America's Memorial Day vs. Israel's Yom HaZikaron

I've only spent one Yom Hazikaron in Israel, and it was one of the most moving experiences of my life. The yeshiva took us all to Har Herzl, hoping to give us a taste of what the day was like in Israel, knowing full well that for some of us, it would be the first, last, and only time they would be in Israel on Yom Hazikaron.
One of the famous parts of the day is the Siren, the one that goes of at night as well as the one that goes on in the morning. The entire country just stops for 2 minutes, as a tribute to all of the people who dies in Israel's wars as well as all the victims of terror attacks.
Albeit there are two groups who do not stand at attention during those two minutes. One of those groups, not surprisingly, are the Arabs.
The other group are certain (not all) chareidim/yeshivish people, who during those two minutes make sure that they are learning Torah.
Some people may knock those Jews for doing this, but I think that there's nothing better that someone could be doing than learning Torah to honor the 20+ thousand Jews who have been killed/murdered since the founding of the State.
Israel's Yom Hazikaron is a day in which the entire country feels the pain of those lost souls, and mourn them.

On the flip side you have America's Memorial Day, which is a somber day only to those families who have lost loved ones in America's wars.
Vietnam, Iraq, Kuwait, , the Revolutionary War, all of the soldiers who died in these wars are forever lost in the lives of their families.

But that's only those families.

For the rest of America, Memorial Day is a day where everyone is off of school/work. People go hiking, light fireworks, and make barbecues. The average person may not even give a second thought that hundreds of thousands, if not millions of people gave their lives in order for them to be a free person in a free country.

It's actually kinda sad about how ungrateful some people are, about this fact. We've become so obsessed with ourselves we don't even think about the things that others have done for us that we're even aware of.

So here we are on Memorial day, let's give 2 minutes to think about all of those people who have died to make this great country (hey, America may have issues, and I'm moving to Israel, but America still is a great country). We owe them that.

I'm going to go prepare the barbecue now.

Checkpoints

There is unfortunately, a large number of people who have to travel through security checkpoints every single day, whether their have to get to a business meeting, go on a school trip, or just to see family.

They are herded like sheep through a narrow walkway where, after a tremendously long wait, they finally reach the end and it is their turn.

The security guard looks them over and then starts to pat them, as if they are some kind of criminals carrying weapons. All these people go through complete and utter humiliation when the security guard "randomly" selects them to do a strip search, when it is obvious that he doesn't care at all about catching terrorists. He's just bored and wanted to humiliate the people passing through.

They are then pulled out of line, where everyone is watching them, as they are searched form head to foot while the guard says that they have to make sure that they are not a terrorist.

Babies, grandmothers, and handicapped, with their added baggage and inability to fend for themselves are routinely pulled over and searched like everyone else.

Sounds horrible doesn't it?

What if I told you hundreds of thousands, maybe even millions of people have to endure this kind of humiliation everyday?

Is this an accurate portrayal of how Israel treats Palestinians who travel through checkpoints?

I wouldn't know.

I was writing about about airport security checkpoints.

Milestone

Well it took me 1 year, 1 month and 28 days to reach the milestone of 1,000 visits to my blog. Go ahead and pass it along if you like it (or don't like) I welcome all viewpoints and opinion.

Funny Bush Videos

I had to do it eventually. Ever since Bush has decided that he's G-d and has the right to give land that doesn't belong to him to the enemies of the Jews, I had to, at some point, make some fun of him.
So here you go, so hilarious Bush videos:

The Ethnic Cleansing of "Palestine"

Note: the following story and analysis is purely satirical (although there's probably some truth to it)

I was in the library last week and noticed that there was a stand of book's about Israel in honor of Israel's 60th birthday.

I wandered over and started to browse through them, noticing various books, some I've read and some I haven't. Books like O' Jerusalem, Dershowitz books, and others.

Then one book caught my eye.

