Friday, November 11, 2005

Kosher Cruises

Do you love travel? Do you love cruises? Find out how you can travel in luxury AND keep kosher by visiting "KosherTravelers.com."

From the website:

Kosher Cruises and Kosher Travel - Ever dreamed of watching the setting sun gild the crystal blue Caribbean sea surrounding your deluxe cruise ship, while graceful candles flicker to the sound of soft music, and elegantly-dressed waiters set gourmet Kosher cuisine on the table before you? Have you imagined touring exotic destinations with all your kosher travel and Jewish religious needs catered for par excellence? Or treated yourself to celebrate a Chag in a luxury Israeli hotel? For nearly a half a century Eddie’s Travel has been making the discerning kosher travelers’ dreams a reality —Eddies Travel is indeed the natural choice for the kosher traveler’s perfect holiday in the best of comfort, luxury and value, with unparalleled personal service.

This website is to promote the kosher cruise business of one individual and I am not putting the information here to promote one kosher business over another. This is simply one more resource of information for Jewish travellers to check out for themselves.

Islamization in Europe

Last update - 11:11 11/11/2005
Islamization in Europe
By Ze'ev Schiff

The outbreak began in England. At first there were signs of increasing extremism and incitement in declarations by Muslim clergy; then weapons were found, including poison; and then young Pakistani men who grew up in England performed acts of terror. German intelligence discovered that Pakistanis were responsible for the suicide bombing in Djerba, Tunisia in 2002, where German tourists were killed. Meanwhile, Moroccan citizens were involved in the two major terror attacks in Spain.

The violence in France began even before the current outbreak, in acts of vandalism perpetrated by young Muslims against Jewish cemeteries and synagogues. Thus they created a situation unprecedented in France since the days of the Nazi occupation Jewish parents were afraid to send their children to school wearing kippot. The French police fought the phenomenon, without success.

Clearly, the Muslims in France are operating out of a sense of strength and self-confidence. The sense of power comes from their growing numbers more than 12 percent of the population and their demographic centralization. They are formally French, but in their own areas they maintain a unique lifestyle, and that's where Islamization has reached its climax.

The current intifada in France began almost exactly like the Palestinian intifada in 1987. Here, an accident in Gaza claimed Palestinian lives. In France, an accident in which two young Muslims were electrocuted sparked the violence. For both Palestinians and French Muslims, the initial motive of the rage was the sense of oppression and humiliation.

Those who argue that the initial and main motive for the riots in France is the sense of oppression felt by the new proletariat emerging among the Muslim immigrants are right. But it is a mistake to focus entirely on socioeconomic causes. They were an initial motive, but the next stages always arrive, and religion has a lot to play in the matter. When Islam doesn't provide enough of an answer, they look for heroes elsewhere, such as Al-Qaida. READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE

More Moslem Destruction of Temple Mount Feared

More Moslem Destruction of Temple Mount Feared
18:14 Nov 09, '05 / 7 Cheshvan 5766
By Hillel Fendel



The Committee to Prevent Temple Mount Artifacts Desecration warns that Muslim Waqf construction works are once again underway - this time at the Temple entrance path taken by Jews 2,000 years ago.

The Committee sent a letter on the matter this week to the Prime Minister and to the Director of the Antiquities Authority. The letter states that new information has been received indicating the Waqf's intention to continue its "refurbishing" works on the Mount.

Yisrael Caspi, an active member of the Committee, told Arutz-7, "For some years now we have been standing guard to try to have the Waqf stop its destruction works. The Waqf is trying to take over the Mount and make it a totally Moslem site, with no Jewish presence."

"The problem is that the Prime Minister has neutralized all other elements - the Minister of Public Security, the Education Ministry, and the Antiquities Authority - and has taken full control of the situation. And the cycle is always the same: The government gives the Waqf a permit for refurbishing and the like, then the Waqf starts building and turning the area into a mosque, while destroying or hiding Jewish artifacts, and then we are not even allowed into the sites. This cycle has to be stopped!"

Caspi said that the latest information indicates that the Waqf plans to begin work at the site known as the Hatunya, adjacent to the Southern Wall excavations and the Dung Gate entrance to the Western Wall.

