Israel & Christians Today December 2011

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ISRAEL & Christians Today December 2011 Edition

“Israel has paid a heavy price to secure Gilad Shalit’s release after five years of captivity in the Gaza Strip. On this day all of us are united in happiness and pain” Benjamin Netanyahu.

www.c4israel.org www.whyisrael.org

perspective

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December 2011

This was no prisoner exchange

By Melanie Phillips

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For whenever Israel points out that any military action against the Palestinians is only in response to Palestinian attacks, many in Britain claim that those Palestinian attacks were only in response to previous Israeli attacks. Thus Israel is always painted as the ultimate aggressor.

o decent person can fail to be moved by the return of Gilad Shalit. Yet this deal ultimately represents a triumph of heart over head.

I have been watching on TV the drama unfold in Israel and Gaza as the kidnapped Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit was released after five years in Hamas captivity in exchange for the release from Israeli prisons of more than 1000 Arab terrorists.

This is entirely false. From the moment Israel was re-established in 1948, it has only ever launched military operations against the Arabs in response to actual or imminent Arab attacks. Yet many in Britain refuse to acknowledge the difference between murderous aggression and the defense against it.

The first pictures of him in a brief interview on Egyptian TV were unsettling, even if not surprising: painfully thin, pale and with deeply sunken eyes, he looked very different from the smiling 19 year-old that became the iconic image of the campaign to secure his release.

Relief that he appears to be physically unharmed - he says he was treated well - must be tempered by concern for the psychological damage he may have suffered.

One can only hope (doubtless fruitlessly) that he will now be shielded from intrusive media attention to afford him the privacy he undoubtedly needs in which to start the long process of adjustment and recovery.

An obscene moral equivalence has been established by this deal between the innocent and the guilty.

Shalit told his Egyptian TV interviewer that he hoped his release would further the peace efforts and help end the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians.

What a burden this poor boy now carries from this deal with the devil that has been done to secure his release. But it will not bring about peace; indeed, one might even say that it marks the collapse of the ‘peace process’ and makes war even more likely.

For by making this deal with Hamas, Israel’s Prime Minister Netanyahu has effectively buried Fatah’s Mahmoud Abbas, already weakened by the failure of his UN ‘Palestine statehood’ stunt.

For Israel, that stunt marked the end of the illusion that Abbas was a genuine partner in any peace process. Now Hamas has been strengthened by this deal.

That is, to put it mildly, unfortunate; but now at least the illusion of a moderate Palestinian leadership is over. Israel has brought its hostage home; and

Gilad Schalit, together with his parents and brother, are leaving the Tel Nof Israel Air Force base to return to his home in northern Israel

now, with Hamas poised to relocate to an Egypt which is itself on the brink of descending into Islamic radicalism, Israel faces squarely the true face of genocidal Arab rejectionism.

Nothing illustrates this better than the obscene joy which has erupted in both Gaza and the West Bank, where jubilant Arabs are celebrating their released killers as returning heroes.

This was how the so-called ‘moderate’ Mahmoud Abbas addressed the murderers of Jewish innocents at a mass welcoming ceremony for the released prisoners: ‘Your sacrifice and hard work were not in vain... We thank God for your return and your safety...

You are freedom fighters and holy warriors for the sake of God and the homeland.’

Hamas is also presenting as heroes to cheering Gazan crowds the terrorists in charge of guarding Shalit during his time in captivity: ‘Shalit’s captors will take the stage alongside the freed prisoners during the Gaza celebrations to be held upon their return to the Strip.

The released prisoners first received by Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, government ministers, Legislative Council members and other figures. Next, the detainees met with relatives.

One of the freed prisoners is Muhammad Zufi, who assisted Shalit’s abductors in videotaping the abduction operation.’

According to Israeli opinion polls, the deal has overwhelming Israeli public support.

But away from the mainstream media which has been gloating over its role in creating the public pressure for such a deal to be

done, an anguished debate has nevertheless been under way for days now about the terrible price Israel has paid for the release of this one soldier and the incalculable consequences of such a deal.

It is not merely the grossly disproportionate numbers involved, which no other country in the world would even contemplate for one moment. It is the fact that the deal declares in effect that terrorism works.

It is the fact that trading one innocent life for more than 1000 guilty lives hands a sickening victory to terrorists, making it much more likely that they will kidnap more soldiers to trade for yet more jailed murderers.

It is the fact that this deal makes it almost inevitable that yet more Israeli families will end up mourning the loss of loved ones who will be murdered as a result

by Palestinian terrorism.

It is the fact that it underscores the shattering weakness of the Israel Defence Force in having failed to rescue Shalit during the five years he was held.

What has happened, many Israelis are asking themselves, to the country that produced the daring and heroic raiders of Entebbe who managed to defy all odds in rescuing Israeli hostages from a hijacked plane?

And at a deeper level still, it is the fact that an obscene moral equivalence has been established by this deal between the innocent and the guilty.

This equivalence is being played out in the coverage which describes the deal as a ‘prisoner swap’ or ‘prisoner exchange’ – more than 1000 Palestinian prisoners held in Israeli jails for one Israeli prisoner

They refuse to acknowledge that Hamas sets out to murder as many young Israelis as possible, whereas Israel goes to great lengths (not always successfully) to avoid civilian casualties. photo@isranet

held by Hamas.

But Shalit was a hostage, kidnapped in an act of illegal aggression by an organization whose aim is the destruction of Israel and which allowed him not one visit by the Red Cross during his five-year incarceration.

By contrast, the released Palestinians have not just been tried and punished according to due process of law, but include among their number not just those who have committed some of the worst terrorist atrocities in Israel’s history - such as the blowing up of Sbarro’s pizza restaurant in Jerusalem, where 16 people were murdered including five members of the Schijveschuurder family – but even worse, some of the masterminds behind such atrocities.

Some families who have lost loved ones in these terror attacks have welcomed the deal; they say they did not want the Shalit family to suffer as they themselves have suffered. But for other families bereaved by these murders, the anguish is unbearable.

Watching the murderers of their loved ones walk free to a rapturous reception in Gaza and the West Bank and listening to their gloating satisfaction at having taken the lives of Israeli innocents, these families feel as if they have been brutally abandoned by a society for which justice cannot be allowed to get in the way of emotion.

For these suffering relatives, it is almost as if today they are being forced to endure yet another bereavement.

But then, the equivalence being drawn in the coverage of this deal reflects in turn the morally bankrupt ‘tit-for-tat’ analysis of the Arab war against Israel employed by so many in Britain and the west.

They refuse to acknowledge that the aim of every single military operation by Israel in Gaza is to defend and protect itself against attack by a fanatically Jew-hating enemy pledged not only to destroy Israel but to wipe out every single Jew on earth.

The refusal to acknowledge this crucial moral difference has meant that many in Britain and the west view Israel as the aggressor in the conflict, and the victimization of Israelis is largely glossed over.

So just as the anguish of Israeli terror victims’ families over the Shalit deal has been minimized by the media coverage – particularly in Israel itself, which reflects the malign nature of its own left-wing media class -- so the anguish of Israel itself as a state under permanent existential siege is routinely ignored, and Israel instead grotesquely portrayed as the aggressor in the region.

What many in Britain and the west still don’t understand is that what Israel is up against, is what Britain and the west are now up against – not a violent campaign by people fighting for a state of their own but an Islamist cult of death, in which the murder of innocents is a cause for exultation and mass killers are lionized as heroes and religious martyrs, not just by Hamas but by the Fatah leadership in the West Bank too.

The five-year Shalit drama and its disturbing resolution have therefore come to symbolize the toxic cocktail of ignorance, misunderstanding, naivety, malice, cowardice, cynicism, incompetence and moral muddle by the so-called civilized world - including Israel itself - that has actually served to perpetuate the Middle East impasse.

Continued on page 3

comment

December 2011

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The Gilad Shalit Dilemma

By Jerold S. Auerbach

I

n Haifa eight years ago, Asaf Zur was returning home from school. Along the way, his fellow bus passenger, a Hamas suicide bomber, blew himself up and killed seventeen Israelis, mostly school children like 17-year-old Asaf.

The bomb belt worn by the terrorist was made by Mawaz Abu Sharach and Majdi Amro. They trained him, planned his deadly assault, and drove him to his target. For their heinous cruelty they received seventeen life sentences. Interviewed from an Israeli prison on British television for a program called “Inside the Mind of a Suicide Bomber,” they said: “We will be released before our sentences’ time; we will go back to terror because we must kill more Jews.”

Sharach and Amro are among the 1,027 terrorists who were released by Israel in return for Sgt. Gilad Shalit, 19 years old when he was abducted during a crossborder raid from Gaza more than five years ago. Held captive and incommunicado by Hamas ever since, his outside contacts have been limited to three letters, a DVD, and an audio tape – granted only in return for the release of 20 female Palestinian prisoners.

Shalit’s cruel confinement mobilized his family and their many supporters. Gilad’s father Noam worked relentlessly to secure his son’s release. Mass prayers have been held at the Western Wall. Ten thousand Israelis joined in a protest march, organized by Shalit’s parents, to the Prime Minister’s residence in Jerusalem. A tent was erected nearby for family and friends to maintain vigil and to press for Gilad’s return – at any price.

Few issues galvanize Israelis, and evoke their sense of themselves

as a national family, like the capture of soldiers. Gilad became “a son to all of us,” whose return home would heal the deep family wound. News of his imminent release, in exchange for the Palestinian terrorists (nearly 300 of whom are convicted murderers serving life sentences), electrified the country. A substantial majority of Israelis, who have supported such disproportionate

Dozens of Israelis are likely to die at the hands of prisoners who have been exchanged for Gilad Shalit. prisoner exchanges in the past, enthusiastically approve. So does Hamas leader Khaled Mashaal, for whom the agreement is a “great achievement.”

But not Yossi Zur, father of Asaf. He knows the history and consequences of vastly disproportionate prisoner exchanges. During the past thirty years, 7,000 Palestinian prisoners incarcerated for brutal terrorist actions have been released in exchanges for 19 Israelis (and 8 bodies). Since 2002, 182 Israelis have been killed by the released terrorists. Based on these numbers, dozens of Israelis are likely to die at the hands of prisoners who have been exchanged for Gilad Shalit.

Why now, after five years?

Egyptian military rulers, who brokered the Shalit exchange, may have wished to strengthen relations with Hamas to please the

Muslim Brotherhood. Hamas can use the deal to weaken Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, whose pursuit of UN recognition Hamas opposes. And Prime Minister Netanyahu will surely bask in public approval for bringing Gilad Shalit home – when he is not castigated for surrendering to terrorists.

The Israeli conundrum cuts deeply. To Security Agency Chief Yoram Cohen, this is “the best deal for Israel from a security perspective.” But he conceded that strengthening Hamas could “increase motivation for more attacks and kidnappings.” Despite good reasons for opposing the deal, claimed Israeli journalist Ari Shavit, there is “one decisive reason” to support it: Shalit has become “a symbol of mutual solidarity” for Israelis; “without this feeling, there is no meaning to our lives here.”

To those on the Israeli right, however, it is a “disgraceful surrender.”

The Netanyahu government was denounced for betraying Israelis whose family members were killed by the released terrorists. A number of those families filed emergency lawsuits to stop the release.

Soldiers in elite counter-terrorist units who had risked their lives to capture the murderers also protested.

A decade ago fifteen-year-old Malka Chana Roth was one of fifteen Israelis murdered in a horrific Palestinian terrorist bombing in the Sbarro pizzeria in downtown Jerusalem. The suicide bomber was escorted to the restaurant by Ahlam Tamimi, a 20-year-old university student who was disguised as a Jewish tourist.

Sentenced to 16 life sentences, she said, “I’m not sorry for what I did.

Gilad Schalit is being hugged by his father Noam Schalit while PM Netanyahu photo@isranet looks on

I will get out of prison and I refuse to recognize Israel’s existence.”

Ahlam Tamimi was prescient: she is on the list of prisoners to be exchanged for Shalit.

When Frimet Roth, Malka’s mother, heard the news she responded: Tamimi has been “handed a life to live – the life of a hero, an inspiration. And the government that prosecuted this monstrous woman has agreed to the satanic transaction.”

It is difficult to imagine that Israeli solidarity can be forged from Noam Shalit’s joy and the bitter sorrow of Yossi Zur, Frimet Roth, and the families of hundreds of other innocent victims whose Palestinian murderers will be free to murder again.

According to President Shimon Peres, the Shalit exchange demonstrates that the Jewish state has fulfilled its “top moral value – to save one soul in Israel.” But

to save one soul by virtually assuring the deaths of others is, at least, morally questionable. The imprisoned 13th century Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg refused the huge ransom of 23,000 silver marks raised by his loyal followers lest it encourage the incarceration of other rabbis. He died in prison seven years later.

As Yossi Zur realized, “since the names and faces of the future victims are not known, it is permissible to ignore all signs and past experience, and fantasize that nothing will happen.” For Israelis, sadly, history suggests otherwise.

The result is that it deals more scrupulously and humanely with its mortal enemies - and takes more punishment as a result - than any other nation on earth.

defame, demonize and delegitimize Israel by denouncing its military actions as illegal, aggressive or disproportionate – thus in effect trying to paralyze its attempts to defend itself against attack, while simultaneously forcing it to surrender to its enemies through the appeasement process.

Jerold S. Auerbach is Professor Emeritus of History at Wellesley College.

Mr. Auerbach taught courses on the United States in the twentieth century, the history of freedom of speech, and the history of Israel. He is the author of Brothers at War: Israel and the Tragedy of the Altalena.

