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Two headlines that sum up a lot

March 9, 2010

Ha’aretz: Israel offers aid to Turkey after 41 killed in earthquake

Yediot Aharonot: Turkey rejects Israel’s offer of post-quake aid

Apparently, Ankara thinks it’s preferable for innocent people to die than to accept help from Jews.

Waqf, PA leadership attempt to rewrite biblical history

March 8, 2010

We told you before about the ongoing (low-burn) violence and media circus surrounding the Jewish state’s adding two major tourist and spiritual pilgrimage spots to a list of sites of “Jewish cultural heritage.”

Well, on Friday, worshipers at the Western Wall were stoned by rioters on top of the Temple Mount and 15 Israeli policemen and dozens of the rioters were injured in the resulting scuffles. (Don’t Islamic leaders mind their followers using the high ground of what is ostensibly a holy site to attempt to maim worshipers below?)

So let’s go over this again: Israel added two spots to a list that designates sites of historical and cultural relevance. And this caused Palestinians to riot? (Continuing the long tradition of the Palestinian Authority using violence or threats of it where other governments use diplomacy.) And countries ranging from Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab league states, to–predictably– the UN felt the need to condemn the list-making (while not condemning the violence fomented by the PA). And, of course, the U.S. hasn’t retracted the State Department’s comments on the matter, which were that the Israeli list was “provocative and unhelpful.”

So what are these sites anyway?

What exactly are these sites? One is Rachel’s Tomb, which sits on the edge of Bethelehem close to Jerusalem. The second is the Cave of the Patriarchs, which sits in the middle of Hebron. Just how “provocative” is it to add these to the list of sites of Jewish cultural import?

Rachel’s Tomb is identified in Genesis 35:19-20: “So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). Over her tomb Jacob set up a pillar, and to this day that pillar marks Rachel’s tomb.” As the Bible relates, the site has been holy to Jews for thousands of years — more than a thousand years before Islam even came into existence! (And holy to Christians hundreds of years before…)

The case of the Cave of the Patriarchs is even more ironic: Genesis 23 records how Abraham insists on purchasing a burial cave near his home in Kiryat Arba (next to modern-day Hebron) from Ephron the Hittite, even when Ephron offers it to him as a gift:

Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.” (Genesis 23:3-4)

The Hittites offer him “the choicest of our tombs,” but Abraham asks them to “intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.”

Ephron offers to give Abraham the cave for free: “No, my lord,” he said. “Listen to me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.” (Genesis 23:11-12)

A recorded real estate transaction

But Abraham insists on paying for it:

Again Abraham bowed down before the people of the land and he said to Ephron in their hearing, “Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.”

Ephron answered Abraham, “Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver, but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead.”

Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants.

So Ephron’s field in Machpelah near Mamre—both the field and the cave in it, and all the trees within the borders of the field—was deeded to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city. Afterward Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah near Mamre (which is at Hebron) in the land of Canaan. So the field and the cave in it were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site. (Genesis 23:12-20)

The Jewish Sages comment that part of the reason that Abraham was so eager to pay for the burial cave was so that no one could ever dispute that fact that the Jewish people owned it. (The only other sites so recorded are the Tomb of Joseph, which is near the Biblical Shechem, now present-day Nablus, and the site of the Holy Temple, the Temple Mount – both of which Palestinians claim as being of dubious import to the Jewish people.)

Commentator Michael Freund says it best:

Sites such as Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs are part of the national and religious patrimony of the Jewish people, and we do not need anyone’s permission to renovate and maintain them. Our reverence for these sites and attachment to them predates Muhammad and precedes Jesus, and no one has the right to lecture us about where and how we choose to serve God.

In fact, this entire episode provides a revealing glimpse of just how transparently hypocritical our critics have become. After all, it was nearly 15 years ago, in the September 1995 Oslo II Accords, that the Palestinians themselves recognized Israel’s attachment to Rachel’s Tomb. In Article V, Annex I to the agreement, the Palestinians agreed that “the present situation and existing practices in the tomb shall be preserved,” meaning that they clearly consented to Israeli control and use of the site, which has never been anything other than a place of Jewish worship.

