Stuck

I'm having a really hard time getting back into the writing habit here, so for now, here's something different. A branch growing through a modern wall below the Eastern ramparts of the Old City of Jerusalem.

Return

It appears that I'm back but it doesn't really feel like it, exactly. I usually don't suffer from jet lag much but I guess that's what this is. With a touch of the usual homesickness thrown in (go figure). Anyway, it's disorienting. So posting won't resume here for a few more days. Please stand by.

Shabbat Shalom.

L'hitraot

As you may have noticed, this blog doesn't pretend to be technologically sophisticated. I realize that I could increase my coverage and my readership by adding a few modest increments here and there and some day I may do exactly that. But at the moment it's all I can do to find time to post an occasional thought or rant. So I suspect my readers are and will remain into the indefinite future a small and select minority.

To all of those who constitute that minority ... many thanks and I hope I occasionally reward your patience and your persistence.

A corollary to this technological inepitude or indifference (as the case may be) is that I still do not own a laptop. This allows me to actually, from time to time, take ... a true vacation ... something that I find increasingly rare among my fellow inhabitants of the 21st century of this Common Era.

Every 24 months or so I have an opportunity to hop across the ponds, as it were, to visit my family in Jerusalem. And as I am about to do exactly that, I expect things will be rather slow around here for a while. I will have access to someone else's computer and I'll try to post something from time to time but, as usual on these trips, I will probably be far too busy, intrigued and enthralled to do an awful lot of blogging. Apologies in advance.

genesis x

Taking a moment out here for the frivolous and nostalgic ... I came across this very old email, forwarded to me by a friend and, I confess, forwarded on by me to a few other people. (Hey, I agreed with the sentiment. I still do.)

From: [ ... ]
To: [ ... ]
Sent: Friday, September 25, 1998 10:59 PM
Subject: A petition to censure and move on


Now that the Starr report is out, and the worst is known, I've been hoping that congress would take swift action and then move on with the business of the country. But it seems our representatives are settling down for a long process, and I'm not sure I can stand it. Worse, I'm not sure the country can stand it.

I'm helping launch an Internet campaign to tell our representatives that we've had enough. The President should receive censure from the Congress and we should all move on. And the independent counsel investigation should end. It's time for the public interest to come first, and for our representatives to show real leadership.

Will you help? Just go to http://www.moveon.org to sign the petition. It only takes a minute. And then if you send a message on to your friends and colleagues, the ball will really get rolling. It's up to us.

Please feel free to forward this message to anyone you think would be interested.

That was the beginning. Before the PAC. Before Soros. Just Wes Boyd and Joan Blades and a small mailing list. The genesis of a monster. Who knew?

Six degrees of separation

Sometimes less. In the Jewish world, very often less, as Soccer Dad (whose nephew learns at the Merkaz Harav Yeshiva) demonstrates (the following links are his -- and there are more).

One of my nephew's other cousins usually studied in the library on Thursday nights, but because it was Rosh Chodesh (the new Jewish month) he had gone to the Kotel (Western wall) and was out of harm's way.

I finally found out that one of the young men killed was my nephew's roommate.

This isn't my nephew's first connection to a terror attack. In 2002 the family of one of his classmates was ambushed. His friend's father, mother and brother were killed.

And it's not just that nephew. I'm taken aback by the number of terror victims that my brother's family had connections to.

His older brother used to study with the son of Col. Dror Weinberg. Col. Weinberg was considered a rising star of the Israeli army and was religious too. He was killed in an ambush in Chevron.

My sister-in-law, a doctor, has worked with a brother of Dr. Shmuel Gillis, a talented hematologist who was known for his treatment of both Jews and Arabs. (Barbara Sofer wrote "Who will care for Jamila now?" in his memory.)

And my brother was friends with Rabbi Shimon Biran, who had been the Rabbi of Kfar Darom in Gaza. And two and a half years ago, my brother had to watch his friend be buried again.

Of course that's just a small sample of those who have been killed by terror in Israel. Still it gives a sense of the cost of this war against Israel and the degree to which it touches society as a whole.

This is an important element of the solidarity of the Jewish people. And, as our enemy has figured out better than many of us have, a vulnerability that is able to transmit pain and grief on an almost universal level ... to those who care, anyway.