(Source: American Thinker)

This was no prisoner exchange (continued) Continued from page 2

No decent person can fail to be moved by the return of Gilad Shalit to Israel. Few eyes will have been dry at his reunion with his family. Yet it has to be said that ultimately, this deal represents a triumph of heart over head and sentimentality over realism.

The Shalit family did what many of us hope we would have done in similar circumstances – fought a tenacious and brilliant campaign to sustain public pressure on the government to secure their son’s release.

It was, however, emotional blackmail – and the Israel government should have resisted it. Shalit came to be regarded as every Israeli’s son.

Tragically, however, in the years to come Israel may come to realize that it paid for the life of Gilad

Shalit with the blood of further murdered Israelis and the lifelong torment of their families.

Yet no-one should underestimate the extreme difficulty of the decision Netanyahu was forced to take in this case.

As so often in Israel, he was between a rock and a very hard place. However he resolved the Shalit dilemma, it would have been a terrible decision.

For Jews, the diabolical nature of this kind of choice – weighing up the sacrifice of one of your own against the sacrifice of others of your own– has a terrible historical resonance.

For during the Holocaust, a particularly sadistic torment inflicted by the Nazis upon their Jewish victims was to force them to choose which of their children or loved ones to sacrifice in order

to save others from gas or bullet.

The Holocaust happened because the world looked the other way until it was too late. It abandoned the Jews to meet their fate and be forced to make these infernal choices alone. And now the world is abandoning Israel to meet its fate and be forced to make these infernal choices alone.

Sure, America helps arm Israel in order that it may defend itself against otherwise insuperable odds. But at the same time, the west forces Israel to remain trapped in a permanent war that the west ensures Israel cannot win.

For Israel’s fate is to live cheek by jowl with people pledged to destroy it. Armed to the teeth, Israel will however never unleash its full military power against those people because it is constrained by Jewish ethics.

The Arabs know this and take full advantage of it, launching attacks in order to present Israel with the choice between abandoning its own victims - as has effectively largely happened in the rocket-bombarded south of Israel - and taking military action, which will inevitably result in some civilian casualties and thus not only earn the opprobrium of the double-standard applying world but, more lethally, destroy Israel’s own belief in itself.

To their eternal shame, Britain and the west have allowed themselves to be manipulated by this cynical strategy in the cause of genocide.

These false friends leap to

The outcome is that Israel is now trapped between Hamas, Fatah, Hezbollah, Iran, Syria, Egypt and the Mediterranean Sea – and yet is blamed for preventing peace by building apartments in the suburbs of Jerusalem.

The infernal choice it was forced to make over Gilad Shalit was thus but the latest and most dramatic example of how the west has abandoned Israel to swing in the wind.

This article originally appeared in Melanie Phillips’ blog at dailymail.co.uk

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news & views

December 2011

Occupation Without Tanks or Soldiers

By Soeren Kern

I

slamic extremists are stepping up the creation of “no-go” areas in European cities that are off-limits to non-Muslims.

the first car from being attacked. In the Molenbeek district of Brussels, police have been ordered not to drink coffee or eat a sandwich in public during the Islamic month of Ramadan.

Many of the “no-go” zones function as microstates governed by Islamic Sharia law. Host-country authorities effectively have lost control in these areas and in many instances are unable to provide even basic public aid such as police, fire fighting and ambulance services.

The “no-go” areas are the by-product of decades of multicultural policies that have encouraged Muslim immigrants to create parallel societies and remain segregated rather than become integrated into their European host nations.

In Britain, for example, a Muslim group called Muslims Against the Crusades has launched a campaign to turn twelve British cities – including what it calls “Londonistan” – into independent Islamic states. The so-called Islamic Emirates would function as autonomous enclaves ruled by Islamic Sharia law and operate entirely outside British jurisprudence.

The Islamic Emirates Project names the British cities of Birmingham, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Leeds, Leicester, Liverpool, Luton, Manchester, Sheffield, as well as Waltham Forest in northeast London and Tower Hamlets in East London as territories to be targeted for blanket Sharia rule.

In the Tower Hamlets area of East London (also known as the Islamic Republic of Tower Hamlets), for example, extremist Muslim preachers, called the Tower Hamlets Taliban, regularly issue death threats to women who refuse to wear Islamic veils.

Neighborhood streets have been plastered with posters declaring “You are entering a Sharia controlled zone: Islamic rules

In Germany, Chief Police Commissioner Bernhard Witthaut, in an August 1 interview with the newspaper Der Westen, revealed that Muslim immigrants are imposing “no-go” zones in cities across Germany at an alarming rate.

Extremists demonstrating in London

enforced.” And street advertising deemed offensive to Muslims is regularly vandalized or blacked out with spray paint.

In the Bury Park area of Luton, Muslims have been accused of “ethnic cleansing” by harassing non-Muslims to the point that many of them move out of Muslim neighborhoods. In the West Midlands, two Christian preachers have been accused of “hate crimes” for handing out gospel leaflets in a predominantly Muslim area of Birmingham. In Leytonstone in east London, the Muslim extremist Abu Izzadeen heckled the former Home Secretary John Reid by saying: “How dare you come to a Muslim area.”

In France, large swaths of Muslim neighborhoods are now considered “no-go” zones by French police. At last count, there are 751 Sensitive Urban Zones (Zones Urbaines Sensibles, ZUS), as they are euphemistically called. A complete list of the ZUS can be found on a French government website, complete with satellite maps and precise street demarcations. An estimated 5 million Muslims live in the ZUS, parts of France over which the French state has lost control.

Muslim immigrants are taking control of other parts of France too. In Paris and other French cities

with high Muslim populations, such as Lyons, Marseilles and Toulouse, thousands of Muslims are closing off streets and sidewalks (and by extension, are closing down local businesses and trapping non-Muslim residents in their homes and offices) to accommodate overflowing crowds for Friday prayers. Some mosques have also begun broadcasting sermons and chants of “Allahu Akbar” via loudspeaker into the streets.

The weekly spectacles, which have been documented by dozens of videos posted on Youtube. com (here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here and here), and which have been denounced as an “occupation without tanks or soldiers,” have provoked anger and disbelief. But despite many public complaints, local authorities have declined to intervene because they are afraid of sparking riots.

In the Belgian capital of Brussels (which is 20% Muslim), several immigrant neighborhoods have become “no-go” zones for police officers, who frequently are pelted with rocks by Muslim youth. In the Kuregem district of Brussels, which often resembles an urban war zone, police are forced to patrol the area with two police cars: one car to carry out the patrols and another car to prevent

New “Mecca” in Spain T he municipality of Salt, a town near Barcelona where Muslim immigrants now make up 40% of the population, has approved a one-year ban on the construction of new mosques. It is the first ban of its kind in Spain.

The moratorium follows public outrage over plans to build a massive Salafi mosque that is being financed by Saudi Arabia.

Salafism is a branch of revivalist Islam that calls for restoring past Muslim glory by forcibly re-establishing an Islamic empire (Caliphate) across the Middle East, North Africa and parts of Europe such as Spain, which Salafists view as a Muslim state that must be reconquered for Islam.

Much of Spain was ruled by Muslim conquerors from 711 and 1492; Salafists believe that the territories the Muslims lost

Spanish town becoming new Mecca

during the Spanish Reconquista still belong to them, and that they have a right to return and establish their rule there – a belief based

The interviewer asked Witthaut: “Are there urban areas – for example in the Ruhr – districts and housing blocks that are “no-go areas,” meaning that they can no longer be secured by the police?”

Witthaut replied: “Every police commissioner and interior minister will deny it. But of course we know where we can go with the police car and where, even initially, only with the personnel carrier.

The reason is that our colleagues can no longer feel safe there in twos, and have to fear becoming the victim of a crime themselves.

We know that these areas exist.

Even worse: in these areas crimes no longer result in charges. They are left ‘to themselves.’ Only in the worst cases do we in the police learn anything about it. The power of the state is completely out of the picture.”

In Italy, Muslims have been commandeering the Piazza Venezia in Rome for public prayers. In Bologna, Muslims repeatedly have threatened to bomb the San Petronio cathedral because it contains a 600-year-old fresco inspired by Dante’s Inferno which depicts Mohammed being tormented in hell.

In the Netherlands, a Dutch court ordered the government to release to the public a politically incorrect list of 40 “no-go” zones in Holland. The top five Muslim problem neighborhoods are in Amsterdam, Rotterdam and Utrecht. The Kolenkit area in

on the Islamic precept that territories once occupied by Muslims must forever remain under Muslim domination.

Sacrificing common sense on the altar of multiculturalism, the previous Socialist government in Salt secretly gave permission to the Salafi Muslims to build the mega-mosque, which, with four stories comprising 1,000 square meters (11,000 square feet) accompanied by towering minarets, would be the largest Salafi mosque in Europe.

The secret deal was only discovered after the Socialists were ejected from power in May 2011. Angry natives began pressuring the new town council – now ruled by the center-right Convergència i Unió (CiU) party – to prevent the mosque from being built. On August 24, the council approved the one-year

Amsterdam is the number one Muslim “problem district” in the country. The next three districts are in Rotterdam – Pendrecht, het Oude Noorden and Bloemhof.

The Ondiep district in Utrecht is in the fifth position, followed by Rivierenwijk (Deventer), Spangen (Rotterdam), Oude Westen (Rotterdam), Heechterp/ Schieringen (Leeuwarden) and Noord-Oost (Maastricht).

In Sweden, which has some of the most liberal immigration laws in Europe, large swaths of the southern city of Malmö – which is more than 25% Muslim – are “no-go” zones for non-Muslims.

Fire and emergency workers, for example, refuse to enter Malmö’s mostly Muslim Rosengaard district without police escorts. The male unemployment rate in Rosengaard is estimated to be above 80%.

When fire fighters attempted to put out a fire at Malmö’s main mosque, they were attacked by stone throwers.

In the Swedish city of Gothenburg, Muslim youth have been hurling petrol bombs at police cars. In the city’s Angered district, where more than 15 police cars have been destroyed, teenagers have also been pointing green lasers at the eyes of police officers, some of whom have been temporarily blinded.

In Gothenburg’s Backa district, youth have been throwing stones at patrolling officers. Gothenburg police have also been struggling to deal with the problem of Muslim teenagers burning cars and attacking emergency services in several areas of the city.

According to the Malmö-based Imam Adly Abu Hajar: “Sweden is the best Islamic state.”

Soeren is a graduate of the School of Foreign Service at Georgetown University in Washington, DC. He also studied politics at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

(Source: kern.pundicity.com)

ban on the building of new mosques in order to provide “some time for reflection.”

Fearing the risk of violence, the provincial interior ministry issued a statement saying that anti-mosque demonstrations would be banned because it could “hurt the religious feelings of the majority of Muslims in Salt.”

Around 12,000 of Salt’s 30,000 inhabitants are Muslim immigrants. Salt and other towns in the north-eastern region of Catalonia have become ground zero for Salafi Islam in Spain.

The movement is based in the Catalonian city of Tarragona, but Salafi Islam also has a major presence for instance in Barcelona, which hosts five Salafi mosques. Salafi preachers in Catalonia teach that Islamic Sharia law is above Spanish civil law.

(Source: www.hudson-ny.org)

bible study

December 2011

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Hanukkah – Festival of Light

By Rev. Willem J.J. Glashouwer

T

he Hebrew word ‘Hanukkah’ means ‘consecration’. This festival commemorates the cleansing and reconsecration of the second Temple in the year 165 B.C., after the Maccabees’ rebellion against the Syrian occupiers who had desecrated the temple. It begins on 25 Kislev (sometime in December) and lasts for 8 days.

Hanukkah is not mentioned in the Old Testament, but it is referred to in the New Testament, in John 10:22: “Then came the Festival of Dedication at Jerusalem. It was winter, and Jesus was in the Temple courts walking in Solomon’s Colonnade.”

There are no Biblical sources covering the time between the Old and New Testaments. For that period of time one has to rely on extra-Biblical sources. There were no more prophets in Israel after the Minor Prophets, and the writing of Biblical history only begins again around 50 A.D., when the New Testament started to be written.

This inter-testamentary period lasted for some 400 years, from 350 B.C. to 50 A.D. We find the story behind Hanukkah in the Apocryphal books of the Bible, 1 and 2 Maccabees, and in the writings of the Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus.

In 168 B.C. the Hellenistic Syrians dominated the Jewish land. They wanted to force Greek – Hellenistic – culture upon all their subjects. This was a mixture of Greek and Eastern cultures and had to become the new world culture.

Hellenism achieved great influence, especially in higher circles. Temples for Zeus, the paramount god, were built throughout the Middle East, as well as grammar schools in the Greek mould. The Greek language was imported. Many chose Greek names and celebrated Hellenistic festivals. This was the instrument used to force the system of the Greek-Hellenistic, humanist culture upon the Jews.

The Jewish religion was a thorn in the flesh of the Syrian rulers, of course. Their policy therefore aimed at luring the Jews away from their traditions and their belief in God. Zeus, the paramount Greek god (the Sun-god!), not the God of Israel, had to be worshipped. A section of the Jewish people, the elite in particular, went along with all this and became assimilated to a great extent.

There was a strong opposition movement, however.

This opposition erupted under the new Syrian king Antiochus IV. He called himself ‘Epiphanes’ (the illustrious), but many gave him the nickname ‘Epimanes’, which means ‘destroyer’ or ‘idiot/

photo@isranet

fool’. He desecrated the Temple by having pigs sacrificed there.