"A staircase leads from the Temple Mount plaza downward under the Al Aksa mosque [south of the Dome of the Rock]," he said, "to two tunnels built by King Herod 2,000 years ago. The tunnels served the Jews who entered the Holy Temple from the Hulda Gate on the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount. Today, we see the Hulda Gate, but just to the left is a building called the Hatunya, built several hundred years ago. The Waqf wants to excavate the tunnels and the Hatunya, and, based on past experience, turn it into yet another mosque - while hiding or destroying Jewish artifacts."

"We firmly object to granting the Waqf a construction permit for its Temple Mount works," the Comittee's letter states, "and we demand that all work be carried out only under the supervision of the Antiquities Authority."

Caspi said, "Our past experience has shown that the Waqf does not exactly have an interest in preserving the archaeological findings there, and especially not the Jewish ones. On the contrary: They want to hide and even destroy all Jewish findings. This is our concern. We demand that the Antiquities Authority - which is not taking a strong enough position on this issue - be responsible once again for what goes on there." READ THE COMPLETE ARTICLE...


A SPECIAL REQUEST: Will someone who knows their Torah please leave a comment that includes the exact prohibition against permitting any desecration of the Temple? Todah rabah.

Jewish Cookbooks & Recipes


Oyf a nikhtern mogn ken men keyn zakh nit fartrogn
(With an empty stomach nothing can be tolerated)

Thursday, November 10, 2005

The Irgun Website

WEBSITE: Gamla Shall Not Fall Again!

Pay a visit to the "GAMLA SHALL NOT FALL AGAIN!" Website. It's got quite a few good resources and even add-ons for webmasters and bloggers (see near the bottom of this page - a news ticker and a banner). Gamla.org is also where I found the following links to important documents from Israel's history:

Israel - Background Materials
Terror Victims since OSLO (Fatilities ONLY)

Pre-State
The Balfour Declaration - 1917The Mandate for Palestine - May 1922

Pre 1967
Declaration of Establishment of State of Israel - 1948
UN General Assembly Resolution 181 - 1947
The Palestinian National Charter - 1964

After 1967 War - Labour Party
Protection of Holy Places Law - 1967
The Khartoum Resolutions - 1967
U.N. Security Council Resolution 242 - 1967
U.N. Security Council Resolution 338 - 1973

Begin (Likud) Gov.
Camp David Accords - September 17, 1978

Shamir Labour/Likud Gov.
Israel's Peace Initiative - May 14, 1989
Madrid Letter of Invitation - 1991

Rabin Gov.
Declaration of Principles - Sept. 1993
Israel-PLO Recognition - Letters - Sept. 9, 1993
Agreement on Gaza Strip and Jericho Area - May 4, 1994
Preparatory Transfer of Powers and Responsibilities - Aug. 29, 1994
The Israeli-Palestinian Interim Agreement - September 28, 1995
Summit of Peacemakers - Sharm el-Sheikh, March 13, 1996
Agreement on Temporary International Presence in Hebron - May 1996

Netanyahu Gov.
Protocol Concerning the Redeployment in Hebron - Jan. 17, 1997
Agreement on Temporary International Presence in Hebron - Jan. 21, 1997
Protocol Concerning Safe Passage between the West Bank and the Gaza Strip
The Wye River Memorandum - October 23, 1998

Barak Gov.
The Sharm el-Sheikh Memorandum - September 4, 1999
Trilateral Statement on the Middle East Peace Summit at Camp David - July 25, 2000
U.N. Security Council Resolution 425 (Regarding Lebanon)

Sharon Gov.
Israeli Settlements and International Law Legal Position Paper May 2001

View Israel As If You Were There!

360° IPIX Pictures of Israel

Step right inside Israel and Jerusalem! Experience our incredible 360° orb-images of some of the most beautiful sites in the country. Simply use your mouse to zoom around inside them, look up, look down, and look in every direction. Loading the pictures will take at least thirty seconds, depending on the speed of your Internet connection. The Java version (medium-resolution image) can be clicked on and seen immediately, while the Plug-in version (high-resolution image) requires you to first download the IPIX Plug-in. We know of some problems with the Netscape browser program. If this problem occurs on your computer, please either use the Internet Explorer browser program and/or only use the Plug-In versions of the photographs below. Scroll down for the complete list of all ten IPIX images....