In other words, it's a vulnerability that's also a strength. As my years increase, I become increasingly aware that we, as a people, have come close to perfecting the process of grieving, deeply and sincerely grieving, and then moving on. We've had to. And yet, we have never, ever, elevated death over life as a goal or an aspiration.

This is just one of the many things that make us better than our enemy. In spite of the tactical edge that it sometimes gives them, this is just one of the many reasons why we will prevail ... and they will not.

I call heaven and earth to witness against you this day, that I have set before you life and death, the blessing and the curse; therefore choose life, that you may live, you and your seed

-- Deuteronomy (devarim) 30:19

A city united in grief

Psalm 122

A Song of degrees of David:
I was glad when they said unto me:
'Let us go unto the House of the Lord'.
When our feet stood within thy gates, O Jerusalem;
O Jerusalem, built as a city that is united together;
For there the tribes went up, the tribes of the Lord,
as a testimony of Israel,
to give thanks unto the name of the Lord.
For there are set thrones of judgement,
the thrones of the house of David.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem:
they that love thee shall prosper.
Peace be within thy walls, and prosperity within thy palaces.
For my brethren and companions' sakes, I will say now,
peace be within thee.
For the sake of the House of the Lord our God I will seek thy good.

Shabbat Shalom.

Action alert

Bangladeshi journalist Salah Uddin Shoaib Choudhury has been out of the news for the past several weeks while his trial for the crime of trying to visit Israel for a writers' conference (a/k/a "treason") has been continued yet again. His next court date is coming up on March 12. I get the impression that the government of Bangladesh intends to keep this trial going in bits and pieces until the earlier of a) Choudhury's assassination, God forbid, or b) a lapse of attention by the US Congress and Choudhury's influential supporters around the world, which they figure will happen sooner or later and which would likely lead to the same outcome. He potentially faces the death penalty, so this is no small matter.

In March, 2007, the U.S. House of Representatives passed this resolution urging the Bangladesh government to drop all charges against Choudhury. It passed by a vote of 409-1 (the sole dissenter was Ron Paul).

We may not be able to do much about the attempts on Shoaib's life other than to keep him in our thoughts and prayers. But we can certainly do a great deal to make sure that his unjust persecution and prosecution never escapes the glare of the media spotlight and Congress' scrutiny.

For ways you can help and for more information, go here.

Read and weep

Meryl

Omri

Soccer Dad

Treppenwitz

LGF ... and LGF ... and LGFBoker Tov Boulder ... and BTB again

Israelly Cool

Elder of Ziyon ... and here ... and here ... and here

Sometimes I wonder. Will there come a day when the righteous rage of the Jewish people will reach critical mass and boil up in a conflagration the likes of which the world has never seen? Or will we just continue nursing it and smothering it and keeping it in check, hoping it will recede again, hoping against hope that we can prevent an event that will ignite it again. It had been 1,261 days since the last major terrorist attack in Jerusalem, so .... Never mind Sderot. And Ashkelon. And the summer of 2006. Where, exactly, is that fuse?

Do me a favor. Click on every one of those links. Really. They're all worth your time. And your tears. And your rage. Don't hold it back. How do you breed the kind of sub-human who could open fire on dozens of seminary students huddled over their books in a library? What kind of "society" could produce such a monstrosity, such a debased life form? And why is so much of Western "civilization" so dead set on preserving, protecting and praising the perpetrators of such acts and the depraved culture and twisted faith that engender them?

Questions to ponder. Questions that could make you go stark raving mad.

Getting it

Soccer Dad has a great fisk-fest this morning with the target-rich material of useless idiot Richard Silverstein. Highly recommended reading.

And not to put too fine a point on it, but Canada's National Post, in an editorial entitled "Palestinian self-destruction," makes many of the same points, and more.

On Saturday, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned Israel for "excessive and disproportionate" use of force. We reject that censure of Israeli actions, as should leaders of all civilized nations. No nation on Earth would sit back passively as a neighbouring territory bombarded its cities with rockets.