He also had an image erected there, for the paramount god, Zeus. He stole everything from the sanctuary that was holy and precious: the altar of incense, the candlestick with the seven lamps, the golden bowls, etc.

Antiochus forbade the study of God’s Word, the keeping of the Sabbath and the dietary laws, circumcision and all the other regulations of the Jews. Everyone who was caught observing a Jewish custom was condemned to death. Thousands of Jews died because they remained faithful to the commandments their God had given them. We read about this in 1 Maccabees 1:56-63. This says, among other things: ‘Women who had had their children circumcised were put to death, in keeping with the decree. The parents were killed in their houses and the children hanged. But many in Israel were determined and resolved in their hearts not to eat anything unclean; they preferred to die rather than to be defiled with unclean food or to profane the holy covenant; and they did die.’

Antiochus gave the people the choice: either Greek idol worship and Hellenistic thinking and life, or reject these and die. Some Jews abandoned their faith in God because they were afraid, but a very great multitude of Jewish martyrs kept the faith and had to pay for the faithfulness with a terrible death.

But God had not forgotten His people. He sent men who stood

in the breach for His sanctity and who were able to lead the people in a rebellion against the cruel ruler.

When the king’s envoys came to a small place near Jerusalem called Modein, they tried unsuccessfully

The Jews celebrate Hanukkah because they are able to serve the true God once again. He, not the pagan gods, must sit on the throne.

to persuade an old priest called Mattathias to offer sacrifices of pigs to Zeus. 1 Maccabees 2:23 et seq. recounts how another Jew goes to the pagan altar to perform the sacrifice when Mattathias continues to refuse to do so.

‘When Mattathias saw him, he was filled with zeal; his heart was moved and his just fury was aroused; he sprang forward and killed him upon the altar.’

This act of opposition was the starting signal for a guerrilla war in 168 B.C., for which he took the initiative, together with his five sons. The first phase of this war against the occupation army lasted for three years. Mattathias was already an old man and he died shortly after the start of the struggle. His five sons took over the leadership. The

third son, Judah, was appointed as commander in chief. Judah won one victory after another and he was given the nickname ‘Maccabeus’, which means ‘hammer blow’.

The Maccabees conquer Jerusalem in the year 165 B.C., exactly 3 years after the desecration of the Temple. The men are shocked when they see the decrepit state of the holy city and the temple. Maccabees 4:38-40: ‘They found the sanctuary desolate, the altar desecrated, the gates burnt, weeds growing in the courts as in a forest or on some mountain, and the priests’ chambers demolished.

Then they tore their clothes and made great lamentation; they sprinkled their heads with ashes and fell with their faces to the ground. And when the signal was given with trumpets, they cried out to Heaven.’

However, these men who mourned for Zion and Jerusalem did not rest on their laurels.

Judah selected a few priests, who cleansed the sanctuary, threw down the pagan altar, and built a new altar according to the requirements of the law. They sanctified the forecourts as well and thus made every part of the Temple fit again for God’s service.

When everything was ready it was decided to reconsecrate the Temple and the altar. The day chosen for this was the 25th of the ninth Jewish month, Kislev, which corresponds approximately

with our month of December.

This was precisely the same day of the year on which the Temple had been desecrated, three years earlier. The ceremony for this reconsecration lasted eight days.

Maccabees 4:56: ‘For eight days they celebrated the dedication of the altar and joyfully offered holocausts and sacrifices of deliverance and praise… There was great joy among the people now that the disgrace of the Gentiles was removed.’

Flavius Josephus called Hanukkah, the reconsecration of the Temple, the Festival of Light. We read about this in the Antiquities of the Jews 12,325: ‘Since that time we celebrate this feast, which we call ‘the Festival of Light’, to which we give this name, I think, because we achieved the right to celebrate it at a time when we had not counted upon doing so.’

The Festival of Light was not only a military victory; it also has a deep spiritual significance. The Jews celebrate this feast because they are able to serve the true God once again. That is what it is about. He, not the pagan gods, must sit on the throne. We, as Christians, celebrate the Festival of Light, Christmas, because the true light of the world is born. The Lord Jesus has come to save the world. By the sacrifice He made for our sins we may also belong to the true God, the God of Israel.

(Rev. Willem J.J. Glashouwer is the President of Christians for Israel Intl.)

6

news & views

December 2011

Recognize Jerusalem

By David Pollock

O

ver 16 years ago, the US Congress passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 into public law. The law states that it is the policy of the United States that Jerusalem should remain an undivided city and should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel, and that the US Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999.

However, before the legislation was enacted into law, a waiver was negotiated that would give the President the power to postpone implementing this legislation for 6 months in the interest of national security. Every year since 1998 the President has utilized the presidential waiver and on June 3, 2011, President Obama signed the waiver again.

As our only democratic ally in the Middle East, it is within our security interests today to protect

and strengthen the nation of Israel.

Israel stands on the front lines of a physical and ideological war in the Middle East. By relocating the US Embassy to Jerusalem, we send a strong statement to the sworn enemies of Israel that we believe in Israel’s historical tie to the land and her right to live there in peace and security. Furthermore, it has only been under Israeli control that freedom of religion has been protected and the holy sites have remained open to all faiths. By establishing Jerusalem’s status now in US policy, we ensure the continued protection of these rights that Israel has safeguarded for over 40 years.

During this Congress, legislation has once again been introduced in the US House and Senate to recognize Jerusalem and move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in the form of H.R.1006 / S.1622, the Jerusalem

Embassy and Recognition Act of 2011. If passed, this legislation would remove the Presidential waiver power and begin the process of moving the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. H.R. 1006 / S. 1622 would also bring about the official recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

As Prime Minister Netanyahu reiterated in his address to Congress in May, we must remember “…that only since 1967 has freedom of worship and the protection of the holy sites of all faiths been upheld. Israel has guaranteed those fundamental rights […] and we believe that this reality should continue into the future.” The passage of H.R. 1006 / S. 1622 would be a positive step toward ensuring future generations access to all of Jerusalem, and the continued protection of the current inhabitants’ religious freedom. It

The Cotton Sellers Market street, leading to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

would also cement our nation’s support of the Jewish people’s historic connection to the city of Jerusalem.

“If you want the peace of

Jerusalem, keep Jerusalem united under Israel.” - Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu (Source: www.israelallies.org)

‘Arab-Spring’ or ‘Anti-Christians Spring?’

R

epublican presidential candidate Newt Gingrich contends that the “grotesque failure” of President Barack Obama’s Mideast policies has propelled an “anti-Christian spring.”

The number of Christians in Iraq plunged from 1.2 million to 500,000 since the American invasion in 2003, and Christianity is under siege throughout the region, Gingrich told an audience in Myrtle Beach, S.C., Saturday.

“This is why the current strategy in the Middle East is such a total grotesque failure,” the National Journal quotes Gingrich as telling a crowd of about 200. “People say, ‘Oh, isn’t this great, we’re having an Arab Spring.’ Well, I don’t know, I think we may in fact be having an anti-Christian spring. I think people should take this pretty soberly.”

Gingrich was referring to the wave of uprisings that have upset longtime autocratic regimes in the

Middle East.

Ironically, the plight of Christians in the Middle East is likely to worsen as the Arab Spring removes dictators who shielded Christian communities.

The parties that are gaining power in Libya, Egypt, Tunisia, and other countries tend to be offshoots of the fundamentalist Muslim Brotherhood.

As president, Gingrich said, “I would actively try to defend

religious liberty across the planet, including in Egypt and Iraq.”

That vow comes amid increasing instances of violence targeting Christians, including the Oct. 8 killing of more than two dozen mostly Coptic Christian demonstrators in Egypt and the potential execution of a Christian pastor in Iran for refusing to renounce his faith and embrace Islam. In the Egyptian slaughter, the New-York based Human Rights

Watch alleged a military cover-up and demanded an independent investigation. And the death sentence for Yosef Nadarkhani has prompted an international outcry, as Newsmax has reported.

“The only hope for justice for the victims is an independent, civilian-led investigation that the army fully cooperates with and cannot control and that leads to the prosecution of those responsible,” Human Rights Watch said.

Indeed, the flight of Christians from Egypt mirrors the Iraqi exodus Gingrich mentioned, as Newsmax reported recently.

Egypt is home to about 8 million Coptic Christians, but at least 95,000 of them have fled since March, and the number could balloon to 250,000 by the end of this year, according to the Egyptian Federation of Human Rights.

“At the present rate, the Middle East’s 12 million Christians will likely drop to 6 million in the year 2020. With time, Christians will

effectively disappear from the region as a cultural and political force,” according to Daniel Pipes, a leading scholar of the Middle East.

In Libya, transitional government leader Mustafa Abdul-Jalil laid out a vision for the country now that Moammar Gadhafi has been killed.

Islamic Shariah will be the “basic source” of legislation and existing laws that contradict the teachings of Islam would be nullified, he said. “We are an Islamic state,” he declared to a cheering crowd in Benghazi.

Christian Syrians have clung to the government of President Bashar Assad, despite his regime’s own atrocities and his threats against the West. They fear what might happen if Assad fell, having seen what has happened in neighboring countries. Indeed many Christians who have fled sectarian strife in countries such as Iraq have ended up in Syria.

(Source: Newsmax Wires)

No Such thing as a ‘Jewish State’

By Tzvi Ben Gedalyahu

F

rench President Nicolas Sarkozy says that “a Jewish state has no meaning because a state is neither Jewish nor Catholic.”

He made the same remark several times in interviews on two Jewish radio stations and with a French news agency following the release of kidnapped soldier Gilad Shalit, whose parents are French citizens.

Sarkozy earlier said on another occasion that Israel cannot be defined as Jewish no more than

“this table is Catholic.” He was raised as a Roman Catholic but his grandfather was Jewish.

His remarks reflect an international view that denies that the United Nations recognition of Israel as a country in 1947 actually is the re-establishment of the ancient state that existed for approximately 1,000 years from the time of King Saul until the fall of the Holy Temples.

Asked about a “Jewish state,” Sarkozy replied, “A Jewish state – I don’t know what that

means. Speaking of a state of the Jewish people is already more interesting.”

“A Jewish state has no meaning because a state is neither Jewish nor Catholic.”

Nevertheless, the French president favors a “two-state” solution in which Israel will be bordered by the Palestinian Authority, which PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has stated will be cleansed of Jews and thereby be a country only for Arab Muslims and a small and dwindling Christian population.

“If there is a Palestinian state, it is likely that Palestinians will be mainly living there and if there is an Israeli state Jews around the world know that whatever happens they will have a homeland,” according to Sarkozy’s line of thinking.

“Two states for two peoples would mean that nobody is losing face. As far as I know there are millions of people who are not Jewish in Israel today,” he added.

(Source: www.israelnationalnews.com)

French President Nicolas Sarkozy

testimony

December 2011

7

Israel, Sudan and Me

By Simon Deng

S

imon Deng, a former South Sudanese slave taken by a neighbor as a young boy to Islamist Northern Sudan, gave this impassioned speech at the Durban Watch Conference in New York, Sept 22, 2011.

I want to thank the organizers of this conference, The Perils of Global Intolerance. It is a great honor for me and it is a privilege really to be among today’s distinguished speakers.

I came here as a friend of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. I came to protest this Durban conference which is based on a set of lies. It is organized by nations who are themselves are guilty of the worst kinds of oppression.

It will not help the victims of racism. It will only isolate and target the Jewish state. It is a tool of the enemies of Israel.

The UN has itself become a tool against Israel. For over 50 years, 82 percent of the UN General Assembly emergency meetings have been about condemning one state – Israel. Hitler couldn’t have

Seven million were ethnically cleansed and they became the largest refugee group since World War II. The UN is concerned about the so-called Palestinian refugees.

They dedicated a separate agency for them, and they are treated with a special privilege.

Meanwhile, my people, ethnically cleansed, murdered and enslaved, are relatively ignored.

The UN refuses to tell the world the truth about the real causes of Sudan’s conflicts. Who knows really what is happening in Darfur?

It is not a “tribal conflict.”

It is a conflict rooted in Arab colonialism well known in north Africa. In Darfur, a region in the Western Sudan, everybody is Muslim. Everybody is Muslim because the Arabs invaded the North of Africa and converted the indigenous people to Islam.

In the eyes of the Islamists in Khartoum, the Darfuris are not Muslim enough. And the Darfuris do not want to be Arabized. They love their own African languages and dress and customs. The Arab response is genocide! But nobody

Israel immediately started airlifting aid and medical supplies to South Sudan through photo@isranet the NGO, IsraAID

been made happier.

The Durban Conference is an outrage. All decent people will know that.

But friends, I come here today with a radical idea. I come to tell you that there are peoples who suffer from the UN’s anti-Israelism even more than the Israelis. I belong to one of those people.

Please hear me out.

By exaggerating Palestinian suffering, and by blaming the Jews for it, the UN has muffled the cries of those who suffer on a far larger scale.

For over 50 years the indigenous black population of Sudan – Christians and Muslims alike – has been the victims of the brutal, racist Arab Muslim regimes in Khartoum.

In South Sudan, my homeland, about 4 million innocent men, women and children were slaughtered from 1955 to 2005.

at the UN tells the truth about Darfur.

In the Nuba Mountains, another region of Sudan, genocide is taking place as I speak. The Islamist regime in Khartoum is targeting the black Africans – Muslims and Christians. Nobody at the UN has told the truth about the Nuba Mountains.

Do you hear the UN condemn Arab racism against blacks?