Includes:

Western Wall (Kotel)
The Temple Mount & Dome of the Rock
Nimrod's Castle
Gamla Nature Reserve
Banyas Springs
Ein Avdat Nature Reserve
The Ramon Crater
The Red Canyon
Solomon's Pillars
Timna National Park

CLICK HERE TO VISIT THIS WEBPAGE

Get a Kotel Screensaver

You can download a free screensaver of the Western Wall in Jerusalem by CLICKING HERE (actually you won't be downloading anything by clicking that link - it just takes you to the page where you CAN download the screensaver).

Binyamin Netanyahu's Official Website

CLICK HERE TO VISIT (links to homepage or first page of website). Be sure to see his LINKS PAGE, too.

Personal Anecdote: Mr. Netanyahu, before becoming Prime Minister of Israel, Cabinet Minister, Likud Party member and sometimes leader, used to be Israel's Consul General in Los Angeles, California. That's how I met him. I didn't know him as well as some other members of the Jewish Defense League knew him but I was aware of his devlish sense of humor.

Once upon a time (and many times thereafter), the PLO and Islamic Student Council (actually pretty much one and the same as each other) planned a violent anti-Israel riot at the Israeli consulate in Los Angeles. They actually imagined that they could walk right up to the building housing the consulate and start smashing windows or beating people up. Whatever. They didn't count on the Jewish Defense League getting there FIRST.

We were a human barrier that they simply could not penetrate and those few who tried very quickly regretted the attempt and scampered back to their side of the boulevard with a few new bruises to show for their pathetic attempt.

The FBI did not try to stop the confrontation although they were happily taking pictures of all the attendees. On both sides.

Eventually, the LAPD showed up and ordered the entire crowd (both sides) to disperse. And there was simply no way the JDL would abandon Israel until every last anti-Israel anti-American fanatic was gone from the street. Every last one of them.

So, just as the LAPD started slapping on the handcuffs on us JDL members, Binyamin Netanyahu comes out from the consulate stating with great conviction to the police, "No, no, you have no legal authority to do that."

Seems that it is federal law that the building(s) that house any foreign embassy or consulate as well as 500 feet extending outwards from those buildings is the sovereign territory of that nation. So the LAPD was stepping onto Israeli "soil" to arrest the JDL.

Mr. Netanyahu told them they would have to gain his government's permission to do that and since he was his government's representative and he was declaring all of us in JDL to be Israeli citizens "by right of return*," he was therefore refusing to allow the LAPD to have access to "his" citizens. He asked them to kindly step off of Israeli soil.

So none of us were arrested that day and we turned our side of the street into a great block party celebration. Shalom Sherman, a well-known Israeli entertainer who happened to be on the premises, came out to entertain us. It was great fun.

And I thought that Mr. Netanyahu was a very funny man for doing what he did.

*The "right of return" refers to Jews who emigrate to Israel and can almost automatically be granted Israeli citizenship by claiming this right. A person normally goes to Eretz Israel to do this but conceivably, since Israeli embassies are considered "Israeli soil," I guess a person could also make that same claim that way. At least, that's how it worked that one day with Mr. Netanyahu. Many American citizens hold dual citizenship with another country.


"Islam Undressed"

"Islam Undressed"
A Critical Analysis of ‘Real Islam’.
Its People, Culture, Philosophy, and Practices Yesterday and Today.
by: Vernon Richards (Sept 19, 2005)

Talk Now, Demolish Israel Later, Hamas Says

Talk Now, Demolish Israel Later, Hamas Says
By Julie Stahl CNSNews.com
Jerusalem Bureau Chief
November 09, 2005 Jerusalem

(CNSNews.com) - Hamas is ready to negotiate with Israel as a means of achieving its goals, which include the end of the Jewish State, a Hamas leader said on Wednesday.

Hamas candidates are planning to run in the upcoming Palestinian Authority elections, scheduled to take place in January. Officials from the group have said they plan to use the democratic elections as a means to establish an Islamic state.

Hamas leader Mahmoud al-Zahar took that a step further on Wednesday when he said that Hamas might be willing to negotiate with Israel but only as a means of achieving its final goals."Negotiation is not our intention. Negotiation is a method," al-Zahar said in a rare interview with Israeli media, broadcast on the radio. MORE...

