Israel.beth sholom.3 11
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What's really going on in Israel.
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Israel.beth sholom.3 11
- 1. Iran The Flotilla The Goldstone Report Hamas PLO Hezbollah Syria Egypt "Peace” Talks American Pressure Worldwide Anti-Semitism Jordan
- 2. Our Friends in Egypt
- 3. “ Democrats” in Egypt?
- 4. I was just wondering...
- 5. And let’s hear what the “moderate” PLO truly thinks of the “2-state solution” “ pal ambassador to Leb” (2 min)
- 6. Arafat & Abbas’ Mentor with Hitler
- 10. So how do “palestinians” behave when they grow up? “ lynch” (2 min)
- 11. Two days ago, Sabri Saidam, adviser to Abbas and under-secretary of the Fatah Revolutionary Council, told PA Arabs in a speech that “the weapons must be turned towards the main enemy [Israel] and that internal differences of opinion must be set aside.”
- 12. What did they do to the Fogel family yesterday? Rabbi and Rebbetzin Udi and Ruth Fogel 11 year old Yoav Fogel 4 year old Elad Fogel 3 month old Hadas Fogel MURDERED FOR BEING JEWS!
- 14. How did it get this bad?
- 15. It all started right here – Where’s Our Flag? In 1967, Israel became the “Occupier” Israel became “The Goliath” instead of “The David”
- 19. How did the Israeli Government Respond? - by evicting Jews “ gaza out” (4 min) How did the Israeli Government Respond? - By Evicting Jews
- 21. Then we started “Counting the Olmert” ---------------------------- Ehud Olmert became Acting Israeli Prime Minister and decided the best way to win the job permanently was to evict and brutalize Jews. Let’s see what he did at Amona. “ Amona” (9 min)
- 23. But now “the world” is against us like never before!! The Gaza Expulsion was supposed to put “ the world” on OUR side
- 25. Why Are We Losing?
- 27. 14 out of 27 Likud MKs came to a Manhigut Yehudit wedding in January Including the Knesset Speaker and 7 ministers
- 29. We Want Israel to be “A Light Unto the Nations ” We threaten the total control of the Establishment Our message is NOT one of “ reciprocity ” It is one of Jewish Pride – and we are making great progress. This is a true revolution. ------------- We need you. Won’t you join us? www.JewishIsrael.org [email_address]
- 33. So running out of Gaza brought us…
- 35. And then it brought us Operation Cast Lead – where Israel actually stopped fighting for 2 hours every day to deliver supplies to the enemy - and its infamous Goldstone Report where we get blamed anyway And then the flotilla disgrace..
- 36. We send our boys to fight thugs - armed only with paint balls!
- 44. About the Gush Katif refugees
- 46. How did the Israeli Government Respond? - by evicting Jews “ gaza out” (4 min)
- 47. Then Sharon used 55,000 Soldiers to evict 10,000 non-resisting Jews “ gaza out” (4 min)
- 49. The funds provided the refugees are not nearly enough. Please make your checks out to: “ Friends of Gush Katif” ------------- And to make sure this doesn’t happen again, please get involved with Manhigut Yehudit www.JewishIsrael.org [email_address]
- 51. Let’s take a look at what Gush Katif was… “ Gush Katif” (to 6:19 then to 7:48))
- 52. “ Let my people stay!” A Commemoration and Analysis of Gush Katif
- 53. So running out of Gaza brought us…
- 54. Israel and the Flotilla
- 55. "If ships reach Gaza - victory, if terrorized by Zionists - victory. “ Ismail Haniyeh – leader of Hamas “ We Con the World” (5 min)
- 57. A Few Words From Hamas “ Hamas” (4 min)
- 59. And how do the “palestinians” behave when they grow up? “ lynch” (2 min)
- 70. Now let’s hear a personal message From Moshe “ Moshe address” (10 min)
- 71. Let’s See what the “palestinians” teach their children (1 min) “ kids”
- 87. Why do the “palestinians” behave like this? Why? “ history of hitler and muslim waffen ss” (4 min)
- 103. How does the Israeli Government Respond? “ gaza out” (4 min)
- 111. PLO Israeli arab uprising Land for peace Hezbollah IRAN Hamas The Arab League Arms from Sinai and Egypt into Gaza LOOK AT ALL OF THESE PROBLEMS THE Moderate Mahmoud Abbas AL AKSA MARTYRS BRIGADE
- 112. There is no military solution. Israel is occupying Arab land. Land for peace. Israel needs the money from the US. Israel can’t go against “world opinion”. The real problem is the Arabs, right? The Israel leaders are, and always have been, heroes. Haven’t they? Do American Jews have a say about what goes on in Israel? What Messages are we pounded with daily? Israel MUST make concessions. ISRAEL HAS TERRIBLE PR
- 120. So What’s Really Going On In Israel? And how did we get here? - Let’s take a look.
- 132. So how did we get here? ------- When did it become Israelis vs. Jews?
- 136. Moshe Feiglin Campaign Theme Song by Ariel Zilber In my country in my land we long for normalcy Everything is collapsing, forget about security Leaders of all types have ruled here But none of them has rid us of evil and fear Feiglin has courage Feiglin has a Jewish heart We know that Feiglin has a G-d Because Feiglin has a path we have not yet trod Jewish justice, economy, education and society Feiglin has the plan to restore our integrity We will defeat our enemies They will all melt away Because the Likud will have a Jewish heart With Feiglin from the start http://www.jewishisrael.org/video/video_07.htm
- 140. (2 min)
- 142. The Manhigut dream is becoming a reality . Entered Likud November 2000 2,800 Total Seats Manhigut Wins 132 Seats Largest Single Bloc! Central Committee Elections October 2002 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007
- 143. “ A momentous event occurred in the Likud. Moshe Feiglin scored a dizzying success in the internal Likud elections.” Haaretz – October 18, 2002 Reactions to 2002 Election Results “ Manhigut Yehudit has quietly infiltrated Israel’s major political party. Its goal is simple: to transplant the Zionist dream that consumes both Likud & Labor with a purely Jewish one.” Jerusalem Post – October 25, 2002 “ Feiglin used to be looked at as an outsider – but not anymore. His victory of 132 delegates in the Likud Central Committee now makes him a serious force inside the Likud party.” Channel One TV – October, 2002
- 144. The Manhigut dream is becoming a reality . Ariel Sharon Bibi Netanyahu Moshe Feiglin 3% 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 2000 2001 2002 2003 2004 2005 2006 2007 Central Committee Elections October 2002 Entered Likud November 2000 Likud Chairman Elections November 2002
- 145. The Manhigut dream is becoming a reality . Candidates Bibi Netanyahu Silvan Shalom Moshe Feiglin Yisrael Katz 12% Dropped Out Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz Education Minister Linar Livnat Ex-Minister Uzi Landau 3% 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 Central Committee Elections October 2002 Entered Likud November 2000 Likud Chairman Elections November 2002 Likud Chairman Elections December 2005
- 146. The Manhigut dream is becoming a reality . 3% 12% August 2007 Elections: Moshe Feiglin received 24% of the vote! 2007 2006 2005 2004 2003 2002 2001 2000 Central Committee Elections October 2002 Entered Likud November 2000 Likud Chairman Elections November 2002 Likud Chairman Elections December 2005
- 147. Election Results Review Year Polls Actual 2002 (Against Sharon & Bibi) Not Polled 3% 2005 (Against Six Ministers) 4% 13% 2007-2008 ? 22% ?
- 148. How Many Votes Separated Bibi & Feiglin? 15,000
- 149. December 2006
- 150. 100,000 Visited Hebron on Sukkot 250,000 Made a Human Chain for Gush Katif
- 151. The people are there… Help us go get them!
- 159. But does the left think everything is just a joke?
Notes de l'éditeur
- LEGAL ACROBATICS: THE PALESTINIAN CLAIM THAT GAZA IS STILL "OCCUPIED" EVEN AFTER ISRAEL WITHDRAWS Dore Gold Jerusalem Issue Brief, August 26, 2005 PER PHASED PLAN OF 74 ---------------------------------- PA TELEVISION: ISRAEL'S DESTRUCTION IS WITHIN REACH The Palestinian Authority's state-run television station broadcast various programs this past week conveying the message that Israel's destruction is attainable. In the days since the IDF began to withdraw completely from Gaza, PA TV broadcast several programs all emphasizing the goal of destroying the Jewish State. ----------------------------------------------------------- Friends, For all those ostriches who view the man in the suit as anything other than the spiritual successor to his unwashed boss, Yasir Arafat, the mass murderer, the recent death of a young bride, her cousin and a fourteen year-old boy should erase any doubt. Under Abbas, the murders continue. The incitement continues. They even brag about it. I wonder what Ms. Rice has to say to this? Naomi _____ PALESTINIAN MEDIA AND OFFICIALS SAY ABBAS'S OWN FATAH KILLED 'SETTLERS' BY MICHAEL WIDLANSKI 16 October 2005 Voice of Palestine Radio, the official voice of Mahmoud Abbas's Palestinian Authority, declared Sunday night that both of today's attacks on Israelis were carried out by members of the Fatah organization headed by PLO leader Abbas. At least three people were murdered and another five wounded-including women and children-- in the two drive-by shooting attacks that took place within minutes of one another: one on a group of civilians at a bus-stop south of Bethlehem, the other on the road between Jerusalem and Nablus. "Both armed attacks were carried out by the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades which are part of the Fatah Movement," asserted Voice of Palestine, which, along with the other Palestinian media stressed that the attacks were on "mustawtaneen"-the Arabic word for settlers. The murders were not condemned by the official Palestinian media or any Palestinian officials who have generally called such previous attacks on "settlers" a legitimate form "resistance" to occupation. Dr. Abbas and his aides also did not condemn the kidnap murder three weeks ago of a Jerusalem man, Sasson Nuriel, who was tortured by Palestinian terrorists from the Hamas organization and then made to read a "confession" that was filmed and distributed on Hamas websites. The attacks have occurred during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan which is often a time set aside not only for penitence but also for jihad, holy war. Indeed, official Mosque addresses as well television and radio shows during recent weeks have been depicting Israelis and Americans as murderers and as victimizers of Muslims, highlighting the need for more "resistance" [muqawwama], "fighting" [kifaah] and "active struggle" [nidaal]. Palestinian leaders have repeatedly promised to curb violence and curtail incitement to violence, but since Dr. Abbas came to power as PLO chairman last December, there has been a general continuation of anti-Israeli and anti-Western propaganda as under the late Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat. Although Abbas has removed some "martyr videos," government-controlled newspaper cartoons and television montage films habitually depict Israelis and Americans as sadists. A cartoon in the Al-Quds newspaper this month shows America turning the Arab world into a human slab of beef with a US government stamp, while staged "documentary films" show Israeli jailers torturing Palestinian prisoners or Israeli soldiers gloating while killing Palestinian women and children. ----------------------------- Abu Mazen accused Israel for this attack because Israel did not make"significant enough concessions"!!!! And he believes his accusations. Well, not that it will help people like Peres, but the rest of us can recognize Criminal Chutzpah when it is in our face. Don Arabs Kill 3, Wound 5 in Gush; One Wounded Near Eli IsraelNationalNews.com , October 16, 2005 / 13 Tishrei 5766 Terrorists from the PA have fired on a hitching post on Route 60 in Gush Etzion in the direction of Kiryat Arba, killing three and wounding five. In a similar attack near Eli, one Jew was wounded. --------------------------------------------
- People are so upset about obama pressuring israel, and how bibi and ron lauder are standing up to him… How? By saying that we should be left alone to destroy ourselves by dividing our country and tearing out it’s heart and making it militarily defenseless without using nuclear weapons. Talk about asaf shariv’s joke about no palestinian state – how it makes them appear as if they really are against it. Us pres, russian pres, and the israeli pm. Good news and bad news Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- So, of course, if Israel refuses to assert its rights, acts like it is an occupier, treats its own people as the real en Is it any wonder then, that if Israel refuses to assert its rights, irrationally tries to give away its land to those who haven’t honored any obligations, acts like it is an occupier, refuses to teach its people their own heritage, and treats their own people who wish to keep their heritage as the real enemy, that Jews worldwide would feel detached from Israel? What’s the Bottom Line?
- Shalhevet Pass, Gal Eisenman The good terrorists - by Caroline Glick The Jerusalem Post - October 27, 2005 ...After Wednesday's bombing, the Iranian-sponsored Islamic Jihad claimed responsibility. As is their habit, the terrorists claimed that the massacre of Israeli civilians was their response to the IDF's killing of their terror commander Luai Sa'adi in Tulkarm earlier this week. But then something interesting occurred. In Gaza City, masked Fatah and Islamic Jihad terrorists held a joint press conference where they claimed joint responsibility for the bombing. A Fatah spokesman further announced that any attack against Islamic Jihad will be viewed as an attack against Fatah as well. Disturbingly, no Israeli newspaper other than The Jerusalem Post reported on the press conference. And that isn't all. Like the government, the Israeli media also ignored the fact - reported again exclusively by the Post's Khaled Abu Toameh - that in the same IDF raid where Sa'adi was killed, Majed al-Ashkar, a senior Fatah terror commander, was also killed. The Israeli Hebrew-speaking public has not been informed that the two had spent the past several months establishing joint Fatah-Islamic Jihad cells throughout Judea and Samaria and Gaza. FOR HIS part, Abbas, whom the Sharon-Peres government and the Bush administration uphold as Israel's partner in peace and the fight against terrorism, has been making some interesting moves. Abbas has told the Americans and the Israelis that he is working to end Fatah terrorism by integrating the Aksa Martyrs Brigades into the Palestinian security forces. But on Wednesday night, Channel 2's reporter in Gaza interviewed three such "former" terrorists as they stood in position outside the ruins of the community of Neveh Dekalim. The flag flying from the top of their tent was that of the Aksa Martyr Brigades. One man was in uniform and the other two were wearing civilian clothes. All were brandishing the same AK-47 rifles they received as terrorists. All claimed that they are still part of the Aksa Brigades. As one Palestinian source noted to the Post, the fact that Fatah and Islamic Jihad terrorists are now operating in the same cells raises the prospect that Islamic Jihad operatives will infiltrate the Palestinian security services by claiming to be Fatah terrorists. As members of the security forces, these murderers will receive training at the hands of Russian security personnel who are now operating in Gaza.... 10-31 Is the choice Abbas or the abyss? By Jonathan Tobin Strategy on Palestinians a mockery of president's stands on democracy and terror http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | In any descent into folly, there is a tipping point. Before that happens, there's a chance to reverse course and avert disaster. But after the crucial moment arrives, failure is inevitable, and the only question is just how badly things will actually turn out. No, I'm not talking about the Bush administration's Iraq policy, its hurricane recovery efforts or the fallout from the Valerie Plame leak case. Rather, the really bad mistake Washington is about to commit is one that has generated no outrage from the press or worries about declining poll numbers. Ironically, it was at Bush's meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas last week - an event that provided a respite from bad press - at which the greatest administration blunder of the month occurred: Bush gave Abbas the green light to allow Hamas terrorists to keep their arms and run in next January's Palestinian elections. Not only does this contradict Bush's own challenge to the world that it must choose between terror and democracy; it also gives the lie to the administration's position on what is acceptable in the efforts to establish a government in Iraq. TERROR AND POLITICS DON'T MIX Some of the administration's defenders will claim that excluding Hamas or any other Islamist movement would undermine democracy. But nothing could be further from the truth. A political party in a democracy does not need an army, let alone a terrorist wing. Excluding armed gangs from the status of genuine democratic parties is simple common sense. How, we must ask Bush, can an election be considered fair when the contending parties can intimidate voters and the media at will? Of course, would it be fair to exclude Hamas while including Fatah, which has its own "armed wing" - the Al Aksa Martyrs Brigade - that murdered three Israeli teenagers in cold blood the day before the Washington meeting? But to even ask such questions is to ponder issues that the administration is unwilling to face. The Bush team's approach to the Israel-Arab conflict has boiled down to a simple prayer that somehow Mahmoud Abbas can transform Palestinian politics and culture from one of terrorism and war to one of peace.