What you find on the pages of the New York Times, or in the record of the UN condemnations is “Israeli crimes” and Palestinian suffering. My people have been driven off the front pages because of the exaggerations about Palestinian suffering. What Israel does is portrayed as a Western sin.

But the truth is that the real sin happens when the West abandons us: the victims of Arab/Islamic apartheid.

Tel Aviv - Southern Sudanese celebrate their country’s independence. Just one day after the new Republic of South Sudan was given statehood, Israel recognized the new republic the following day photo@isranet

Chattel slavery was practiced for centuries in Sudan. It was revived as a tool of war in the early 90s. Khartoum declared jihad against my people and this legitimized taking slaves as war booty. Arab militias were sent to destroy Southern villages and were encouraged to take African women and children as slaves. We believe that up to 200,000 were kidnapped, brought to the North and sold into slavery.

I am a living proof of this crime against humanity.

I don’t like talking about my experience as a slave, but I do it because it is important for the world to know that slavery exists even today.

I was only nine years old when an Arab neighbor named Abdullahi tricked me into following him to a boat. The boat wound up in Northern Sudan where he gave me as a gift to his family. For three and a half years I was their slave going through something that no child should ever go through: brutal beatings and humiliations; working around the clock; sleeping on the ground with animals; eating the family’s left-overs. During those three years I was unable to say the word “no.” All I could say was “yes,” “yes,” “yes.”

The United Nations knew about the enslavement of South Sudanese by the Arabs. Their own staff reported it. It took UNICEF – under pressure from the Jewish-led American Anti-Slavery Group – 16 years to acknowledge what was happening. I want to publicly thank my friend Dr. Charles Jacobs for leading the anti-slavery fight.

But the Sudanese government and the Arab League pressured UNICEF, and UNICEF backtracked, and started to criticize those who worked to liberate Sudanese slaves. In 1998, Dr. Gaspar Biro, the courageous UN Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Sudan who reported on slavery, resigned in protest of the UN’s actions.

My friends, today, tens of thousands of black South Sudanese still serve their masters in the

North and the UN is silent about that. It would offend the OIC and the Arab League.

As a former slave and a victim of the worst sort of racism, allow me to explain why I think calling Israel a racist state is absolutely absurd and immoral.

I have been to Israel five times visiting the Sudanese refugees.

Let me tell you how they ended up there. These are Sudanese who fled Arab racism, hoping to find shelter in Egypt. They were wrong.

When Egyptian security forces slaughtered 26 black refugees in Cairo who were protesting Egyptian racism, the Sudanese realized that the Arab racism is the same in Khartoum or Cairo. They needed shelter and they found it in Israel.

Dodging the bullets of the Egyptian border patrols and walking for very long distances, the refugees’ only hope was to reach Israel’s side of the fence, where they knew they would be safe.

Black Muslims from Darfur chose Israel above all the other Arab-Muslim states of the area.

Do you know what this means!?

And the Arabs say Israel is racist!?

In Israel, black Sudanese, Christian and Muslim were welcomed and treated like human beings. Just go and ask them, like I have done. They told me that compared to the situation in Egypt, Israel is “heaven.”

Is Israel a racist state? To my people, the people who know racism – the answer is absolutely not. Israel is a state of people who are the colors of the rainbow. Jews themselves come in all colors, even black. I met with Ethiopian Jews in Israel. Beautiful black Jews.

So, yes… I came here today to tell you that the people who suffer most from the UN anti-Israel policy are not the Israelis but all those people who the UN ignores in order to tell its big lie against Israel: we, the victims of Arab/ Muslim abuse: women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, homosexuals, in the Arab/Muslim world. These are the biggest victims of UN Israel hatred.

Look at the situation of the Copts in Egypt, the Christians in Iraq, and Nigeria, and Iran, the Hindus and Bahais who suffer from Islamic oppression. The Sikhs. We – a rainbow coalition of victims and targets of Jihadis – all suffer. We are ignored, we are abandoned. So that the big lie against the Jews can go forward.

In 2005, I visited one of the refugee camps in South Sudan. I met a 12 year old girl who told me about her dream. In a dream she wanted to go to school to become a doctor. And then, she wanted to visit Israel. I was shocked. How could this refugee girl who spent most of her life in the North know about Israel? When I asked why she wanted to visit Israel, she said: “This is our people.” I was never able to find an answer to my question.

On January 9 of 2011 South Sudan became an independent state. For South Sudanese, that means continuation of oppression, brutalization, demonization, Islamization, Arabization and enslavement.

In a similar manner, the Arabs continue denying Jews their right for sovereignty in their homeland and the Durban III conference continues denying Israel’s legitimacy.

As a friend of Israel, I bring you the news that my President, the President of the Republic of South Sudan, Salva Kiir – publicly stated that the South Sudan embassy in Israel will be built – not in Tel Aviv, but in Jerusalem, the eternal capital of the Jewish people.

I also want to assure you that my own new nation, and all of its peoples, will oppose racist forums like the Durban III. We will oppose it by simply telling the truth. Our truth. My Jewish friends taught me something I now want to say with you.

AM YISRAEL CHAI – The people of Israel lives!

(Simon Deng, a native of the Shiluk Kingdom in southern Sudan, is an escaped jihad slave and a leading human rights activist)

8

sermon

December 2011

A Brave Rabbi Speaks Out

By Rabbi Schlomo Lewis

E

ditor’s note: The sermon below, delivered by Rabbi Schlomo Lewis of Atlanta on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, 2010, has been referred to as the “Sermon of the Century.”

“Ehr Kumt” (Yiddish for “He’s Coming”) I thought long and I thought hard on whether to deliver the sermon I am about to share. We all wish to bounce happily out of shul on the High Holidays, filled with warm fuzzies, ready to gobble up our brisket, our honey cakes and our kugel. We want to be shaken and stirred – but not too much.

We want to be guilt-schlepped – but not too much. We want to be provoked but not too much. We want to be transformed but not too much.

I get it, but as a rabbi I have a compelling obligation, a responsibility to articulate what is in my heart and what I passionately believe must be said and must be heard. And so, I am guided not by what is easy to say but by what is painful to express. I am guided not by the frivolous but by the serious.

I am guided not by delicacy but by urgency.

We are at war. We are at war with an enemy as savage, as voracious, as heartless as the Nazis but one wouldn’t know it from our behavior. During WWII we didn’t refer to storm troopers as freedom fighters. We didn’t call the Gestapo, militants. We didn’t see the attacks on our Merchant Marine as acts by rogue sailors.

We did not justify the Nazis rise to power as our fault. We did not grovel before the Nazis, thumping our hearts and confessing to abusing and mistreating and humiliating the German people.

We did not apologize for Dresden, nor for The Battle of the Bulge, nor for El Alamein, nor for D-Day.

Rabbi Schlomo Lewis

those who did nothing as well.

Fault was not just with the goose steppers but with those who pulled the curtains shut, said and did nothing.

In WWII we won because we got it. We understood who the enemy was and we knew that the end had to be unconditional and absolute. We did not stumble around worrying about offending the Nazis. We did not measure every word so as not to upset our foe. We built planes and tanks and battleships and went to war to win… to rid the world of malevolence.

We are at war… yet too many stubbornly and foolishly don’t put the pieces together and refuse to identify the evildoers. We are circumspect and disgracefully politically correct.

Let me mince no words in saying that from Fort Hood to Bali, from Times Square to London, from Madrid to Mumbai, from 9/11 to Gaza, the murderers, the barbarians are radical Islamists.

To camouflage their identity is sedition. To excuse their deeds

Evil – ultimate, irreconcilable, evil threatened us and Roosevelt and Churchill had moral clarity and an exquisite understanding of what was at stake. It was not just the Sudetenland, not just Tubruk, not just Vienna, not just Casablanca.

It was the entire planet. Read history and be shocked at how frighteningly close Hitler came to creating a Pax Germana on every continent.

Not all Germans were Nazis – most were decent, most were revolted by the Third Reich, most were good citizens hoisting a beer, earning a living and tucking in their children at night. But, too many looked away, too many cried out in lame defense – I didn’t know.” Too many were silent.

Guilt absolutely falls upon those who committed the atrocities, but responsibility and guilt falls upon

He paused for a moment and once again was lost in the past.

His smile faded. Pain filled his wrinkled face. “I remember one Shabbos in 1938 when Vladimir Jabotinsky came to the shul” (Jabotinsky was Menachim Begin’s mentor – he was a fiery orator, an unflinching Zionist radical, whose politics were to the far right.) Joe continued, “I can still hear his words burning in my ears. He climbed up to the shtender, stared at us from the bima, glared at us with eyes full of fire and cried out. ‘Ehr Kumt.

Yidn Farlawst Ayer Shtetl’ – He’s coming. Jews abandon your city.’” is contemptible. To mask their intentions is unconscionable.

A few years ago I visited Lithuania on a Jewish genealogical tour. It was a stunning journey and a very personal, spiritual pilgrimage. When we visited Kovno we davened Maariv at the only remaining shul in the city.

Before the war there were thirtyseven shuls for 38,000 Jews.

Now only one, a shrinking, gray congregation. We made minyon for the handful of aged worshippers in the Choral Synagogue, a once majestic, jewel in Kovno.

After my return home, I met with an elderly family friend, Joe Magun. “Shalom,” he said. “Your abba told me you just came back from Lithuania. Did you visit the Choral Synagogue in Kovno?

The one with the big arch in the courtyard?”

“Yes, I did. In fact, we helped them make minyon.” His eyes opened wide in joy at our shared memory. For a moment he gazed into the distance and then, he returned. “Shalom, I grew up only a few feet away from the Choral Synagogue.”

We thought we were safe in Lithuania from the Nazis, from Hitler. We had lived there, thrived for a thousand years but Jabotinsky was right – his warning prophetic.

We got out but most did not.”

We are not in Lithuania. It is not the 1930s. There is no Luftwaffe overhead. No U-boats off the coast of long Island. No Panzer divisions on our borders. But make no mistake; we are under attack – our values, our tolerance, our freedom, our virtue, our land.

Now before some folks roll their eyes and glance at their watches let me state emphatically, unmistakably – I have no pathology of hate, nor am I a manic Paul Revere, galloping through the countryside. I am not a pessimist, nor prone to panic attacks. I am a lover of humanity, all humanity.

Whether they worship in a synagogue, a church, a mosque, a temple or don’t worship at all.

I have no bone of bigotry in my body, but what I do have is hatred for those who hate, intolerance for those who are intolerant, and a guiltless, unstoppable obsession to see evil eradicated.

Today the enemy is radical Islam but it must be said sadly and reluctantly that there are unwitting, co-conspirators who strengthen the hands of the evildoers. Let me state that the overwhelming number of Muslims are good Muslims, fine human beings who want nothing more than a Jeep Cherokee in their driveway, a flat screen TV on their wall and a good education for their children, but these good Muslims have an obligation to destiny, to decency that thus far for the most part they have avoided. The Kulturkampf is not only external but internal as well. The good Muslims must sponsor rallies in Times Square, in Trafalgar Square, in the UN Plaza, on the Champs Elysee, in Mecca condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent. Thus far, they have not.

The good Muslims must place ads in the NY Times. They must buy time on network TV, on cable stations, in the Jerusalem Post,

in Le Monde, in Al Watan, on Al Jazeena condemning terrorism, denouncing unequivocally the slaughter of the innocent – thus far, they have not. Their silence allows the vicious to tarnish Islam and define it.

Brutal acts of commission and yawning acts of omission both strengthen the hand of the devil.

I recall a conversation with my father shortly before he died that helped me understand how perilous and how broken is our world; that we are living on the narrow seam of civilization and moral oblivion.

Knowing he had little time left he shared the following – “Shal. I am ready to leave this earth. Sure I’d like to live a little longer, see a few more sunrises, but truthfully, I’ve had it. I’m done. Finished.

I hope the Good Lord takes me soon because I am unable to live in this world knowing what it has become.”

This startling admission of moral exhaustion from a man

Choral Synagogue Kovno

Continued on page 9

sermon

December 2011

Continued from page 8

who witnessed and lived through the Depression, the Holocaust, WWII, Communist Triumphalism, McCarthyism, Strontium 90 and polio. – Yet his twilight observation was – “The worst is yet to come.” And he wanted out.

I share my father’s angst and fear that too many do not see the authentic, existential threat we face nor confront the source of our peril. We must wake up and smell the hookah.

“Lighten up, Lewis. Take a chill pill, some of you are quietly thinking. You’re sounding like Glenn Beck. It’s not that bad. It’s not that real.”

But I am here to tell you – “It is.” Ask the member of our shul whose sister was vaporized in the Twin Towers and identified finally by her charred teeth, if this is real or not. Ask the members of our shul who fled a bus in downtown Paris, fearing for their safety from a gang of Muslim thugs, if this is an exaggeration. Ask the member of our shul whose son tracks Arab terrorist infiltrators who target – pizza parlors, nursery schools, Pesach Seders, city buses and play grounds, if this is dramatic, paranoid hyperbole.

Did anyone imagine in the 1920’s what Europe would look like in the 1940’s? Did anyone presume to know in the coffee houses of Berlin or in the opera halls of Vienna that genocide would soon become the celebrated culture? Did anyone think that a goofy-looking painter named Shickelgruber would go from the beer halls of Munich and jail, to the Reichstag as Fuehrer in less than a decade? Did Jews pack their bags and leave Warsaw, Vilna, Athens, Paris, Bialystok, Minsk, knowing that soon their new address would be Treblinka, Sobibor, Dachau and Auschwitz?