JUST A LITTLE REMINDER: The Oslo Accords forbid any terrorist group from participation in Palestinian elections. In violation of this important agreement that began the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, P.A. Chairman Mahmoud Abbas has invited Hamas to field candidates in all P.A. elections.


A Moslem Voice Speaks Truth

The PBS website has an interview with one Mamoun Abdelali who speaks of what it is like to grow up Moslem in France, poor, disenfranchised, with no real hope for a bright future. He tells of countless young people abandoned by their own local Moslem clerics who are then left to form a quasi-counterculture of their own without any real moral or true Islamic compass to guide them.

So how DO they find direction? Al Qaeda seeks them out at mosques and markets and schools and private living rooms and anywhere else they can be tracked down. Young people are selected and then profiled for their "terrorist potential" before being approached. Then they are seduced by favors and money.

Mr. Abdelali says the lure is understandable. One day, you are a juvenile delinquent detached from the society where you live but you still know it is wrong to steal cars (even if you do it, anyway) and the next day you have powerful friends with a twisted version of a religion you don't even know that well and those "friends" are now telling you that all criminal behavior, car stealing, arson, even murder are now to be considered acts of worship to Allah. How very empowering and validating that must feel to that young person.

Mr. Abdelali seems to think that this force may now be unstoppable. He fears for the future of Europe. READ HIS INTERVIEW HERE.


Moroccans demand release of hostages

Moroccans demand release of hostages
Thousands march for two workers reported held in Iraq
Monday, November 7, 2005; Posted: 1:44 p.m. EST (18:44 GMT)

CASABLANCA, Morocco (AP) -- Tens of thousands of Moroccans marched through Casablanca to demand the release of two Moroccan Embassy employees reported kidnapped in Iraq and threatened with execution.

Demonstrators chanted "No to terrorism" and "Islam is a religion of love, not hatred" during Sunday's march. The Moroccan government has condemned the kidnappings and called for the hostages to be released without any conditions. MORE...


A war of values, not religion

A war of values, not religion
By Jeff Jacoby, Globe Columnist
November 6, 2005

THE PRINCE of Wales was at the White House last week, hoping, the Daily Telegraph reported, ''to convince President Bush of the merits of Islam . . . because he thinks the United States has been too intolerant of the religion since Sept. 11, 2001." This is a drum Prince Charles has been beating for years. In 1993, for example, he scolded those in the West who peddled ''unthinking prejudices" about Muslim culture -- for example, ''that sharia law of the Islamic world is cruel, barbaric, and unjust." Two months after 9/11, he was lambasting the American attitude toward Islam as ''too confrontational."

Of course, it goes without saying that most Muslims are not terrorists. Of course many people professing Islam are compassionate and generous. Of course Islam should not be gratuitously insulted. But neither should it be sugar-coated or kowtowed to. Yet too many Western elites are unwilling to speak plainly about the problems within Islam itself, or to hold Muslim culture to what should be universal standards of decency and justice. Far from being ''too confrontational" in their attitude toward Islam, they have been too indulgent and deferential, careful never to say anything that might be deemed insensitive. One result has been an increase in extremist behavior: Witness the ''Eurofada" raging in the streets of Paris. MORE...


France’s Ramadan Uprising - a Ticking Bomb for Europe

France’s Ramadan Uprising - a Ticking Bomb for Europe

The violent riots spreading across France took several worrying directions Sunday night, Nov. 6, and Monday. The mostly Muslim gangs of youths began surging out of the immigrant suburbs to invade town centers; they fired their first gunshots at policemen; the number of torched cars peaked to 1,400; and disturbing new slogans were hurled, depicting Paris as ”Baghdad-on-the Seine” and their campaign as the start of Europe’s Ramadan Intifada.

A single slogan made a mockery of president Jacques Chirac’s efforts of the last three years to distance France from President George W. Bush’s Iraq war. Furthermore, the French government’s helplessness in quelling the trouble is encouraging other European communities to follow suit - in Denmark, Belgium, Spain and Sweden, for starters.

There are plenty of indications that the riots are not simply spontaneous outbursts of frustration by disadvantaged youths of North and black African descent, but centrally organized mayhem, an “intifada” activated by Muslim networking.