- People are so upset about obama pressuring israel, and how bibi and ron lauder are standing up to him… How? By saying that we should be left alone to destroy ourselves by dividing our country and tearing out it’s heart and making it militarily defenseless without using nuclear weapons. Talk about asaf shariv’s joke about no palestinian state – how it makes them appear as if they really are against it. Us pres, russian pres, and the israeli pm. Good news and bad news Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- So, of course, if Israel refuses to assert its rights, acts like it is an occupier, treats its own people as the real en
- We are the gallant rapist. People are so upset about obama pressuring israel, and how bibi and ron lauder are standing up to him… How? By saying that we should be left alone to destroy ourselves by dividing our country and tearing out it’s heart and making it militarily defenseless without using nuclear weapons. Talk about asaf shariv’s joke about no palestinian state – how it makes them appear as if they really are against it. Us pres, russian pres, and the israeli pm. Good news and bad news Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- We request from the State of Israel to stop immediately the neglecting of the evacuees from Gush Katif and North Samaria Gush Katif Update- Feb. 23Gush Katif Committee Update – February 23rd .Prominent leaders from the Left sign a petition for Gush Katif. Last week a group of scholars, writers and ex-politicians from the left held a special press conference in the vicinity of the renewed farms of the evacuees in the Ziqim area, south of Ashqelon. They signed a petition against the neglecting of the evacuees and demanding the immediate involvement of the government in their rehabilitation. The petition was presented by Major General (Res.) Uzi Dayan to Lior Kalfa, Chairman of the Gush Katif Committee at the end of a visit and meeting with the expellees.Public Petition "Evacuated with determination – Rehabilitation with sensitivity.We request from the State of Israel to stop immediately the neglecting of the evacuees from Gush Katif and North Samaria. At certain times a government has the right to evacuate territories and even to uproot communities but the State should also protect the impaired rights of the evacuated civilians, compensate them and rehabilitate them. This is a mutual guarantee that we are all obligated to, this is an order of the morals and of the heart, this is by order of law, this is the credo of democracy.The residents of Gush Katif and North Shomron have been evacuated from their communities for the sake of us all. In spite of this, one year and five months have passed since the evacuation and thousands of evacuees are still unattended in temporary dwellings in caravilla sites. They do not have permanent communities, the unemployment skyrockets, the communities are torn apart, the loss is immense and thousands of evacuees lack a solid ground to restore their lives. Didn't you learn from the experience? Did you forget that refugee camps struck by unemployment are a ticking bomb?We look into the distress of our brothers, we ache with them and we object to their present situation. The neglecting of the evacuees from Gush Katif could prevent the legitimacy of the government to undertake similar moves in the future.We evacuated them with determination; we should care for their rights with sensitivity." The petition was signed among all by A.B. Yeoshua, Arieh Eliav, Sami Michael, Amos Oz, Yossi Sarid, Gila Almagor, David Grossman, Doron Almog, Yaron London, Shulamit Aloni and others.The following statement was published by the Gush Katif Committee The enclosed report from Arutz Sheva describes the condition of the refugees from Gush Katif and the N. Shomron communities following the August 17 forced expulsion by the Sharon government. To date, ALMOST NOTHING has been done to help the refugees – NO COMPENSATION, NO EMPLOYMENT, NO HOMES, NO SCHOOLS, NO SYNAGOGUES, NO FARMS,……..NOTHING – except one temporary shelter followed by another. It is clear that the government MUST fulfill its obligations to the 10,000 displaced persons, but, WHILE THEY WAIT, MANY ARE PENNILESS. Money is being raised for them through many different organizations. AFSI suggests that you may want to give tax-deductible donations through the CENTRAL FUND OF ISRAEL – earmarked for RACHEL-OPERATION BAND-AID, or to FRIENDS OF GUSH KATIF. Checks may be mailed to AFSI, 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205, New York, NY 10128, and we will send them on to the proper parties. SHARON HELD PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EXPELLEES’ PLIGHT By Hillel Fendel Over 10 weeks after the expulsion, and 2/3 of the families evicted from their Gush Katif/Shomron homes have not yet been provided with a temporary solution. Their lawyer holds PM Sharon responsible. Attorney Yitzchak Meron, the head of the Land of Israel Legal Forum that has been representing the Gush Katif expellees on a pro-bono basis, has written a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Excerpts: "Over 70 days have passed since, at your initiative, some 9,000 people were thrown out of their homes. Almost none of them have attained their permanent [housing] solution. At the earliest, they will reach it two years from now, and others will apparently have a final housing solution in only 3-4 years. "No less severe is the fact that 2/3 of the people still do not even have a temporary solution. As it appears now, a large portion of them will reach this only 3-6 months from now. "The temporary solutions themselves involve great suffering for the residents. They will have to live in very crowded conditions of 10-12 square meters [12-14 square yards] per person. Much of their furniture and belongings do not even fit into the small houses; their belongings will have to remain in containers or warehouses. The people have to buy furniture and equipment that fits their new houses - and it goes without saying that the law provides for no compensation for this." "In short, the State has taken away from thousands of expelled residents their houses that they built with great toil, and these people are now without a home. They live in crowded hotel conditions. Some of them will have to remain this way for months to come. Physical and psychological ramifications of this situation are already noticeable, and experts say they will only get worse. "We warned in advance that the state did not concern itself with providing appropriate housing solutions in advance. We warned of a double uprooting, and now it appears that some people will have to be uprooted three and even four times." Meron contests the claim that the residents themselves did not cooperate sufficiently with the Disengagement Authority, but adds, "In any event, ever since the expulsion, certainly there is no such claim! Yet despite this, everything that has been done has been too late, too little and too slow... "Among the issues that have not been solved and that could be solved by your personal intervention are the families that lived in the area for many years - including young couples who were born there and families who rented privately - but because of various technical definitions, [are not yet receiving compensation]. The uprooted people themselves are not even involved in various negotiations between the government and the locations where caravila communities are planned - and they stand helpless on the sidelines.“ ---------------------------- Report # 12: State of Gush Katif, Northern Gaza and Northern Shomron CommunitiesOctober 24, 2005 Submitted by Toby Klein Greenwald Commissioned by Israel Resource News Agency and the Center for Near East Policy Research [All previous reports available through the search engine www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com] No Treatment for Special Needs Children There are three families currently living in Ir Haemuna who have young children who have special needs, and who received regular treatments, paid for by National Insurance, in Neve Dekalim, the “capital” of Gush Katif, before the disengagement. One of the children, a 5-year-old boy, is recognized as a victim of terror, and receives treatments as a result of a mortar injury he suffered when he was only a year old. Since the families did not know how long they would be in Ir Haemuna, they began to arrange for the children to receive treatment shortly before Rosh Hashana. According to one mother, they were told by the supervisor of the local treatment center five minutes away that she was given an instruction by the Prime Minister’s office to not give treatment to any children from Ir Haemuna. A more senior supervisor, who was also the supervisor of Special Education facilities in Gush Katif before the disengagement, stepped into the picture and met with the families on the eve of Succot, and said she would attempt to solve the problem. The Prime Minister’s office did not respond to our question about the incident. More on Ir Haemuna below. Moshav Katif The members of Moshav Katif have been staying in the Ulpana in Kfar Pines since the disengagement. Dvir Cohen, spokesman for Moshav Katif, says that the possible deal with Kibbutz Hafetz Haim fell through because the Disengagement Authority was not willing to pay for meals and the families of Moshav Katif, none of whom, to the best of his knowledge, have received compensation yet, do not have the funds to pay for food, nor do they have the facilities in the small guest house rooms to cook for themselves. The day after Succot, the Katif community will be moving to the King Saul Hotel in Ashkelon (which means that the elementary school children will have to change schools again). The long term plan is to end up in the Lachish area, but it is not clear where they will be between a short stay about a month in the hotel and when they go to Lachish. Among the possibilities being discussed are being in a high-rise apartment building in Ashkelon, being in the Nechusha area in the Negev. There were originally almost 60 families in Moshav Katif. There are currently about 45 left in the Ulpana. The others have scattered to Ir Haemunah, to parents or friends or other private arrangements. This is one more example of a community that is slowly being broken up. Seven sites of the Gush Katif community were visited over the Succot holiday. Ganei Tal - Yad Binyamin 1 [Photos available] The people from Ganei Tal are still living in cramped conditions in Kibbutz Hafetz Haim, although they are complimentary about how the kibbutz and its guest house has received them. They still have only two washing machines for more than 60 families, and have grown used to taking their laundry with them to family and friends when they go to visit. The caravan site, to which they are due to move some time soon after the Succot holiday, is in the process of being completed. People from Ganei Tal have testified that there were homes that were tested for water-proofedness and found faulty. A “tour” of several of these houses confirmed what has been said about the small sizes of the rooms, and the fact that the living-dining-kitchen area is small and not sufficient for a regular sized family, including their kitchen appliances, and normal sized dining and living room furniture. There were no security rooms in the houses, as is required in new buildings by Israeli law. An outside glance at some of the houses revealed crooked “trisim” (closing blinds), which raises the question if those are freak occurrences or an indication of the general quality of the building materials and/or process. The homes are set very close together and the windows face each other so there is no semblance of privacy. One Ganei Tal resident who toured a sample house, said about it, “Aside from the fact that it’s made out of cardboard, it’s not bad.” Nitzan Residents here are from Neve Dekalim and a number of other Gush Katif communities [Photos available] It had rained for approximately fifteen minutes in Nitzan that day, and there were some streets that were filled with water, where the drainage was faulty, and many muddy areas. MK Uzi Landau visited Nitzan that day, met with local residents and then toured one of the homes. At the same time there was a visit by Nobel Prize winner Professor Yisrael (Robert) Aumann and the head of World Mizrachi, Mr. Kurt Rothschild, who said that World Mizrachi had donated succot to Nitzan and elsewhere. The residents spoke with MK Landau about the debilitating issue of unemployment. Aaron Hazut, who had been the head of the secretariat of the Gan Or community before the disengagement, who is himself a victim of terror, led the discussion from the side of the residents. There are currently 270 families living in Nitzan. Hazut says, “We were not among those who said, ‘ It won’t happen’. We didn’t think it would ‘weaken anyone to plan in advance; we wanted to find a solution.” He then went on to describe to MK Landau the problems that they’ve encountered, in spite of their decision to plan. The main issue raise was unemployment. Hazut said, “The government built a local employment office but the ‘solutions’ they’re suggesting are putting salt in the wounds. There is a real feeling of unkept promises. The homes don’t have the proper infrastructure or security. The employment office doesn’t offer any real solutions. We’re trying to create the solutions ourselves.” According to Hazut, there were originally 420 farmers in Gush Katif, of which 200 actually worked the land themselves. Most of those ended up in Nitzan. He said that 520 families would be located in Nitzan in the end, including others from Neve Dekalim. The farmers claimed that the land they were offered was not developed; they were told to use their compensation money to develop it but then there would have left them nothing to build their businesses with afterwards. They say that the compensation is based on what things were worth six years ago, but everything has gone up since then - the raw materials, gas, solar, etc. They valued their worth according to the old prices but they will have to pay the new prices. (This and other issues were raised before the disengagement by attorneys who brought petitions to the High Court of Justice, but ten out of eleven judges found, in most instances, against the people to be disengaged.) Personal comments by farmers: o So we sat [with the Disengagement Authority] before the disengagement, and what good came of it? Only bad - the entire Gush fell apart. You [politicians] also only worked on how to prevent it. Even during that period, those MK’s who considered themselves the “rebels”, should have worried about the “day after”. o Personal comment: “They wouldn’t tell someone who lived on a kibbutz for 20 years, ‘Go rent an apartment on the third floor in a city...’” o Another Farmer: We have to fight for everything. o I was a person who was active, busy, doing business, now is doing nothing. We still have to pay our everyday supplies, but there are some people who have no income since June! o We have to buy storage sheds, different furniture…The ministry of agriculture didn’t find solutions for us. My equipment is thrown in Masuot Yitzhak, and parts of it are always being stolen. o They give us 90 meter homes in these kinds of conditions, and then we have to spend tens of thousands of shekels on storage. I look at the newspapers nothing appears there about this. We expect the people “in charge” to help take care of these things, to have a heart. o We brought millions of dollars into the state of Israel through our exports. This [disengagement] is a national crime. And we’re a society who are law-abiding… o There aren’t closets in the homes, someone had to spend NIS 40,000 just on all new closets. We’re still paying mortgages, and being charged $450 for rent. o Farmer: We, who were super-farmers, are now super-unemployed. I grew 90 dunams of cherry tomatoes, exported tons to Europe, employed 60 workers a typical Gush Katif farmer. When I signed up for unemployment, they wanted me to take a job in a carton factory, folding cartons at minimum wage. Some of my Thai workers, that are working somewhere else, hopefully temporarily, are receiving NIS 5,000 a month. I would have received NIS 3,000 a month. We need something to get up for in the morning. o At the most, we’ll receive 60% of what our real worth is, and that’s the best case scenario. They’re offering compensation that will be able to bring us, at best, to 50% of the output we had before. There is no possibility that we’ll reach what we reached before. We’ve already lost one season. Even if I started building right now, I won’t be able to get it off the ground till September, 2006. o The day before the disengagement we sat with the Director of the Ministry of Agriculture and he said, “I’ll do thus and thus…”A month later, when we sat with him, we saw there are no solutions. They offer land far away, or inappropriate…The Minister of Agriculture doesn’t relate to us, or his deputy minister. o They offered us land that is not sandy, not appropriate to our organic produce for which we developed an expertise. We can’t use up all our compensation on developing land. But we can’t just sit at home doing nothing, either. o It takes an average of three years just to “learn” the agricultural land area. They say that it took the farmers from Yamit five years before they were able to produce effectively again [and they had three years in advance to prepare, and much higher level of compensation TKG]. o We had special terms with Agrexco and others; one has to work hard to be accepted into that “club”; now we have to start from scratch. o At first, they came to us with the offer of going to Kibbutz Nahal Oz, to give us 2,000 dunams there. The government was to take care of the infrastructure. The only problem was that the kibbutz didn’t give the land in the end. A visit was made to several families who live in Nitzan. They were obviously trying to make the most of the situation by arranging the homes nicely, but they all commented that they had to spend money on storage sheds, new closets or furniture that fit the small rooms, and other items, such as trisim (blinds). Unlike the caravans in Yad Binyamin, the homes in Nitzan all come without blinds, even though the homes look into each other. One family the Farjun’s - estimated that they had to spend between NIS 25,000 and NIS 30,000 on items that they would not have had to buy, had they stayed in Gush Katif, and that will not be covered by any compensation. On a very troublesome note: They told MK Landau that three teenagers have been hospitalized in the psychiatric ward in Beer Sheva. “It’s a human tragedy,” said one resident. “There is no treatment for the problems of the teenagers. Not to mention how they feel, when they come home and ask, ‘ Abba, what did you do all day?’ And these are youth who, before the disengagement, when professionals were sent to study them, were considered psychologically the strongest among youth.” MK Landau promised to pursue solutions for the various issues. Gan Or - Kibbutz Yavne [Photo of Dorit and Tzvika available] There are five families from the community of Gan Or who have been absorbed into Kibbutz Yavne on the basis of residents, not members, for the next two years. One family we visited, Dorit and Tzvika Fixler, had settled into a little kibbutz home that was 30% the size of their home in Gan Or. Dorit, who worked full time as an art teacher in Gush Katif, had not yet started working, as there already are art teachers in the kibbutz. Tzvika, who, with Dorit, owned a highly successful bio strawberry growing farm that exported extensively to Europe, is now working as a salaried employee for an irrigation company. They do not know what their long term plan will be and, like the other Gan Or people, are exploring a number of possibilities. The families in Kibbutz Yavne from Gan Or, mostly from the field of agriculture, made arrangements in advance, but because there was not a location that could take all of them, Gan Or was one of the communities that did not succeed in remaining together following the disengagement. Elei Sinai Tent City [Photos available] According to spokesperson Edi Amit, families left in the tent city of Elei Sinai are waiting for the government to make them an offer of a communal settlement. The large Bedouin carpets meant to give a “feel of home” were sunk into the mud, as it had rained that day. A sign facing the highway says, “59 days without a home” (on October 19) and another sign, on a makeshift clinic tent, reads, “We treat people with sensitivity and determination”, a reference to the instructions given to the soldiers who removed people from their homes. Shirat Hayam Hotel in Ashkelon Residents from Bdoloch, Morag, Elei Sinai and elsewhere. [Photos available] There are about 40 families left in this hotel. The hotel, at the instructions of the Disengagement Authority, has allowed the people to remain in the hotel rooms but has closed the dining room. We found them, at dinnertime on chol hamoed Succot, sitting around a little table in the lobby, eating meals out of airline-type packets, that have been donated. For the most part, they buy their own food now. Most of them have not yet received any compensation and are unemployed. Other families from those settlements, who had desperately wanted to stay together as communities, are scattered around the country. Rabbi Yishai Bar-Hen, who had been the rabbi of the secular, northern Gazan communities, gave us a tour, and was astounded to discover, in the process, that the hotel had dismantled the synagogue room. He expressed bitterness and anger about what he called “a lack of basic humanity” being shown the Gazan Jews. Another member of the Elei Sinai community fumed as she showed us the what she referred to as a “one-sided” contract that they had been offered by Kibbutz Carmia [contract available in Hebrew], where there already is an area with caravans for the disengaged, and more are due to be built. “The caravans aren’t ready yet,” she says, “but the Disengagement Authority wants us to move anyway.” She pointed out a clause stating that that they could not have “invited guests” in their homes, without permission of the kibbutz, only guests who “happen by”. [We have a copy of the contract.] They will be charged rent (deducted from their compensation, while they are still paying mortgages), almost $500 including expenses as of August 15, even though they will be moving in some time, they hope, in November. The payment is supposed to come from the Disengagement Authority, but the contract states that they will be required to pay, themselves, if the Authority does not. Also, the evacuees, not the Disengagement Authority, are required to have two guarantors sign the contract. The secular Gazans said they were sorry that, whereas religious settlers were given succot as gifts, they were not offered to most of the secular. When asked if it was common practice for secular Jews in Israel to build succot, they replied, “We all did in Gaza.” Atzmona Ir Haemunah (near Netivot) [Photos available] Atmona’s tent city, called in Hebrew “Ir Haemunah” The City of Faith is located on the outskirts of Netivot, a city in the Negev. It is in an abandoned factory compound. There is a reconstructed temporary playground in an empty area across the road, for Atzmona’s many children. Large industrial tents have been set up and separated by plyboard and various materials into separate living quarters. Concrete and rubber sheeting have supplanted the pastoral community of grass and palm trees. Atzmona was the “holy” settlement in Gush Katif, unique in its combination of deeply committed, religious people who were also welcoming and tolerant to outsiders. They allowed no televisions or secular newspapers into the community, and many of the adults were involved in the study or teaching of Torah; others were farmers who ran the largest plant nursery in the Middle East. It also boasted one of Israel’s most famous pre-army study (“mechina”) programs, headed by a rabbi who had been a pilot in the air force. That program has relocated to Yated, a community in the Negev, close to the Egyptian border and within the range of mortars from Gaza, where about 20 of Atzmona’s families including many farmers and the mechina teachers - went after the disengagement. Most of the others about 57 families - have remained here, while they await a community solution. They are not interested in apartments scattered in various cities, or in what they consider the large, impersonal, Nitzan development, which are the only options they’ve been offered so far by the Disengagement Authority. A handful of families have arranged for other living quarters, for now. There are areas in the compound set aside for study, for prayer, and the second floor of the factory has the school. The Ministry of Education refuses to finance either the school or the pre-schools. Bathrooms and showers for the community are metal stalls standing in a row at one end. A slice of life: The “rabbanit” of Atzmona, Meira Netanel, welcomes us in their tent and explains that, “It’s been a hard day. The concrete is not level, and all the rain flowed down to our side and flooded the tents here.” She spent the day picking items up off the wet floor and trying to push the water out of the tent. Two of her daughters were sitting on a small couch, using plastic chairs as desks. There were crayons, books, and a Hebrew version of Monopoly on nearby stools. Shabbat candlesticks stood on a small white tablecloth on a well-worn wooden bureau, and a bamboo bookshelf held food supplies. Meira said they were about to leave for a funeral near Yated. The 83-year-old man known as “ Saba (Grandfather) Tzadok” Raab (brother of the Israeli poet Esther Raab), who became a media star during the disengagement, had passed away that afternoon. He was the oldest person to be expelled from Gush Katif, and was a favorite with the young people of Atzmona. “Saba Tzadok” was shown on Israeli TV when he spoke with the soldiers and officers who came to remove him from his home in Atzmona. He tried to return a medal to an IDF officer, a medal he received from the State of Israel for his personal war efforts against the Nazi’s, who destroyed his first home in Czechoslovakia. He also lived and fought in Kfar Etzion, that fell in the War of Independence in 1948, with the rest of Gush Etzion, and he sat in a Jordanian prisoners of war camp after that for a year. He lived for 18 years near his son in Atzmona, since the death of his wife, and worked in the Atzmona plant nursery. During the disengagement, he no longer wanted an Israeli medal, hence his attempt to return it. Meira told us that her husband, the rabbi, had visited Saba Tzadok just before Rosh Hashana, and Saba had told him of his joy to at least be living in a new settlement in the Negev, where he would be able to bring a little bit of “tikun”, repair, to the world, following the disengagement. He worked a little bit every day, in spite of his age. When asked what their future plans are, Meira said, “The government is offering us something in the Lachish area [where some other Gush Katif communities would also be] but nothing is finalized yet. There is a secular kibbutz there, with eleven families, of the Hashomer Hatzair [Communist] movement. We’d be perfectly happy for them to stay in the area, but they apparently would want to move, and have asked the government for compensation that it is not willing to pay. So I don’t know how long it will take. We may be here [in the tent city] for months.” Interim possibilities? “Yes, in apartments scattered in various cities. But we want to remain a community.” Her words are confirmed by Yonatan Rom, a member of the Atzmona secretariat, and he adds, “If the government wanted to help us relocate now with the same determination that they expelled us, we’d no longer be living in this tent city.” There is a sign hanging from the “school” balcony, a sheet painted with the words, “It is impossible to stop this faith.” For more information or contact information: Toby Klein Greenwald [email_address] 0523-822104 From abroad: 972-523-822104
- Disengagement Plan Formulated to Escape Sharon Corruption Probe 19:53 Jun 16, '05 / 9 Sivan 5765 Two veteran journalists, based on talks with persons very close to the Prime Minister, say that the Disengagement Plan was hatched up simply to avoid Sharon's indictment in the Greek Island scandal. Journalists Raviv Drucker of Channel Ten TV and Ofer Shelach of Yediot Acharonot newspaper appeared on Nissim Mishal's Channel Two television program last night and summarized the results of their research. The main findings: The evacuation plan was born because Sharon was sure that then-State Prosecutor Edna Arbel would indict him. The decisions on the disengagement plan were made by marginalizing the army people, and without the participation of the ministers and the Cabinet. Sharon proposed to one of the army's top generals that he be a "plant" and report to him on the goings-on in the General Staff. Click here to view the 7-minute Channel Two TV segment - in Hebrew (or right click and select "Save Target As..." to download) Drucker and Shelach said that Sharon's fear of State Prosecutor Arbel was a determining factor in making this plan. "If not for the interrogations, this historic decision would not have been made," they said. "This can be seen by the timetable of events in February 2004" - the appointment of Gen. Eiland to begin working on the plan, the appointment of Meni Mazuz as Attorney General, a summons to Sharon for police interrogation, the rumors that Arbel was about to indict him, and finally the meeting of the Farm Forum [Sharon, his sons and one or two others very close to the Prime Minister]. This Farm Forum "did not state it outright," Drucker said, "but it was in the air that something had to be done, that there had to be some major diplomatic process that would swallow up everything and would change the public agenda [away from the corruption headlines against Sharon] - and they came up with this plan." In answer to a question, Shelach said, "The people who are closest to Sharon told us absolutely that if it wasn't for those police interrogations, this decision [to quit Gaza] would not have been made. This can be seen by the timetable of events..." Drucker and Shelach further found that top Sharon-aide Dov Weisglass (pictured) led the way in preparing the disengagement plan, particularly in a private meeting with Condoleeza Rice in December 2003, and that those in the army and government who could have helped improve the plan for Israel were left out of the decision-making loop. "[National Security Advisor] Giora Eiland was in the midst of preparing a plan as to how Israel could get some benefit from its withdrawal," they said, "when suddenly he was presented with this new [unilateral] plan - and even now he objects to the plan [as it now stands]." Narrator Nissim Mishal noted that the image of Prime Minister Sharon as depicted in the new book, entitled Boomerang, does not jibe with the common perception of him as strong and determined. "Instead," he said, "your book portrays him as one who is scared of police interrogations and led along by the Farm Forum and [top Sharon-aide] Duby Weisglass." Raviv Drucker responded, "We too were surprised by what we found. One government minister told us, 'This is the weakest Prime Minister I have seen, and I have seen many Prime Ministers.' The point is that Sharon is very strong at enforcing his decisions, but is weak at making decisions; he has no spine of his own today, and the best example of this is Duby Weisglass and the disengagement plan... "Sharon wanted only to survive politically. Weisglass led the whole plan. In October 2003, before the plan had started, Weisglass asked staffers in the Prime Minister's Bureau for data on Gaza because he said he felt we had to withdraw from Gaza. Sharon did not yet agree then - but he would come around later. At that time, Weisglass also started spreading hints to other people that if Sharon didn't agree to this plan, he would end up leaving the political arena as an 'insignificant old man.' Weisglass also started pressuring [Defense Minister Sha'ul] Mofaz at this time. But more than anything - Weisglass felt that he had the right key to persuade Sharon." Drucker's colleague Ofer Shelach continued: "When Sharon arrived in office, he didn't know what to do; he was great in tactics, but had no strategy - not on the personal level, and not on the diplomatic-international level. He just doesn't know what to do. Don't forget: after two years in office, he finds himself - the great terror-fighter Arik Sharon - with the highest amount of terror victims ever. And Weisglass - together with the Farm Forum, but mainly Weisglass - takes advantage of this to lead Sharon [by the nose]... "In December '03, after Sharon's Herzliya speech introducing the disengagement concept but when this plan was still very vague - in fact, Sharon was still asking the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff what they thought about taking down just one or two communities - Weisglass goes to Washington all by himself - without his Military Secretary Moshe Kaplinsky or National Security Advisor Giora Eiland, who usually accompany him - and speaks to then-U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice privately. Very senior army officials told us that this was the trip in which Weisglass made the following offer: In the first stage, we would quit Gaza, in the second stage there would be a deep withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, and in the third stage we'd even be willing to talk about the '67 lines. "The important thing to note is that from that moment, there is no contact with those elements who were supposed to help Sharon decide about the plan, figure out what Israel would get in return, and help Israel get the best deal it could. And from that moment, the plan essentially rolls along on its own." Shelach and Drucker revealed that Sharon sought out a top IDF general to be a mole in the IDF General Staff. The authors refused to divulge the name of the general whom Sharon asked to be his "plant." They said, "The general himself told us that Sharon asked him to agree to report back to him on the goings-on in the General Staff... All along, Sharon was unhappy with the army, and always tried to form direct channels of communication [in this way]..." They said that many top officers, such as former Chief of Staff Mofaz, Intelligence Chief Ze'evi-Farkash, and others, were originally very much against the disengagement plan. "Several months before Sharon's adoption of the Disengagement Plan, there was a deliberation amidst the top brass of the IDF in the presence of the Chief of Staff. Many options were presented. One of the options was unilateral disengagement from Gaza. There was unanimous agreement regarding the idea: absolutely no. Mofaz said at the beginning, 'Whoever supports a unilateral retreat, apparently wasn't here for the last two and a half years,' and Farkash said it would be a catastrophe, and the head of IDF Research said it would be the worst thing... but after several months, when they saw that Sharon was so strongly in favor, they amazingly all fell in line and backed it..." "We have a very biting claim," Drucker concluded. "In the past four and a half years, there were many opportunities to end or change the course of the intifada, but because of the way decisions were made, these chances were missed, and the bottom line - it's terrible to say - is that there were many people who were killed [by terrorists during the Oslo War] in vain."