Genocide Protest

anti-Muslim rallies were held in America? None.

And yet, we apologize. We grovel. We beg forgiveness.

The mystifying litany of our foolishness continues. Should there be a shul in Hebron on the site where Baruch Goldstein gunned down twenty-seven Arabs at noonday prayers? Should there be a museum praising the U.S. Calvary on the site of Wounded Knee? Should there be a German

After 9/11, how many Muslims were killed in America? None.

After

9/11,

how

many

If those behind this project are good, peace-loving, sincere, tolerant Muslims, as they claim, then they should know better, rip up the zoning permits and build elsewhere.

Believe it or not, I am a dues paying, card carrying member of the ACLU, yet from start of finish, I find this sorry episode disturbing to say the least.

William Burroughs, the novelist and poet, in a wry moment wrote – “After one look at this planet, any visitor from outer space would say – “I want to see the manager.”

The sages teach – “Aizehu chacham – haroeh et hanolad – Who is a wise person – he who sees into the future.” We dare not wallow in complacency, in a misguided tolerance and naïve sense of security.

We must be diligent students of history and not sit in ash cloth at the waters of Babylon weeping.

We cannot be hypnotized by eloquent-sounding rhetoric that soothes our heart but endangers our soul. We cannot be lulled into inaction for fear of offending the offenders. Radical Islam is the scourge and this must be cried out from every mountaintop. From sea to shining sea, we must stand tall, prideful of our stunning decency and moral resilience. Immediately after 9/11 how many mosques were destroyed in America? None.

Can they build? Certainly. May they build? Certainly. But should they build at that site? No — but that decision must come from them, not from us. Sensitivity, compassion cannot be measured in feet or yards or in blocks. One either feels the pain of others and cares, or does not.

cultural center in Auschwitz?

Should a church be built in the Syrian town of Ma’arra where Crusaders slaughtered over 100,000 Muslims? Should there be a thirteen-story mosque and Islamic Center only a few steps from Ground Zero?

Despite all the rhetoric, the essence of the matter can be distilled quite easily. The Muslim community has the absolute, constitutional right to build their building wherever they wish. I don’t buy the argument – “When we can build a church or a synagogue in Mecca they can build a mosque here.” America is greater than Saudi Arabia. And New York is greater than Mecca. Democracy and freedom must prevail.

Let us understand that the radical Islamist assaults all over the globe are but skirmishes, firefights, and vicious decoys. Christ and the anti-Christ. Gog U’Magog.

The Sons of Light and the Sons of Darkness; the bloody collision between civilization and depravity is on the border between Lebanon and Israel. It is on the Gaza Coast and in the Judean Hills of the West Bank. It is on the sandy beaches of Tel Aviv and on the cobblestoned mall of Ben Yehuda Street. It is in the underground schools of Sderot and on the bulletproofed inner-city buses. It is in every schoolyard, hospital, nursery, classroom, park, theater – in every place of innocence and purity.

Israel is the laboratory – the test market. Every death, every explosion, every grisly encounter is not a random, bloody orgy. It is a calculated, strategic probe into the heart, guts and soul of the West.

In the Six Day War, Israel was the proxy of Western values and strategy while the Arab alliance was the proxy of Eastern, Soviet values and strategy. Today too, it is a confrontation of proxies, but the stakes are greater than East Jerusalem and the West Bank.

Israel in her struggle represents the civilized world, while Hamas, Hezbollah, Al Qaeda, Iran, Islamic Jihad, represent the world of psycho pat hic, loathsome evil.

As Israel, imperfect as she is, resists the onslaught, many in the Western World have lost their way displaying not admiration, not sympathy, not understanding, for Israel ’s galling plight, but downright hostility and contempt. Without moral clarity, we are doomed because Israel ’s galling plight ultimately will be ours. Hanna Arendt in her classic Origins of Totalitarianism accurately portrays the first target of tyranny as the Jew. We are the trial balloon. The canary in the coal mine. If the Jew/Israel is permitted to bleed with nary a protest from “good guys” then tyranny snickers and pushes forward with its agenda.

Moral confusion is a deadly weakness and it has reached epic proportions in the West; from the Oval Office to the UN, from the BBC to Reuters to MSNBC, from the New York Times to Le Monde, from university campuses to British teachers unions, from the International Red Cross to Amnesty International, from Goldstone to Elvis Costello, from the Presbyterian Church to the Archbishop of Canterbury.

There is a message sent and consequences when our president visits Turkey and Egypt and Saudi Arabia, and not Israel.

There is a message sent and consequences when free speech on campus is only for those championing Palestinian rights.

There is a message sent and consequences when the media deliberately doctors and edits film clips to demonize Israel.

There is a message sent and consequences when the UN blasts Israel relentlessly, effectively ignoring Iran, Sudan, Venezuela, North Korea, China and other noxious states.

There is a message sent and consequences when liberal churches are motivated by Liberation Theology, not historical accuracy.

There is a message sent and consequences when murderers and terrorists are defended by the obscenely transparent “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.”

Looking for logic?

Looking for reason?

Looking for sanity?

9

It is exhausting and dispiriting.

We live in an age that is redefining righteousness where those with moral clarity are an endangered, beleaguered specie.

Isaiah warned us thousands of years ago – “Oye Lehem Sheh-Korim Layome, Laila v’Laila, yome – Woe to them who call the day, night and the night, day.” We live on a planet that is both Chelm and Sodom . It is a frightening and maddening place to be.

How do we convince the world and many of our own, that this is not just anti-Semitism, that this is not just anti-Zionism but a full throttled attack by unholy, radical Islamists on everything that is morally precious to us?

How do we convince the world and many of our own that conciliation is not an option, that compromise is not a choice?

Everything we are. Everything we believe. Everything we treasure is at risk.

The threat is so unbelievably clear and the enemy so unbelievably ruthless how anyone in their right mind doesn’t get it is baffling. Let’s try an analogy. If someone contracted a life-threatening infection and we not only scolded them for using antibiotics but insisted that the bacteria had a right to infect their body and that perhaps, if we gave the invading infection an arm and a few toes, the bacteria would be satisfied and stop spreading.

Anyone buy that medical advice? Well, folks, that’s our approach to the radical Islamist bacteria. It is amoral, has no conscience and will spread unless it is eradicated. – There is no negotiating. Appeasement is death.

I was no great fan of George Bush – didn’t vote for him. (By the way, I’m still a registered Democrat.) I disagreed with many of his policies but one thing he had right. His moral clarity was flawless when it came to the War on Terror, the War on Radical Islamist Terror.

There was no middle ground – either you were friend or foe.

There was no place in Bush’s world for a Switzerland. He knew that this competition was not Toyota against G.M not the Iphone against the Droid, not the Braves against the Phillies, but a deadly serious war, winner take all. Blink and you lose. Underestimate, and you get crushed.

I know that there are those sitting here today who have turned me off. But I also know that many turned off their rabbis seventy-five years ago in Warsaw, Riga, Berlin, Amsterdam, Cracow, Vilna. I get no satisfaction from that knowledge, only a bitter sense that there is nothing new under the sun.

Continued on page 10

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viewpoint

Continued from page 9

Enough rhetoric – how about a little “show and tell?” A few weeks ago on the cover of Time magazine was a horrific picture with a horrific story. The photo was of an eighteen-year-old Afghani woman, Bibi Aisha, who fled her abusive husband and his abusive family. Days later the Taliban found her and dragged her to a mountain clearing where she was found guilty of violating Sharia Law. Her punishment was immediate. She was pinned to the ground by four men while her husband sliced off her ears, and then he cut off her nose.

December 2011

Aisha’s disfigurement should be displayed on billboards, along every highway from Route 66 to the Autobahn, to the Transarabian Highway. Her picture should be posted on every lobby wall from Tokyo to Stockholm to Rio. On every network, at every commercial break, Bibi Aisha’s face should appear with the caption – “Radical Islamic savages did this.” And underneath – “This ad was approved by Hamas, by Hezbollah, by Taliban, by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, by Islamic Jihad, by Fatah al Islam, by Magar Nodal Hassan, by Richard Reid, by Ahmadinejad, by Sheik Omar Abdel Rahman, by Edward Said,

by The Muslim Brotherhood, by Al Qaeda, by CAIR.” “The moral sentiment is the drop that balances the sea,” said Ralph Waldo Emerson. Today, my friends, the sea is woefully out of balance and we could easily drown in our moral myopia and worship of political correctness.

That is the enemy If nothing else stirs us. If nothing else convinces us, let Bibi Aisha’s mutilated face be the face of Islamic radicalism. Let her face shake up even the most complacent and naïve among us.

In the holy crusade against this ultimate evil, pictures of Bibi

We peer up into the heavens sending probes to distant galaxies.

We peer down into quarks discovering particles that would astonish Einstein. We create computers that rival the mind, technologies that surpass science fiction. What we imagine, with astounding rapidity, becomes real.

If we dream it, it does, indeed, come. And yet, we are at a critical point in the history of this planet that could send us back into the cave, to a culture that would make the Neanderthal blush with shame.

Our parents and grandparents saw the swastika and recoiled, understood the threat and destroyed the Nazis. We see the banner of Radical Islam and can do no less.

A rabbi was once asked by his students: “Rabbi. Why are your sermons so stern?” Replied the rabbi, “If a house is on fire and we chose not to wake up our children, for fear of disturbing their sleep, would that be love? Kinderlach, ‘di hoyz brent.’ Children our house is on fire and I must arouse

you from your slumber.”

During WWII and the Holocaust was it business as usual for priests, ministers, rabbis? Did they deliver benign homilies and lovely sermons as Europe fell, as the Pacific fell, as North Africa fell, as the Mideast and South America tottered, as England bled? Did they ignore the demonic juggernaut and the foul breath of evil? They did not. There was clarity, courage, vision, determination, sacrifice, and we were victorious. Today it

must be our finest hour as well. We dare not retreat into the banality of our routines, glance at headlines and presume that the good guys will prevail.

Democracies don’t always win.

Tyrannies don’t always lose.

My friends – the world is on fire and we must awake from our slumber. “Ehr Kumt.”

(Source: frontpagemag.com)

Israel does not stand alone

By Michael Oren

T

he claim of Israel’s isolation, echoed

by USA Democratic and Republican leaders alike, is gaining status as fact.

“Israel finds itself increasingly isolated, beleaguered, and besieged,” John Heilemann wrote recently in New York magazine. The Economist reported that “Israel’s isolation has…been underlined by the deterioration of its relations with Turkey and Egypt.” New York Times columnist Nicholas D. Kristof accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of “isolating his country,” while Thomas Friedman described Israel as “adrift at sea alone.”

But is Israel really more isolated now than in the past? Isolation, of course, is not automatically symptomatic of bad policies.

Britain was isolated fighting the Nazis at the start of World War II. Union forces were isolated early in the Civil War, as was the Continental Army at Valley Forge. “It is better to be alone than in bad company,” wrote the young George Washington. That maxim is especially apt for the Middle East today, where one of the least-isolated states, backed by both Iran and Iraq and effectively immune to United Nations sanctions, is Syria.

Israel, in fact, is significantly less isolated than at many times in its history. Before the 1967 Six-Day War, Israel faced a belligerent Egypt and Jordan and a hostile Soviet bloc, Greece, India and China — all without

Michael Oren

strategic ties with the United States.

Today, Israel has peace treaties with Egypt and Jordan; excellent relations with the nations of Eastern Europe as well as Greece, India and China; and an unbreakable alliance with America. Many democracies, including Canada, Italy and the Czech Republic, stand staunchly with us. Israel has more legations abroad than ever before and recently joined the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which comprises the most globally integrated countries.

Indeed, Egypt and Germany mediated the upcoming release of Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit, who had been held hostage by

Hamas for five years.

Israel is not responsible for the upheavals in the Arab world or for the lack of freedom that triggered them. Israelis did not elect Turkey’s Islamic-minded government or urge Syria’s army to fire on its citizens.

Conversely, no change in Israeli policies can alter the historic processes transforming the region. Still, some commentators claim that, by refusing to freeze settlement construction on the West Bank and insisting on defensible borders and security guarantees, Israel isolates itself.

The settlements are not the core of the conflict. Arabs attacked us for 50 years before the first settlements were built.

Netanyahu froze new construction in the settlements for an unprecedented 10 months, and still the Palestinians refused to negotiate.

Settlements are not the reason that Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas signed a unity pact with Hamas in May, or why, in his address to the U.N. General Assembly, Abbas denied the Jews’ 4,000year connection to our homeland. As Abbas wrote in the New York Times in May, the Palestinian attempt to declare a state without making peace with Israel was about “internationalization of the conflict…to pursue claims against Israel” in the United Nations, not about settlements.

As for borders and security, Israel’s

position reflects the 2005 withdrawal from Gaza. After uprooting all our settlements, we received not peace but thousands of Hamas rockets fired at our civilians. In Lebanon, a U.N. peace force watched while Hezbollah amassed an arsenal of 50,000 missiles.

Israel’s need for defensible borders and for a long-term Israeli army presence to prevent arms smuggling into any Palestinian state is, for us, a life-and-death issue. Moreover, in a rapidly changing Middle East, we need assurances of our ability to defend ourselves if the Palestinians who support peace are overthrown by those opposed to it.