It is true that the Palestinians have suffered the bulk of the casualties in the ensuing counterterrorism operations. But such arithmetic does not change the moral calculus: It is not Israel's fault that the Palestinians choose to keep reigniting a lopsided and unwinnable war. Moreover, so long as Palestinians maintain the inhumane and terroristic practise of launching their rockets from civilian areas, Israel is blameless -- under both the letter and spirit of international law -- for the fact that some civilians die alongside the jihadis who deploy among them.

The situation of the Palestinians is a gruesome tragedy. But insofar as post-occupation Gaza is concerned, it is entirely self-inflicted. When Hamas, or whoever else takes over Gaza in coming years, decides to stop using the Palestinian people as one collective suicide bomber, they will find a willing peace partner in Israel. Until then, the Palestinian blood that flows won't stain Israeli hands.

The National Post gets it. Please read - and link - the whole thing.

Alarm bells

Meryl explains why those "harmless" rocket attacks from Gaza are going farther and killing and wounding more people than ever before. Hint: it's got a lot to do with a hole in a wall. She also has some advice for the so-called Israeli leadership, which is giving the appearance of sleeping through the whole thing. What's wrong with these people?

Meir Shalev is a columnist for Yediot Aharonot and the author of A Pigeon and a Boy, recently published in English. My mom says it's a great novel, but Shalev is one of those Israeli intellectuals who's in deep denial about the strengths and weaknesses of his country and what it will take for it to prevail in its ongoing struggle for survival. Writing almost a year ago, he said

Forty years have passed since the Six-Day War... and Israel has indeed choked. The country is busy dealing with one matter: the occupation — the territories, the Palestinians, terror, holy sites, the establishment and evacuation of settlements. Forty years have passed, and Israel has neglected everything that the Israel of 1948 wished to occupy itself with: education, research, welfare, health.

[ ... ]

Forty years, and Israel is forced to decide which is more important: the lives of its sons and daughters or the graves of its ancestors.

Forty years of an army whose main occupation has been manning roadblocks, detaining suspects, assassinating enemies and guarding settlements have brought us to the high level of arrogance and low level of capability that the Israeli Defense Forces displayed during last year's war in Lebanon.

Forty years of deceitful, villainous dealing in the occupied territories have caused corruption to seep into our own politics and society.

Forty years, and we must come to terms with the fact that Israel cannot cultivate democracy at home and apartheid in the backyard.

Forty years, and for the first time one can hear voices doubting whether the Jewish state will be around for another 40.

Reading this drivel, I'm reminded why Israel today seems paralyzed by the threats from both the north and the south, unable to act effectively in its own justifiable defense. There are so very many intelligent, talented Israelis who think this way. The universities are full of them, the cafes are full of them, the arts and the sciences are full of them and no wonder. While the arabs indoctrinate their children with visions of blowing themselves to bits murdering Jews, we Jews are indoctrinating our children with visions of sugar plum peace fairies and the unbearable horror of being mean. This is what they learn in school now. Not about draining the swamps and making the dessert bloom and honorably defending their families, not about saving hundreds of thousands of lives, not to mention building a homeland for the Jewish People. Instead, they learn about multculturalism and "tolerance" and occupation and oppression and suffering and apartheid and, most of all, guilt. And more guilt. All our achievements have been built on the backs of the oppressed and atonement must be made. Then there will be peace. Right? Well, it's not right. Not at all right.

And reading this, I'm also uncomfortably aware that a lot of the same can be said of Americans, as well. And, of course, Europeans, too. Somewhere, everywhere, alarm bells have been going off unnoticed. We slumber on.

By the way (speaking of alarm bells) if you haven't yet seen Greg Davis' excellent documentary "Islam: What the West Needs to Know," you should and you can. It's here, on Google Video.

Shabbat Shalom.

Warming the cockles

What the heck does that expression mean, anyway? No one actually seems to know. Well, whatever part of my heart the "cockles" may be (although the only cockles with which I'm familiar are, I'm afraid, treif), this story warms them.

Joseph Cedar, director of the Oscar-nominated Israeli film Beaufort, and an Orthodox Jew, has resolved a thorny Shabbat dilemma.

Traditionally, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences holds a high-profile public symposium for the five finalists vying for the best foreign-language film Oscar on the day before the award ceremony.

This year, the symposium will be on Saturday morning, Feb. 23, and Cedar was uncertain whether he could participate on a Shabbat.