- People are so upset about obama pressuring israel, and how bibi and ron lauder are standing up to him… How? By saying that we should be left alone to destroy ourselves by dividing our country and tearing out it’s heart and making it militarily defenseless without using nuclear weapons. Talk about asaf shariv’s joke about no palestinian state – how it makes them appear as if they really are against it. Us pres, russian pres, and the israeli pm. Good news and bad news Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- WINSTON MID EAST ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY October 11, 2005 Email: gwinston@interaccess.com Please disseminate & re-post. If you publish, send us a copy. Many of our articles appear on Websites at http://www.gamla.org.il/english & freeman.org Outgoing mail is virus-checked. To be removed from this list, please send your Email address. 600 ISRAELI SOLDIERS UNDER PSYCHIATRIC CARE PLUS 7 SUICIDES ...SO FAR! by Emanuel A. Winston, Mid East Analyst & Commentator Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has left a trail of broken bones, pernicious lies and all the things that indelibly mark a Dictator driven by his own interests . The following is unreported by the Leftist Media: Of the 40,000 soldiers sent in to roust Jews from their homes, 600 are under psychiatric care with 7 having committed suicide so far - according to reliable, confidential sources. For every one who has sought help and committed himself to psychiatric facilities, one may assume there are multiples of those numbers who are brooding, depressed who may yet end up in a psychiatric facility or "G-d forbid" commit suicide for their role in being one of Sharon's storm troopers.
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- Dear Friends, Please watch this film. It's 45 minutes long. This film documents the "pro-active steps" that the Israeli government did to "cure" 100,000 Sephardic Jewish children from the skin disease of ringworm during the 1950s. All of these children were children of new Jewish immigrants from Arab lands. They were all "treated" for ringworm even if many of them didn't have ringworm, and even though ringworm goes away all by itself without ANY treatment. Additionally, the parents of these children were only told that their children were going for "a nature outing". http://video.google.com/googleplayer.swf?docId=5681201882713148969 Here’s the new link: (10/07) http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=7749694216572836816&q=the+ringworm+children&total=24&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 After you watch this video, you will wonder why they did this and how could they do this. You may also wonder how does this tie in with the behavior of the Israeli governments to this day (as it DEFINITELY tie in with the actions of the Israeli governments, from Moshe Dayan taking down the flag over the Temple Mount in 67, to the Oslo "Peace" process, to the folly of Sharon's Disengagement, etc.)
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. "[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation," the authors of the report wrote. "A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel." "These results are very upsetting," Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a "comfortable life" in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. "Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state." He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. "Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time," Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- Check out the link. It's a comparison of the Matrix to Judaism on Aish.com http://www.aish.com/seminars/matrix/default.asp I think it's great Now get some sleep -------------------------------------------------------------------- You mean this Girl. [email_address] http://arutzsheva.com/article.php3?id=5679 I like it but, My brother has a point that I agree with. He wrote: &quot;Or maybe the flaws are in the prayers and the Diaspora Jews who penned them long ago...&quot; So now the Anshei Knesset HaGedola are &quot;Galut Jews&quot;. In that case, I'm happy to be counted in their company. mw Shabbat Shalom Shlomo Walfish [email_address] Aish Orchestras and Singers www.aishorchestra.com 718-261-AISH-office 718-228-8881-fax ----------------------------------------------------- From: Rob Muchnick <rmuchnick@TheMetroGroup.com> Date: Thu, 27 Oct 2005 22:28:15 -0400 To: 'Shlomo Walfish' <shlomo@aishorchestra.com> Subject: RE: An Open Letter to American (Orthodox) Jewry Hey, Where did you find this letter? I'd like to contact this guy. Thanks, Rob -----Original Message----- From: Shlomo Walfish [ mailto:shlomo@aishorchestra.com] Sent: Thursday, October 27, 2005 2:52 PM To: shlomo@aishorchestra.com Subject: An Open Letter to American (Orthodox) Jewry An Open Letter to American (Orthodox) Jewry by Orit Oct 26, '05 / 23 Tishrei 5766 First, I'd like to thank you, America, for being a wonderful host to me after the terrible Disengagement. It was nice to spend time with my family in sunny Los Angeles, relax with manicures and pedicures, and zone out to the latest TV shows. I was able to gather new strength, gain new perspectives, and clarify my mission to go back to Israel and change a country. However, it was less fun to go to sh ul o n the High Holidays at my folks' Modern Orthodox synagogue. Services were terribly boring. But what really annoyed me was that no one talked about Gush Katif. The sermons that I heard (or didn't fall asleep to) mentioned Katrina a lot, but rabbis were eerily silent on the topic of the Disengagement. I find this a little disturbing, because all throughout the holidays we pray for the joy and peace of Israel; yet, while thousands of Israelis are in a state of suffering, uncertainty and confusion, no one seems to care, even though the liturgy expresses otherwise. It was also interesting that on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar, when we're supposed to reflect rigorously on the state of our soul, no one really talked about the fate-altering Disengagement. This certainly should have been a hot topic on the Day of Atonement, but again, it was easily evaded, if it was even on anyone's minds. And still, we prayed - all day - for righteousness, honesty and peace of mind - personal and national. But, in America at least, Judaism is not about the Jewish people anymore. Judaism is about having a nice life and wearing nice outfits to sh ul, where you can network with equally smart, successful and well-dressed people. It's about saying morning and evening prayers because it feels holy and idealistic, and, hey, everyone wants to feel good about themselves. For many American Jews, Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur seemed all about how to continue living a nice, suburban life. The Torah might as well be a Tony Robbins self-help book, because it outlines great techniques for living, sprinkled with a few historic traditions and ethical codes. I realized, during my nice stay with you, that you say you care, but deep down, I don't think you really do. You say you love Israel and that you are Zionists, but I don't think you really are. You see, Judaism is not about nationalism to you. Judaism is not about a people living free, independent and strong in their homeland; it's about having a nice house, a good pa rnasa, and a way of life that's safe and comfortable. That's why many of you (and there are exceptions), didn't really like talking about the Disengagement. That's why some of you were even happy that it occurred, and that America was appeased, because God forbid, your generous host - your real nation -- would be mad at you otherwise. As soon as you have to take a stand or interrupt your lifestyle, you retreat to your prayer books and everyday say words like: &quot;Blessed are You, Ha Shem, Who redeems Israel, Who gathers the dispersed of Israel, Who loves righteousness and judgment, Who breaks His enemies and humbles wanton sinners, Who builds Jerusalem, Who sprouts the rays of redemption, Who restores His Presence to Zion.&quot; These are supposed to be your values, but are they? Do you mean these prayers? Do you want these blessings? No, you do not. Because if you did, you'd be taking a lot more risks for Israel than you are now. You'd seriously consider - and what a thought! - fulfilling the mi tzvah o f living in the country. You'd save some money, pick-up your family, and take part in realizing your prayers - the ingathering of the exiles, the building of Jerusalem, the restoration of Zion - no matter how difficult it will be. Or maybe the flaws are in the prayers and the Diaspora Jews who penned them long ago, because it's easy to absolve all responsibility to Ha Shem a nd just say, &quot;Ha Shem r estores Zion, Ha Shem b reaks His enemies, I don't have to do a thing!&quot; But Ha Shem o nce said, through his prophet Isaiah, &quot;Of what are your great many sacrifices to me? I am full of the burnt-offerings and the fat of fed beasts.&quot; Prayers are considered the modern-day substitute for animal sacrifices, and Ha Shem's sick of them. He doesn't want your new moon and Sh abbat i nvocations - Ha Shem c alls them &quot;iniquity.&quot; He says that you can pray all you want, but he won't answer them. Ha Shem w ants us to do what's right and to seek justice - thus says Isaiah. But Torah is not about doing what's right anymore, is it? It's about making enough money to send kids to Jewish day schools, so that one day, they could also have a big house and two cars in the same neighborhood and send their kids to the same school and sh ul, and so on and so forth, forever. And when Israel is at war with her neighbors, and her people are dying, they'll continue to send their kids to Jewish day schools, and say the same prayers in the same sh ul, and maybe they'll send some money to Israel, but they'll be glad they are in their beloved America. When Judaism is too difficult, why put yourself on the line? Why risk your life or your lifestyle? Why shed blood? After all, it's only a religion. And I wouldn't want you to risk your life for a religion. But it's not a religion we're talking about. It's about a nation - the Jewish nation and its people - me, you, your spouse, your kids, your parents. It's about fighting for what is right and pursing justice. But that doesn't seem to be too important these days. So, farewell America. I had a good time. You're a good friend, you can be there for me in difficult times, but I have to catch a plane and start finding myself some justice. Shabbat Shalom Shlomo Walfish [email_address] Aish Orchestras and Singers www.aishorchestra.com 718-261-AISH-office 718-228-8881-fax -----------------------------------------------------
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- 6- In September, 25,000 Israeli Arabs called for the violent overthrow of the Israeli government & the death of the Police Minister and he did nothing. The next day 100,000 settlers had a rally in which they repeatedly urged their followers to use non-violent means of opposition to Disengagement and the government decries that the settlers are preparing the atmosphere for murder.
- As the first Chief Rabbi of the renewed Jewish settlement in the Land of Israel in the early 20th century, Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, wrote in the beginning of his book, Orot (Lights): &quot;The Land of Israel is not something peripheral [to Judaism], it is not an external acquisition or national asset, it is not a means to collective solidarity [national unity], nor even to strengthen the nation's physical or spiritual existence. The Land of Israel is an independent unit [with it's own value], bound by the bond-of-life and a living attachment to the Jewish People, connected to them through a deep inner uniqueness, with the nation's existence.&quot; &quot;Therefore, it is impossible to comprehend, understand or appreciate the essence of this inner unique sanctity and holiness of the Land of Israel, and to reveal and actualize the depth of love for her [by the Jewish People] through any form of human conceptualization, or rational human understanding, but only by the &quot;Spirit of G-D&quot; that is in the soul of the Jewish People and acts on the nation as a whole.“ &quot;The view, that the Land of Israel is only an external, peripheral value serving as a cohesive force, even when it comes to reinforce the Jewish idea in the Diaspora...The Judaism [Jews] in the Diaspora will only be strengthened through a deep involvement with the Land of Israel. Only through their longing for the Land of Israel, will exilic Judaism receive its inherent qualities and essential characteristics. Yearning for Salvation, is the force that preserves Exilic Judaism, it gives the Jews of the Diaspora the power to continue, whereas the Judaism of the Land of Israel, is the very Salvation itself.&quot;
- Young US Jews 'detached' from Israel Ruth Eglash , THE JERUSALEM POST Sep. 6, 2007Young American Jews are feeling increasingly alienated and disconnected from Israel, according to a study to be released Thursday by Professors Steven M. Cohen and Ari Y. Kelman. Based on the responses of more than 1,700 non-Orthodox American Jews of all ages, the study indicates that successively younger age groups show a greater detachment from the State of Israel. According to the report, which was based on statistics collected as part of the 2007 National Survey of American Jews between December 20, 2006, and January 28, 2007, less than half of Jews under the age of 35 believe Israel's destruction would be a personal tragedy, compared to 78 percent of those over 65. Sixty-six percent of Jews aged 50-64 believe it would be a personal tragedy, compared to 54% aged 35-49. &quot;[F]eelings of attachment may well be changing as warmth gives way to indifference, and indifference gives way even to downright alienation,&quot; the authors of the report wrote. &quot;A mounting body of evidence has pointed to a growing distancing from Israel of American Jews, and the distancing seems to be most pronounced among younger Jews. Insofar as younger Jews are less attached to Israel, the inevitable replacement of older with younger birth cohorts leads to growing distancing in the population overall. If so, then American Jews, as a group, may be growing more distant primarily because younger Jews feel less attached to Israel.&quot; &quot;These results are very upsetting,&quot; Jewish Agency for Israel chairman Ze'ev Bielski told The Jerusalem Post , blaming a combination of a &quot;comfortable life&quot; in America and growing materialism for the detachment from Israel. &quot;Who would believe that only 60 years after the Holocaust so many of our own people are not connected to the Jewish state.&quot; He said the only way to combat this growing trend was to invest more in such programs as birthright, which offers a free 10-day tour of Israel to young Jews, and Masa, JAFI's flagship program for young adults. &quot;Looking at this study makes us even more determined to invest in these programs to enforce Jewish identity and in bringing young Jews to Israel for any length of time,&quot; Bielski said, adding that it was also the responsibility of the Israeli government to improve Diaspora relations, invest in Jewish education and connect Jews around the world with people in Israel. Further findings by Cohen, a sociologist of American Jewry and research professor of Jewish Social Policy at Hebrew Union College's Jewish Institute of Religion, and Kelman, an assistant professor of American Studies at the University of California Davis, include findings that a growing number of young American Jews were less supportive of Israel. Only 60% of those under 35 believed caring about Israel was an important part of being Jewish. Among those over the age of 65, 80% believed caring about Israel was a way to express their Jewish identity. Only a little more than half (54%) of those under 35 said they felt comfortable with the idea of a Jewish state, compared to 81% of those over 65. The study, which was commissioned by The Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, is the first in a series of reports by Cohen and Kelman examining the specific facets of young American Jewish identity. In the coming months, further reports will look at gender variation, sexuality, the use of pop culture and the influence of the Internet among North America's young Jewish population.
- WINSTON MID EAST ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY October 11, 2005 Email: gwinston@interaccess.com Please disseminate & re-post. If you publish, send us a copy. Many of our articles appear on Websites at http://www.gamla.org.il/english & freeman.org Outgoing mail is virus-checked. To be removed from this list, please send your Email address. 600 ISRAELI SOLDIERS UNDER PSYCHIATRIC CARE PLUS 7 SUICIDES ...SO FAR! by Emanuel A. Winston, Mid East Analyst & Commentator Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has left a trail of broken bones, pernicious lies and all the things that indelibly mark a Dictator driven by his own interests . The following is unreported by the Leftist Media: Of the 40,000 soldiers sent in to roust Jews from their homes, 600 are under psychiatric care with 7 having committed suicide so far - according to reliable, confidential sources. For every one who has sought help and committed himself to psychiatric facilities, one may assume there are multiples of those numbers who are brooding, depressed who may yet end up in a psychiatric facility or &quot;G-d forbid&quot; commit suicide for their role in being one of Sharon's storm troopers.
