Seven-year-old Liel Levitan was the top winner in the Girls U7 category of the European School Chess Championship 2018, held June 29 to July 8 in Krakow, Poland.
More than 300 players from over 20 European federations were divided into six age categories for open competitions and girls’ competitions (U7, U9, U11, U13, U15 and U17).
The winners of the European Championships 2018 receive free board and lodging to participate in the World School Championship 2019 to be held in Tunisia.
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In the last six months, the threats have grown. An Iranian drone flew into Israel near Beit Shean in February. A salvo of twenty rockets was fired at the Golan in May.
Each action has led to a reaction by Israel, usually punishing Iran and the Syrian regime. But the attacks have not deterred the regime or Tehran. Tehran knows that it can continue to threaten Israel in a variety of ways. Israel has sought to warn Damascus via Moscow to stop the Iranian threat. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu repeatedly stressed that Iran must leave Syria. Assad responds that there are no Iranian forces in Syria. Beneath the war of words the airstrikes and Iranian presence continue.
In retaliation for the drone incursion, the IDF struck three targets in Syria. Defense Minister Avigdor Lieberman has warned that Syria must refrain from any actions that violate the border area. “I made it clear here, both to the commanders and to the representatives of the UN Disengagement Observer Force that any Syrian entering into the buffer zone, every Syrian soldier in the buffer zone, would endanger his soul.”
A new report at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies argues that “Israel now seeks to ensure this does not develop into a pattern, where Iran is allowed to test Israel and simply absorb limited retribution.”
On the heels of Netanyahu’s trip to Moscow and US President Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin next week, the message must be clear: Iran must leave Syria.
The regime and Moscow must take this seriously and not continue the rhetorical charade of claiming there are no Iranian forces in Syria or that they are not “foreign” or that they consist merely of militias or advisors. The Golan border must not become another Gaza, it must remain quiet or Assad will pay the price for allowing threats to fester.
In 1990 and 1994, Congress enacted laws requiring the government to cease funding any “specialized agencies” or “affiliated organization[s]” of the United Nations that grant full membership to the Palestinian Authority (PA). These laws have become relevant since Mahmoud Abbas began a campaign to join international institutions as a stepping stone to a unilateral declaration of statehood and a tool for lawfare against Israel. Since 2016, the PA joined four such groups, which nonetheless continue to receive funds from the U.S. Eugene Kontorovich argues that these organizations should be defunded, not only on strictly legal grounds but also as a matter of policy: PDF The acceptance of [the PA as a] member state turns these UN agencies into political tools for Palestinian unilateralism, rather than technical agencies dealing with specialized tasks. Moreover, as evidenced by the Palestinian membership in UNESCO, once it is a part of these agencies, the PA will hijack their agendas and divert them to anti-Israel policies and polemics. . . . [I]f the U.S. does not enforce non-waivable statutory measures triggered by PA action, it will lose its credibility as a potential broker of Middle East peace. Any peace plan will require U.S. assurances to Israel in the event the Palestinians take certain hostile measures. Implementing those assurances will always have a cost, a downside. If the U.S. will not abide by its own statutes when doing so might be uncomfortable, it can hardly be expected to do so with mere diplomatic assurances.
[Furthermore], a failure to implement the funding restrictions will only encourage the PA to step up its “internationalization” campaign. . . . Finally, the UN agencies admitted the PA with full knowledge of the consequences. The UN itself has thus put the promotion of the PA’s agenda above the original goals of these agencies. If mandatory U.S. funding cuts would be destructive to the mission of these organizations, they would not have accepted PA membership. If cutting funding impedes the functioning of these organizations, the solution consistent with U.S. law is not to continue funding, but rather defunding [in order] to pressure the PA to quit the organizations it has already joined.
This page at the Palestine Cabinet website shows that anyone who spent more than a year in Israeli prisons is entitled to free health insurance.
They still have to fill out paperwork - proof that they were in prison more than a year, proof that they are no longer in prison.
Regular Palestinians have to pay a monthly fee for health insurance. Even the unemployed have to pay a token fee. From what I can tell, former prisoners who have been held in Israeli prisons for terror activities are the only ones who get free health insurance.
The support that the Palestinian Authority gives to terrorists goes beyond salaries.
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I mentioned last week that Iranian president Hassan Rouhani claimed that Iran always had very good relations with Jews.
In remarks with Austrian Chancellor Sebastian Kurz, Rouhani said, "Some European countries have historic debts to the Jews that we do not have, but the Jewish nation also has a debt to us. We Iranians saved the Jews of Babylon. They are indebted to us, but the Zionists are an occupying and tyrannical group that oppressed the Palestinian people, besieged the Gazans, supported ISIL, and treated ISIL wounded."