So for chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to say last week that Israel’s move amounts to a “unilateral decision to make Palestinian sites in Hebron and Bethlehem part of Israel” is not only absurd, it is patently false.

And since the accords were signed on the White House lawn in front of the world, and were formally witnessed by representatives of both the US administration and the European Union, one would expect them to see right through the Palestinians’ shenanigans.

Worse yet, by playing along with the feigned outrage of the Palestinian leadership, the international community is merely giving credence to their boorish denial of the Jewish essence of these sites.

You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar or a learned archeologist to recognize the long-standing and incontestably Jewish nature of Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs. Arguing otherwise is akin to asserting that the earth is flat, Elvis is still alive and the moon is made of cheese, and that is how the Palestinian claims should be viewed.

Is it offensive to call Jesus’ birthplace a Christian site?

Can the world imagine a case in which Israel would list the Church of the Manger (Jesus’ birthplace) in Bethlehem and Jesus’ family home in Nazareth as sites of historical importance to Christians — and the Palestinians would protest?

Unfortunately, I think we can. But that doesn’t make it any more crazy.

Some clues as to what was discussed at terror trio’s meeting

March 5, 2010

Last week, we told you how a troika of terror heads–Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and Hezbollah head Sheik Hassan Nasrallah–had a little dinner party.

Although some Western powers, including the U.S., continue a policy of engagement with Syria (Undersecretary of State William Burns visited Damascus just a week before the dinner party and the U.S. is sending its first new ambassador in five years), ties between Assad and Hezbollah remain strong. According to the Washington Institute, since the 2006 war with Israel, Hizbullah has procured an estimated 40,000 rockets and – with Syria’s help – reportedly improved the quality of its arsenal.

Syria also may have provided the Russian-made shoulder-fired Igla antiaircraft system, which is capable of downing Israeli F-16s.

Ha’aretz writer Yoel Marcus wrote that the well-publicized banquet was “certainly in Iran’s interest, but it is unclear whether it is in Syria’s.” After all, the Syrian regime is among those Iran would like to bring down: Not only is Assad not a Shi’ite Muslim like the Iranian mullahs, but he and his government are secular — something the Iranian regime wants to stomp out.

Marcus continues, showing just how “scary” Israelis find the troika (summary: not very):

As for Ahmadinejad, he has a big mouth – he does not understand that the more he threatens us with a second Holocaust, the more he spurs Israel to build greater means of deterrence and increases its willingness to use them. The reasoning, as Ronen Bergman wrote last week in Yediot Ahronot, which won the day when former Prime Minister Menachem Begin ordered the bombing of the Iraqi reactor and by which the Syrian reactor was bombed, is that a country calling for the destruction of Israel must not be given the means to do so. Our deterrence is based on force and the willingness to use it in the face of a threat to our survival.

Israel’s reputation is built on deterrence. Iran, full of itself, could presume that we will not act or we will not be allowed to act. But good intelligence on their part can depend on precedents where we did act in similar circumstances.

Trio of terror has a night out in Syria…

March 1, 2010

Wouldn’t you have loved to be a fly on the wall at a formal banquet hosted by Syrian dictator Bashar Assad whose guest list included Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hezbollah head Sheik Hassan Nasrallah, AFP reports.

It was a rare public outing for Nasrallah, who keeps his schedule private due to fears that he’s on the list of terror leaders Israel is looking to assassinate. According to AFP, he “has seldom left his Lebanese stronghold and has made few public appearances.”:

With an Israeli death threat hanging over him, the Hezbollah chief has even avoided religious or political gatherings in Lebanon, and his televised speeches have been taped or broadcast from secret locations.

Apparently, though, the chance to discuss “the latest developments in the region, and Zionist threats against Lebanon and Syria” was enough to lure him out of his hiding place.

Iran and Syria are the main backers of Hezbollah, the only militia that has kept its military arsenal since the end of Lebanon’s 1975-1990 civil war.

Assad and Ahmadinejad signed a visa-scrapping accord in Damascus on Thursday, signaling even closer ties and brushing aside US efforts to drive a wedge between the two allies.

Bombing attempt at Cairo’s main synagogue

February 24, 2010

A clumsy attempt to bomb Cairo’s historic main synagogue failed Sunday when a make-shift explosive device in a suitcase failed to ignite fully after an assailant hurled it at the house of worship from window above it. There were no injuries or damage.

