in public.

(3) He has ignored the Torah reading; even if he has missed a single verse or even a single word, his sin is enormous. For our Sages consider it a serious sin even to leave the synagogue while the Torah reading is in progress; how much more so regarding one who is present in the beis haknesses (synagogue) and whose craving for idle conversation and loshon hora causes him to ignore the word of the Living God! Often, this occurs on Shabbos, when the sin is far greater than on a weekday, as is stated in many holy works.

To all of the above is added the sin of engaging in idle conversation in the beis haknesses or beis midrash, which is a great sin as stated in Shulchan Aruch — and certainly when such conversation is in the form of loshon hora!

How Google Saved my Neshama

I've been a lifetime AOL user. Call it the curse of AOL being the first major Email an internet provider and the fact that I've been using the same email address for 12 years.

Anyways. I want to thank Yishai Fleisher for, unknowingly, opening my eyes to an extremely harmful feature that AOL provides.

Let's forget the fact that Aol NEVER WORKS! And it takes approximately 3 minutes to sign onto your screen name (and this is using the AOL website, forget the AOL program!) where you then have to spend another 10 minutes going through your list of 60 emails to weed out the junk from the stuff that's actually important.

So after spending what could have been productive time, deleting emails for Viagra and Microsoft Windows (all at low, low prices) I can finally go to the top of the inbox to read my email only to find that I have five new junk emails to delete.

How I managed 12 years of this with all my hair I have no idea.

So, now that I FINALLY have finished cleaning out my inbox, I can actually read my mail.

But this is actually not the worst part of AOL.

The worst part is actually the ads.

We learned in our E-Commerce class that most people have become immune to banner ads, and I can say that I've become one of them. But I think the fact that you don't even realize consciously what's on the screen is rather disturbing, and it took me a while to realize that AOL's banners are full of half naked women.

They run an ad continuously for a weight loss program, with a bikini-clad woman, as well an ad for an online dating service that shows a girl in her underwear looking at a webcam.

I think the fact that I didn't even REALIZE that that's what I was being bombarded with every single day shows I have some work to do.

So I emailed AOL and complained and this is the response I recieved:

"We are sorry for the inconvenience that our banner ads cost you, but we have no control over what our advertisers put in their banner space."

Translation: "We're getting too much money to care about the spiritual well being of our customers."

Well, I had been thinking about switching to Google's Gmail for some time and had been unable to make the switch until now.

The real catch was that I could still receive all of my AOL mail in my Gmail inbox. I could even send an email with my AOL screen name, all without having to actually sign onto AOL.

But there have been some additional bonuses to switching to Gmail.

First of all, I love the fact that Gmail does not use any picture ads. They take of the successful model of Google that doesn't use picture-based ads, they only use keyword based ads.

This gives me the oppurtunity to see ads that pertain to me. Take for instance an ad for Rabbi Rappaport's mohel services in the Baltimore-Washington area. Or as I wrote about last week, an ad to buy Rav Kook's sefarim online.

I even saw an ad for a dvar Torah on Friday.

Well I must say that I highly recommend Gmail, also for their unnatural ability to filter out spam, even spam that it brings over from AOL.

All in all I have to say that I am extremely happy with my decision and I hope that Gmail continues to provide the excellent product that they have.

Another Aliyah Rant

I was reading the article in the Yeshiva World News about the hardships of Jewish families in America with tuition and healthcare. Not to be blunt or anything, but of the 60 comments posted the word "Aliyah" didn't come up once. (Well, it will when, and if, they post my comment.) How come people don't think of Aliyah as an option? It's what I like to call the curse of the Exile, people have become so comfortable that they've forgotton what the mission of the Jewish people is.

There's a weekly parshah sheet that makes it's rounds in my Shul called the "Penimim." They had an interesting insight into the cause for anti semitism. You know what the cause is?

The Jews.

Not that the Jews exist, but the fact that Jews forget what their mission is.

There's a reason Yaakov declined Eisav's invitation to join with him after they meet (in next weeks Parshah). Yaakov knew that he would be safer traveling with Eisav, but if he did that his family would start to assimilate with Eisavs family and the Jews mission would become lost.

It's funny, because this came from a Yeshivish source, I think some people whould start practicing what they preach.

Arabs are in a good mood, so what do they do? They Shoot Eachother!

This is an article from Al Jazeera, a fine news source that always spell checks it's articles before posting them to their website.

At least five people have been killed and about 100 are reported to have been wounded after gunfire broke out at a rally attended by Fatah supporters in Gaza.