France’s leaders, like the British and Dutch, are clinging to the hope that sympathetic dialogue with moderate Muslims will calm the street, despite all the evidence that radical, activist Muslims do not heed established Islamic authorities.

The controlling hand, far from being legitimate Muslim authority, is beginning to emerge as the very organization that has for several years been recruiting young fighters in French Muslim ghettos fight al Qaeda’s wars against the West in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Iraq and other sectors.

On February 20, 2004, DEBKA-Net-Weekly and DEBKAfile were first to reveal the extent of al Qaeda’s penetration of West Europe. They turned up French intelligence statistics which estimated that “al Qaeda had recruited in France between 35,000 and 45,000 fighters and was organizing them in military-style units.

Today, French counter-terror sources are willing to admit, albeit on the quiet and not for attribution, that those clandestine terrorist cells may well be at the bottom of the current riots. MORE...

Al Qaeda in the News

Zarqawi Moves His Headquarters to Baghdad

According to intelligence data reaching the American command, the Jordanian terrorist chief, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, commander of al Qaeda Iraq, has left the Sunni-dominated Anbar province bordering on Syria after two years. In mid-October he is described as driving into Baghdad in mid-October in a convoy of six Iraqi military vehicles stolen from US-Iraqi bases in the north. All the travelers, including the boss, were clad in new uniforms of high Iraqi army officers. They breezed past the roadblocks guarding the town’s entrances without arousing suspicion. Indeed some of the Iraqi security officers manning them saluted the fake officers. MORE...



Al Qaeda in Iraq claimed the triple suicide blasts that ripped through three Amman hotels Wednesday, Nov. 9.

Jordan has closed its borders, government offices and schools in a high security alert after the serial strikes against Western chain hotels bearing the hallmarks of al Qaeda’s Abu Musab al Zarqawi, himself a Jordanian Palestinian. The Radisson, Grand Hyatt and Days Inn were attacked minutes apart, the first suicide bombings al Qaeda brought off in Amman. MORE...



Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has been diverting fighting strength from Iraq to terror arenas in Jordan, Syria, Sinai and the Gaza Strip.

The suicide attacks on three US-owned five-star hotels popular with Westerners in Amman Wednesday night, Nov. 9, points to several disturbing manifestations. MORE...

Wednesday, November 09, 2005

When Pictures Lie

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It was always a great horrible lie. The entire thing, from beginning to end, was a lie. I'm talking about that pitiful and pathetic video show put on by French television that was shown around the world that featured a father trying to shield his young son from a barrage of Israeli bullets. It never happened. At least, not in the way the Al Qaeda recruiting posters would have you believe.

When this report first aired and I saw it, I felt great sympathy for that father and child and it broke my heart on that poor father's behalf that he was unable to save his child's life. It truly broke my heart. It didn't matter if you were Moslem or Jew, Arab or American. The only story from those horrifying images was one of heartbreak.

But what would have been the reaction of millions of viewers around the world if they had been permitted to see ALL the video shot that day by that French TV crew? What if the world had seen the extra footage of the father and son actors being stage blocked and managed by the French crew prior to actual "shooting?" Most especially, where would the public outrage have been directed and should have been directed if the remaining video had been shown that clearly displayed the "dead" boy after being "shot," now sitting himself up, propped up on an elbow and with a playful attitude?

And should the whole story have been told... in the interest of journalistic integrity, of course. That part of the story about how a child who had died in a local hospital that day who'd had no part in any shooting was identified as the boy in the video even though that boy, still very much alive, looked nothing like the dead child in the hospital. Should that part of the story have been told?

Oh, that's right. Seeing as how the whole thing was a set-up from start to finish, it is rather silly to toss around terms like "journalistic integrity," isn't it?

It was all staged. They were actors performing for the camera. Nobody died. It's believable at this point that nobody even got shot.

And who benefitted from this disgusting manipulation? Well, as mentioned, Al Qaeda and other terrorist organizations used the fake video in their recruiting efforts which were so successful that a young woman strapped herself up with explosives and, fortunately, was stopped by Israeli soldiers before she could carry out her plan - to walk into a children's hospital and blow herself up so as to kill as many innocent babies as possible in revenge for the videotaped "killing" of the Palestinian boy.

And that was hardly the only repercussion of this piece of propaganda filth. The nation of Israel was condemned from every corner of this planet for this incident. It hardly mattered when the truth came out. The intifada was on.

