In Defense of Jerusalem and Israel

A few weeks ago on Yom Yerushalayim Dr. Mordechai Kedar of Bar-Ilan University was on Al Jazeera's Arabic TV station, being confronted with the normal Arab issues, West Bank, Jerusalem, and I felt Dr. Kedar responded very well.
Of course the one critique I have is related to one line he said regarding the future of the "West Bank" and the creation of a PA state there.
Now I will admit that he did come of very strongly, not the typical apologetic Jew that we see in the media these days (click here for an example). But there still is an idea that the Jews don't belong in YESHA.
I was speaking to someone last year about this issue, and they told me that Israel was violating "international law."
Now I'm not a law student, but I have learned enough that when someone tells me something I'm not aware of to ask what their source is. So I asked them which law they were referring to.
They explained to me that Israel was an occupying entity that came into that land, started colonizing it, and started cleansing the locals from their places of birth. This was the crime they were committing.
I of course wouldn't have it, told them that I found that either they had an incredible bias for ignoring all of atrocities committed against the Jews by Arab countries in the early part of the 1900's, or they were simply ignorant of them and victims of other people who had these biases.
But furthermore, if you go by that rational that if a foreign entity (which the Jews most certainly are not) drives natives of their land and then starts colonizing that land and claiming it as their own, then you have just displaced at least 50 Million people on the East Coast of America, and even more if you branch further out west.
Because America WAS founded on this idea of colonizing the land and driving the natives out, yet I don't think that Left-Wing academics will say that the United States is occuping the natives of America (IE Native Americans), of course they probably will claim their occuping other countries, but it is certainly not for colonization. Israel, albeit with secular motivation which might be a topic for a different post, were not invading they were returning. The fact that the Jews lived previously in the land of Israel, is only in debate by anti-Semites. Anyone with an open mind who is presented with un-biased information, will find archaeological evidence of the Jews previous reign over the land everywhere. One of the reasons the Arabs will not allow archaeological research teams onto the Temple Mount is because it would disprove their claim that the Jewish Temple never existed..

Here's the Al Jazeera interview with Dr. Mordechai Kedar (in Arabic with subtitles):

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.

Message to Liberals

From the Life-of-Rubin blog:

You're not unpatriotic because you have an opposing opinion.

You're not unpatriotic because you oppose the war.

You're not unpatriotic because you hate our President.

You're unpatriotic because you give comfort and honor to our enemies.

You're unpatriotic because you interview them and give them a stage to play their mind games.

You care more about respecting an evil murderous dictator then you're own President. Even that doesn't make you unpatriotic, but it does make you wrong.

The New York 'Slimes'

I'm was actually surprised to pick up the New York Times to see a picture with the following caption

As one settler was carried off near the market, an officer rushed to pick up the man’s glasses from the ground.

My first response whenever I see the NY Times do anything about Israel is, usually something along the lines of "here we go again." But I was presently surprised when I saw this picture, a classic Jew-in-distress picture of one Jew helping the other.

The pleasant feeling died as soon as I started reading the article.
"Settler"
"Occupied West Bank"
"Palestinian city, Hebron."

I don't expect the NY Times to study the Bible, or learn Jewish history. But I did learn something very interesting yesterday that might cause them to rethink who the 'occupiers' are.
The Arabs call themselves "Philistines," the West calls them "Palestinians." They claim that they are the descendants of the Philistines. Well some good 'ol fashion history for you.
The word "Philistine" in Hebrew is "Pelishtim."
"Pelishtim," means "Occupier."

Case closed.

Anti-Israel Rally in Washington

Some insights on today's rally in Washington D.C:

The protesters had amassed themselves right in front on the Capitol, in the large grassy field the started the "mall" towards the Washington Monument.
We started walking past them in search of the pro-Israel group and saw a large stage set up with music playing and a LOT of people.
As we approached we realized that this unfortunately was NOT our group (it was a gay pride rally). We eventually wandered over to the right group.
At first I was kind of disappointed at the turn out for the pro-Israel counter rally. There couldn't have been more then 100 people there, compared to the 300 or 400 on the Capitol lawn.
But then I thought back to the Pro-Israel rally that took place back in 2002 and there, we had close to 10,000 people! I don't think that there is any doubt as to what the majority of America thinks about Israel.

One thing that I did notice was the difference in the signs of both sides. The pro-Israel rally had very straight forward posters like this:

And the Anti-Israel people were holding posters like this:

No offense, but to an outsider the 'Free Palestine" poster doesn't really mean anything. You can say that America should cut off it's support to Israel, but you have to explain why.
Stand With Us the organization that put the Stand with Israel rally together, did a much better job at getting the message across with their posters. A male Arab with the green Hamas bandanna (diaper) on his head, a gun in on hand, and a matching baby in the other hand, I think sends a stronger message, mainly because people already are familiar with the image of Arab terrorists.