The gunfire erupted as tens of thousands of people were attending the rally in Gaza City to mark the death of Yasser Arafat, the former Palestine Liberation Organisation (PLO) leader.

Nour Odeh, Al Jazeera's correspondent in Gaza City, said that people fled from the scene as gun battles between Fatah and Hamas fighters intensified.

She said doctors at local hospital had been "overwhelmed" by casualties and that the death toll could rise.

Fatah officials accused Hamas forces of opening fire from the nearby Islamic University, but Hamas said its men had come under attack from Fatah gunmen and shot back.

Organisers say that about 100,000 people had turned up at the commemoration event for the former Fatah leader.

Tense atmosphere

Hamas had broken up some smaller demonstrations organised by its rival on Sunday, the third anniversary of Arafat's death.

Speaking at Monday's rally before the gunfire broke out, Odeh called the atmosphere in Gaza City "quite tense".

"Fatah promised everyone a show of force and presence in Gaza and a show of force they certainly did show," she said.

"[The rally] has surpassed all expectations [of the number of people attending]."

Hamas had set up checkpoints on the main north-south road in Gaza to check vehicles going to the event, residents said.

Their security forces also deployed across Gaza City and fired in the air on Monday morning at one intersection after youths threw stones at them, witnesses said.

Odeh said that she had spoken to people who had walked to the rally from Beit Hanoun, which lies at the northernmost tip of the Gaza Strip.

"Four months after the Hamas takeover of Gaza, the occasion of the anniversary of Yasser Arafat's passing has basically brought all Fatah members together to show that they are here," she said.

She said the rally had galvanised Fatah supporters after previous attempts to hold public demonstrations in the Gaza Strip were put down by Hamas's police force.

Fatah has had only a marginal presence in Gaza since Hamas forces violently took control of the region in June and took over key institutions.

The Wafa news agecny, which is run by the office of Mahmoud Abbas, the leader of Fatah and the Palestinian president, said Hamas had confiscated pictures of Arafat and headdresses symbolising the late leader.

The items were seized "at a time when the Gaza Strip is being deprived of basic goods and medicine", a Hamas security offical was quoted as saying by a pro-Hamas website.

Israel recently imposed caps on fuel imports to the Gaza Strip, leading to transport restrictions and reductions in electricity output to the Palestinian territory.

BEWARE: AMERICANS ARE VERY KNOWLEDGEABLE ABOUT THE WORLD

PA Arabs Losing Interest in Independent State

This from Israel National News:

by Ezra HaLevi

Though the Annapolis Conference is widely seen in Israel as an effort to keep the Olmert government alive, there are indications it comes at the tail end of the movement for a PA state.

“It would not be a great exaggeration to conclude that the Palestinian national movement has ceased to exist in recent years,” writes political correspondent Danny Rubinstein for Haaretz. “The institutions of the PLO, which were to represent all groups among the Palestinian people, have become outdated and of little importance.”

Rubinstein, in fact a leading proponent of a Palestinian state, laments that many top PA officials have returned to their countries of origin and given up on carving from Israel another Arab state in the Middle East, for the Palestinians. “Nabil Shaath, a PLO veteran who was a minister in the Palestinian government after returning with Arafat and settling in Gaza, has return to his home in Cairo where he runs a thriving business,” Rubinstein notes. “Muhammad Dahlan and Hasan Asfor, who not long ago were ministers and powerful advisors in Gaza, now spend most of their time in Cairo with their families. In Ramallah, it is estimated that 50,000 residents have left the West Bank [Judea and Samaria] in recent years, most to return to their homes and property in Amman. They had come to Ramallah and Nablus to work in PA offices there.”

Though he does not mention it and presumably would not support it, Rubinstein seems to conclude that MK Benny Elon’s Israeli Initiative - to reengage Jordan and Egypt with regard to Judea, Samaria and Gaza – is the way of the future. “With the failure of the PA experiment, the Arab states have begun to return to the scene. The Jordanian government, with the encouragement of Israel, is establishing a renewed presence in the West Bank…King Abdullah II and government leaders in Amman are careful to publicly announce that they have no designs on the West Bank. While this may be true, there is no doubt that their interest in events there is growing. There is every reason to expect further cooperation between the West Bank and the East Bank in Jordan, which will also have political consequences.”

