Archive for February, 2007

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Sharansky on the new antisemitism and what to do about it

Monday, February 12th, 2007

On one side, we have the Iranian regime, which is denying the Holocaust and calling for Israel to be “wiped off the map” while racing to develop the physical means of doing so. On the other side, we have what is, in effect, international silence in response, coupled with growing willingness to discuss Israel’s existence as a mistake, an anachronism, or a provocation. — Natan Sharansky

When Sharansky finally got out of the Soviet Union and came to Israel, I was in the midst of reserve duty, in a cold and rainy place. Some of my fellow miluimniks, also immigrants from the USSR, watched him appear on television and commented “big Zionist, wait till they stick him here”. I don’t know whether he got to my old unit, but Sharansky has proven to be a big Zionist in the best possible sense.

Read Sharansky’s discussion of the new antisemitism and his practical program to combat it.

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Who is really desecrating the Temple Mount?

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

Here’s what the Biblical Archaeology Society says:

…in the early 1990s, Palestinian leader Yassar Arafat took over control of the Waqf, and a systematic destruction of any vestige of Jewish presence on the Mount was begun. Arafat claimed that there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem, an opinion often referred to as “Temple Denial.”

During the ten-year “reign” of Arafat on the Temple Mount, and in the years since his death, numerous unauthorized and archaeologically unsupervised construction projects have been carried out.

In 1996 the Waqf began converting the underground area of the Mount popularly known as Solomon’s Stables into a large mosque. It has bulldozed parts of the top of the mount to make way for “open” mosques, cleaned ancient cisterns, paved over ancient areas, damaged an ancient wall, dug a trench for a utility line, and removed thousands of tons of “debris,” from the site, dumping it in the Kidron valley.

They’ve also employed a huge electric saw to cut up ancient stones from the Temple Mount, destroying any historical evidence the stones may have offered. An analysis in the early 1990s found that the Waqf had committed more than 35 violations of Israeli antiquities law on the site.

Despite the fact that religious Jews as well as archaeologists have complained, the Israeli government has done nothing to stop the desecration of Judaism’s holiest site, out of fear of arousing Arab passions.

Read the article by Hershel Shanks of the BAS here. It’s infuriating.

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Today’s three ‘no’s

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

No recognition, no end to terrorism, and no peace.

GAZA (Reuters) – The Palestinian unity government which will be formed under an agreement reached in Saudi Arabia will not recognize Israel, a political adviser to Hamas Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh said on Saturday.

“The issue of recognition was not addressed at all (in Mecca),” Ahmed Youssef said. “In the platform of the new government there will be no sign of recognition (of Israel), regardless of the pressures the United States and the Quartet would exert,” he said.

The rain of Kassam missiles from Gaza hasn’t abated either.

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The fog of media war

Sunday, February 11th, 2007

By Vic Rosenthal

Recently, the incredibly irritating Michael Lerner announced that he

would not be surprised to learn that some branch of our government conspired either actively to promote or passively to allow the attack on 9/11 (JTA)

My first impulse was “Lerner’s even more insane than I thought”.

(more…)

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Academic life damages Jewish brains

Saturday, February 10th, 2007

An Israeli historian, Prof. Ariel Toaff of Bar Ilan University, has written a book claiming that medieval Jews did actually use Christian blood to make Matzoh.Blood libel

Of course, he justifies his claims using ‘evidence’ consisting of confessions extracted from Jews under torture.

Toaff’s father, Elio Toaff (who has disavowed the book) is a former chief rabbi of Rome and Italian restaurant owner.

The question of why he would write such a book naturally arises. Literally hundreds of innocent Jews have been murdered over the centuries as a result of the blood libel, and certainly no serious historian has ever suggested that confessions obtained by torture are evidence for anything. The blood libel today is believed by many in the Muslim world and continues to be a part of modern antisemitic literature. And Toaff’s book has already been cited on several antisemitic websites.

So to put things in perspective, Toaff has struck a small blow for Jew-hatred (small because those who believe such things will believe them anyway, and those who don’t won’t be convinced by his ‘evidence’) and perhaps a large one for his personal notoriety.

Update [14 Feb 1225 PST]: Toaff has suspended distribution of his book to “re-edit the passages which comprised the basis of the distortions and falsehoods that have been published in the media.” Apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that what he wrote could have been used for nefarious purposes. Now, of course, we’ll hear that the ‘Jewish lobby’ has ‘silenced’ him.

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