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Stand for Israel Blog

Netanyahu: I’ll meet with Mubarak next week

April 28, 2010

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will be traveling to Egypt next week to meet with Egyptian President Mubarak. The two will talk of ways to restart peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinian Authority.

While some elements within his own party have criticized him for it, Netanyahu defends his policy of trying to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and saysthat he has shown the world that he intends to protect Israel’s soveriegnty over Jerusalem. Netanyahu hopes that negotiations will start as early as next week and will cover all outstanding issues.

IDF ‘Shake-up’ means army chief is out

April 8, 2010

Apparently, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu doesn’t want to make too much of a fuss about the recent decision to terminate IDF chief Gabi Ashkenazi. Ashkenazi was to serve one more year, but his tenure was not extended. The Jerusalem Post reports the move as “part of a routine shake-up of the army’s chain of command.”

“I appreciate the Chief of Staff very much,” Netanyahu told reporters during a press conference held at the Knesset in Jerusalem. “But every organization needs to freshen its ranks.”

Some claim the relationship between Ashkenazi and Defense Minister Ehud Barak is strained. Reporters questioned Netanyahu about these alleged tensions speculating Barak supported the termination. Netanyahu also brushed off challenges of Israel’s political isolation is, in part, due to his policies.

“There’s a change in the world that is caused by the rise of radical Islam,” he said. “There are those who put this responsibility on Israel, but everybody who looks at it closely sees that is not the case.”

Ad campaign calling for Third Temple pulled

April 6, 2010

New housing units in Jerusalem aren’t the only buildings being proposed in Israel. Just before Passover, a major ad campaign launched promoting the construction of a Third Temple.

Bus placards with ads streaming down the side included a picture depicting a Jewish Temple on the Temple Mount, with the rebuilt Temple taking the place of the two mosques that are now located on the site. A caption below the photo read, “May the Temple be built swiftly in our days,” taken from the daily Jewish prayer book.

The ad campaign, organized by and paid for by the conservative group Eretz Yisrael Shelanu (Our Land of Israel/The Land of Israel is Ours, also known as SOS-Israel), was a magnet for controversy. Finally, the advertising franchiser pulled the ads, responding to complaints and threats of vandalism.

Not surprisingly, SOS-Israel leaders were highly critical of the decision. Rabbi Shay Geffen, a representative of the group, said, ““We might as well shelve all the Jewish holy books that call for the rebuilding of the temple too … These are words that every Jew utters three times a day in their prayers. I’m surprised that an established company like Egged would react in this way.”

Thousands gather for Priestly Blessing at Western Wall

April 5, 2010

A Priestly Blessing was given to thousands of Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall April 1. The blessing was administered by hundreds of Kohanim from the Priestly class (descendants of Aharon the Priest).

Happening only twice-yearly, the blessing is a regular part of morning prayers in most of Israel, as opposed to in the Diaspora, where it is recited only on holidays.

At the beginning of the ceremony, the Leviim (Levites) in the congregation wash the hands of the Kohanim and then the Kohanim remove their shoes (if they are unable to remove their shoes without using their hands, the shoes are removed prior to the washing), and walk up to the platform in front of the ark, at the front of the synagogue. They cover their heads with their tallitot (prayer shawl), recite the blessing over the performance of the mitzvah, turn to face the congregation, and then the hazzan or prayer leader slowly and melodiously recites the three verse blessing, with the Kohanim repeating it word by word after him. After each verse, the congregation responds Amen.

In Conservative Judaism, the majority of congregations do not perform the priestly blessing ceremony, but some do. In some American Conservative congregations that perform the ceremony, a bat kohen (daughter of a priest) can perform it as well.

Conservative Judaism has also lifted some of the restrictions on Kohanim including prohibited marriages. Orthodox Judaism requires male kohanim (plural of kohen), in continuity with the requirements of the Temple. The Masorti movement in Israel, and some Conservative congregations in North America, require male kohanim as well, and retain restrictions on Kohanim.

Following the blessing a reception was held by chief rabbis of Israel, Rabbi Yona Metzger, Rabbi Shlomo Amar and Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich at the Western Wall pavilion.
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The Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest site, is located in Jerusalem’s Old City.

Foxman: Carter’s apology insincere

March 30, 2010

Former president Jimmy Carter’s anti-Israel bias is showing again. During a recent conference on U.S.-Arab relations in Atlanta, Carter said in a speech that the U.S. government has “yielded excessively” to Israel.

Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, says Carter’s comments indicate that he was not sincere in a 2009 apology to the Jewish community. Carter countered by issuing a statement that he has “never stigmatized” Israel either now or during his presidency.

In December 2009, Carter published an open letter to the Jewish community in which he offered an al Het – a request for forgiveness – to the Jewish community for “any words or deeds of mine” that may have stigmatized Israel.