Located on a stand about Israel (a stand supposedly to show Israel in a POSITIVE light) was the book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine."

I have not read the book, I probably will not read the book, but even without reading that book, I can tell you that the book is full of lies.

You want to see ethnic cleansing, look at Darfur. You want to see ethnic cleansing, look at the Nazi's. Israel's relationship with it's Arab neighbors is not ethnic cleansing

Now I'm going to make a rather interesting statement: even though the premise of that book is false, that Israel is ethnically cleansing Palestinians, the creation of a Palestinian state will cause the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians (Pretty strong claim right? Watch this).

According to the Arabs they are considered to have "Palestinian nationality" in that they have the right to property in the state of Israel (more commonly know is the Right of Return or Death to Israel or "We the Arabs unabashedly declare that we hate all Jews and want you dead") , whether they be first generation, 2nd generation, 3rd...it doesn't matter. If they had a ancestor that, at one point in time, owned land there, all of his descendant's have a right to that land. (Whether they even owned the land to begin with is for another post)

Here's an example of how their claims are taken directly from a page in Jewish history and twisted to meet their false agenda.

Hitler determined a Jew by a person had at least one Jewish grandparent. If you're grandfather married a Christian and your family have only married Christians since, you are still considered a Jew.

My (as in like me, the author of this blog) grandfather came to Israel (AKA, British mandated "Palestine") from Russia in the mid-30's. On his passport (wasn't really a passport, it was more like an ID card), under nationality, was stamped "Palestinian."

Ah, here's where it gets interesting, these Arabs want to claim that they are an indigenous nation, that have lived here for millennia (just like the Jews have), yet how could a Jew have the same nationality as they do AKA "Palestinian"? The only way for this to make sense is for people who lived under the British Mandate, who were issued identification cards to be given that nationality.

Now the local Arab population did not like the name "Palestinian" at all. That word was associated with all this nasty things, like the PALESTINE Post (later to be renamed the Jerusalem Post), the PALESTINIAN Airways (later to be renamed El Al), and worst of all PALESTINIAN (later to be renamed "Israeli" or another eternal name Jew/Yid/Yihudi/Bnei Yisrael).

Yes, they didn't like that name at all, in fact if you would call and Arab a "palestinian" he would shout at you for calling him a Jew.

Anyways, to get back to the ethnic cleansing. There was no ethnic cleansing of Palestinians, because the Palestinians were the Jews. But to follow the logic of the Arabs, I would be a 3rd generation Palestinian because my grandfather was given the nationality of "Palestinian" because he happened to live in the Land of Israel during the time the British were labeling people who lived there that name.

But wait! My grandfather left Israel shortly after it became a state, do I still have that lofty status as a"Palestinian?"

According to them I do. Remember, they view anyone who had, at one in history, owned property in the Land of Israel, or even just lived there, as the rightful owners for the rest of time to their ancestors. They also, even if they left, maintain the status of "Palestinians." (You can find people who claim to be 2nd or 3rd generation "Palestinian" who live in America)

So anyways according to that I am a Palestinian.

I am also an Israeli.

Therefore if there is ever (chas v'shalom) the creation of a Palestinian state in Judea & Samaria (or let's say even if they decide to make their state somewhere else, a ploy that we know is only so they can destroy Israel) I should be able to have duel citizenship to both places, correct? I should have a Israeli passport like I do now, or I should have a Palestine passport.

Right?

WRONG!

Because I would not be allowed to have a Palestinian citizenship purely because of the fact that I AM A JEW! I would not be allowed to even visit their state because the Palestinian state would be Juden Rein! No Jews! None!

But let's say that I was living in community in Judea & Samaria (something that is very likely to happen) I would be ethnically cleansed by ISRAEL with the support of the UNITED STATES, from my home there. Israel is not the one doing the ethnic cleansing because they want to drive the Arabs out of Israel, the ethnic cleansing is going on purely for the Arabs! Its' the ARABS WHO ARE ETHNICALLY CLEANSING THE ORIGINAL PALESTINIANS, THE JEWS!