Another report bolsters Rubinstein’s assessment, with PA Arabs massively trying to obtain Israeli citizenship. Reportedly, thousands of PA Arabs living in the areas surrounding Jerusalem have submitted applications to become Israeli citizens, fearing the rise of a PA entity along the borders of the Partition Wall following the Annapolis conference.

Arabs in the surrounding neighborhoods listed as part of Jerusalem’s municipality were offered citizenship after the Six Day War, but many refused. Since then, according to officials, only a few dozen applications were received each year.

In Israel, Birthrate Up for Jews, Down for Muslims

This from the Jerusalem Post:

The country's fertility rate continues to rise; the average number of babies born to Muslim women is falling; having babies before the age of 20 is less common, and the average age when women have their first child is up. These are some of the findings of the report on Patterns of Fertility in 2006 released this week by the Central Bureau of Statistics.
A total of 148,170 babies came into the world last year: 71 percent of them were born to Jewish mothers and 23% to Muslims; 3% to women of undetermined religion; 2% to Druse; and 1% to Christians (81% of those Arabs). According to data from 2006, the average Israeli woman will have 2.9 children in her lifetime, compared to 2.8 based on 2005 figures. The average fertility rate among Jewish women rose from 2.7 in 2005 to 2.8 in 2006. Muslim women's fertility has declined to four children, compared to 4.7 in 2000. The lifetime fertility rate for Christian Arab women was 2.2 children in 2006, compared to 2.7 in 1996. The highest rates are in haredi towns such as Modi'in Illit (Kiryat Sefer) and Betar Illit, with an average of eight children per woman, and in Beduin towns such as Tel Sheva (6.8), Rahat and Arara. The least fertile cities were Ariel (1.7), Kiryat Yam, Tirat Carmel, Kiryat Bialik and Upper Nazareth. There were 3% more newborns than during the previous year, with the increase due largely to a higher birthrate among Jewish women. Baby boys - 51.3% - are more common than girls. In 2006, the average woman gave birth to her first child at 26.8 years, about a year and six months older than a decade earlier. Only 3,966 babies were born in 2006 to women under the age of 20. Nearly 5,900 single Jewish women gave birth that year; most had never been married; the rate was 6.6 births per 1,000 single women in 2006, compared to 4.3 a decade before. Most of the increase was among women in their late 30s. In 2005, 4.4% of all newborns were from multiple pregnancies. During the last decade, there has been a 12% increase in multiple births - putting Israel near the top in this category. Ninety-six percent of the multiple births were twins, and 3% triplets (compared to 10% triplets a decade before). Fully 99.6% of all deliveries are in a hospital. But 3.6% of Muslim women in the South give birth at home.

The Last Place You'd Expect. . .

I just had the most incredible thing happen to me. I switched to Gmail this week for my email. I had been using AOL, but the ads that they post there I didn't think was good for my neshama.
One of the things I like about Gmail is that there are no picture ads, only words.
So I'm looking at my email and in the scrolling bar at the top of the page it switches to this:
תקליטור כתבי הרב קוק - www.talsys.net/?d=p/36 - חדש - גירסה 3 - מותאם לXP

It's a website for Rav Kook's sefarim!

"The Visitor"

This article is from Aish:

A few years after I was born, my Dad met a stranger who was new to our small Texas town. From the beginning, Dad was fascinated with this enchanting newcomer and soon invited him to live with our family. The stranger was quickly accepted and was around from then on.

As I grew up, I never questioned his place in my family. In my young mind, he had a special niche. My parents were complementary instructors: Mom taught me good from evil, and Dad taught me to obey. But the stranger...he was our storyteller. He would keep us spellbound for hours on end with adventures, mysteries and comedies.

If I wanted to know anything about politics, history or science, he always knew the answers about the past, understood the present and even seemed able to predict the future! He took my family to the first major league ball game. He made me laugh, and he made me cry. The stranger never stopped talking, but Dad didn't seem to mind.

Sometimes, Mom would get up quietly while the rest of us were shushing each other to listen to what he had to say, and she would go to the kitchen for peace and quiet. (I wonder now if she ever prayed for the stranger to leave?)

Dad ruled our household with certain moral convictions, but the stranger never felt obligated to honor them. Profanity, for example, was not allowed in our home... not from us, our friends or any visitors. Our longtime visitor, however, got away with four-letter words that burned my ears and made my dad squirm and my mother blush.

My Dad didn't permit the liberal use of alcohol. But the stranger encouraged us to try it on a regular basis. He made cigarettes look cool, cigars manly and pipes distinguished. He talked freely (much too freely!) about sex. His comments were sometimes blatant, sometimes suggestive, and generally embarrassing.