Among other things, Carter has consistently referred to the Jewish nation an “apartheid” state. In June he asserted, “Tragically, the international community too often ignores the cries for help and the citizens of Palestine are treated more like animals than like human beings.”

Foxman says while he was encouraged by Carter’s 2009 apology, he believes Carter’s attitude toward Israel is the same as ever. “Nothing has changed. None of his views have been recalibrated,” Foxman told the Georga Democrat. “He hasn’t really changed his views and I don’t understand what this Al Het letter was all about.”

Passover’s a holy festival, but the holiness includes the Israeli “national sport” — cleaning

March 25, 2010

Celebrate the Feast of Unleavened Bread, because it was on this very day that I brought your divisions out of Egypt. Celebrate this day as a lasting ordinance for the generations to come. In the first month you are to eat bread made without yeast, from the evening of the fourteenth day until the evening of the twenty-first day. For seven days no yeast is to be found in your houses. And whoever eats anything with yeast in it must be cut off from the community of Israel, whether he is an alien or native-born. Eat nothing made with yeast. Wherever you live, you must eat unleavened bread.

– Exodus 12:17-20

Many committed Christians know that Passover marks the Jews’ deliverance from bondage in Egypt, and may even know that it’s celebrated with a seder, a family meal that includes the recitation of the Haggadah, the traditional Jewish text that teaches the story of the Jews’ redemption from slavery and formation into the nation of Israel. If you’ve ever been to one, you might have enjoyed the liturgy and discussion or tasted traditional dishes like matzo ball soup, brisket or tzimmes, a sweet carrot dish.

You may even know that observant Jews refrain from eating food that has any sort of yeast in it, known as chametz. (Ashkenazi Jews–those of European origin–also avoid kitniyot, a category of food that includes items that were frequently mixed with grains, such as corn and legumes.)

What you may not realize is that, in keeping with the biblical instruction that “no yeast is to be found in your house,” observant Jews spent the weeks before Passover ridding their homes of all leavened food — and that doesn’t just mean making sure you eat the rest of the pasta, but it also means cleaning underneath the sofas and bookshelves to find the errant Cheerios the 3-year-old dropped.

For the Orthodoxly observant, “Passover cleaning” includes switching kitchenware to special sets of pots and pants and dishes that are used only during Passover and stored safely away during the rest of the year. But, in Israel, even the non-observant get caught up in the fever.

Israeli writer Allison Kaplan Sommer, whose family is not Orthodoxly observant, observes wryly that:

Housecleaning is transformed from a private activity into something of a national competitive Israeli sport. In my corner of greater Tel Aviv suburbia, spring means the smell of ammonia, not roses, is in the air. Walk into the supermarket, and you have navigate past shelves full of cleaning supplies, before you make it to the milk and eggs. You can’t turn on the television without commercials for the latest gadget to make cleaning easier, faster and better; public service announcements sternly warn the population against the inhalation of too many toxic cleaning products.

Once we were slaves in Egypt, now we are slaves to the image of the idealized Passover home, with everything perfectly scrubbed and in order.

In fact, many major rabbis, including this revered ultra-Orthodox one, end up telling their congregants to stop the Passover madness and stop worrying so much about microscopic crumbs and enjoy the holiday more.

Meanwhile, in the political realm, Israeli politicians will lead up to the holiday by squabbling over the chametz law — a regulation that requires that leavened foods not be publicly displayed (in keeping with Jewish law). Last week, the Interior Ministry reminded municipal officials that they’re responsible for enforcing the law and asked  that all municipalities submit a list with the names of inspectors responsible for enforcing the law.

In keeping with the other Israeli national sport–arguing–some will argue that the law represents religious coercion, while others will argue that it’s simply a publicly preserve national customs.

Bibi: Jews ‘were building Jerusalem 3,000 year ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today’

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu “confidently rebuffed” pressure to stop a planned building project in northern Jerusalem in a speech to AIPAC on Monday, according to the Wall Street Journal (subscriber only), and then set out on a series of meetings in Washington, hoping to ease the worst spate of tensions between the U.S. and Israel in decades.