So anyways, I will probably never read the book "The Ethnic Cleansing of Palestine" because it will most likely a work of fiction that doesn't examine the history correctly. As Rabbi Ken Spiro put it, "The creation of Palestinian history, is one of the most successful historical fabrications in the history of the world."

But don't worry, in another 5, 10, 50, 100 years eventually the threat of the "Palestinians" will disappear, and I can guarantee you, the Jews will still be here.

Oh, and on one last note:

ALL JEWS IN THE WORLD COME HOME AND MAKE ALIYAH!!

Busted Google!

(FOR THOSE OF YOU ON FACEBOOK READING THIS YOU HAVE TO CLICK TO SEE THE ORIGINAL POST IN ORDER TO SEE THE PICTURES)

I was looking at Israel on Google Earth and found something very interesting:


If you can take a real close look..


It says "Every Human has Rights."

the obvious implication is that the United States and United Nations don't give Jews rights.

Right?

I think more likely someone was pissed that Israel is about to celebrate it's 60th birthday and he wanted to make a hint that Israel is "oppressive" to its neighbors.

Well, as I've written about on this blog many times, there is a huge difference between IDF soldiers protecting children in preschool vs Arab terrorists who send those children out to kill themselves.

Israel is B"H here to stay, the trick is for us as Jews, to unite. Once we've done that we won't have to worry about sovereignty, terrorism or our neighbors.

Happy 60th Israel!


UPDATED: I realized that I could click on those two icons. One of them was in downtown Jerusalem, the other was in Beit Lechem. I found something interesting on the Beit Lechem one, they had profiled a guy named Abdelfattah Abusrour who was teaching Arab children theater in the hope the it would bring peace.
I have to commend the guy for his attempt, but unless Arab society on a whole has takes on a similar view there will never be a peace.

This leads to another question, what kind of peace are we talking about. Everyone likes to say "Peace" all the time, it's kind of just turned into a slogan without anyone thinking what it rally means.

We have "Peace" with Egypt, this peace has caused us to lose the Sinai, our own oil source, half opf our then territory and the very minor issue of LETTING TERRORISTS BRING WEAPONS INTO GAZA without Israel being able to do a thing from stopping them fire thousands of rockets into Sderot.

So what will a peace look like? An Israel without Yesha? How would that produce different results than Egypt? Egypt may have signed a piece of paper, but they are still preaching the most horrific anti-semitic messages, some of which rival Nazi propaganda.

So this leads to back to Abdelfattah Abusrour, is he imagining a day where Israel will give Yesha to the Arabs and that there will be no hostility towards the smaller Israel? That's going to be hard to do especially when the state sponsored television is preaching the same message that Egypt is.

The other icon lead to the same organization this time to a woman named Nurit Peled-Elhanan, who had a child killed by an Arab terrorist. She then somehow decided that her child was killed because Israel is "occupying" their land.

This is unfortunately the conclusion one will come to if they don't dig for the facts, some of which pertain to who really has the right to this land, and who actually bought it?

I can't go into detail on this right now because I don't have all of the sources in front of me, but pardon this claim, Jews were the ones who own more land in Yesha then any Arab does. They BOUGHT it from them back in the 1800's.

Add that to the fact that the Torah also goes into detail about Israel belonging to the Jews, and it's quite surprising that there is anyone claiming that the Arabs own this land. We bought it TWICE.

But now back to Google.

Google does not have a good relationship with Israel. They insist on calling Yesha "Palestine" they show parts of Yerushalayim as "Palestine."
But still, they should take a backseat on an issue like this. It's one thing to mark fabricated borders (hey anyone can make a mistake) but to put something in blaming Israel of "occupying" and not having anything about to say about, say, Sderot (I checked, by Sderot it just says "Sderot" nothing about falling rockets.

And I used to like Google as a tech company