- Disengagement Plan Formulated to Escape Sharon Corruption Probe 19:53 Jun 16, '05 / 9 Sivan 5765 Two veteran journalists, based on talks with persons very close to the Prime Minister, say that the Disengagement Plan was hatched up simply to avoid Sharon's indictment in the Greek Island scandal. Journalists Raviv Drucker of Channel Ten TV and Ofer Shelach of Yediot Acharonot newspaper appeared on Nissim Mishal's Channel Two television program last night and summarized the results of their research. The main findings: The evacuation plan was born because Sharon was sure that then-State Prosecutor Edna Arbel would indict him. The decisions on the disengagement plan were made by marginalizing the army people, and without the participation of the ministers and the Cabinet. Sharon proposed to one of the army's top generals that he be a &quot;plant&quot; and report to him on the goings-on in the General Staff. Click here to view the 7-minute Channel Two TV segment - in Hebrew (or right click and select &quot;Save Target As...&quot; to download) Drucker and Shelach said that Sharon's fear of State Prosecutor Arbel was a determining factor in making this plan. &quot;If not for the interrogations, this historic decision would not have been made,&quot; they said. &quot;This can be seen by the timetable of events in February 2004&quot; - the appointment of Gen. Eiland to begin working on the plan, the appointment of Meni Mazuz as Attorney General, a summons to Sharon for police interrogation, the rumors that Arbel was about to indict him, and finally the meeting of the Farm Forum [Sharon, his sons and one or two others very close to the Prime Minister]. This Farm Forum &quot;did not state it outright,&quot; Drucker said, &quot;but it was in the air that something had to be done, that there had to be some major diplomatic process that would swallow up everything and would change the public agenda [away from the corruption headlines against Sharon] - and they came up with this plan.&quot; In answer to a question, Shelach said, &quot;The people who are closest to Sharon told us absolutely that if it wasn't for those police interrogations, this decision [to quit Gaza] would not have been made. This can be seen by the timetable of events...&quot; Drucker and Shelach further found that top Sharon-aide Dov Weisglass (pictured) led the way in preparing the disengagement plan, particularly in a private meeting with Condoleeza Rice in December 2003, and that those in the army and government who could have helped improve the plan for Israel were left out of the decision-making loop. &quot;[National Security Advisor] Giora Eiland was in the midst of preparing a plan as to how Israel could get some benefit from its withdrawal,&quot; they said, &quot;when suddenly he was presented with this new [unilateral] plan - and even now he objects to the plan [as it now stands].&quot; Narrator Nissim Mishal noted that the image of Prime Minister Sharon as depicted in the new book, entitled Boomerang, does not jibe with the common perception of him as strong and determined. &quot;Instead,&quot; he said, &quot;your book portrays him as one who is scared of police interrogations and led along by the Farm Forum and [top Sharon-aide] Duby Weisglass.&quot; Raviv Drucker responded, &quot;We too were surprised by what we found. One government minister told us, 'This is the weakest Prime Minister I have seen, and I have seen many Prime Ministers.' The point is that Sharon is very strong at enforcing his decisions, but is weak at making decisions; he has no spine of his own today, and the best example of this is Duby Weisglass and the disengagement plan... &quot;Sharon wanted only to survive politically. Weisglass led the whole plan. In October 2003, before the plan had started, Weisglass asked staffers in the Prime Minister's Bureau for data on Gaza because he said he felt we had to withdraw from Gaza. Sharon did not yet agree then - but he would come around later. At that time, Weisglass also started spreading hints to other people that if Sharon didn't agree to this plan, he would end up leaving the political arena as an 'insignificant old man.' Weisglass also started pressuring [Defense Minister Sha'ul] Mofaz at this time. But more than anything - Weisglass felt that he had the right key to persuade Sharon.&quot; Drucker's colleague Ofer Shelach continued: &quot;When Sharon arrived in office, he didn't know what to do; he was great in tactics, but had no strategy - not on the personal level, and not on the diplomatic-international level. He just doesn't know what to do. Don't forget: after two years in office, he finds himself - the great terror-fighter Arik Sharon - with the highest amount of terror victims ever. And Weisglass - together with the Farm Forum, but mainly Weisglass - takes advantage of this to lead Sharon [by the nose]... &quot;In December '03, after Sharon's Herzliya speech introducing the disengagement concept but when this plan was still very vague - in fact, Sharon was still asking the Defense Minister and the Chief of Staff what they thought about taking down just one or two communities - Weisglass goes to Washington all by himself - without his Military Secretary Moshe Kaplinsky or National Security Advisor Giora Eiland, who usually accompany him - and speaks to then-U.S. National Security Advisor Condoleeza Rice privately. Very senior army officials told us that this was the trip in which Weisglass made the following offer: In the first stage, we would quit Gaza, in the second stage there would be a deep withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, and in the third stage we'd even be willing to talk about the '67 lines. &quot;The important thing to note is that from that moment, there is no contact with those elements who were supposed to help Sharon decide about the plan, figure out what Israel would get in return, and help Israel get the best deal it could. And from that moment, the plan essentially rolls along on its own.&quot; Shelach and Drucker revealed that Sharon sought out a top IDF general to be a mole in the IDF General Staff. The authors refused to divulge the name of the general whom Sharon asked to be his &quot;plant.&quot; They said, &quot;The general himself told us that Sharon asked him to agree to report back to him on the goings-on in the General Staff... All along, Sharon was unhappy with the army, and always tried to form direct channels of communication [in this way]...&quot; They said that many top officers, such as former Chief of Staff Mofaz, Intelligence Chief Ze'evi-Farkash, and others, were originally very much against the disengagement plan. &quot;Several months before Sharon's adoption of the Disengagement Plan, there was a deliberation amidst the top brass of the IDF in the presence of the Chief of Staff. Many options were presented. One of the options was unilateral disengagement from Gaza. There was unanimous agreement regarding the idea: absolutely no. Mofaz said at the beginning, 'Whoever supports a unilateral retreat, apparently wasn't here for the last two and a half years,' and Farkash said it would be a catastrophe, and the head of IDF Research said it would be the worst thing... but after several months, when they saw that Sharon was so strongly in favor, they amazingly all fell in line and backed it...&quot; &quot;We have a very biting claim,&quot; Drucker concluded. &quot;In the past four and a half years, there were many opportunities to end or change the course of the intifada, but because of the way decisions were made, these chances were missed, and the bottom line - it's terrible to say - is that there were many people who were killed [by terrorists during the Oslo War] in vain.&quot;
- WINSTON MID EAST ANALYSIS & COMMENTARY October 11, 2005 Email: gwinston@interaccess.com Please disseminate & re-post. If you publish, send us a copy. Many of our articles appear on Websites at http://www.gamla.org.il/english & freeman.org Outgoing mail is virus-checked. To be removed from this list, please send your Email address. 600 ISRAELI SOLDIERS UNDER PSYCHIATRIC CARE PLUS 7 SUICIDES ...SO FAR! by Emanuel A. Winston, Mid East Analyst & Commentator Israel's Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has left a trail of broken bones, pernicious lies and all the things that indelibly mark a Dictator driven by his own interests . The following is unreported by the Leftist Media: Of the 40,000 soldiers sent in to roust Jews from their homes, 600 are under psychiatric care with 7 having committed suicide so far - according to reliable, confidential sources. For every one who has sought help and committed himself to psychiatric facilities, one may assume there are multiples of those numbers who are brooding, depressed who may yet end up in a psychiatric facility or &quot;G-d forbid&quot; commit suicide for their role in being one of Sharon's storm troopers.
- So, of course, if Israel refuses to assert its rights, acts like it is an occupier, treats its own people as the real en
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- They oppose a referendum on disengagement because it would be bad for democracy. They support refusal to serve in Judea and Samaria, but they were against refusal to expel Jews. They claim Abbas is very different from Arafat. They accept money from foreign European governments and hire planes to fly over Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria. Then they post these maps of the towns online. Terrorists have used these maps to infiltrate the towns and kill Jews. This is the definition of espionage. Their American Founder said: Join us because you don't want the future to belong to the zealots, the fundamentalists, the territorial maximalists who would rather spill Jewish blood than see peace come to the Land of Israel. This is odd, considering Peace Now was the group that filed the lawsuit to destroy Amona, and they've never condemned anything that the police did there. The man who came here two weeks ago, Noam Shelef, wrote a long article on Amona and he didn't condemn anything done to the settlers, but he claimed they used equal violence against the police. this letter from Rosenblum shows their hypocrisy about refusal, their eyes closed about Abbas, their disregard for democracy (by being against a referendum) ------------------ Letters of Support &quot;Which Side Are You On?&quot; by Mark Rosenblum Professor Rosenblum with students Dear Friend: I am concerned about Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's safety. Sharon–the bulldozer who led the settlement juggernaut. Sharon–the uncorked genie of Israeli politics. And now, Sharon–the first Israeli leader to begin a withdrawal from the territories and dismantling of settlements there. The first Israeli leader to face a Palestinian leadership not run by Yasser Arafat. In a world full of ironies, Ariel Sharon is now the man Israel's &quot;peace camp&quot; looks to to take the first steps towards ending the occupation. And so, I'm worried about Ariel Sharon. I'm worried he will die like Yitzhak Rabin. At the hands of a fellow Jew. Some 9,000 Israeli settlers will be uprooted from Gaza and the northern West Bank settlements in July, according to plans. And the opposition is mounting. Supported by hardliners in the Knesset (including members of Sharon's own Likud party), provided with a religious hechsher by prominent rabbis in the territories and funded by right-wing American Jewish groups, Israeli extremists are emboldened to back their opposition to the withdrawal with violent action. It is out of this chaos that another Yigal Amir (Prime Minister Rabin's murderer) might emerge, an unknown with a gun, ready to murder Israel's elected leader because, he says, his rabbi said it was the moral thing to do. This must stop. It is time for the forces of sanity and pragmatism to join together and make clear that we are the majority. On March 19, thousands of Israelis gathered in Tel Aviv under the banner, &quot;Israel is getting out of Gaza.&quot; Organized by Shalom Achshav, Israel's Peace Now movement, the demonstrators were a fraction of the overwhelming majority of Israelis who support a negotiated settlement with the Palestinians, leading to separate, independent Israeli and Palestinian states, with security for Israel. Recent surveys show that 75 percent of Israelis support renewing political negotiations with the Palestinians. And 52 percent of Palestinians oppose military operations against Israeli targets. That number is up from 29 percent just six months ago. As the U.S. sister organization of Peace Now, Americans for Peace Now (APN) provides 60 to 90 percent of the funds that Peace Now in Israel uses for its activities. APN's support is crucial to counter the right-wing American Jews and Evangelical Christians who help finance the settler movement and its opposition to a negotiated settlement. APN stands as proof that there are American Jews who will not bite every time right-wing groups dangle another red herring to scuttle progress toward peace. As a supporter of APN, you can help keep American public opinion on course to follow the &quot;Road Map&quot; that President George Bush designed to lead to an accommodation between Israel and the Palestinians. American support is crucial to successful negotiations–and welcome by both sides. In March, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research in Ramallah and the Harry S. Truman Research Institute for the Advancement of Peace at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem found that 55 percent of Israelis and 79 percent of Palestinians believe the U.S. should increase its involvement in trying to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Beyond the poll numbers, experience makes it clear that no agreement will be reached without active involvement of the United States. America is Israel's only trustworthy ally. And an American public opinion that sides with a negotiated settlement is crucial to propelling the U.S. government into action. APN works to build American consensus on peace and demonstrates that the power to act is on our side. Just look at what the other side is doing. - A year ago, the Rabbinical Council of Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip released a statement that the uprooting of settlements is against Jewish law and that no one, including soldiers, should be involved in such an action. - Since then, the implications of that ruling have begun to take a hideous form. Former Chief Rabbis Mordechai Eliahu and Avraham Shapira have called on soldiers and police to refuse orders to evacuate settlers. Rabbi Shapira compared the possible evacuations to desecrating the Sabbath and eating unkosher food. [but they support the refusal of soldiers to serve in j&s] - The spiritual leader of the Shas Party, Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, made headlines when he called Sharon &quot;evil&quot; because of the disengagement plan. He added, &quot;God will strike him with one blow and he will die. He will sleep and not awake.&quot; Although they seem perfectly clear, Rabbi Yosef later said those comments had been misunderstood. - The desecration of the tombs of three national heros: the assassinated prime minister Yitzhak Rabin, Israel's founding father David Ben Gurion and Theodor Herzl, the original visionary of Zionism. - In February, Chabad rabbis rallied in Jerusalem. Wearing sackcloth as a demonstration of mourning, they accused Sharon of leading Israel to &quot;another Holocaust,&quot; according to the Jerusalem Report. - In March, Ha'aretz reported that settlers in several areas around the West Bank attacked Palestinian laborers in what the Israel Defense Forces described as &quot;an attempted lynching.&quot; The extreme right will stop at nothing to put a spoke in the wheels of disengagement, and the current clashes are merely an omen of what is to come, the newspaper editorialized. - When Israeli soldiers recently tried to remove two trailers from an outpost in the West Bank, they were met by hundreds of angry settlers. One settler cocked his gun and pointed it at the head of a soldier. Professor Assa Kasher, who wrote the IDF code of ethics, put it best: &quot;I hear these things and I can't believe my ears,&quot; he said. &quot;The rabbis have not learned a thing from the assassination of Yitzhak Rabin and are playing with fire by encouraging soldiers to disobey orders to dismantle settlements.&quot; Will the withdrawal from Gaza and four West Bank settlements lead to violence, with extremist settlers–buoyed by rulings of their rabbis--attacking Israeli soldiers and Palestinian civilians? Will a right-wing extremist emerge from the shadows and attempt to avert the withdrawal by threatening the nation with civil war, by attacking the mosques on the Temple Mount or by assassinating Israel's elected leader? In the lead-up to the withdrawal in July, which side are you on? Where you stand on this question may also dictate what you think about Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas. Elected in a free and fair election, Abbas is a very different kind of leader than the autocratic, duplicitous Yasser Arafat. Abbas recently won praise from the head of Israel's military intelligence, Aharon Zeevi Farkash, for his record so far in fighting terrorism. &quot;Besides talking, [Abbas] has also been taking action,&quot; Farkash said. Rightist American opponents of negotiations point to Abbas' record as the longtime No. 2 man in the PLO: &quot;Abbas is a terrorist!&quot; &quot;Abbas is a Holocaust Denier!&quot; their propaganda screams. They say: &quot;would you support Saddam Hussein's deputy to take over Iraq?&quot; No doubt that Abbas is a Palestinian Nationalist and not a born-again Zionist, however, a more fruitful analogy would be, &quot;Would you have supported Anwar Sadat's offer in 1977 to come to Jerusalem?