Another interesting aspect of the rally that was pointed out to me was the types of people who were leading each one. The Pro-Israel rally was led and run by Christians, and unfortunately not many Jews were there. In fact I'd have to guess that about 60-70% of them were Christians. With numbers like that the "I can do more for Israel in the US, so I can't make Aliyah" argument is bogus. These people aren't turning up the to Israel rallies, so they might as well move to Israel and let the Christians take care of it.
On the other side I would occasionally hear the announcer introduce "So-and-so is a Jew and is against the Israeli presence in Judea and Samaria (OK they said 'occupation,' but I have an issue with that word)
Here a few pictures of the poor Jews who have been brainwashed into hating the country of their forefathers:


There's one picture of the Neturei Karta. The infamous Rabbi Weiss, marching in support of killing Jews.
We actually ran into a member of this (I can't think of strong enough word to describe these masters of the Chillul Hashem, so I'm leaving it blank) group on our way back sitting in front of the Capitol learning Mesechta Beitzah. Sitting in front of the Capitol building learning Gemara, supporting the killing of Jews, what a disgrace to G-d.
This led to a very interesting conversation with this poor hopeless Yid. He just sat there, spewing his propaganda and whenever we raised an issue that he couldn't answer he would tell us that he doesn't speak English very well, only the native tongue of the Jews. Hebrew? No, Yiddish.
He then went on to tell us that Rav Kook was an apikores and that we are part of a small minority of Jews who support the "Tzionim" and Zionist Occupation.
I didn't want to be the one to tell him that he was the one in the minority. He told us that he lives in Williamsburg, and there's a good chance he rarely gets to exit the little world that he's sheltered in.

This picture on the right has an interesting story behind it. Immediately after I took it, an Arab approached me and asked if I'd taken a picture of that sign. I asked why I shouldn't have. Then he said "well take a picture of this," and proceeded to make a very rude hand gesture. There was so much more hate coming from the anti people than the pro people.

The truth is I didn't think that either rally was very effective. The pro-Israel one was very isolated and the only people there were pro-Israel to begin with. The Anti-Israel rally I felt just made noise, and caused some people to shout at each other. A group of people standing around trying to get another group of people to think the way they did.
Everyone is entitled to an opinion (and I was glad to see that the opinion was not as a whole, anti-Israel), but the point of these demonstrations is not to convince the other side to change to your way of thinking. The goal is to educate the "salvageable's," the people who are indifferent to the situation and don't have an opinion either way.
The most successful activism will take Israel's problem and say that this is the prospects problem, or he will be presented with a reason to support Israel because it's "cool." To have one side yelling at the other side will only cause these people to want nothing to do with either side.

Radical Islam's Coverup and the Left's denial

Interesting stuff going in my English today. Thank G-d I only have to sit through that class one more time, but this final class period will prove interesting. We're having a debate on whether violence is 'ever' okay, or if it's never okay. Then of all of the things my Christian and Judaism denying teacher has to do is quote one of the Commandments, "You should not kill." Of course if you actually look at the Hebrew, I believe it translates as "You should not murder," but I didn't feel like debating with my teacher. I'm done next week and I've realized that I'm not going to change her and she isn't going to change, so our verbal jousts are really pointless.
Anyways, she was explaining how this 'no violence' thing was going to work. Apparently America should lay down it's arms and once we do that all violence will disappear.

Yeah, right.

That might have been one of the stupidest statements I've ever heard. Not that I'm against peace, but I don't think that the way to peace is to stop fighting and put the next move in your enemies court.
But this really explained a lot about how the Liberal mind works. They have convinced themselves that Radical Islam is a myth (or that it's misunderstood) and they that the way to deal with it is to not seem aggressive to them, and not attack something we don't understand. I don't thing that it takes a genius to realize that when someone has the means to kill, and says he's going to kill, there probably a good chance that he's going to eventually come and kill you. Of course my teacher would tell you the Radical Islam doesn't exist, that it was something that was invented to create an excuse to attack Arabs.
I wish that we didn't have to fight anyone, but when I see video's of Arab leaders chanting 'Death to Israel and the Jews,' and 'Death to America,' the last thing I want to do is sit back and see how this unfolds. I want to do something about it, because something has to be done, even if 'violent' action must be taken.

My research paper last semester was about how Radical Islam is taking over America, not with weapons and force, but by indoctrinating the minds of college students. Arab countries send thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of Arabs to college campuses all over America with the one goal of creating sympathy or the Arabs, and for some other strange reason, hatred for Israel (go figure). I'm seeing it in this class, how can she be shown a video of cartoon characters telling Arab children to grow up to be a suicide bomber, and not be disgusted with it. The goal is to have the next generation, not have any animosity towards Arab's and then they don't have to fight a battle, they've already won.

I saw it today, she believes that America is the terrorist. America have isolated who they deem a 'terrorist' and then they attack. She almost makes it seem like that the Arabs were good guys.

Go figure.

Now obviously not all Arabs are bad, but the situation is that it is almost impossible for Arabs who have a moderate voice to speak out. Arab families are very large and most of the Arabs who leave Arab countries have large amounts of family that are left behind. This creates a situation where they can't speak out against the Arab countries for fear of their families being killed.
Look at the few who do speak out, Nonie Darwish, Brigitte Gabriel, none of the them have family left in the countries they were raised in. Walid Shoebat rejected Jihad and was alienated and threatened by his own family.
This is unfortunately the case with many of these Arabs, they simply can't speak out.

This of course puts the Arabs and the Left in a position of power.

I hope we have some strong people who will lead America in the future, people who will really recognize the threat that is facing America. I will B"H be in Israel by the time any of this happens.
I'm not worried, because America has people protecting it. Israel has the G-d of the Jewish people and the entire world.

I'm comforted by the fact however that we will win, in the end. It just depends how many trials and tribulations we have to go through.