"I had a long talk with my rabbi in Israel," said Cedar, 39, who is in Los Angeles with his family now in anticipation of the awards. "He decided that I could attend as long as I didn't use a microphone and walked to the event at the Samuel Goldwyn Theater."

Cedar figures he can cover the two-mile distance in about an hour, an almost unheard feat for pedestrian-phobic Angelenos, but no big deal for Israelis - even for an Israeli who was born in New York, but whose parents made aliya when he was five.

Yes, it's a little thing. Kind of like a cockle. Only, well, definitely not treif.

Shabbat Shalom.

Do not adjust your ... set

Cue in the music. You're definitely entering ... the Twilight Zone.

Regarding the Gaza blockade, [Israeli Prime Minister] Olmert said Israel was continuing to impose sanctions in a controlled manner in order to prevent a humanitarian disaster. He stressed that Gazans would not live normal lives as long as Israel is under fire. "We view Hamas as being responsible for everything that happens in the Gaza Strip, irrespective of whether its operatives are involved in every single incident," he added.

Olmert also praised the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. "Despite the [continuing] Kassam fire, it was a very good move since there are no longer 30,000 soldiers protecting 1,200 citizens," he said.

Ok. The man is certifiably insane. I'm beginning to think ... criminally insane. How do you even try to respond to the falsehoods and distortions in that sentence? But, let's just graze the surface of the scum.

There were more than 8,000 residents living comfortably and productively in Gush Katif alone before Olmert and Sharon literally ripped them from their homes, their communities and their livelihood. And, lest we forget, they had been invited there by their government.

"30,000 soldiers protecting 1,200 citizens?" What planet is Olmert living on?

Today, thanks to his "very good move," there are over 20,000 residents of Sderot under constant fire, not to mention the inhabitants of Negev kibbutzim such as Be'eri and Nir Am, such as Zikkim, Karmia and Yad Mordecai, all betrayed like their "relocated" former neighbors, first by the actions and then by the false promises of the same Olmert and Sharon.

Families are destitute. Children are losing lives, losing legs, losing hope. Meanwhile, Israeli soldiers are still being killed and kidnapped fighting the terrorists in Gaza, who are now better armed, better funded and much better situated to attack deeper and deeper into "Israel proper." And Olmert has the unmitigated gall to say that this disaster, the "humanitarian disaster" that he perpetrated, was "a very good move?"

I'm told I shouldn't blog when I'm angry. And that's undoubtedly good advice. But not blogging when I'm angry virtually means not blogging at all these days. Anyone who can watch this moron get away with one tragic, catastrophic mistake after another (all the while patting himself heartily on the back) and not get angry doesn't have a heart. Sorry. It's not me, babe.

Like a bad movie

No one would even bother to watch a show with a script this bad, recycling the same unbelievable junk over and over again. But this is the U.N., where clarity and reason are always on vacation. Add in the perpetual bias of the AP, and, well, you get this.

The UN's top humanitarian affairs official said Friday he was shocked by a "grim and miserable" situation he encountered during a visit to impoverished Gaza, including to the main hospital, and urged that the territory's borders be opened.

Israel and Egypt severely restricted access to Gaza after Hamas took control by force last June. Since then, Gaza's private sector has largely collapsed, and poverty among the area's 1.4 million residents has spread further, with some 80 percent now depending on some food aid.

On Friday, John Holmes, the UN's undersecretary-general for humanitarian affairs, toured Gaza as part of a four-day visit to the region. Also on his itinerary is a visit to the border town of Sderot near Gaza, hit hard by rockets fired by Gaza terrorists.

At this point in the story, you might expect some explanation as to why the border closings are necessary, followed by an account of Holmes' "shock" at the "grim and miserable situation" under which residents of Sderot are forced to live.

Not exactly.

In Gaza, Holmes visited Gaza's largest hospital, Shifa, speaking to dialysis patients and stopping in the neo-natal department. He also toured the Karni industrial zone near the closed cargo crossing between Gaza and Israel. The industrial zone once employed 1,800 Palestinians, but has been idle since June, officials said.

"I have been shocked by the grim and miserable things I have seen and heard about during the day," Holmes told reporters during a news conference at the main UN compound in Gaza.

"These grim and miserable things are the result of the current restrictions on the crossings into Gaza, and the very limited amounts of foods and other materials being allowed in," he said.