&quot; The Egyptian president, after all, launched the Yom Kippur War. Many at the time opposed negotiating with Sadat. Because they did not prevail, Israel has had peace with Egypt for more than a quarter century and a precedent was set for peacemaking with Israel's other neighbors. No one involved in the Arab-Israeli conflict can boast of clean hands. Not Abbas. Not Sharon. The practical, realistic question about Abbas is not, &quot;Can he whistle Hatikva?&quot; but &quot;Does he have the will, agility and support to halt terrorism and deliver a negotiated settlement?&quot; As Abbas proves to be–as Margaret Thatcher said about Mikhail Gorbachev–&quot;someone we can do business with,&quot; which side will you be on? Shalom Achshav and Americans for Peace Now believe there is only one side–the side that promotes a secure, flourishing, Israel through negotiations with the Palestinians leading to a contiguous Palestinian state. And to do that we need you to join with us. To push the zealots and messianists to the fringes [hello, but all Jews prayed for 2000 years for moshiach, and it is the goal of judaism, and now you mock them]. To soberly and rationally assess the chances for peace. That's what Shalom Achshav and APN do. It was Shalom Achshav and its Settlements Watch project that revealed the Israeli government's complicity in establishing illegal outposts on the West Bank. [by accepting money from european governments and posting aerial maps online of Jewish settlements, giving terrorists perfect information on their targets.] By accepting foreign money and making this info available, you are breaking the law and helping Jews get murdered. This is called espionage. It was Shalom Achshav and APN that helped publicize the potential land grab by the Israeli government in East Jerusalem and contributed to forcing its halt. It was Shalom Achshav and APN that refuted the propaganda of the anti-peace camp in our newspaper and magazine ads, and continues to do so. {I don't belong to the anti-peace camp. I belong to the true peace through Judaism camp. You belong to the camp of Land for False-Peace. Please advise me of one obligation which the arabs have lived up to which they agree to.] It was APN that conducted a forum on Capitol Hill, during which the senior diplomats of Israel, the Palestinians, Egypt, and Jordan spoke together, for the first time, about the unique opportunity that exists for Israel and the Palestinians. Ambassador Ayalon, of Israel, said about the event, &quot;I think it is very timely and I think that it has been quite some time since there was a forum which included the ambassadors from Jordan, Egypt, Israel, and a representative of the PLO together in one forum. I think maybe also it symbolizes the changes of the time, and I hope the time is changing.&quot; This cautious optimism was the dominant message from the four diplomats. Something else came out of the Ambassador's conversation with reporters after the event. One correspondent asked if Ayalon's participation in a program sponsored by APN would cause political problems for him at home. Ayalon did not flinch. He said that it is entirely natural for the Israeli embassy to work with APN. Continuing, he observed that APN is the Zionist organization with the credibility and relationships needed to invite the Arab ambassadors. It was Shalom Achshav that kept the communications channels open with like-minded Palestinians during the intifada so, at the right moment, there would be someone to talk with. It was APN that brought a nuanced, progressive approach to Israel advocacy on college campuses. It was Shalom Achshav and APN that revealed that municipal budgets from settlements are used for anti-government incitement. In fact, as I write this letter, Shalom Achshav's petition to the Israeli courts has, at least, temporarily halted the transfer of funds to Yesha Council of Settlements. Join us if you believe that as we grow in numbers we grow stronger. Join us because you believe that the majority of Israelis want to negotiate peace with the Palestinians.[but you opposed a referendum to prove it] Join us because you don't want the future to belong to the zealots, the fundamentalists, the territorial maximalists who would rather spill Jewish blood than see peace come to the Land of Israel. [see Amona. it seems that you would rather spill Jewish blood than me.] Join us if you believe that Israel must choose security over settlements, demography over geography and democracy over theocracy. Join us if you believe that these radical settlers can't have a veto over Israeli democracy. Join us so that, once and for all, we can forge an overwhelming and undeniable consensus to end the occupation. By now you see the potential cost of failure could be more than the life of a prime minister. Please make your tax-deductible contribution today to Americans for Peace Now. Because there is only one side to be on. [ THIS IS SO PEJORATIVE.] Click HERE to see APN's &quot;Letter to Christian Friends of Israel&quot; from Rabbis Joy Levitt & Michael Strassfeld http://www.peacenow.org/about/press.asp?cid=3491 Many right wing advocates of a referendum also argue that it is necessary because Ariel Sharon betrayed his election pledges--as if he had never promised &quot;painful compromises for peace&quot;; as if Menachem Begin didn't reverse himself in giving up Sinai for peace with Egypt; and as if election pledges (in Israel and elsewhere) aren't nearly always treated with cynicism by voter and politician alike. http://www.peacenow.org/briefs.asp?rid=&cid=358 these boys aren't big on democracy. Opponents of a referendum begin by noting that under Israel's parliamentary system, and particularly its electoral system (the entire country is one constituency, thereby ensuring representation for small parties), it is the Knesset that must make decisions such as disengagement. According to this argument, a referendum would undermine the authority of the Knesset; opponents of disengagement are simply trying to bypass the sovereign will of the democratically-elected Knesset, which approved disengagement by a solid (Jewish!) majority. Secondly, if there is ever to be room for a referendum, this is not the issue. The Knesset decided in 1999 that a peace agreement in which Israel gives up territory to which Israeli law has been applied, such as the Golan and East Jerusalem, must be approved by 61 MKs and a simple majority in a referendum. That set the standard. In the case of the settlements, Israelis who consistently opposed their construction over the past four decades were never invited to vote in a referendum concerning their establishment; why should there be a referendum regarding their dismantlement, particularly when it repeatedly emerges that settlements and outposts were built in violation of Israel's own legal statutes and regulations? Indeed, the recent advisory ruling of the International Court of Justice in The Hague clearly establishes that the settlements are illegal, thereby further challenging the logic of a referendum. Many advocates of disengagement also point out that the most hard line settlers, those who threaten violence in the event of disengagement, will never accept the outcome of a referendum anyway, since they claim to answer to a higher authority. In other words, a referendum won't prevent internal strife over the disengagement issue. Some of the opponents of a referendum among the smaller ultra-orthodox and Arab parties are, at best, ambivalent about disengagement, but fear the precedent of a referendum nevertheless. If a simple majority of the interested public can determine the fate of disengagement, they argue, then it could also in future determine that all yeshiva students must serve in the army, or could vote to reduce the rights of non-Jewish citizens. In other words, referenda could become a highly divisive tool in Israeli society, where checks and balances are in any case not always evident. This brings us back to reality. Even if the Likud attempts to pass a referendum bill in the Knesset, the majority in that body opposes the idea. This is as it should be. The referendum demand stands on flimsy sovereign foundations. -------------------------- He concludes by saying that Peace Now's role at Amona was just to ask the gov. to enforce the law. How about the law in 93 when Rabin and Peres and their gang broke the law by speaking with the people who call themselves palestinians. It was called treason, which is a capital crime. Do you support enforcing this law? How about telling soldiers to refuse orders to serve in j&s? But opposing those who refused to evict Jews? - find a paper on this. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Settlements in Focus Settlements in Focus - Vol. 2, Issue 3: Amona Redux Index and Link to all issues of APN's &quot;Settlements in Focus&quot; (published 2/17/06) Settlements in Focus Amona Redux (Vol. 2, Issue 3) A publication of Americans for Peace Now What is the timeline of legal decisions that led up to the recent demolitions at the illegal outpost of Amona? The illegal outpost of Amona was first constructed in late 1995. Demolition orders for nine structures at Amona – all built illegally on land that is privately owned by (and appropriately registered to) Palestinians – were issued in October 2004 by the Civil Administration. July 2005: The legal action surrounding Amona opened on July 3rd, 2005, when Peace Now filed a petition with the Israeli High Court charging Israeli authorities with failing to implement stop-work orders at the site, and with failing to implement demolition orders issues in October 2004 regarding illegally built buildings at the site. In response to the Peace Now petition, on July 5th, 2005, the High Court of Justice issued an interim injunction requiring the Civil Administration and the District Police to prevent the habitation of structures in question and to enforce the previously issued stop-work orders. Also in response to the Peace Now petition, settlers began moving into the illegal structures. Faced with expulsion, on July 10th the settlers left the houses. August 2005: On August 4th, 2005, the State committed to the High Court of Justice that it would implement demolition orders against the nine illegally built permanent dwellings at Amona after the completion of the Gaza disengagement. November 2005: At the beginning of November 2005 – two months after the completion of the disengagement from Gaza and apparently after pressure from the High Court – the State Attorney's Office informed the Court that Israeli Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz had decided that the demolition orders would be implemented by the end of January 2006. On November 24th, the High Court of Justice instructed the State to inform the Court by January 5th, 2006, of the status of the State's preparations to carry out the demolitions. January 2006: At the beginning of January 2006, settlers, some of whom had moved back into the illegally built structures in Amona following their &quot;voluntary&quot; departure in July 2005, began a series of stalling tactics in court. On January 3rd they filed a petition under the name &quot;the Agricultural Joint Community of Settlement Ltd – Amona.&quot; The petition asked the High Court of Justice to dismiss the original Peace Now petition, since Peace Now had not included among its respondents either this heretofore unknown group or two of the current residents of the outpost. On January 18th the High Court of Justice held a hearing regarding the original Peace Now petition. During the hearing the Court made two decisions: first, it vacated the original Peace Now petition, since the State had clearly indicated its intention to demolish buildings in question. In doing so, the settlers' frivolous petition became irrelevant. In addition, the Court issued an injunction blocking the demolition of the 9 structures for another week, in order to give the settlers the opportunity to file any additional petitions. The settlers responded by, not surprisingly, filing a petition against the demolitions. On January 29th the High Court rejected this petition, clearing the last hurdle, or removing the last pretext, blocking the State from carrying out the demolitions. In rejecting the settlers' petition, Justice Michael Cheshin was strongly rebuked the settlers, noting that, &quot;I visited the Amona website, and it turns out that people are calling for violent resistance if the petition is rejected...The court does not aid whoever judges himself. These calls are not against the British occupier, but against the elected authorities of the State of Israel. The court is not a grocery store and the petitioners must bow their heads and accept the verdict. To say that they will engage in a violent battle if the verdict goes against them constitutes contempt of court.&quot; February 2006: Settler stalling tactics continued until the very last moment. At 3am on February 1st – after Israeli security forces had already begun to mobilize around Amona, the settlers contacted High Court Justice Elyakim Rubenstein to file yet another petition to stop the demolitions. The petition proposed that the Court block the demolition order and that the settlers would make plans to move the illegal structures onto land that was not privately owned. Rubenstein granted an injunction against the demolitions – leading to celebrations among some of the settlers. By 9:00 a.m. a special three-judge panel had convened and voted 2-1 to reject the petition (with Rubenstein voting in the minority). In considering this final tactic by the settlers, Justice Ayala Procaccia also rebuked the settlers for their tactics and their timing, stating &quot;Why was there a need to wait for the last day, with forces already on the ground, and only then come up with proposals that may be nice, but the timing is very, very difficult. This entire move should have been undertaken several months ago, before there was a concrete date for the evacuation.&quot; Finally, on February 1st following hours of serious clashes with settlers and settler supporters, security forces succeeded in evacuating settlers and protesters from the nine illegally-built structures at Amona and implementing the October 2004 demolition orders. For more details on the history of Amona, see Settlements in Focus, Vol. 1, Issue 6 . Does this mean the outpost of Amona is gone? No. The demolition orders dealt only with a small area of Amona. The rest of this illegal outpost – consisting of more than 30 families living in mobile homes and a few semi-permanent houses – was not impacted by the legal case. Moreover, while the basis for the demolitions was the fact that the nine homes in question were illegally built on privately owned Palestinian land, even after the demolitions the land is still not accessible to its Palestinian owners. Why didn't the orders apply to the entire illegal outpost? As discussed in a previous edition of Settlements in Focus ( Vol. 2, Issue 2 ), the Israeli High Court has historically considered settlement-related issues to be political matters, rather than legal ones, and has thus refrained from getting involved or ruling on the legality of the settlers' actions. This position has been based on, among other things, the premise that settlement activities do not involve the confiscation of privately-owned land. However, in the case of Amona, and specifically the site on which the nine demolished structures were located, the court was faced with settler actions on privately-owned land (whose ownership was clearly established). Recognizing that Amona presented the High Court with a new and serious challenge – one in which settler behavior was so egregious that it would be difficult for the High Court to ignore it – the Peace Now petition intentionally focused only on the area of the outpost where the settlers had infringed on recognized property rights of the Palestinian owners, and had done so egregiously (i.e., with the construction of permanent structures). As a result, the Court's decision only dealt with these specific structures. Peace Now views the Amona case as a test case, and is encouraged by the fact that the High Court determined in the end that the rule of law must take precedent over political issues – as evidenced clearly when the High Court rejected the arguments of the settlers' lawyer on January 29th, 2006, when he argued that the case is a political one and that carrying out the demolitions so close to an Israeli election would hurt Israel's democracy. Peace Now is already using the Amona case as a precedent in other legal action against outposts, and it is hoped that the Court will continue to deal with the issue of outposts not as political issues but mainly as legal ones. How bad were the clashes between settlers and security forces at Amona? Settlers began gathering their supporters at Amona overnight on February 1st, and by the morning, when the High Court rejected the settlers' final petition to stop the demolitions, thousands of protesters, including many young people, had gathered at the site. As reported on the newspaper Yedioth Ahronoth's website, security forces arriving in the area at 3:00 a.m. &quot;were greeted with a barrage of rocks, oil, paint, and water.&quot; Regarding the actual operation, the paper reported that: &quot;Security forces completed the takeover of nine homes in the illegal West Bank outpost of Amona Wednesday following three and a half hours of unprecedented clashes with settlers. The evacuation degenerated into a violent confrontation between thousands of settlers and thousands of soldiers and police officers. By early afternoon hours, 200 people were reported to have sustained injuries, including 80 members of the security forces, most of them police officers. At least one police officer sustained very serious head wounds and was airlifted to hospital after he lost consciousness. Knesset Members Effie Eitam and Arieh Eldad, who arrived at the site to support the settlers' struggle, were also wounded [another right-wing Knesset Member, Benjamin Elon, was also injured].