I now know that my early concepts about relationships were influenced strongly by the stranger. Time after time, he opposed the values of my parents, yet he was seldom rebuked... and NEVER asked to leave.

More than 50 years have passed since the stranger moved in with our family. He has blended right in and is not nearly as fascinating as he was at first. Still, if you could walk into my parents' den today, you would still find him sitting over in his corner, waiting for someone to listen to him talk and watch him draw his pictures. His name?

We just call him, "TV."

And the stranger has a wife now. We call her "Internet."

Hashem Who?

I have a relative who is a Christian Missionary, who sometimes comes by my house in the hope that I'm not there (OK, I'm only joking). But hanging around him, as well as observant Christians has given me some insight into how Jews approach the whole G-d idea.

Lori Palatnik, who has a weekly videocast on Aish, one told a story of a seminar she was giving to intermarried couples, one spouse was Jewish, and the other wasn't.

She spoke about a number of topics, where you should educate the kids, how to deal with certain in-laws and other family members, and throughout the seminar she would get nods of heads from different people all over the room. She was trying to see if she could figure out which was the spouse who was Jewish.

She knew when what topic would uncover that answer. As soon as she started speaking about G-d half of the room leaning in (the non-Jewish half) and half of the room leaned back (the Jewish half).

The non-Jews wanted to hear what she had to say, but the Jews didn't. Why?

Back to my uncle, he knows that everything that happens in is life is from G-d, and he acknowledges it. Throughout his speech he'll say, "Through the work of G-d" he recognizes it.

Why don't Jews?

It's not only the non-religious, Orthodox Jews have trouble saying it. Lori, told a story of a woman who approached her after the seminar and told her that she wanted to become Jewish like her husband, but she was worried that if she became Jewish she would have to give up G-d.

Another, similar, subject that revolves around this idea of the Beit Hamikdash. There a rather disturbing story in the Gemarah (Ketubot 61a), of a Jew and a non-Jew who are traveling together. The non-Jew is lagging and he wants the Jew to slow down, so he yells what he thinks is something that will cause the Jew to stop and be shocked. "The Beit Hamikdash has been destroyed."
The Jew turns around and says, "You want to shock me? You're going to have to do better than that, that's old news."

This a great example of what the Exile has done to us. We had a close friend of the family pass away this past summer, and when I went to make a shiva call I realized something. I took a closer look at what we say to the mourner, "May you be comforted with the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem."
What does that mean? It means the feeling you get when you lose someone close to you, is the same feeling you should get when you think about the destruction of the Beit Hamikdash.

I have a rebbe who unfortunetly sometimes has to visit America from Israel. He has some close friends of his who, whenever he's in town, try to get together.
So he's on the phone with one of them and his friend asks him when he's going to to visit America again.
"Well I hope that the next time I see you will be here in Jerusalem in the Holy Temple.

And his friend replied, "Don't be retarded, when are you going to come visit America."

It's a sickness, a sickness of the Exile, and the only thing that will get some people thinking differently will either be a destruction or a rebuilding. The destruction of another Holocaust or the rebuilding of the Beit Hamikdash.

One of the first steps to this is to start realizing G-d more in out lives. Say "Thank G-d," "Baruch Hashem," and don't be afraid. In fact if you say "Thank G-d," to a non-Jew, especially a Christian, they will have the utmost respect for you.

Give it a try, I dare you.

CNN's Bias what's new?

Yasher Koach to the people who put together this video:

What Would You Take With You?

Let’s just say I had a rough night last night.

I was having some issues with my computer, and I was on the phone with Compaq describing the problem to them and this was their response:

“We know exactly what the problem is, please give us your credit card number so we can charge you $40 to walk you through how to insert one line of code into Windows” (WHY DIDN’T I GET A MAC)

Anyways, I said forget it, I restart my computer and am greeted with the message, “We’re sorry, a critical line of code is missing from Windows, please reload your operating system.”

AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

I have 2 Recovery DVD’s for my computer, one wipes the hard drive and restores the computer to when it was purchased, wiping the hard drive and all that good stuff. The other fills in missing pieces in Windows.

I have critical data that I hadn’t backed up, so I chose the later.

So I’m sitting there and am told that it will take about an hour to complete the procedure. So I decide to leave it and go daven Maariv and do the Daf. This is a drastic change from when I’d do computer related stuff when I was younger. Then I’d do all sorts of things from pace the room, listen to music, but go the Beis and learn?