So where does Israel go to get her reputation back? How do we put back the lives of innocent civilians who were slaughtered by terrorists who carried out their acts of murder in the name of a "murdered" child that still lived?

These are some of the questions posed by David Gelernter in his article, "When Pictures Lie." Go read it.

Life in Israel from Cafe Oleh

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Cafe Oleh from the Jerusalem Post lists many great resources for information about living in Israel.

Truth in History - Were the Palestinians Actually Expelled from Israel in 1948?

But were they uprooted, and if so by whom? In Haifa, one of the largest and most dramatic locales of the Palestinian exodus, not only had half the Arab community fled the city before the final battle was joined, but another 5,000-15,000 apparently left voluntarily during the fighting while the rest, some 15,000-25,000 souls, were ordered or bullied into leaving against their wishes, almost certainly on the instructions of the Arab Higher Committee. The crime was exclusively of Arab making. There was no Jewish grand design to force this departure, nor was there a psychological "blitz." To the contrary, both the Haifa Jewish leadership and the Hagana went to great lengths to convince the Arabs to stay. These efforts, indeed, reflected the wider Jewish attitude in Palestine. All deliberations of the Jewish leadership regarding the transition to statehood were based on the assumption that, in the Jewish state that would arise with the termination of the British Mandate, Palestine’s Arabs would remain as equal citizens.

-- From, "Were the Palestinians Expelled?" by Efraim Karsh

November 9, 1938

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Kristallnacht
To learn more about it, please CLICK HERE.

On Hating the Jews by Natan Sharansky

On Hating the Jews
The inextricable link between anti-Semitism and anti-Americanism.
BY NATAN SHARANSKY

An incredible article. Everyone should read it.

And a personal note: In the 1970's when the Jewish Defense League was probably the most vocal (in terms of grabbing headlines) fighters for the survival of Soviet Jewry, we began wearing metal bracelets inscribed with the names of individual Soviet Jews who awaited emigration out of the old Soviet Union. I wore two bracelets, one for each arm. On one was the name, "Sylva Zalmanson," who had been in a group of desperate Jews who attempted to hijack a Soviet aircraft to freedom.

And the other bracelet bore the name, "Anatoly Sharansky." Mr. Sharansky, upon finally emigrating to Israel, would take the name of Natan and would one day become Israel's minister for Jerusalem and Diaspora affairs.

For as long as the names Sylva Zalmanson and Anatoly Sharansky remained on my wrists, next to the pulse of my heart, they stayed constantly in my thoughts and the night did not pass that they weren't also in my prayers.

Thank you, Mr. Sharansky. For surviving. Todah rabah. Kol ha kavod.

What Martin Luther King, Jr. Had to Say

You declare, my friend, that you do not hate the Jews, you are merely "anti-Zionist." And I say, let the truth ring forth from the high mountain tops, let it echo through the valleys of G-d's green earth; when people criticize Zionism, they mean Jews--this is G-d's own truth.

~ Martin Luther King, Jr.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

So what happened to the canary?

Jeff Jacoby of the Jewish World Review writes in his editorial, "The canary in Europe's mine," that anti-Semitism is not merely on the rise in Europe, it has spilled over the floodgates and engulfs the continent. His article gives example after example of how anti-Semitism has worked its way back to political correctness after a period of shame and guilt following the Holocaust.

You see, the point of his article was to say, "Pay attention to your history, Europe. When your Jews have suffered, so have you. Pay attention, Europe. Disaster is coming." Jacoby paints the Jew as the symbolic canary in the mine. When the canary in the mine dies, all the miners know to get out fast because at that point disaster is imminent.

Interestingly, a portion of his article discusses France and the French government's reaction to the flood of French anti-Semitism. Mr. Jacoby writes:

But nowhere have the flames of antisemitism burned more furiously than in France.

In Lyon, a car was rammed into a synagogue and set on fire. In Montpellier, the Jewish religious center was firebombed; so were synagogues in Strasbourg and Marseille; so was a Jewish school in Creteil. A Jewish sports club in Toulouse was attacked with Molotov cocktails, and on the statue of Alfred Dreyfus in Paris, the words "Dirty Jew" were painted. In Bondy, 15 men beat up members of a Jewish football team with sticks and metal bars. The bus that takes Jewish children to school in Aubervilliers has been attacked three times in the last 14 months. According to the police, metropolitan Paris has seen 10 to 12 anti-Jewish incidents per day since Easter.