&quot; In addition, around 50 people were arrested. What was the public reaction to the demolitions and the confrontations? In general the Israeli public has supported the evacuation and demolition of the illegal structures in the Amona outpost, and has generally blamed the settlers for the violence that occurred at the site. - A &quot;Dialogue&quot; poll of adult Israelis (including Israeli Arabs) carried out on January 31st for Ha'aretz newspaper and Israel's Channel 10 (and published on February 2nd), asked people if they &quot;support or oppose the forceful evacuation of the Amona outpost.&quot; Of those polled, 58.8% said &quot;support,&quot; 22.1% said &quot;oppose,&quot; and 19.1% gave some other answer. - A &quot;Dahaf&quot; poll of 500 adult Israelis (including Israeli Arabs) for Yedioth Ahronoth carried out on February 1st (and published on February 3rd), asked people, &quot;should the illegal outpost Amona have been evacuated?&quot; 58% of those polled answered &quot;yes,&quot; and 34% answered &quot;no.&quot; The poll also asked, &quot;Who is responsible for the violence that broke out during the course of the evacuation?&quot; 57% of those polled responded &quot;settlers,&quot; 16% responded &quot;army/police,&quot; 10% responded &quot;both sides,&quot; and 4% blamed &quot;Olmert/government.&quot; - A &quot;Geocartography&quot; poll commissioned by Army Radio and carried out the morning of February 2nd asked people to assess blame for the confrontations and violence at Amona (with those polled apparently permitted to select more than one answer). Of those polled, 70% blamed the violence at Amona on &quot;past Israeli governments who encouraged the settler enterprise,&quot; 64% blamed the settler leadership (the Yesha Council), 57% blamed the rabbis who indoctrinated the protesting youth, 51% blamed the Israeli government for not finding a peaceful solution, 39% blamed the violence on settlers and their supporters, and 31% said the blame was shared by the settlers and the police. Of those polled, 63% said that they &quot;understood the settlers' sense of betrayal&quot; but &quot;their use of violence was unjustified.&quot; What does the violent resistance in Amona mean for future actions against outposts? Some observers believe that the settlers – and in particular the segment of the settler youth that is remains energized, alienated, and angered by the Gaza disengagement – deliberately sought to raise the stakes at Amona by engaging in far more violent resistance than in the past. In doing so, they wanted to send a message about the political costs of any future settlement evacuations in the West Bank. Early indications are, however, that their tactics may have backfired. Acting Prime Minister Olmert responded forcefully to the reports of settlers attacking Israeli soldiers, stating at a Knesset meeting that &quot;This is a phenomenon that cannot continue or be accepted. When bricks are thrown at the heads of soldiers and police officers, a line has clearly been crossed.&quot; He reportedly went on to say that, &quot;This is reaching a scope we haven't seen before. This was an organized activity on the part of the settlers for political ends. The State of Israel will not tolerate it.&quot; Other senior officials took a similarly hard line, including Cabinet Minister Roni Bar-On, who stated that, &quot;We will not allow any law-breaker, even if he is a member of Knesset...to harm the State of Israel as a state of law. We restrained ourselves in Gush Katif. We restrained ourselves in Hebron, in Yitzhar, and in outposts for a long time, even if people there physically injured security forces. That's finished. The era of restraint has come to an end. From now on, this will be a nation of law, which enforces the law.&quot; He also said that, &quot;Whoever breaks the law, whoever harms the army, whoever harms the police, will pay the price, and immediately. No one in the State of Israel will be above the law,&quot; he concluded. Bar-On also criticized settler leaders for cowardice in &quot;hiding behind children&quot; and inciting them to climb onto rooftops and attack security forces evacuating Amona. The American Jewish newspaper, The Forward, commented on January 27th, 2006: &quot;...The practice of placing the cause above the law extends back to the earliest days of building settlements beyond the 1967 border. The outposts did, however, get a particular push from Sharon, longtime patron of the settler movement. While serving as foreign minister in 1998, Sharon declared on Israel Radio that settlers 'should run, should grab more hills, expand the territory.... Everything we don't grab will be in their hands.' It is either unnerving or reassuring, therefore, to hear Ra'anan Gissin, Sharon's longtime media adviser and now Olmert's spokesman, explain by phone that there is 'a matter of principle' of 'the rule of law.' ...The settlers 'must decide, philosophically, what kind of state they want,' he said. Placing ideals over law risks a return to the state of nature, to anarchy. 'They need to be read the liberal, democratic thinkers,&quot; Gissin said, &quot;and then they'll understand.' Gissin's lecture is just one sign that the political current has shifted. Even hawkish Likud leader Benjamin Netanyahu expressed support this week, in a policy speech, for 'dismantling outposts that lack legal approval,' promising that he would do so if elected prime minister...&quot; All of this notwithstanding, it was also reported in this same news cycle that Foreign Minister Tzippi Livni has begun secret talks with the Settlers Council to try to reach an agreement concerning outposts. Under such an agreement, settlers would voluntarily dismantle several illegal outposts, and in return would attempt to obtain retroactive approval for the remaining outposts with legal problems. Such a compromise would not be without precedent. In October 1999 then-Prime Minister Barak was faced with the existence of 42 illegal outposts. Following negotiations with settlers, Prime Minister Barak chose a &quot;compromise&quot; course under which only 12 of outposts were evacuated, all but one o
- Gush Katif Update- Feb. 23Gush Katif Committee Update – February 23rd .Prominent leaders from the Left sign a petition for Gush Katif. Last week a group of scholars, writers and ex-politicians from the left held a special press conference in the vicinity of the renewed farms of the evacuees in the Ziqim area, south of Ashqelon. They signed a petition against the neglecting of the evacuees and demanding the immediate involvement of the government in their rehabilitation. The petition was presented by Major General (Res.) Uzi Dayan to Lior Kalfa, Chairman of the Gush Katif Committee at the end of a visit and meeting with the expellees.Public Petition &quot;Evacuated with determination – Rehabilitation with sensitivity.We request from the State of Israel to stop immediately the neglecting of the evacuees from Gush Katif and North Samaria. At certain times a government has the right to evacuate territories and even to uproot communities but the State should also protect the impaired rights of the evacuated civilians, compensate them and rehabilitate them. This is a mutual guarantee that we are all obligated to, this is an order of the morals and of the heart, this is by order of law, this is the credo of democracy.The residents of Gush Katif and North Shomron have been evacuated from their communities for the sake of us all. In spite of this, one year and five months have passed since the evacuation and thousands of evacuees are still unattended in temporary dwellings in caravilla sites. They do not have permanent communities, the unemployment skyrockets, the communities are torn apart, the loss is immense and thousands of evacuees lack a solid ground to restore their lives. Didn't you learn from the experience? Did you forget that refugee camps struck by unemployment are a ticking bomb?We look into the distress of our brothers, we ache with them and we object to their present situation. The neglecting of the evacuees from Gush Katif could prevent the legitimacy of the government to undertake similar moves in the future.We evacuated them with determination; we should care for their rights with sensitivity.&quot; The petition was signed among all by A.B. Yeoshua, Arieh Eliav, Sami Michael, Amos Oz, Yossi Sarid, Gila Almagor, David Grossman, Doron Almog, Yaron London, Shulamit Aloni and others.The following statement was published by the Gush Katif Committee The enclosed report from Arutz Sheva describes the condition of the refugees from Gush Katif and the N. Shomron communities following the August 17 forced expulsion by the Sharon government. To date, ALMOST NOTHING has been done to help the refugees – NO COMPENSATION, NO EMPLOYMENT, NO HOMES, NO SCHOOLS, NO SYNAGOGUES, NO FARMS,……..NOTHING – except one temporary shelter followed by another. It is clear that the government MUST fulfill its obligations to the 10,000 displaced persons, but, WHILE THEY WAIT, MANY ARE PENNILESS. Money is being raised for them through many different organizations. AFSI suggests that you may want to give tax-deductible donations through the CENTRAL FUND OF ISRAEL – earmarked for RACHEL-OPERATION BAND-AID, or to FRIENDS OF GUSH KATIF. Checks may be mailed to AFSI, 1623 Third Ave., Suite 205, New York, NY 10128, and we will send them on to the proper parties. SHARON HELD PERSONALLY RESPONSIBLE FOR EXPELLEES’ PLIGHT By Hillel Fendel Over 10 weeks after the expulsion, and 2/3 of the families evicted from their Gush Katif/Shomron homes have not yet been provided with a temporary solution. Their lawyer holds PM Sharon responsible. Attorney Yitzchak Meron, the head of the Land of Israel Legal Forum that has been representing the Gush Katif expellees on a pro-bono basis, has written a letter to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon. Excerpts: &quot;Over 70 days have passed since, at your initiative, some 9,000 people were thrown out of their homes. Almost none of them have attained their permanent [housing] solution. At the earliest, they will reach it two years from now, and others will apparently have a final housing solution in only 3-4 years. &quot;No less severe is the fact that 2/3 of the people still do not even have a temporary solution. As it appears now, a large portion of them will reach this only 3-6 months from now. &quot;The temporary solutions themselves involve great suffering for the residents. They will have to live in very crowded conditions of 10-12 square meters [12-14 square yards] per person. Much of their furniture and belongings do not even fit into the small houses; their belongings will have to remain in containers or warehouses. The people have to buy furniture and equipment that fits their new houses - and it goes without saying that the law provides for no compensation for this.&quot; &quot;In short, the State has taken away from thousands of expelled residents their houses that they built with great toil, and these people are now without a home. They live in crowded hotel conditions. Some of them will have to remain this way for months to come. Physical and psychological ramifications of this situation are already noticeable, and experts say they will only get worse. &quot;We warned in advance that the state did not concern itself with providing appropriate housing solutions in advance. We warned of a double uprooting, and now it appears that some people will have to be uprooted three and even four times.&quot; Meron contests the claim that the residents themselves did not cooperate sufficiently with the Disengagement Authority, but adds, &quot;In any event, ever since the expulsion, certainly there is no such claim! Yet despite this, everything that has been done has been too late, too little and too slow... &quot;Among the issues that have not been solved and that could be solved by your personal intervention are the families that lived in the area for many years - including young couples who were born there and families who rented privately - but because of various technical definitions, [are not yet receiving compensation]. The uprooted people themselves are not even involved in various negotiations between the government and the locations where caravila communities are planned - and they stand helpless on the sidelines.“ ---------------------------- Report # 12: State of Gush Katif, Northern Gaza and Northern Shomron CommunitiesOctober 24, 2005 Submitted by Toby Klein Greenwald Commissioned by Israel Resource News Agency and the Center for Near East Policy Research [All previous reports available through the search engine www.IsraelBehindTheNews.com] No Treatment for Special Needs Children There are three families currently living in Ir Haemuna who have young children who have special needs, and who received regular treatments, paid for by National Insurance, in Neve Dekalim, the “capital” of Gush Katif, before the disengagement. One of the children, a 5-year-old boy, is recognized as a victim of terror, and receives treatments as a result of a mortar injury he suffered when he was only a year old. Since the families did not know how long they would be in Ir Haemuna, they began to arrange for the children to receive treatment shortly before Rosh Hashana. According to one mother, they were told by the supervisor of the local treatment center five minutes away that she was given an instruction by the Prime Minister’s office to not give treatment to any children from Ir Haemuna. A more senior supervisor, who was also the supervisor of Special Education facilities in Gush Katif before the disengagement, stepped into the picture and met with the families on the eve of Succot, and said she would attempt to solve the problem. The Prime Minister’s office did not respond to our question about the incident. More on Ir Haemuna below. Moshav Katif The members of Moshav Katif have been staying in the Ulpana in Kfar Pines since the disengagement. Dvir Cohen, spokesman for Moshav Katif, says that the possible deal with Kibbutz Hafetz Haim fell through because the Disengagement Authority was not willing to pay for meals and the families of Moshav Katif, none of whom, to the best of his knowledge, have received compensation yet, do not have the funds to pay for food, nor do they have the facilities in the small guest house rooms to cook for themselves. The day after Succot, the Katif community will be moving to the King Saul Hotel in Ashkelon (which means that the elementary school children will have to change schools again). The long term plan is to end up in the Lachish area, but it is not clear where they will be between a short stay about a month in the hotel and when they go to Lachish. Among the possibilities being discussed are being in a high-rise apartment building in Ashkelon, being in the Nechusha area in the Negev. There were originally almost 60 families in Moshav Katif. There are currently about 45 left in the Ulpana. The others have scattered to Ir Haemunah, to parents or friends or other private arrangements. This is one more example of a community that is slowly being broken up. Seven sites of the Gush Katif community were visited over the Succot holiday. Ganei Tal - Yad Binyamin 1 [Photos available] The people from Ganei Tal are still living in cramped conditions in Kibbutz Hafetz Haim, although they are complimentary about how the kibbutz and its guest house has received them. They still have only two washing machines for more than 60 families, and have grown used to taking their laundry with them to family and friends when they go to visit. The caravan site, to which they are due to move some time soon after the Succot holiday, is in the process of being completed. People from Ganei Tal have testified that there were homes that were tested for water-proofedness and found faulty. A “tour” of several of these houses confirmed what has been said about the small sizes of the rooms, and the fact that the living-dining-kitchen area is small and not sufficient for a regular sized family, including their kitchen appliances, and normal sized dining and living room furniture. There were no security rooms in the houses, as is required in new buildings by Israeli law. An outside glance at some of the houses revealed crooked “trisim” (closing blinds), which raises the question if those are freak occurrences or an indication of the general quality of the building materials and/or process. The homes are set very close together and the windows face each other so there is no semblance of privacy. One Ganei Tal resident who toured a sample house, said about it, “Aside from the fact that it’s made out of cardboard, it’s not bad.” Nitzan Residents here are from Neve Dekalim and a number of other Gush Katif communities [Photos available] It had rained for approximately fifteen minutes in Nitzan that day, and there were some streets that were filled with water, where the drainage was faulty, and many muddy areas. MK Uzi Landau visited Nitzan that day, met with local residents and then toured one of the homes. At the same time there was a visit by Nobel Prize winner Professor Yisrael (Robert) Aumann and the head of World Mizrachi, Mr. Kurt Rothschild, who said that World Mizrachi had donated succot to Nitzan and elsewhere. The residents spoke with MK Landau about the debilitating issue of unemployment. Aaron Hazut, who had been the head of the secretariat of the Gan Or community before the disengagement, who is himself a victim of terror, led the discussion from the side of the residents. There are currently 270 families living in Nitzan. Hazut says, “We were not among those who said, ‘ It won’t happen’. We didn’t think it would ‘weaken anyone to plan in advance; we wanted to find a solution.” He then went on to describe to MK Landau the problems that they’ve encountered, in spite of their decision to plan. The main issue raise was unemployment. Hazut said, “The government built a local employment office but the ‘solutions’ they’re suggesting are putting salt in the wounds. There is a real feeling of unkept promises. The homes don’t have the proper infrastructure or security. The employment office doesn’t offer any real solutions. We’re trying to create the solutions ourselves.” According to Hazut, there were originally 