Needless to say I was very calm when I rebooted Windows and discovered that the entire “My Documents” folder had been erased!

I had all of my work stuff, school stuff, music, pictures, all of my audio projects. And it was just gone.

So I had take into account, now that it was gone, what would I have to do. Luckily work things were completed, but I do a newsletter and sometime I have to look back at old editions for certain things. The big thing was the 25 page energy audit I was doing for my Environmental Science class. I had been through page 15, and now it was gone. If figured that it would be about six hours worth of work to redo it.

But besides that I have to say I felt relieved. I was free of the burden of my very cluttered drive, and I could let it go. I realized that I could do without most of the files on there. They were only baggage.

So I was up late last night reinstalling programs that had been corrupted. (and I still managed to make it to 6:30 minyan this morning!)

So today I was tweaking, trying to see if there was someway to recover any of my lost files. I was tipped off by the fact that my 100gb hard drive only read 40gb free. All of the folders in the C drive didn’t add up. So I went to the internet trying to find a data recovery program. After numerous downloads and attempts I gave up, the files weren’t in any of the lost files.

Then I decided to just put “Lost My Documents” into Google. . . and my attempt sprung gold!

Instead of erasing my files, the permissions had been changed, all I had to do was sign in in Safe Mode, change the permission and I was good to go!

Well here I am, with my “lost” files back. And it got me thinking about what’s going on in California and Sderot right now. I came across and article asking “What would you take if you had 15 seconds to grab something and get out of the house? Lets say you didn’t have to worry about family members, what object would you consider irreplaceable and would have to come with you. The thing that you absolutely could not live without?

We’ve been discussing in out science class about one of the ways to curb the so-called Global Climate Change, is to like more economically and efficiently. Besides food, shelter, clothing, and religious materials, what is really important?

Just a thought.

Google determines future of Jerusalem!

Take a good hard look at this picture, notice the red line straight down the middle. That's what Google has determined is the line of the border of Israel. Notice how the Kotel and Har Habayit are on the OTHER SIDE!
In related news terrorists are using Google Earth to help plan terror attacks.

"Mother, Father, Husband, Wife" -words banned in Public Schools!

This from World Net Daily:

"Mom and Dad" as well as "husband and wife" effectively have been banned from California schools under a bill signed by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger , who with his signature also ordered public schools to allow boys to use girls restrooms and locker rooms, and vice versa, if they choose.

"We are shocked and appalled that the governor has blatantly attacked traditional family values in California," said Karen England, executive director of Capitol Resource Institiute

"With this decision, Gov. Schwarzenegger has told parents that their values are irrelevant. Many parents will have no choice but to pull their children out of the public schools that have now become sexualized indoctrination centers."

"Arnold Schwarzenegger has delivered young children into the hands of those who will introduce them to alternative sexual lifestyles," said Randy Thomasson, president of Champaign for Children and Families which worked to defeat the plans. "This means children as young as five years old will be mentally molested in school classrooms.

"Shame on Schwarzenegger and the Democrat politicians for ensuring that every California school becomes a homosexual-bisexual-transsexual indoctrination center," he said.

Analysts have warned that schools across the nation will be impacted by the decision, since textbook publishers must cater to their largest purchaser, which often is California, and they will be unlikely to go to the expense of having a separate edition for other states.

The bills signed by Schwarzenegger include SB777, which bans anything in public schools that could be interpreted as negative toward homosexuality, bisexuality and other alternative lifestyle choices.

There are no similar protections for students with traditional or conservative lifestyles and beliefs, however.

"SB 777 will result in reverse discrimination against students with religious and traditional family values," said Meredith Turney, legislative liaison for Capitol Resource Institute. "These students have lost their voice as the direct result of Gov. Schwarzenegger's unbelievable decision. The terms 'mom and dad' or 'husband and wife' could promote discrimination against homosexuals if a same-sex couple is not also featured.

"Parents want the assurance that when their children go to school they will learn the fundamentals of reading, writing and arithmetic – not social indoctrination regarding alternative sexual lifestyles. Now that SB777 is law, schools will in fact become indoctrination centers for sexual experimentation," she said.

England told WND that the law is not a list of banned words, including "mom" and "dad." But she said the requirement is that the law bans discriminatory bias.

"Having 'mom' and 'dad' promotes a discriminatory bias. You have to either get rid of 'mom' and 'dad' or include everything when talking about [parental issues]," she said. "They [promoters of sexual alternative lifestyles] do consider that discriminatory."

