Mideastern surrealism
Iraq will demand that Israel pay compensation for bombing the unfinished nuclear reactor at Osirak in 1981, an Iraqi member of parliament told the Iraqi al-Sabah newspaper in an article published on Tuesday…
The Iraqi demand is based on UN Security Council Resolution 487, which was drafted following the bombing of the reactor in June 1981. The resolution harshly condemned Israel’s aerial attack and determined that Iraq had a right to demand compensation over the damages.
This is reminiscent of the time the Egyptians demanded that Israel compensate them for the gold and valuables taken by the bnei yisrael at the time of the exodus (in response to which someone said that Israel would gladly pay as long as they received back wages for 400 years of slave labor).
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The rabbi’s strange perspective
Rabbi David Saperstein of the Union for Reform Judaism’s Religious Action Center will speak at our local Reform congregation, Temple Beth Israel, next Sunday. His subject: “Israel’s Three Most Vital Challenges: Peace, Equality, and Religious Freedom.â€
Just to make things clear, ‘Peace’ means something like “making an agreement with the Palestinians to end the occupation of Judea and Samariaâ€, ‘Equality’ refers to the position of Arab citizens of Israel, and ‘religious freedom’ means ending the dominance of the Orthodox establishment over religious affairs (and funds) in Israel.
As Dave Barry, a very funny writer, always said, I Am Not Making This Up.
I don’t suggest that Rabbi Saperstein’s issues are unimportant, but I wonder how he missed these three:
- The Iranian nuclear project
- The 40,000+ rockets aimed at Israel by Hezbollah, plus thousands more by Iranian satellite Syria
- The supply of rockets – much more powerful than the Qassams of the past — and other weapons now in the hands of Hamas
English assignment for the rabbi: get a dictionary and look up ‘vital’.
More to come, after his talk.
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Bakri, the artist with a postmodern concept of truth
Last week I wrote about the possibility that Israeli Arab (excuse me, ‘Palestinian resident of Israel’) filmmaker Mohammad Bakri, who was responsible for the propaganda film ‘Jenin, Jenin’, would be indicted for criminal libel. It turns out that he will not. But Attorney General Menachem Mazuz said that he would support the appeal of several reserve soldiers in their civil libel suit against Bakri.
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But people still take them seriously…
How did I miss this one? Not only is J Street funded by Arab and Iranian money, but the connections to Saudi Arabia are even closer than had been previously imagined, writes Lenny Ben-David. The close relationship between J Street and Qorvis Communications, the Saudi-employed PR firm, should remove all doubts that J Street is no more than an anti-Israel front group.
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Statistics
This blog has been in existence for a bit more than three years. There are 1311 posts, most of them written by me, and 985 comments, most by my old friend (of almost 50 years) Shalom Freedman from Jerusalem. My own favorite blogs are still The Rubin Report and Elder of Ziyon.
Technorati Tags: Israel, Osirak, J Street, Bakri, Saperstein
In the 1311 posts Vic Rosenthal has made on this blog he has made an astounding commentary on the present situation of the state of Israel. He has examined with an extraordinary logic and depth the criminal effort to delegitimize and destroy Israel. He has defended Israel in such a way as to put him in the first rank of those who write about it. I feel great gratitude to him not only for what he has taught me in these posts, but more importantly what he has given to the Jewish world in writing them.
I pray that he will have the strength to persist in them, and that they will find the much wider audience that they truly merit.