According to a police report, early Sunday morning, a man entered a hotel on the fourth floor of a building across from the synagogue, ostensibly to check in. As he was going through the process, he abruptly threw his suitcase out the window (toward the synagogue below).

The man’s suitcase held four containers of gasoline, each of which was attached to a glass bottle filled with sulfuric acid. Police theorized that the bottles of acid were meant to shatter on impact, thereby igniting the makeshift bomb. Instead, the bag fell onto the sidewalk in front of the hotel and briefly caught fire before being extinguished.

The synagogue, Shaar Shomayim (“Gates of Heaven”), was built in 1899 and was once the largest building on its main downtown street. Its style is intended to evoke the look of ancient Egyptian temples. See photos of the beautiful building and read about its history here.

Egypt was long home to a thriving Jewish community with a storied history that included some of the Jewish world’s greatest leaders, including Maimonides, the great 12th century philosopher who is still considered the premiere codifier of Jewish law. Prior to the establishment of Israel, the community numbered around 80,000 people.

The Jews were kicked out after the establishment of the modern state of Israel, however. According to Ha’aretz, only several dozen–mostly elderly–Jews remain in the country. A number of heavily guarded synagogues remain.

There he goes again…

February 21, 2010

In keeping with the apparent preferred sport of Iranian leaders’–tossing invective toward Israel–on Thursday, Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad urged Hezbollah’s leader to wipe out Israel “once and for all,” if a regional war “breaks out” in the near future, the Associated Press reports.

According to the Iranian state news agency, Ahmadinejad told Hezbollah head Sheik Hassan Nasrallah that “the preparations should be of the level that, if they (the Israelis) want to repeated the mistakes of the past (by attacking), then their case should be closed once and for all and the region delivered from their evil ways forever.”

The slight problem with Ahmadinejad’s logic is that Israel hasn’t started wars with Hezbollah (you have to love the way AP uses the neutral term “breaks out” — as if war just sort of happens). Rather, Israel went into Lebanon after repeated cross-border attacks by Hezbollah, including the July 12 attack that set off the war: Hezbollah sent a barrage of rockets into northern Israeli towns and then sent a team of terrorists into the Jewish state (some military minds might call this “an invasion”), who killed three Israeli soldiers, wounded two, and dragged the bodies of an additional two soldiers–who were seriously wounded and may have died pretty much immediately–back across the border.

The purpose of Israel’s incursion was to recover the two soldiers, about whom Hezbollah refused to provide any sort of information, including signs of life. It wasn’t until a prisoner swap two years later that the families of the soldiers–Ehud Goldwasser and Eldad Regev–discovered that the two–their sons, brothers, and husbands–had probably been dead the whole time.

In addition to such flagrant flouting of the rules of combat, Hezbollah actively attempts to emotionally torment Israeli civilians — beyond refusing to provide any information about captives, the organization has the lovely habit of erecting billboards just inside the Lebanese border with Israel that include graphic photos of dead and dismembered Israeli soldiers, with statements taunting Israelis and Israeli leaders.

We don’t think Israel is the one with “evil ways” from which we all need deliverance.

Hezbollah receives funding and other support from Iran. Its also closely allied with the dictator state of Syria, whom it recently joined in issuing threats against the Jewish state.

Not really a shock: 90 percent of Middle East views Jews unfavorably

February 12, 2010

A new study ”paints a worrying picture” of Middle Easterners’ attitude toward Jews, the Jerusalem Post reports.

In the predominantly Muslim nations surveyed, views of Jews were overwhelmingly unfavorable. Nearly all in Jordan (97 percent), the Palestinian territories (97%) and Egypt (95%) held an unfavorable view. Similarly, 98% of Lebanese expressed an unfavorable opinion of Jews, including 98% among both Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims, as well as 97% of Lebanese Christians.

It’s not really that surprising. After years of being told by their own governments that Jews eat Palestinian children for breakfast and other nonsense, of course the majority of Israel’s Arab and Muslim neighbors despise Jews. Their governments can’t take responsibility for the squalor of their countries, so they blame the thuggery and corruption of their countries on Jews. It’s not a new tactic (See blood libels, Chemielnicki pogroms, Nazi propaganda, or of the other countless violent scape-goating episodes in Jewish history.)