Also signed was AB394, which targets parents and teachers for such indoctrination through "anti-harassment" training, CCF said.

Schwarzenegger had vetoed almost identical provisions a year ago, saying existing state law already provided for penalties for discrimination.

"We had hoped that the governor would once again veto this outrageous legislation but he obviously decided to side with the out-of-touch extremists that control the legislature. This law does not reflect the true values of the average Californian," said England. "True leadership means standing up for what is true and right."

Thomasson said SB777 prohibits any "instruction" or school-sponsored "activity" that "promotes a discriminatory bias" against "gender" – the bill's definition includes cross-dressing and sex changes – as well as "sexual orientation."

"Because no textbook or instruction in California public schools currently disparages transsexuality, bisexuality, or homosexuality, the practical effect of SB777 will be to require positive portrayals of these sexual lifestyles at every government-operated school," CCF noted.

Offenders will face the wrath of the state Department of Education, up to and including lawsuits.

CCF noted that now on a banned list will be any text, reference or teaching aid that portrays marriage as only between a man and woman, materials that say people are born male or female (and not in between), sources that fail to include a variety of transsexual, bisexual and homosexual historical figures, and sex education materials that fail to offer the option of sex changes.

Further, homecoming kings now can be either male or female – as can homecoming queens, and students, whether male or female, must be allowed to use the restroom and locker room corresponding to the sex with which they choose to identify.

AB394 promotes the same issues through state-funded publications, postings, curricula and handouts to students, parents and teachers.

It also creates the circumstances where a parent who says marriage is only for a man and a woman in the presence of a lesbian teacher could be convicted of "harassment," and a student who believes people are born either male or female could be reported as a "harasser" by a male teacher who wears women's clothes, CCF said.

Thomasson said Schwarzenegger also signed AB14, which prohibits state funding for any program that does not support a range of alternative sexual practices, including state-funded social services run by churches.

Affected will be day cares, preschool or after-school programs, food and housing programs, senior services, anti-gang efforts, jobs programs and others.

Thomasson said it also forces every hospital in California – even private, religious hospitals – to adopt policies in support of transsexuality, bisexuality, and homosexuality and opens up nonprofit organizations to lawsuits if they exclude members that engage in homosexual, bisexual, or transsexual conduct.

"It's the height of intolerance to punish individuals, organizations, businesses, and churches that have moral standards on sexual conduct and sexual lifestyles," said Thomasson, in response to the signing of AB14. "This is another insensitive law that violates people's moral boundaries."

The vitriol over the issue rose to new levels in its latest campaign.

As WND reported a board member for the homosexual advocacy group Equality California verbally attacked and threatened CRI for its opposition to the bill earlier.

The board member sent an e-mail and video to CRI threatening the group would be buried if it continued efforts opposing the homosexual advocacy.

"The shocking hate mail we received shows that those behind this legislation do not promote true tolerance," said England. "Only politically correct speech will be tolerated. Those with religious or traditional moral beliefs will not be allowed to express their opinions in public schools."

She also cited an informational document published by the Gay-Straight Alliance Network and the Transgender Law Center that already is lobbying for special treatment in the school system.

"If you want to use a restroom that matches your gender identity … you should be allowed to do so," it advises. "Whenever students are divided up into boys and girls, you should be allowed to join the group or participate in the program that matches your gender identity as much as possible."

Further, the groups advise, "If you change your name to one that better matches your gender identity, a school needs to use that name to refer to you." The advocacy group also warns schools against bringing parents into any such discussion with students.

WND has documented a number of other cases in which educators, including leaders in California, have taken it upon themselves to promote a homosexual lifestyle to children under their charge.

WND reported California Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell, under whose supervision hundreds of thousands of children are being educated, has used his state position and taxpayer-funded stationery to praise a "gay" pride event used in the past to expose children to sexually explicit activities.

That drew vehement objections from several educators, including Priscilla Schreiber, the president of the Grossmont Unified High School District governing board.

"I am outraged that a person in this high-ranking elected position would advocate an event where diversity is not just being celebrated but where pornography and indecent exposure is being perpetrated on the young and innocent children of our communities," she said.

This is just plain sick, and I want to point out a striking coincidence.
This past week's Torah portion talked about the destruction of Sodom. Sodom was famous for its sexual immorality.

How was Sodom destroyed? With fire.

What's happening in California right now?

Just a thought.