Despite repeated Palestinian efforts to isolate us, Israel is not alone. And we have a great many friends, especially in the United States, who we know would not want to imply that Israel stands alone in a dangerous region. Prime Minister Netanyahu remains committed to resuming peace talks with the Palestinians anywhere, any time, without preconditions, while insisting on the security arrangements vital to Israel’s survival. Meanwhile, we will continue to stretch out our hand for peace to all Middle Eastern peoples. To paraphrase one of George Washington’s contemporaries – if that be isolation, make the most of it.

Michael Oren is Israel’s ambassador to the United States.

(Source: Washington Post)

testimony

December 2011

11

A Mass Grave, 70 Years Later

By Mordechai I. Twersky

H

Mr. Shachan himself recalled when I spoke with him. He was 8 at the time.

ere in the land of Tevye, the roosters still crow. Cows graze in open fields. But Tevye doesn’t live here anymore.

Here, according to testimony at a war crimes tribunal held in Bucharest in 1945, Jews pleaded for their lives with a Romanian police commander who, in quieter times, had engaged Jews in fluent Yiddish. But he told the assembled Jews that day that he had a new name: “My name is Hitler.”

I have set out from Israel to Ukraine to trace my ancestors.

My first stop is west of Kiev, in a corner of the czarist-era Pale of Settlement for Jews, where “Fiddler on the Roof” was set.

Here sits an old Jewish cemetery, now a plowed-over field. It bears not a single headstone, just a house-like memorial for the late-19th-century maggid, or preacher, Mordechai of Chernobyl, my paternal ancestor five generations back.

I continue on, more than 250 miles, to the outskirts of Khotyn, a 1,000-year-old Bessarabian fortress city beside the Dniester River. I enter another open field to connect with a far darker time.

I find a 30-foot-long concrete slab, etched at its head with the names, in Hebrew, of 45 men, women and children. First are my grandfather and uncle: “The holy Rabbi Mordechai Israel Twersky and his son, Aaron.”

Following a Jewish tradition, I remove my shoes. This is sacred ground – one of three mass graves in the city, containing in all an estimated 1,900 Jews who perished early in the Holocaust, 70 years ago this summer.

“The earth shifted for days,” an old, toothless man tells me in Russian. He is one of Khotyn’s 15 remaining Jews and among the minyan, or quorum for worship, who accompany me. “They couldn’t bury them fast enough.”

I had never fully understood what happened here in 1941.

I open my briefcase. I show Ilya an account from the Yad Vashem archives. A Jew, sensing the end was near, asked Rabbi Twersky to make sense of it all. “It will be good,” the rabbi replied, in Yiddish.

“One must always have faith.”

Growing up in New York, I heard stories from my father, who survived five labor camps before making it to Ellis Island and becoming a rabbi. Not one to subject his three children to horrors, he focused on how his father had lived. On this visit, I wanted also to learn how my grandfather had died.

In the quiet streets of this city, where a Jewish community of 15,000 once thrived, I find no living witnesses. But I carry vivid testimonies written and spoken by Khotyn’s survivors, a guidebook from another era.

The history is complicated; it begins with the Soviet occupation in 1940 of Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, which the Nazi-Soviet pact allowed Stalin to detach from

Romania. The Romanian Army’s withdrawal, and its return a year later with the invading Germans and their mobile S.S. killing units – the notorious Einsatzgruppen – unleashed a systematic RomanianGerman campaign of torture, rape and mass murder. Then the Romanians deported some 23,000 Jews from the Khotyn district, which includes the city, to an occupied zone known as Transnistria.

Over a three-week period in July and August of 1941, approximately 50,000 Jews were murdered in Bessarabia and northern Bukovina, the historian Avigdor Shachan wrote in “Burning Ice: The Ghettos of Transnistria.” According to the International Commission on the Holocaust in Romania, 280,000 to 380,000 Romanian and Ukrainian Jews died in Transnistria during the war.

They were victims not just of Germany, but at least equally of Romania’s anti-Semitic government. Just days before the dictator Ion Antonescu’s henchmen murdered my grandfather, experts on the Holocaust say, his next in command, Mihai Antonescu, advised top officials about the coming deportation of Jews.

The ministers, he said, could be “indifferent if history judges us as barbarians ... This is the most opportune moment in our history.

If need be, use machine guns.”

hear him pray.”

Ms. Cherkes, now 60, says her grandparents told her they had hidden my grandfather and his family in their orchard (in a non-Jewish neighborhood) after the Russians evicted the Twerskys from their home, leaving them to fear being deported or shot.

One must always have faith.

I stare at the locals. My thoughts turn to the many collaborators, Romanian and Ukrainian, who assisted the Romanian and German armies in their atrocities.

“They entered the homes of Jews with axes in their hands,” Nahum Morgenstern, a survivor, said of the collaborators, in a remembrance on file at Yad Vashem, the Holocaust remembrance institution and archive in Jerusalem. “They forced the Jews to undress and took their clothing. Then they decapitated them.”

On Stefan Cel Mare Street, I gaze at my grandfather’s house.

A couple sits outside at a table, drinking beer. What was once a synagogue sanctuary is now a grocery store.

I am taken to a deserted compound about a mile away. It resembles a warehouse, with large glass windows and a high ceiling.

A cow grazes outside. “In 1941 this was a girls’ school,” says one of my guides, a man named Ilya, whose mother survived the war.

“Here,” he says of the Romanians and Germans, “they gathered all the city’s Jews, then picked out the Jewish leaders. Your grandfather was one of them.”

“Your grandfather prayed from that balcony,” says Genya Cherkes, pointing upward and narrating a history her Jewish family bequeathed to her. “On the Sabbath and holidays,” she says, “people gathered below just to

I feel that I know this compound.

For years, I imagined it as I read testimonies depicting Jews’ being herded into classrooms, gasping for air, debating whether to rejoin their leaders. “I was pressed up against the second-floor window,”

We trace the path taken by the doomed Jewish leaders – doctors, lawyers and teachers, but also scribes, butchers and pharmacists – along the Dniester River, where hundreds of Khotyn’s Jews were shot. My grandfather was seen breaking from the line. “He jumped into the river to purify himself,” according to testimony from a survivor, Rachela Katz, cited in “On the Roads of Exile: Memories, 1941-1945” by Solomon Shapira. “The soldiers pulled him out and beat him.”

We arrive at the spot – a foul-smelling marsh – where, in Ms. Katz’s account, the Jews were forced to dig their own grave.

There is an eerie quiet. The grass is high and thick. I recite psalms and a prayer for the dead, El Moleh Rachamim (God Full of Compassion). I read from Ezekiel, “Son of man, can these bones live?”

Roosters are crowing now, seemingly louder and louder. To these ears it is a piercing, heckling sound – Tevye’s roosters sounding out an impudent “Taps” for a community where real Tevyes once lived.

A towering poplar engulfs the grave in its soothing, protective shade. “It is a sign,” one Jew tells me in Russian. “Life can still sprout here.”

Time is short. I must travel to Murafa, where my grandmother Batsheva, Rabbi Twersky’s wife, rests. She died there of malnutrition and typhus in a ghetto set up by Romanian authorities in 1942.

Before leaving, I ask Ms. Cherkes, who tends Khotyn’s centuries-old Jewish cemetery and the graves of her forebears, how she can still live in a city where the martyrs so far exceed the remaining Jews.

“You can’t begin to understand,” she says, annoyed by the question but forcing a smile. “You will never understand.”

(Mordechai I. Twersky, a freelance writer and broadcast journalist, is a doctoral student in Jewish history at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan, Israel)

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news & views

December 2011

The Palestinization of UNESCO

By Bat Ye’or

I

n January 1981 the Organization of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Summit meeting in Mecca declared that, “Palestine should be viewed as the paramount issue of Muslim nations.” Since then Europe hastened to adopt this path as well and has provided for the Palestinization of the cultural, social and above all political life of Europe.

For three decades, Europe obeyed the OIC in a servile manner. The EU has effectively created a major problem for itself that is eating away and destroying it. The EU made Palestine the hub of its international policy, transforming it into a symbol of peace and universal harmony, in a world that would not know “justice” until its coming. The only obstacle to this paradise is the Machiavellian Israel, the oppressor and usurper of Palestine, whose purity as a peaceful victim is the harbinger of global justice.

Europe does not yet dare use armed force against Israel, whose existence it claims to defend, while advising it to commit suicide. Europe fights Israel with the infamous Nazi weapons by delegitimizing its existence, robbing it of its history, defaming it by propaganda, hatred and attempts to destroy its economy through boycotts, divestment and sanctions (BDS). Toward this goal it encourages an international campaign of incitement to hatred by financing anti-Israel NGOs and lobbies. Europe claims that Jewish existence in its ancestral homeland, Judea and Samaria, is an “occupation” – a colonization.

In this way, Israel has become a state that is occupying its own historical homeland. In Orwellian language propagandists speak of “the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land” that is called Judea, and not of the ethnic and religious cleansing of Jews from their homeland through wars, expulsions, dispossession and the dehumanizing apartheid rule of dhimmitude. Euro-jihadists invoke “Palestinian resistance” rather than the reality of their terrorism that has spread throughout the planet.

The EU has used every stratagem to force Israel to self-destruct

dismembering of Israel.

The Palestinization of Europe is not just its theological Islamization through Palestinianism, this being the ideology for Israel’s demise by disclaiming a people’s territorial sovereignty, history and culture, in conformity with the jihadist worldview. Palestinianism is also a paranoid obsession to hound Israel while claiming it is for its own good. By proclaiming that the Palestinian cause is the cause of peace and justice, Europe invests enormous energy, billions of euros and every effort to send Israel back behind the 1948 lines which it knows are indefensible. Hundreds of thousands of books, accusations and speeches subvert the facts and impose this policy.

Bat Ye’ or

in the name of Palestine. That destruction would lead to an era of “justice and peace” in the world in the same way the charnel houses of Auschwitz were meant to purify humanity from Jews.

What does Palestinization mean?

Firstly, it means creating a people as a substitute for Israel, which takes over its history and therefore its legitimacy. From Palestinization (like the Nazification of Europe two decades before) comes the delegitimization of Israel, an intruder state in the region and in history, even in humanity.

The Palestinization of history denies Israel’s identity, culture, historic and human rights within its homeland, including Judea, Samaria and Jerusalem. For the OIC this process is part and parcel of Islamic theology, which regards the Bible as simply a falsified version of the Koran. According to Islam, biblical history is Islamic history, and the biblical characters we see represented in churches are all Muslim prophets who have virtually no connection with the facts reported in the Bible.

This context explains the Islamization of the Jewish and Christian religious heritage, an approach that involves denying the identity of these two religions, since Christianity views itself as emerging from Judaism, whose Scriptures it adopted. If the Bible

is an Islamic account, Christianity too, and not just Judaism, are both falsifications of Islam. The negation of biblical history, with which Europe has assiduously linked itself by claiming that Israel is a colonizing intruder in its own homeland thereby challenges the historic rights of the Jews to their own homeland. This also negates Christian history and confirms the Koranic interpretation refuting the historicity of both the Torah and the Gospels.

Hence, if there was never a history of Israel or of the Gospels, but only the history of Ibrahim, Ishmael, Issa (the Koranic Jesus), if all the biblical kings and prophets were Muslim, in what is the West rooted? Would it not be in the Koran? That is the logical conclusion of Europe’s choice, when, furious at the return of the Jews to Jerusalem in 1967, it deliberately decided to deny them their ancient capital. It attributed their heritage to those who, by a war of invasion, had illegitimately occupied it since 1948, expelling and dispossessing all its Jewish inhabitants. In a nutshell, if the Israelis are foreign colonialists, occupiers of their own country, it means they have no past, no history, and if Judaism is just a tissue of lies, the same applies to Christianity. If Israel never existed in the past, then its modern restoration is just a colonial deception to conquer territory to which it has no historical, religious or cultural claims, and so its destruction is justified. If history testifies to the contrary, then Europe becomes willingly responsible for the abominable crime of genocide – wiping out the past existence of a people in order to remove its current legitimacy and its human, religious, cultural and historical rights. This reflects the participation, organization and financing by European nations and the European Commission of an international campaign of incitement to hatred for the

The Palestinian grounding in Nazism: The de-Judaizing of Christianity Within this context, the Kairos Palestine declaration of 2010 brands Israel with terms like occupier of Arab lands, colonizer, promoter of apartheid; while conversely Palestinians are innocent victims resisting the occupation and aspiring only to security, justice and peace.

The Kairos declaration, hardly surprisingly, condemns all Christian theology that is based upon the Bible or on biblical faith or history that would legitimize Israel. Understand if you can; what would remain of Christian theology, faith or history if you get rid of Israel and the Bible? Could Christian Palestinianism be the camouflage of Nazism, which had planned to de-Judaize Christianity?

The document ends with a call to people, businesses and countries to take part in the BDS campaign against Israel. This request is in line with the demands of the OIC and similar to the understanding of the European former leaders, who are the same ones responsible for the current Eurabian situation.

What are the consequences of the choice of al-Quds – that is a Muslim Jerusalem – by Europe for its identity, the criteria for assessing its own history, and its immigration policy? The Europe that chose al-Quds and rejected Jerusalem is rejecting its own basic identity. It is denying the Bible, which is not merely a religious text that states various universal values, but also, for Christians, a chronicle of the coming of Jesus and Christianity, which is its culmination. If there had not been a Jewish people, nor biblical history or geography, there would not be Christianity either.

Accordingly, Judaism and Christianity are just a huge aberration, and what remains are the Koran and the Muslim Jesus, whose eschatological mission is the destruction of Christianity.