What is really interesting about this study, though, is that among Israeli Arabs –those who have the closest contact with Jews and who are subject to much of the same propaganda, only 35 percent expressed negative opinions and 56 percent expressed positive opinions.

The lesson? Reality seems to trump propaganda.

(Incidentally, the propaganda extends outside the Middle East, according to the survey:)

Negative views of Jews were also widespread in the predominantly Muslim countries surveyed in Asia: More than seven-in-ten in Pakistan (78%) and Indonesia (74%) expressed unfavorable opinions.

Egyptian journalists union punishes writers for ties to Israelis

February 5, 2010

In the West, reporters who are able to make connections and sources among diverse populations–even if they’re “enemies”–are considered excellent journalists. Hence, reporters scramble to get interviews with Osama bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, and any other number of morally objectionable types so that their readers can better understand them, whether to sympathize with them or to attempt to nail down just why they’re so psychotic.

This idea of a free press doesn’t exist in Israel’s neighborhood (outside of the Jewish state herself, that is). In fact, the journalists’ union in Egypt–which has a peace treaty and relations with Israel–just censured two leading editors for violating its ban on having contacts with Israel or Israelis, the Washington Post reports.

…the union reprimanded Hala Mustafa, editor in chief of the state-run weekly Democratiya, or Democracy, for meeting with Israel’s ambassador in Egypt. Hussein Serag, the expert on Jewish affairs and deputy editor of the weekly magazine October, was suspended from writing for three months.

In the past, Mustafa had called the ban on contact with Israel “obsolete” and out of sync with political developments in the region.

Speaking to The Associated Press Wednesday, she said her reprimand reflected what she called the heavy-handedness and the meddling in politics of security agencies, as well as the country’s “ambiguous” policy toward Israel.

Clearly, the ban makes clear how cold relations between the two countries are, whether or not they have official ties. The government officially discourages travel to and cultural exchanges with the Jewish state, and popular sentiment remains hostile toward the Jewish state — “because of its perceived oppression of the Palestinians,” the Post posits.

The second writer did not mince words about his take on the ban:

Serag’s punishment was for visiting Israel 25 times. He has translated books from Hebrew to Arabic, the latest was “Between Tel Aviv and Cairo,” a memoir by Israel’s former ambassador to Egypt David Sultan.

He said all his visits to Israel were approved by the editor of October magazine and security officials.

“My field of specialty is Israel and Hebrew. If I don’t visit Israel how can I understand these people?” Serag said. “This is hypocrisy, pure and simple.”

One held in bomb targeting Israeli diplomats, more arrests expected in “Hezbollah-style” attack

January 19, 2010

Jordanian security forces are holding a taxi driver who they suspect planted an explosive device that targeted an Israeli diplomatic convoy traveling from the Jordanian capital city of Amman to Israel, Arab TV reported overnight.

No group immediately claimed responsibility for the explosion, which left a large crater at the attack site just 13 miles from the Allenby Bridge, Jordan’s main border crossing into Israel.

The initial investigation suggests that the type and way the bombs were planted is reminiscent of the sort of road-side attacks Hezbollah used to target Israeli troops when they were operating in Lebanon prior to the unilateral Israeli withdrawal in 2000.

According to reports in the Israeli media, officials called the bombing “a well-planned ambush” and credited the fact that the device’s timing was apparently a few seconds off with preventing injuries or worse among those riding in the diplomatic convoy. After the bomb went off, the cars reportedly sped to a nearby Jordanian Army base. The Jordanian Army then imposed a closure on the area and carried out searches, arresting one person.

Israeli officials are still not sure what the taxi driver’s connection to the blast is, but have said that they expect the Jordanians to make more arrests soon.

Meanwhile, according to Yediot Aharonot, Jordanian investigators “are still uncertain whether the attack was carried out by global Jihad activists, Hezbollah members, or possibly Hamas men. According to some estimates, the attack involved the work of many terrorists, including planners, lookouts, and collaborators.”

The agencies involved still are avoiding official comment. A spokeswoman for the Israeli embassy in Amman said, “All I can say now is that everyone is fine.”