Walls in Jewish neighborhoods have been defaced with slogans proclaiming "Jews to the gas chambers" and "Death to the Jews." The weekly journal Le Nouvel Observateur published an appalling libel: It said Israeli soldiers rape Palestinian women, so that their relatives will kill them to preserve "family honor." The French ambassador to Great Britain was not sacked -- and did not apologize -- when it was learned that he had told guests at a London dinner that the world's troubles were the fault of "that shitty little country, Israel."

"At the start of the 21st century," writes Pierre-Andre Taguieff, a well-known social scientist, in a new book, "we are discovering that Jews are once again select targets of violence. . . . Hatred of the Jews has returned to France."


And what is the reaction of the leader of France to all of this? President Jacques Chirac has proclaimed, "Stop saying that there is antisemitism in France. There is no antisemitism in France."

Well, in that case, here's a thousand words, Mr. Chirac:
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Mr. Jacoby writes, "A timeless lesson of history is that it rarely ends with the Jews. Militant Islamist extremists were attacking and killing Jews long before they attacked and killed Americans on Sept. 11. The Nazis first set out to incinerate the Jews; in the end, all of Europe was ablaze.

Jews, it is often said, are the canary in the coal mine of civilization. When they become the objects of savagery and hate, it means the air has been poisoned and an explosion is soon to come. If Europeans don't rise up and turn against the Jew-haters, it is only a matter of time until the Jew-haters rise up and turn against them."


And now it is France's turn to face the fires. See the article, "Why French youth are rioting." In it, you will read, "The spark for the rage is economic - unemployment among French Muslim youth is endemic. But the riots, increasingly organized through Internet sites, have given an opening for fundamentalist Islamists to radicalize French Muslims, giving the riots an even more volatile and sinister edge in an age of terrorism." More coverage of the riots (or should it be called the Cyber-Intifada?) spreading across Europe can be found on Yahoo's Special Riots Coverage Section.

Yo. Europe. How's that canary doing?

After all, they ARE experts... here's what they say.

"Allah revealed Islam in order that humanity could be governed according to it. Unbelief is darkness and disorder. So the unbelievers, if they are not suppressed, create disorder. That is why the Muslims are responsible for the implementation of Allah's Law on the planet, that humanity may be governed by it, as opposed to corrupt man-made laws. The Muslims must make all efforts to establish the religion of Allah on the earth."
--Muhammad 'Abdus Salam Faraj, Jihad: The Absent Obligation, p43


"Islam wishes to destroy all States and Governments anywhere on the face of the earth which are opposed to the ideology and programme of Islam regardless of the country or the Nation which rules it. The purpose of Islam is to set up a State on the basis of its own ideology and programme, regardless of which Nation assumes the role of the standard bearer of Islam or the rule of which nation is undermined in the process of the establishment of an ideological Islamic State."
--Sayeed Abdul A'la Maududi, Jihad in Islam p9



Visit IslamistWatch.org

Reform vs. Islamism in the Arab World Today

MEMRI (Middle East Media Research Institute) has an excellent article on their website that explains the historical roots of today's radical Islamic terrorism. The article follows the progression from the barbarism practiced by early Moslems in fulfillment of their religious idealogy against non-Moslems to how the most extremist views would be extrapolated by radical clerics from the religious texts of Islam and distorted then distorted again and again by the followers of the early clerics unto today's radical extremist clerics of Islam and from that, twisted yet again to fuel a war of hate and terror and death against "the west."

MEMRI suggests there are two camps that exist inside the world of Islam - one based on hate for the infidel and calling for all-out jihad until all the world is brought under the Islamic lash...or dead, and then there is the more moderate school of thought that seeks coexistence with the rest of the planet. So far, the radical voices seem to hold the most sway in the Islamic world and the MEMRI article suggests some of the reasons why this is so.

I'm sorry to say that this article does not hold out much hope that the moderates will ever prevail. Still, the article is eye-opening and quite fascinating. You can READ IT HERE.

See also: "Contemporary Islamist Ideology Authorizing Genocidal Murder"


Rachel Who?