Holmes said the amount of goods entering Gaza had dropped to 10 percent of what it was a year ago. In recent weeks, Israel has also reduced the supply of fuel and electricity to Gaza, in an attempt to pressure Gaza terrorists to halt rocket fire. The reductions have prompted widespread power outages.

"All this makes for a grim human and humanitarian situation here in Gaza, which means that people are not able to live with the basic dignity to which they are entitled," Holmes said. "So what is essentially needed is an opening of the crossings, a lot more goods coming in."

Holmes said he would raise his concerns in meetings with Israeli government officials and representatives of the West Bank government of Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, Hamas' main rival.

The only (feeble) attempt at explaining this gross injustice (sic) is, naturally, put into the mouth of an Israel government spokesman.

Government spokesman Mark Regev said an improvement depended on an end to rocket fire.

"If terrorists in Gaza were to cease firing rockets into Israel, trying to kill our people, the situation could very quickly return to where it was," Regev said.

Right. And that's the version that appears in the Jerusalem Post. The one on AP's website is even worse.

........

And now for that up note. As the Democrats appear to be splitting wider and wider apart, the Republicans seem to be coming together over their presumptive nominee. Rudy Giuliani and Mitt Romney have now both endorsed John McCain's candidacy and President George H.W. Bush plans to do so on Monday. I have to say that I'm not all that displeased by the fact that the right wing fringe of the party is still pouting and threatening to stay home. The more those people marginalize themselves, the more hospitable the GOP becomes to people like me who have been spit out by the Dems. It would be nice to have a political home again.

Shabbat Shalom.

Peace Now's problems

The Registrar of Nonprofit Organizations has decided to withdraw the certificate of proper administration from the organization that provides funding for Peace Now, a Justice Ministry official said Monday.

According to the official, the registrar, Yaron Keidar, recently conducted an in-depth examination of the nonprofit organization, known as Sha'al Educational Enterprises.

So reports this morning's Jerusalem Post. What the heck is this all about? Let's rewind...

It started back in November, when Moledet MK Aryeh King filed a lawsuit against Peace Now (Shalom Achshav), alleging that the organization didn't really exist as a legal entity and therefore had no standing to pursue its myriad legal harassments against the Jewish settlement enterprise in Judea and Samaria. King also established his own (Hebrew language) web site devoted to exposing the illegal and subversive nature of some of Peace Now's activities.

As Israel National News reported then,

Website founder King recently filed a suit against Peace Now based on Tzali Reshef's admission that the organization does not legally exist. In response to an earlier suit by King against Peace Now demanding an award for damages, Reshef said that Peace Now cannot be sued because it is not technically a legally-recognized association. King then countered with a suit demanding that Peace Now be erased from all the cases it itself brought against Jewish interests in Judea and Samaria.

"If it can't be sued, then it can't sue," King says. He expresses astonishment that the State Prosecution - headed until last week by Peace Now co-founder Eran Shendar - never "realized" that the many court suits filed over the years by Peace Now were illegal.

But what really caught some people's attention in this story was this:

An often-forgotten tidbit that appears on the site is the fact that Peace Now was funded to the tune of nearly two million shekels by European Union countries in 2003 - including from the Foreign Ministries of Great Britain and Norway - as well as another 1.75 million in 2005. In later years, reports independent researcher David Bedein, other EU countries joined in the funding, which was reached a total of five million shekels ($1.25 million) in 2006.

Britain and Norway are fundamentally opposed to the existence of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria, thus the money they give Peace Now invariably serves those governments' foreign policy interests. Bedein reports that Peace Now is thus "in effect spying on Israel for foreign governments," as its surveillance activities cover not only Israeli communities, but also military installations belonging to the IDF.

The questions raised by these revelations, when you think about it, are pretty mind-boggling. It's disturbing enough that a blatantly political organization such as Peace Now receives so much of its support via donations from foreign governments. But now it emerges that Peace Now isn't even a real organization, political or otherwise. So how was all this money getting funneled to Peace Now? The answer: Sha'al Educational Enterprises.

Sha'al is a registered Israeli nonprofit (amuta). As an "educational organization," it receives both donations from foreign governments and grants from U.S. tax-exempt charities (more on that in a minute). It now appears, however, that Sha'al may be little more than a money scrubber for Peace Now.