The choice of al-Quds replaces the Bible with the Koran. Europe knows that the OIC has decided to move its head office from Jeddah to al-Quds. The OIC is deemed the most suitable institution to represent the world Caliphate, with its mission to anchor the universal Ummah in the Koran and Sunna.

What church could remain in al-Quds? By seeking to destroy Israel, the Church is destroying its own very existence.

With such a disavowal of its own roots and identity, should we still be surprised that Europe has sold its citizens off cheaply on its own territory? In the same way that the European Union has not ceased to harass Israel and to challenge its roots and rights, it has dragged to court those courageous Europeans who have asserted their own identity, rights and freedoms.

This political link between the OIC and the European Union did not only appear in the context of the Israeli-Arab conflict but also in internal European politics concerning the massive Muslim immigration into Europe, which started in the years 1974-75. It was then that a joint Parliamentary Association for Euro-Arab Cooperation (PAEAC) was set up with the task of passing on the political demands from the Arab League countries to the European Community and to monitor their implementation within Europe.

Transposing its anti-Israeli policy to Europe, the EU wants to create a tabula rasa of historical nationalisms and of the privileges of sovereign states, to transfer to the UN – dominated by the OIC – the world governance of human rights. The basic rights of Europeans to security, to their history and freedom of expression are disproved, rebutted, dismissed by the OIC under the guise of Islamophobia and its vehement request for European multiculturalism.

Rooted in the civilization of jihad and dhimmitude, it imposes its own criteria through its European and UN go-betweens in its new Western empire. So while Europe prides itself on creating universal, humanitarian governance, on the international scene the OIC is implementing a Koranic order of Islamic human rights.

With the repudiation of Israel, the EU is repudiating itself. It is putting the emphasis on the GrecoRoman heritage and eliminating that of Judeo-Christianity to please the OIC and Muslim migrants. When the EU does this it eliminates its biblical and therefore Jewish basis, as if Christianity had arisen in the world out of nowhere.

This repression of identity is just one more concession to Islam and its culture that is hostile to Jews and Christians, an issue Continued on page 13

bible study

December 2011

Continued from page 12

that has been neither recognized nor repudiated. To throw Judaism (Israel) and Christianity (the West) into the dustbin of history is to remove human, historical, religious, cultural and national rights from Jews and Christians. It means adopting dhimmitude.

Eurabia and Palestinianism come from the same rejection and the same policy applied to the destruction of the nationstate, the manifestation of the spirit and culture of peoples, condemned to extinction in a globalized, humanitarian utopia.

Their points in common are (1) the war against Israel; (2) the de-Judaization of Christianity; (3) the de-Christianization of Europe; and (4) the joint EU-OIC policy to strengthen the UN’s global governance that the OIC aims to monopolize. This suicidal approach is specific to Europe; it does not exist in China or in India, or even in Muslim countries.

With the anarchic uprisings of the “Arab Spring” (March 2011), the United States and most European countries led by France and its Foreign Minister, Alain Juppé, have become involved in Arab and African tribal conflicts, invoking the “right of interference” and the “right of protection”.

These rights, however, are applied selectively, because they are never invoked to protect Christians against persecution in Egypt, Iraq, Turkey, Algeria, Sudan, Nigeria, Bangladesh, Indonesia or Pakistan.

They are also not used to protect sailors arbitrarily taken hostage by the Somalis.

Europe would find it grotesque and indecent to invoke these rights against the spread of anti-Israeli hatred calling for the extermination of the Jews, against the deluge of rockets launched from Gaza into Israel, or against the hideous crimes perpetrated by its Palestinian allies and “protégés” against Israeli civilians. Nor has it reacted to the Islamization of the biblical holy places in Hebron, both Jewish and Christian, by UNESCO, acting on orders of the OIC. Yet this approach is a serious breach of the religious and historical rights of Jews and Christians, and contradicts the western definition of human rights.

The recognition of Palestine by UNESCO is a harbinger to the Islamization on a world level of the historical and spiritual roots of Judaism and Christianity and conforms to the Koranic assertion that Islam precedes and dominates these two religions.

Bat Ye’or is an Egyptian-born British writer and political commentator, who writes about the history of non-Muslims in the Middle East, and in particular the history of Christian and Jewish dhimmis living under Islamic governments. She is the author of many books, including Eurabia: The Euro-Arab Axis and The Dhimmi: Jews and Christians Under Islam.

(Source: New English Review)

13

PROCLAIM!

By Derek Prince

O

ne of the most effective spiritual weapons that God has put at the disposal of His people is the proclamation of His Word. God’s Word proclaimed is for us today what the rod of Moses was in his generation.

With his outstretched rod Moses defeated the magicians of Egypt, stripped Pharaoh of his power, humiliated Egypt’s gods, and brought Israel out from slavery and freedom.

We must learn to use God’s Word as Moses uses his rod. As we take hold of the Scriptures and proclaim them with bold faith, we can extend God’s authority into any situation where Satan opposes the people and the purposes of God. This applies particularly to the current situation in the Middle East. There are many forces opposing the revealed purposes of God, especially those connected with Israel’s restoration. It is not God’s intention, however, that His believing people should stand by as passive spectators on the sidelines of history.

He expects us to take up the rod of His Word, and stretch it out by bold proclamation against every force and every situation that resist His purposes.

In Jeremiah 31:10 God has given us a specific word to proclaim to all nations: “Hear the word of the LORD, O nations [Gentiles], And declare it in the isles afar off, and say, ‘He who scattered Israel will gather him, And keep him as a shepherd does his flock.’

This word is to be proclaimed to the Gentile nations, even in the remotest parts of the earth. All the peoples of the earth are to be confronted with God’s purpose concerning Israel.

The message itself is simple. It may be formulated in three successive statements.

First, it was God who scattered Israel (from their own land). Second, the same God who scattered Israel is now regathering them (to their own land). Third, God will not merely regather them; He will also keep (protect)

Derek Prince

them. Thus the ultimate safety of Israel is guaranteed by God. I love the words of Jeremiah 31:10 in the original language because Hebrew has a unique way of condensing things. The statement, He who scattered Israel will gather him, is expressed in only three words: Mzareh Yisrael yekabbetzenu.

Mzareh: the one who scatters Yisrael: Israel Yekabbetzenu: will gather him.

Interestingly enough, the verb yekabbetz is directly connected with the word kibbutz. It is almost as if God said, ‘When I bring them back, I will gather them in kibbutzim.’

Israel is in a desperate situation, but we do not need to fear for the outcome, because the same God who is gathering Israel – which is exciting enough! – will also keep them. Let us proclaim it – boldly and continually!

This passage in Jeremiah 31:10, however,

is only one of the countless Scriptures that may be used in proclamation concerning the Middle East. I will just mention briefly three others, which Ruth and I regularly proclaim.

“Let all those who hate Zion be put to shame and turned back. Let them be as the grass on the housetops, Which withers before it grows up” (Psalm 129:5,6) ‘Those who hate Zion’ is a brief comprehensive description of the various forces currently arrayed against Israel.

“For the scepter of the wicked will not remain over the land allotted to the righteous” (Psalm 125:3) ‘The scepter of the wicked’ is, I believe, an accurate description of Islam.

Finally, there is a passage in Psalm 33 which is longer, but singularly appropriate to the current situation on the world, and especially in the Middle East.

“Let all the earth fear the Lord; Let all the inhabitants of the world stand in awe of Him. For He spoke, and it was done; He commanded, and it stood fast. The Lord brings the counsel of the nations to nothing; He makes the plans of the peoples of no effect. The counsel of the Lord stands forever, The plans of His heart to all generations.

Blessed is the nation whose God is the Lord, The people He has chosen as His own inheritance” (Psalm 33:8-12) Here is an unequivocal declaration that it is God’s Word that brought the world into being; and that it is the same Word that directs the course of history. Nations and their governments may hold their councils and issue their decrees, but whenever these are in opposition to God’s prophetic Word, they will come to nothing. God will fulfill all His counsel and His promises concerning Israel, the people whom He has chosen as His own inheritance.

(The Destiny of Israel and the Church – Derek Prince, Word Books)

Poverty in Israel still a major problem

A

recent report released by the Central Bureau of Statistics says that 20 percent of Israeli families - some 1.7 million people - live in poverty, including 873,000 children, about

a third of the country’s population under the age of 18. Although the numbers are distressingly high, they represent a significant improvement over previous years and actually show that

the poverty rate is at its lowest point since 2003. “I can inform you that for the first time we are seeing the beginning of narrowing gaps, the beginning of a povertyreduction trend in all populations:

the elderly, children, and the two most disadvantaged groups, the haredim and the Arabs. This is an important topic we are dealing with every day,” said Finance Minister Yuval Steinitz.

“Journey to Beersheba” & “The Oath of the Covenant”

A

ustralian author, Kelvin Crombie, has just launched his two new books, “Journey to Beersheba” and “The Oath of the Covenant”.

“Journey to Beersheba” is Mr. Crombie’s personal reflection about the story behind the Charge of the Light Horse in 1917 and the re-enactment in 2007. The initial charge on 31 October 1917 was part of the Battle of Beersheba in which British, New Zealand and Australian soldiers defeated the Turkish Army.

It includes a guide to some Anzac-Light Horse related sites in Israel. This book also details how he first received an interest in these subjects while growing up in the Australian bush, and how as a young man he went to

live in Israel.

“Oath of the Covenant” is a scholarly and biblical work that presents the significance of the many covenants recorded

in the Bible. Covenants in variably included promises and conditions.

Some of these are between God and man, either individually or collectively. Most of these God-man covenants are with the nation of Israel.

This book provides some insights into the meaning of oath and covenant gleaned from certain episodes from Israel’s history, in particular the covenant between Joshua and the Gibeonites. These insights help us relate to how covenant was understood in ancient Israel (and later by Jesus and His Jewish followers).

It is scholarly, biblical, and carefully prepared theological material.

(Both books are available from Koorong and Word bookshops, or your local Christian bookstores)

14

speech

December 2011

Situation in the Middle East

By Ron Prosor

Statement by Israeli Ambassador Ron Prosor to the UN Security Council Mr. President, For generations, the Arab world has failed miserably to address the needs of its own people. The United Nations Development Program has sponsored five “Arab Human Development Reports” since 2002. Year after year, the Arab researchers who write these reports offer a glimpse into the real world of the Middle East. Young people struggle without access to jobs and education. Women are denied basic rights. Free expression is repressed.

Minorities are persecuted. Elections are a sham.

And with their world in flames, Arab leaders continue to blame Israel and the West for all their problems. For years, it’s the only explanation that they have been able to offer to their own people.

From time to time, they spice up the story. When a shark attacked a tourist in the Red Sea resort of Sharm El-Sheikh, the local Egyptian governor suggested that the Mossad was using sharks to harm Egyptian tourism. Everything wrong in the Middle East, according to many Arab leaders, is simply Israel’s fault. If it’s not the Mossad, it’s the CIA, or MI6, or some other “foreign force”.

Demanding real answers Today the people of the Middle East demand real answers for their plight. We have seen their brave stands in public squares. We have heard their cries. And we have witnessed the deadly response to these calls for freedom.

In Hama, Daraa and Latakia, the Syrian regime slaughters its citizens in a desperate bid to hold onto power. Some members of this council remain blind to Assad’s brutality.

In Libya, the reign of Moammar Qaddafi is over after more than 40 years of repression and many months of bloodshed. The Libyan despot’s violent end illustrated what Churchill once described as a signal disadvantage of the dictator: what he does to others may often be done back to him. This truth haunts the minds of many leaders in our region – and Qaddafi’s fate rings an alarm for them.

The world must stop Iran In Iran, an Ayatollah regime represses its own people as it helps other tyrants to butcher theirs. Last week, UN Special Rapporteur Shaheed briefed the General Assembly, offering a chilling picture of daily life in Iran. His report highlighted “a pattern of systemic violations of… fundamental human rights… including multifarious deficits in relation to the administration of justice… practices that amount

to torture… the imposition of the death penalty in the absence of proper judicial safeguards… the persecution of religious and ethnic minorities, and the erosion of civil and political rights.”

Iran remains the world’s central banker, chief trainer and primary sponsor of terror. Recent events have shown that its state-directed terrorist activities extend from the Persian Gulf to the Washington Beltway, with targets that range from innocent protestors to foreign soldiers to official diplomatic representatives. This is the way the regime behaves today. One can only imagine what it would do with a nuclear capability – with the dangerous combination of extremist ideology, advanced missile technology and nuclear weapons.

IAEA reports make clear that Iran continues to march toward the goal of a nuclear bomb in defiance of the international community.

We cannot allow it to place the entire world under the specter of nuclear terrorism. The world must stop Iran before it is too late.

Two roads stand before us The Middle East is trembling. Its future is uncertain. And two roads stand before us.

There is the future offered by Iranian and Syrian leaders – a future of more extremism, greater violence and continued hate. Their vision will not liberate human beings, it will enslave them. It does not build, it destroys. And there is another road – a path of progress, reform and moderation.

The choice before us is clear – and it has never been more critical to make the right choice for the future of the Middle East and all its inhabitants. It is time for this Council to stop ignoring the destructive forces that seek to

keep the Middle East in the past, so that we can seize the promise of a brighter future.

Mutual recognition and dialogue Make no mistake: it is important for Israel and the Palestinians to resolve our longstanding conflict.

It is important on its own merits, so that Israelis and Palestinians alike can lead peaceful, secure and prosperous lives. But it will not produce a sudden outbreak of stability, harmony and democratization from the Persian Gulf to the Mediterranean Sea. And seriously addressing the underlying problems of the Middle East will be essential for advancing Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The road to peace can only be built on a foundation of mutual recognition and dialogue.