Rachel Corrie, an American activist, stood in front of an Israeli tank below the driver's line-of-sight and was killed when the tank moved forward and over her. If you put her name into Google, you will get back many thousands of links, stories, websites.

But did you know that other Rachels have also been killed in Eretz Israel? And do you know what they did to get themselves killed? One was a grandmother returning home from the celebration of the birth of her first grandchild. For that, she was murdered by a Palestinian terrorist. Another was a mother of seven children who was murdered, along with several of her children, inside her own home. Again, by a Palestinian terrorist. Yet another Rachel stepped out for a bite of pizza and for that, a Palestinian terrorist determined it was her time to die. He made that choice for her.

And there are more. Too many more. Where are the stories about these Rachels? Why are they invisible to international media?

These are some of the things the article, "Rachel Who" discusses on the blog titled, "Boker Tov, Boulder!" Please go have a look-see.

Images of Israel - Part One

Take a Virtual Tour of Jerusalem


Click on the image

Monday, November 07, 2005

June 7, 1967 - The Wall is Liberated!

These photographs came from
the TheKotel.org Website.


To see a newsreel about the 1967 Six Day War, click here.

Reclaiming Biblical Jerusalem (An article from Aish HaTorah)

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Tzedakah: What is it and why should you care?

Tzedakah (Hebrew: צדקה) in Judaism, is the Hebrew term most commonly translated as "charity", though it is based on a root meaning "justice" (צדק). From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I find that to be fascinating... that the true significance of the word, "tzedakah," is justice. What is more "just" than elevating your fellow human being to the same level of living and dignity as your own self? To erase all barriers of need and suffering between persons, and whole peoples, is justice indeed. Justice is fairness. Justice is the natural state of harmony that occurs when one treats oneself and others with fairness and kindness. And this is tzedakah.

As a student of Rabbi Zvi Block, I learned that a Jew is commanded to do just three things: to love G-d, to love Torah, and to love the world. And, if a Jew finds that he/she can do only one of these three things, then he/she must love the world for that is the greatest commandment of all. G-d says so.

As Rabbi Block explained, in doing and living out that last commandment, one will eventually be fulfilling the other two. Makes sense to me!

One person's life is just one thread in a whole tapestry that makes up human existence. It is essential that we all learn to weave - to coexist - to love one another. That tapestry is not going to weave itself. It's up to us. What kind of world do we want to make out of our many threads?

And if one of those threads goes astray due to hunger or some other basic human need that is not being met, when someone's dignity is on the line, and you have the capacity for compassion that G-d wisely built into your soul, will you listen to it or will you pretend that you're not hearing the call? Will you not use the thread of your own human existence to pick up someone else's lost stitch to help get them back on track?

Maimonides wrote, "Even a poor person who lives entirely on tzedakah must also give tzedakah to another." (Mishnah Torah Chapter 7, Line 5) You see? We all matter. We all can do. We are interwoven.

What kind of human tapestry do you want to see woven and what are you willing to do to achieve it? It is not possible to create something beautiful based on that which is unjust. And so, you must love the world. G-d says so.

Please, read a little of what has been written on the subject of tzedakah...

Talmud: "Deeds of kindness are equal in
weight to all the commandments."

Sunday, November 06, 2005

My Friend, Irv Rubin (O.B.M.)

Shiksa? What shiksa?

So, okay. I'm not really a shiksa... anymore. But I was one, once upon a time, more than half my lifetime ago. I am 55 years old and I converted to Judaism when I was 25. I studied with Rabbi Joseph Feinstein who gave an especially lovely lesson on the sanctity of Life one day...

Just as we were discussing the subject, an annoying fly buzzed the Rabbi. In a flash, Rabbi Feinstein's hand snapped out and with a piece of rolled-up paper he smacked the sanctified life right out of that little fly. The Rabbi's wife burst out laughing.

"So what happened to your lesson on the sanctity of Life?," she asked.

"Let him pay his share of the rent and he can live," answered the Rabbi.

This sweet Orthodox rabbi had already written an episode of "Sanford and Son" in which Fred Sanford discovers his Jewish roots.

So. I'm not a shiksa anymore. And I only ever saw one episode of, "The X Files," but I still liked my title up there, so that's how this blog got its name. Capische?