420 farmers in Gush Katif, of which 200 actually worked the land themselves. Most of those ended up in Nitzan. He said that 520 families would be located in Nitzan in the end, including others from Neve Dekalim. The farmers claimed that the land they were offered was not developed; they were told to use their compensation money to develop it but then there would have left them nothing to build their businesses with afterwards. They say that the compensation is based on what things were worth six years ago, but everything has gone up since then - the raw materials, gas, solar, etc. They valued their worth according to the old prices but they will have to pay the new prices. (This and other issues were raised before the disengagement by attorneys who brought petitions to the High Court of Justice, but ten out of eleven judges found, in most instances, against the people to be disengaged.) Personal comments by farmers: o So we sat [with the Disengagement Authority] before the disengagement, and what good came of it? Only bad - the entire Gush fell apart. You [politicians] also only worked on how to prevent it. Even during that period, those MK’s who considered themselves the “rebels”, should have worried about the “day after”. o Personal comment: “They wouldn’t tell someone who lived on a kibbutz for 20 years, ‘Go rent an apartment on the third floor in a city...’” o Another Farmer: We have to fight for everything. o I was a person who was active, busy, doing business, now is doing nothing. We still have to pay our everyday supplies, but there are some people who have no income since June! o We have to buy storage sheds, different furniture…The ministry of agriculture didn’t find solutions for us. My equipment is thrown in Masuot Yitzhak, and parts of it are always being stolen. o They give us 90 meter homes in these kinds of conditions, and then we have to spend tens of thousands of shekels on storage. I look at the newspapers nothing appears there about this. We expect the people “in charge” to help take care of these things, to have a heart. o We brought millions of dollars into the state of Israel through our exports. This [disengagement] is a national crime. And we’re a society who are law-abiding… o There aren’t closets in the homes, someone had to spend NIS 40,000 just on all new closets. We’re still paying mortgages, and being charged $450 for rent. o Farmer: We, who were super-farmers, are now super-unemployed. I grew 90 dunams of cherry tomatoes, exported tons to Europe, employed 60 workers a typical Gush Katif farmer. When I signed up for unemployment, they wanted me to take a job in a carton factory, folding cartons at minimum wage. Some of my Thai workers, that are working somewhere else, hopefully temporarily, are receiving NIS 5,000 a month. I would have received NIS 3,000 a month. We need something to get up for in the morning. o At the most, we’ll receive 60% of what our real worth is, and that’s the best case scenario. They’re offering compensation that will be able to bring us, at best, to 50% of the output we had before. There is no possibility that we’ll reach what we reached before. We’ve already lost one season. Even if I started building right now, I won’t be able to get it off the ground till September, 2006. o The day before the disengagement we sat with the Director of the Ministry of Agriculture and he said, “I’ll do thus and thus…”A month later, when we sat with him, we saw there are no solutions. They offer land far away, or inappropriate…The Minister of Agriculture doesn’t relate to us, or his deputy minister. o They offered us land that is not sandy, not appropriate to our organic produce for which we developed an expertise. We can’t use up all our compensation on developing land. But we can’t just sit at home doing nothing, either. o It takes an average of three years just to “learn” the agricultural land area. They say that it took the farmers from Yamit five years before they were able to produce effectively again [and they had three years in advance to prepare, and much higher level of compensation TKG]. o We had special terms with Agrexco and others; one has to work hard to be accepted into that “club”; now we have to start from scratch. o At first, they came to us with the offer of going to Kibbutz Nahal Oz, to give us 2,000 dunams there. The government was to take care of the infrastructure. The only problem was that the kibbutz didn’t give the land in the end. A visit was made to several families who live in Nitzan. They were obviously trying to make the most of the situation by arranging the homes nicely, but they all commented that they had to spend money on storage sheds, new closets or furniture that fit the small rooms, and other items, such as trisim (blinds). Unlike the caravans in Yad Binyamin, the homes in Nitzan all come without blinds, even though the homes look into each other. One family the Farjun’s - estimated that they had to spend between NIS 25,000 and NIS 30,000 on items that they would not have had to buy, had they stayed in Gush Katif, and that will not be covered by any compensation. On a very troublesome note: They told MK Landau that three teenagers have been hospitalized in the psychiatric ward in Beer Sheva. “It’s a human tragedy,” said one resident. “There is no treatment for the problems of the teenagers. Not to mention how they feel, when they come home and ask, ‘ Abba, what did you do all day?’ And these are youth who, before the disengagement, when professionals were sent to study them, were considered psychologically the strongest among youth.” MK Landau promised to pursue solutions for the various issues. Gan Or - Kibbutz Yavne [Photo of Dorit and Tzvika available] There are five families from the community of Gan Or who have been absorbed into Kibbutz Yavne on the basis of residents, not members, for the next two years. One family we visited, Dorit and Tzvika Fixler, had settled into a little kibbutz home that was 30% the size of their home in Gan Or. Dorit, who worked full time as an art teacher in Gush Katif, had not yet started working, as there already are art teachers in the kibbutz. Tzvika, who, with Dorit, owned a highly successful bio strawberry growing farm that exported extensively to Europe, is now working as a salaried employee for an irrigation company. They do not know what their long term plan will be and, like the other Gan Or people, are exploring a number of possibilities. The families in Kibbutz Yavne from Gan Or, mostly from the field of agriculture, made arrangements in advance, but because there was not a location that could take all of them, Gan Or was one of the communities that did not succeed in remaining together following the disengagement. Elei Sinai Tent City [Photos available] According to spokesperson Edi Amit, families left in the tent city of Elei Sinai are waiting for the government to make them an offer of a communal settlement. The large Bedouin carpets meant to give a “feel of home” were sunk into the mud, as it had rained that day. A sign facing the highway says, “59 days without a home” (on October 19) and another sign, on a makeshift clinic tent, reads, “We treat people with sensitivity and determination”, a reference to the instructions given to the soldiers who removed people from their homes. Shirat Hayam Hotel in Ashkelon Residents from Bdoloch, Morag, Elei Sinai and elsewhere. [Photos available] There are about 40 families left in this hotel. The hotel, at the instructions of the Disengagement Authority, has allowed the people to remain in the hotel rooms but has closed the dining room. We found them, at dinnertime on chol hamoed Succot, sitting around a little table in the lobby, eating meals out of airline-type packets, that have been donated. For the most part, they buy their own food now. Most of them have not yet received any compensation and are unemployed. Other families from those settlements, who had desperately wanted to stay together as communities, are scattered around the country. Rabbi Yishai Bar-Hen, who had been the rabbi of the secular, northern Gazan communities, gave us a tour, and was astounded to discover, in the process, that the hotel had dismantled the synagogue room. He expressed bitterness and anger about what he called “a lack of basic humanity” being shown the Gazan Jews. Another member of the Elei Sinai community fumed as she showed us the what she referred to as a “one-sided” contract that they had been offered by Kibbutz Carmia [contract available in Hebrew], where there already is an area with caravans for the disengaged, and more are due to be built. “The caravans aren’t ready yet,” she says, “but the Disengagement Authority wants us to move anyway.” She pointed out a clause stating that that they could not have “invited guests” in their homes, without permission of the kibbutz, only guests who “happen by”. [We have a copy of the contract.] They will be charged rent (deducted from their compensation, while they are still paying mortgages), almost $500 including expenses as of August 15, even though they will be moving in some time, they hope, in November. The payment is supposed to come from the Disengagement Authority, but the contract states that they will be required to pay, themselves, if the Authority does not. Also, the evacuees, not the Disengagement Authority, are required to have two guarantors sign the contract. The secular Gazans said they were sorry that, whereas religious settlers were given succot as gifts, they were not offered to most of the secular. When asked if it was common practice for secular Jews in Israel to build succot, they replied, “We all did in Gaza.” Atzmona Ir Haemunah (near Netivot) [Photos available] Atmona’s tent city, called in Hebrew “Ir Haemunah” The City of Faith is located on the outskirts of Netivot, a city in the Negev. It is in an abandoned factory compound. There is a reconstructed temporary playground in an empty area across the road, for Atzmona’s many children. Large industrial tents have been set up and separated by plyboard and various materials into separate living quarters. Concrete and rubber sheeting have supplanted the pastoral community of grass and palm trees. Atzmona was the “holy” settlement in Gush Katif, unique in its combination of deeply committed, religious people who were also welcoming and tolerant to outsiders. They allowed no televisions or secular newspapers into the community, and many of the adults were involved in the study or teaching of Torah; others were farmers who ran the largest plant nursery in the Middle East. It also boasted one of Israel’s most famous pre-army study (“mechina”) programs, headed by a rabbi who had been a pilot in the air force. That program has relocated to Yated, a community in the Negev, close to the Egyptian border and within the range of mortars from Gaza, where about 20 of Atzmona’s families including many farmers and the mechina teachers - went after the disengagement. Most of the others about 57 families - have remained here, while they await a community solution. They are not interested in apartments scattered in various cities, or in what they consider the large, impersonal, Nitzan development, which are the only options they’ve been offered so far by the Disengagement Authority. A handful of families have arranged for other living quarters, for now. There are areas in the compound set aside for study, for prayer, and the second floor of the factory has the school. The Ministry of Education refuses to finance either the school or the pre-schools. Bathrooms and showers for the community are metal stalls standing in a row at one end. A slice of life: The “rabbanit” of Atzmona, Meira Netanel, welcomes us in their tent and explains that, “It’s been a hard day. The concrete is not level, and all the rain flowed down to our side and flooded the tents here.” She spent the day picking items up off the wet floor and trying to push the water out of the tent. Two of her daughters were sitting on a small couch, using plastic chairs as desks. There were crayons, books, and a Hebrew version of Monopoly on nearby stools. Shabbat candlesticks stood on a small white tablecloth on a well-worn wooden bureau, and a bamboo bookshelf held food supplies. Meira said they were about to leave for a funeral near Yated. The 83-year-old man known as “ Saba (Grandfather) Tzadok” Raab (brother of the Israeli poet Esther Raab), who became a media star during the disengagement, had passed away that afternoon. He was the oldest person to be expelled from Gush Katif, and was a favorite with the young people of Atzmona. “Saba Tzadok” was shown on Israeli TV when he spoke with the soldiers and officers who came to remove him from his home in Atzmona. He tried to return a medal to an IDF officer, a medal he received from the State of Israel for his personal war efforts against the Nazi’s, who destroyed his first home in Czechoslovakia. He also lived and fought in Kfar Etzion, that fell in the War of Independence in 1948, with the rest of Gush Etzion, and he sat in a Jordanian prisoners of war camp after that for a year. He lived for 18 years near his son in Atzmona, since the death of his wife, and worked in the Atzmona plant nursery. During the disengagement, he no longer wanted an Israeli medal, hence his attempt to return it. Meira told us that her husband, the rabbi, had visited Saba Tzadok just before Rosh Hashana, and Saba had told him of his joy to at least be living in a new settlement in the Negev, where he would be able to bring a little bit of “tikun”, repair, to the world, following the disengagement. He worked a little bit every day, in spite of his age. When asked what their future plans are, Meira said, “The government is offering us something in the Lachish area [where some other Gush Katif communities would also be] but nothing is finalized yet. There is a secular kibbutz there, with eleven families, of the Hashomer Hatzair [Communist] movement. We’d be perfectly happy for them to stay in the area, but they apparently would want to move, and have asked the government for compensation that it is not willing to pay. So I don’t know how long it will take. We may be here [in the tent city] for months.” Interim possibilities? “Yes, in apartments scattered in various cities. But we want to remain a community.” Her words are confirmed by Yonatan Rom, a member of the Atzmona secretariat, and he adds, “If the government wanted to help us relocate now with the same determination that they expelled us, we’d no longer be living in this tent city.” There is a sign hanging from the “school” balcony, a sheet painted with the words, “It is impossible to stop this faith.” For more information or contact information: Toby Klein Greenwald [email_address] 0523-822104 From abroad: 972-523-822104
- Knesset Representation to Diaspora Jews Who Tie Their Fate to the State of Israel: Jews who have demonstrated a strong connection to Israel shall be empowered to vote in national elections by electing and being represented by two of the 120 Knesset members.
- OLMERT – DESTRUCTION OF MOUNT AND OFFERS TO GIVE AWAY EVERYTHING
- 7. Ex-Peace Now Leader: 'It's Not the Occupation; It's Us' by Hillel Fendel Moriah Shlomot, the Director-General of Peace Now between 2000 and 2002, says she now realizes that she and her ilk spend too much time on how Israel treats the Palestinians, and not enough on societal problems at home. Shlomot had the &quot;privilege and honor,&quot; she wrote today, of appearing for a short time as a regular on a political commentary TV show hosted by journalist Dan Margalit. However, Margalit - a left-winger with a nationalist bent - made it clear to her that her humanistic views were too one-directional. &quot;Margalit's main claim against me,&quot; Shlomot wrote in Thursday's edition of the Yisrael HaYom commuter paper, &quot;was that at every chance, and on every subject or opportunity, I would cite the 'occupation' [of Judea and Samaria by Israel]. He felt that occupation was not the reason for corruption, violence and poverty, and that it is not the sole determining parameter for Israel's foreign relations and diplomacy. Not everything depends on Israel's position vis-a-vis the settlements and the Palestinians.&quot; &quot;I have devoted much thought,&quot; she continued, &quot;to the question of the source for evil, aggressiveness, violence, hatred, and racism - and I must admit that at present, I partially connect with Margalit's claim.&quot; &quot;Perhaps all the evil in the world does not stem from the occupation of the territories in 1967, but it stems from something: From oppression, neglect, inequality and injustice. What caused the basketball fan to throw a small explosive [earlier this week, taking off a guard's three fingers - ed.] at a basketball game? What caused the Beitar fans to express their hatred of the consensus [when they booed during a moment of silence for Yitzchak Rabin]? Could all this be connected, inter alia, to the removal of controls from bread prices, or to the low representation of Sephardim among the Supreme Court judges?&quot; &quot;With Shame and Pain, I Admit...&quot; Then came Shlomot's main confession: &quot;With shame and pain, I admit that my political attention and awareness are directly most of the time to the Israeli-Palestinian arena.&quot; &quot;The peace camp,&quot; she wrote, &quot;is currently focused solely on Annapolis; before that, we concentrated on Camp David, Oslo, Madrid; we formed delegations, we dialogued with the other side, and we held rallies and marches. We never thought to protest against the rise in bread prices, because the division was clear: Eli Yishai [of the Shas Party] worries about the lower classes, and we worry about the Palestinians... No more is there that magical 'mutual responsibility' within the nation... The racism of the elites against the weaker classes and Sephardim is at least as severe as that of the right-wing against the Palestinians...&quot; &quot;It's true,&quot; the former Peace Now director concluded, &quot;the occupation itself is not at fault for everything. We are at fault.&quot;