Even Netanyahu’s critics in Israel concede that there are few politicians as gifted as gifted as he at defending the Jewish state in English — and his skills were on display this week in his remarks, in which he said:

  • Iran’s bid to develop nuclear weapons is first and foremost a threat to Israel, but it is also a grave threat to the region and to the world. Israel expects the international community to act swiftly and decisively to thwart this danger. “But,” he said, “we will always reserve the right to self-defense.”
  • “The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 year ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today. Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital….Today, nearly a quarter of a million Jews, almost half the city’s Jewish population, live in neighborhoods that are just beyond the 1949 armistice lines….They are an integral and inextricable part of modern Jerusalem. Everyone knows that these neighborhoods will be part of Israel in any peace settlement. Therefore, building in them in no way precludes the possibility of a two-state solution.”
  • “While we cherish our homeland, we also recognize that Palestinians live there as well. We don’t want to govern them. We don’t want to rule them. We want them as neighbors, living in security, dignity and peace. Yet Israel is unjustly accused of not wanting peace with the Palestinians. Nothing could be further from the truth….From day one, we called on the Palestinian Authority to begin peace negotiations without delay. I make that same call today. President Abbas, come and negotiate peace.”
  • “Leaders who truly want peace should sit down face-to-face. Of course, the United States can help the parties solve their problems but it cannot solve the problems for the parties. Peace cannot be imposed from the outside. It can only come through direct negotiations in which we develop mutual trust.”
  • “Israel must make sure that what happened in Lebanon and Gaza doesn’t happen again in the West Bank….Experience has shown that only an Israeli presence on the ground can prevent weapons smuggling. This is why a peace agreement with the Palestinians must include an Israeli presence on the eastern border of a future Palestinian state.”
  • “For decades, Israel served as a bulwark against Soviet expansionism. Today it is helping America stem the tide of militant Islam….Our soldiers and your soldiers fight against fanatic enemies that loathe our common values. In the eyes of these fanatics…you are the Great Satan and we are the Little Satan….Militant Islam does not hate the West because of Israel. It hates Israel because of the West – because it sees Israel as an outpost of freedom and democracy that prevents them from overrunning the Middle East. That is why when Israel stands against its enemies, it stands against America’s enemies.”

To read his full remarks, go here.

Someone must be doing something right!

But the land you are crossing the Jordan to take possession of is a land of mountains and valleys that drinks rain from heaven. It is a land the Lord your God cares for; the eyes of the Lord your God are continually on it from the beginning of the year to its end.

So if you faithfully obey the commands I am giving you today—to love the Lord your God and to serve him with all your heart and with all your soul- then I will send rain on your land in its season, both autumn and spring rains, so that you may gather in your grain, new wine and oil. I will provide grass in the fields for your cattle, and you will eat and be satisfied.

Be careful, or you will be enticed to turn away and worship other gods and bow down to them. Then the Lord’s anger will burn against you, and he will shut the heavens so that it will not rain and the ground will yield no produce, and you will soon perish from the good land the Lord is giving you.

– Deuteronomy 11:11-17

Israel is entirely dependent on rain. The water level of the Sea of Galilee–Israel’s main source of fresh water–drops around 5 feet every year and needs to be replenished by rains during the rainy season (generally, the winter months between Sukkot and Passover). When rain doesn’t fall, the water level doesn’t rise. If there aren’t sufficient rains for a few years in a row (as has been the case for a number of years), the Sea of Galilee’s water level continues dropping.

For the last decade, the water level has been hovering around what Israelis call “the red line” — the level at which scientists say that the fresh water source is imperiled (some scientists have worried publicly that dropping too far below the line could cause mineral springs below the lake to burst through, which would turn the Galilee into another Dead Sea). The sea has been below the danger low pretty much constantly for the last decade or more.

But someone must be doing something right — earlier this month, before the end of the season, the level climbed above the danger line for the first time in a year and a half.

Still, there’s plenty more space — the Galilee had another dozen or so feet of space to be filled before its dams have the be released (to prevent flooding in the area). Water experts are hoping for another few feet before the rainy season ends next week.

Israel: UN doesn’t seem to mind when rockets fall on us

March 23, 2010

Israel charged Monday that it appears that the United Nations Human Rights Council doesn’t believe that Israel has the right to self-defense against the rockets Gaza Palestinians launch against its citizens on the southern border, the Jerusalem Post reports.

“You have done nothing about it, and you expect that Israel does nothing either,” Israel’s ambassador to the UN in Geneva, Aharon Leshno Yaar, told the body during a day-long council debate about the Jewish state’s actions in the West Bank and Gaza. Later this week, the council is expected to approve four resolutions regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Just last week, he said, one such rocket killed a Thai man, Manee Singueanphon, who was working in a greenhouse near the Gaza border. He accused council members of disproportionately focusing on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a way to shift the body’s focus away from their own human rights issues.

Yaar noted that even South African jurist Richard Goldstone had stated that “the firing of these rockets are war crimes and may amount to crimes against humanity.”

Of course, the Goldstone Report’s real position on the seriousness of rocket attacks is a little shaky. Last month, Desmond Travers, a retired Irish army colonel who was one of the four members of the “fact-finding” commission that produced the report, claimed that Hamas fired “only two rockets” at Israel prior to last year’s Gaza war.

We’d been wondering about the commissioners’ moral compass, but now we have to wonder about their basic ability to count.

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