A month ago, President Abbas stood in this building and said the following: “I come before you today from the Holy Land, the land of Palestine, the land of divine messages, ascension of the Prophet Muhammad (peace be upon him) and the birthplace of Jesus Christ (peace be upon him).”

He denied 4,000 years of Jewish history. It was not a small omission. It was not an oversight.

The Palestinian leadership attempts to erase the connection between the Jewish people and the Land of Israel.

Others in the Arab world have offered a different message. For example, in 1995, King Hussein came to the United States and said: “For our part, we shall continue to work for the new dawn when all the Children of Abraham and their descendants are living together in the birthplace of their three great monotheistic religions.” Let me repeat this. King Hussein said three monotheistic religions, not one or two.

Those who seek peace do not negate the narrative of the other side. On the contrary, they recognize its existence and choose to sit down and negotiate peace in good faith. This is what President Sadat did. This is what King Hussein did.

Recognize Israel as a Jewish State The ancient Jewish bond to the land of Israel is unbreakable.

This is our homeland. The UN recognized Israel as a Jewish state 64 years ago. It is time for the Palestinians and the more than 20 Muslim countries around the globe to do the same.

Let there be no doubt: Israel wants peace with a future Palestinian state. Let me repeat that: Israel wants peace with a future Palestinian state. In word and in deed, my government has demonstrated time and again that we seek two states for two peoples, living side-by-side in peace.

Prime Minister Netanyahu stood in this hall last month and issued a clear call to President Abbas. Let me reiterate that call today to the Palestinians. Sit down with Israel.

Leave your preconditions behind.

Start negotiations now.

The international community has called on the Palestinians to go back to negotiations. Israel has accepted the principles outlined by the Quartet to restart negotiations immediately, without preconditions. We are waiting for the Palestinians to do the same.

Gap between perception and reality The Palestinians suggest that settlements are the core cause of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It’s an interesting assertion considering that our conflict was raging for nearly a half century before a

single settlement sprung up in the West Bank. From 1948 until 1967, the West Bank was part of Jordan, and Gaza was part of Egypt. The Arab world did not lift a finger to create a Palestinian state. And it sought Israel’s annihilation when not a single settlement stood anywhere in the West Bank or Gaza.

The issue of settlements will be worked out over the course of negotiations, but the primary obstacle to peace is not settlements.

This is a just a pretext for the Palestinians to avoid negotiations.

The primary obstacle to peace is the Arab world’s refusal to acknowledge the Jewish people’s ancient connection to the Land of Israel – and the Palestinian’s insistence on the so-called right of return.

Today the Palestinian leadership is calling for an independent Palestinian state, but insists that its people return to the Jewish state. It’s a proposition that no one who believes in the right of Israel to exist could accept because the only equation in political science with mathematical certainty is that the so-called right of return equals the destruction of the State of Israel. The idea that Israel will be flooded with millions of Palestinians is a non-starter. The international community knows it.

The Palestinian leadership knows it. But the Palestinian people aren’t hearing it. This gap between perception and reality is the major obstacle to peace. The so-called right of return is the major hurdle to achieving peace.

Since the Palestinian leadership refuses to tell the Palestinian people the truth, the international community has a responsibility to tell the Palestinian people about the basic compromises that they will have to make.

Continued on page 15

viewpoint

December 2011

Continued from page 14

responsibilities: You vote for it, you own it. All those who vote for unilateral recognition will be responsible for its consequences.

Basic criteria for statehood The many issues that remain outstanding can only – and will only – be resolved in direct negotiations between the parties.

Israel’s peace with Egypt was negotiated, not imposed. Our peace with Jordan was negotiated, not imposed. Israeli-Palestinian peace must be negotiated. It cannot be imposed. The Palestinians’ unilateral action at the United Nations is no path to real statehood. It is a march of folly.

At this critical juncture, the Palestinians’ true friends will encourage them to put aside the false idol of unilateralism and get back to the hard work of direct negotiations.

Speaking of friends, the many so-called Arab champions of the Palestinian cause have a responsibility to play a constructive role. Constructive support from the Arab world is vital for building the civic and economic structures necessary for real Palestinian statehood and peace. Instead of simply adding to the chorus of state-bashing, the Palestinians true supporters will help advance state-building.

Today the Palestinians are far from meeting the basic criteria for statehood, including the test of effective control. The President of the Palestinian Authority has zero authority in the Gaza Strip. Before flying 9,000 kilometers to New York to seek UN membership, President Abbas should have driven 50 kilometers to Gaza, where he has been unable to visit since 2007.

Crumbs of the table

Hamas and “peace-loving”?

Keeping an eye on Israel’s border with Egypt

In the same breath that they claim their state will be “peaceloving”, Palestinian leaders speak of their unity with Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization. Hamas and “peaceloving”? There is no greater contradiction in terms. This month, on a fundraising excursion for terrorism with his Iranian patrons, Hamas Leader Ismail Haniyeh stood in front of an audience in Tehran and said, “The correct strategy to liberate our country and Jerusalem is violent resistance.”

Under Hamas rule, Gaza remains a launching ground for constant rocket attacks targeting Israeli civilians, which are fueled by the continuous flow of weapons from Iran and elsewhere. Israel has the right to defend itself. As the Palmer report made clear, the naval blockade is a legitimate

security measure in order to prevent weapons from entering Gaza by sea.

When it is not attacking Israelis, Hamas is oppressing its own people. In Gaza, civil society is nonexistent, political opponents are tortured, women are subjugated, and children are used as suicide bombers and human shields. Textbooks and television glorify martyrdom and demonize Jews. Incitement against Israelis also continues in the West Bank and in the official institutions of the Palestinian Authority, which names its public squares after suicide bombers.

The unresolved questions about a future Palestinian state cannot be simply swept under the carpet.

They go to the core of resolving our conflict. They have to be addressed. Let me be clear: for

Photo Judy McComb

Israel, the question is not whether we can accept a Palestinian state.

We can. The question is what will be the character of the state that emerges alongside us and whether it will live in peace.

Unilateral action at the UN The Palestinians’ unilateral action at the UN breaches the Oslo Accords, the Interim Agreement, the Paris Protocol and other bilateral agreements that form the basis for 40 spheres of IsraeliPalestinian cooperation – all of which could be jeopardized by a unilateral action at the UN. This unilateral initiative will raise expectations that cannot be met.

It is a recipe for instability and potentially, violence. Members of the international community should be clear about their

Arab donors provided just 20 percent of the international funds for the Palestinian Authority’s regular budget last year. Let me put this in perspective: last year, Arab donations to the regular PA budget accounted for a little more than half of what Saudi Prince Alwaleed bin-Talal spent on his newest personal luxury jet. People in Washington, London, and Paris are struggling with an economic downturn, but still providing the bulk of support for Palestinian institutions, while Arab states saturated in petrol dollars don’t even give the Palestinians crumbs off the table.

Upholding human dignity and pursue peace In the Jewish tradition, we are taught: “Whosoever saves a single life, saves an entire universe.”

This sacred principle forms the backbone of Israel’s democracy.

It drives our government’s policy.

We witnessed a clear reflection of these values last week – as all

15

of Israel welcomed home our kidnapped soldier, Gilad Shalit, after more than five years in Hamas captivity. It was a moment of great joy, but it came with tremendous costs.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank the SecretaryGeneral personally and some of the countries represented here today that played an important role in the release of Gilad Shalit.

For us, the supreme value of a single human life justified releasing more than a thousand terrorists and criminals covered in the blood of innocents.

The values inherent in such an act shine bright in our region.

Many took note. On Twitter, one Syrian blogger, Soori Madsoos, wrote “Their government is prepared to pay the ultimate price for one citizen, while our government kills us like we are animals and our Arab neighbors say that it’s an internal matter.”

Time and again, Israel has shown that it is ready and able to make bold and courageous decisions to preserve life, to uphold human dignity and to pursue peace.

Sustainable peace must be negotiated. It must be nurtured.

It must be anchored in security. It must take root in homes, schools and media that teach tolerance and understanding, so that it can grow in hearts and minds. It must be built on a foundation of younger generations that understand the compromises necessary for peace.

A brighter future in the Middle East must be forged from within, when we are open and honest about the challenges before us – and resolute in our determination to meet them together.

Thank you.

Ron Prosor is an Israeli diplomat and commentator on the Middle East. He served as Israeli Ambassador to the United Kingdom in 2007-2011. In February 2011, Prosor was appointed Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations.

(Source: mfa.gov.il)

Resenting Israel, Not Netanyahu

By Jonathan S. Tobin

B

arack Obama’s dislike of Benjamin Netanyahu was not a state secret prior to the publication of his candid exchange about the Israeli prime minister with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. So the fact the two have a low opinion of Netanyahu and consider dealing with him to be a burden isn’t exactly news. But while much of the commentary about this kerfuffle has centered on the question of who should be most embarrassed by the revelation – Netanyahu or his two highly placed critics – there is a more important point here.

Netanyahu has a well-earned reputation as a prickly and somewhat unpleasant fellow to deal with – in Israeli political circles as well as the world of international diplomacy.

But

when Sarkozy and Obama grouse about him, the resentment they are giving voice to hasn’t all that much to do with whether or not Netanyahu is a charm school dropout. What really annoys them is his inherent skepticism about the peace process.

Despite his reputation as a hard-liner (a phrase treated in many press accounts as if it were part of his name), Netanyahu has a long record of attempts to conciliate the Palestinians in order to make peace. During his first term as prime minister in the 1990’s he signed two agreements conceding parts of the West Bank to the Palestinian Authority. He enacted a settlement-building freeze in the West Bank during his current administration and formally endorsed the idea of a Palestinian

state. But despite all of this, Netanyahu has never consented to playing the familiar game in which the onus for peace is placed only on Israel to make concessions and not the Palestinians.

Throughout both of his terms as Israel’s leader, Netanyahu has insisted on pointing out the failures of the Palestinians to abide by their Oslo commitments. Rather than meekly nod along when Obama or Sarkozy speak of the need for Israel to relinquish territory, Netanyahu has had the chutzpah to publicly talk back to them about Israel’s rights and not just its immediate security needs. Though he has sometimes given in to their demands if he thought it was in his country’s interests, he has also made it clear that doing so is a grave concession that could bring

deadly consequences. Any Israeli who speaks in this manner, which necessarily complicates the efforts of the peace processers to ignore the Palestinians’ reluctance to make peace, is not going to be liked.

Much like Menachem Begin, the first member of his party to serve as Israel’s prime minister, Netanyahu cannot play the unctuous diplomat. Though he has made concessions and sought to reach out to other countries as well as ably making his country’s case before the American people, he does so as a proud, stiffnecked Jew, not a supplicant or a starry-eyed dreamer who is beguiled by an unrealistic vision about the intentions of his Palestinian negotiating partners.

Netanyahu has more than his share of personal flaws. But

what Sarkozy and Obama are telling us is that the Israeli won’t play by their rules and knuckle under when his country’s rights are imperiled. Though he values Israel’s alliance with the United States, Netanyahu’s idea of his responsibilities is one in which he prioritizes defending his country’s interests over making nice with heads of state.

It should be conceded that his tactics don’t always work well, and he won’t win any foreign popularity contests. But the issue here isn’t Netanyahu. An Israeli leader who won’t acquiesce to the lies other leaders tell about the Palestinians’ peaceful intentions will never be loved. Sarkozy and Obama don’t resent Netanyahu as much as they do Israel.

(Source: jewishworldreview.com)

16

aliyah

December 2011

When the Jewish People Return

By Ira Sulim-Carlier

T

he first time that I heard about God’s plan for Israel and the Jewish people was from my grandmother.

I can still recall her words: “Once the Gospel has been preached over the whole world and the Jewish people return to Israel from the dispersion, it is time for the Messiah’s return to Jerusalem.” This she read in the Bible.

As I grew older, there was more freedom in the Ukraine, and I never really thought about my grandmothers words again.

She passed away in 2004 at the age of 92. Once the Iron Curtain fell, I started going to church. Although we were, once again, allowed to discuss faith openly, Israel and the Jewish people were not referred to or mentioned in church.

In the early nineties, many American missionaries came to the Ukraine and other countries of the former Soviet Union.

Having studied English, I was often asked to act as translator.

During such a visit to an orphanage for handicapped

children, I met Koen - my future husband.

He was there to visit an orphaned Jewish boy, and spoke about his work amongst the Jewish people. He would visit Jewish people who wanted to go back to Israel, and about bringing Jewish families to the airport for departure to their Promied Land.

His story echoed my grandmother words: “When the Jewish people return, it will be the last days.” Those words,

it seems, are being fulfilled today. I believe it is the truth.

This was an absolute revelation for me.

As contact person for the Jewish Agency, I can now practically assist my husband, Koen, with his work amongst the Jewish people. It is an honour for me to be able to be part of this prophetic work.

(Ira Sulim-Carlier is married to Koen Carlier, fieldworker Christians for Israel – Ukraine)

Ira Carlier

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NEW ISRAELIS AT THE WESTERN WALL – Back home again – 150 new immigrants holding up their Israeli identity cards a few days after making aliyah.

They received their new identity cards at a special event organized by the Jewish Agency at the Western Wall Plaza in Jerusalem. Most of the new immigrants came from France, Britain, Italy, Belgium and South Africa. The new arrivals will be absorbed in towns and kibbutzim throughout Israel, including Eilat, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Haifa, Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Netanya.

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