Back to today's story...

The Registrar of Nonprofit Organizations has decided to withdraw the certificate of proper administration from the organization that provides funding for Peace Now, a Justice Ministry official said Monday.

According to the official, the registrar, Yaron Keidar, recently conducted an in-depth examination of the nonprofit organization, known as Sha'al Educational Enterprises.

The official added that Keidar found several problems involving the organization. The most serious was the fact that the aims of the organization, as it defined them, did not tally with the activities of Peace Now, which is a political-ideological activist movement calling for a two-state solution along the 1967 Green Line boundaries. This is problematic, as it may lead to misrepresentation regarding what the money of Sha'al's donors would be used for.

The official added that unless Sha'al Educational Enterprises corrects the faults that Keidar discovered in his investigation, the organization would be dismantled.

This description of Peace Now as "a political-ideological activist movement calling for a two-state solution along the 1967 Green Line boundaries" is more than a little bland. Peace Now has other agendas, one of which appears to be the removal of every last Jew from all areas beyond the Green Line. The organization sees a Judenrein Judea and Samaria as a minimal and absolute pre-condition for "peace." Moreover, I'm fairly certain that the vast majority of Sha'al's donors knew exactly what their money was being used for. I hope that's not all the Justice Ministry is concerned about.

But leaving all that aside for now, let's wrap this up with a quick look at a subject that was raised tangentially in yesterday's version of the JP report (but no longer included in the updated version).

In the meantime, the implication of the findings were that Peace Now does not have the proper administration certificates. As a result, the organization will immediately begin to have problems with fund raising in the United States due to the fact that donations will no longer be considered tax-deductible, the Channel 2 report concluded.

Maybe. If Sha'al doesn't "correct the faults" and regain its nonprofit status, chances are that Peace Now's American fundraising efforts will indeed hit a snag. And even if Sha'al does clean up its act, that may very well mean that it may no longer funnel funds to Peace Now but will be restricted to much more limited activities. But that's not the whole story.

In 2005, Sha'al received a grant of $735,002 from Americans for Peace Now, a U.S. based § 501(c)(3) organization, or so APN reported to the IRS. In 2004, APN reported a grant of $818,830 to Sha'al. But, appearances to the contrary, APN is not an "American Friends" organization. APN's charitable status isn't based on its support for Israel's Peace Now and its grants to Sha'al (which it describes as "The Peace Now Education Fund") represent only a little more than a third of its program budget for those two years. APN isn't in jeopardy here and it does plenty of damage on its own. Still, it looks like Peace Now may be deprived of the use of APN funds in the future, as § 501(c)(3) orgs may not make grants to foreign organizations that aren't recognized as charities by their own governments. In addition to all their other troubles, that's gotta smart just a little.

(Additional sources for this post include: Seraphic Secret; Joe Settler; Guidestar.org; and conversations with Soccer Dad. See also, The Muqata.)

A great man gone

Not so surprisingly, I guess, a very nice piece at al-Guardian today.

WASHINGTON (AP) - Rep. Tom Lantos, who as a teenager twice escaped from a Nazi-run forced labor camp in Hungary and became the only Holocaust survivor to win a seat in Congress, has died. He was 80.

Spokeswoman Lynne Weil said Lantos, a Californian, died early Monday at the Bethesda Naval Medical Center in suburban Maryland. He was surrounded by his wife, Annette, two daughters, and many of his 17 grandchildren and two gt portion of San Francisco and suburbs to the south including Lantos' home of San Mateo.

President Bush praised Lantos in a statement as "a man of character and a champion of human rights."

"After immigrating to America more than six decades ago, he worked to help oppressed people around the world have the opportunity to live in freedom,'' Bush said. ``As the only Holocaust survivor to serve in Congress, Tom was a living reminder that we must never turn a blind eye to the suffering of the innocent at the hands of evil men."

Flags were lowered to half-staff at the White House and U.S. Capitol.

While it would be hard to characterize Tom Lantos as a moderate, he commanded a great deal of respect on both sides of the isle. And for good reason. He was a true gentleman, and a hero. And his memory will surely be for a blessing to us all.

z"l