He is referring to Cyrus the Great who saved the Jews in Babylon.
Now, a Saudi news site is seizing on Rouhani's claim that Iran loves Jews to point out that Cyrus is the one who allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem to rebuild the Temple.
So by referring to how Cyrus saved the Jews, Rouhani is implicitly recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of the Jews! Why else would Cyrus allow them to go to Jerusalem?
I don't think that Iran denies that Cyrus allowed the Jews to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the Temple. Wikipedia in Farsi mentions it.
Iranians know very well that Jerusalem was Jewish way before Islam existed.
(Unfortunately, the Saudi news site turns this into a conspiracy theory, saying that Rouhani implicitly recognized the Jewish ties to Jerusalem as a way to ease sanctions. Which is quite nuts.)
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One afternoon in the spring of 2015, a senior State Department official named Frank Lowenstein paged through a government briefing book and noticed a map that he had never seen before. Lowenstein was the Obama Administration’s special envoy on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, a position that exposed him to hundreds of maps of the West Bank. (One adorned his State Department office.)
Typically, those maps made Jewish settlements and outposts look tiny compared to the areas where the Palestinians lived. The new map in the briefing book was different. It showed large swaths of territory that were off limits to Palestinian development and filled in space between the settlements and the outposts. At that moment, Lowenstein told me, he saw “the forest for the trees”—not only were Palestinian population centers cut off from one another but there was virtually no way to squeeze a viable Palestinian state into the areas that remained. Lowenstein’s team did the math. When the settlement zones, the illegal outposts, and the other areas off limits to Palestinian development were consolidated, they covered almost sixty per cent of the West Bank.
Lowenstein showed the small map to Secretary of State John Kerry and said, “Look what’s really going on here.” Kerry brought the map to his next meeting with President Obama. The map was too small for everyone in the Situation Room to see, so Lowenstein had a series of larger maps made. The information was then verified by U.S. intelligence agencies. Obama’s Presidency was winding down, but Lowenstein figured that he could use the time left to raise awareness about what the Israelis were doing. “One day, everyone’s going to wake up and go, ‘Wait a minute, we’ve got to stop this to at least have the possibility of a two-state solution,’ ” Lowenstein said.
This is idiotic.
The white areas of the map are essentially Areas A and B under the Oslo Accords from 1995. Under the accords, the rest of the West Bank was under Israeli control.
This has nothing to do with settlements. It is a map of Palestinian areas being misrepresented as evidence of Israeli settlement growth.
Here you can see, side by side, the State Department map of 2016 that claims that the map proves no two state solution is viable and the actual 1995 Oslo II map of Areas A and B. Pretty much identical.
Here's another view putting the two maps side by side, with the right hand map from ResearchGate showing Areas A and B:
If you can tell the difference between Area C in 1995 and in 2016, you have much better eyes than I do.
The Obama map is a lie.
But look how impressed the Obama White House and John Kerry was with the deception:
Kerry met regularly with Obama in the Oval Office. During one of those meetings, Kerry placed the maps on a large coffee table, one after another, so Obama and his advisers could study them. Ben Rhodes, one of Obama’s longest-serving advisers, said the President was shocked to see how “systematic” the Israelis had been at cutting off Palestinian population centers from one another. Lowenstein didn’t show the maps to the Israelis, but he did walk them through the key findings, which were incorporated into Kerry speeches and other documents.
The Israeli peace offers made after the Oslo map was created removed most of the separations between Palestinian areas.
The idea that the maps prove that Israel is gobbling land and making peace impossible is a pure falsehood.
The next paragraph shows that Mahmoud Abbas knows that the maps were wrong, even though the writer doesn't get it:
Later, Kerry presented some of the maps to Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian President. Kerry’s goal was to show Abbas that the Obama Administration understood the extent to which the two-state solution was threatened. Abbas was taken aback. Instead of feeling reassured, he told a confidant that the maps convinced him that the Americans believed “the chances of a viable Palestinian state is next to nil.”
Abbas was upset because he saw how the State Department completely misinterpreted the map! He knows that in terms of square kilometers, the amount of space taken up by settlements and Israeli control is virtually identical to the amount of space agreed upon during Oslo. It doesn't preclude peace at all - Palestinian refusal to accept the Israeli offers in 2000 and 2001 and 2008 is what precluded peace.
Finally, the deceptive maps were behind the final disgusting anti-Israel action done by Obama:
Alarmed by Israeli actions depicted in the maps, Obama decided to abstain on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning the settlements, clearing the way for its passage.
A map that Bill Clinton would have easily recognized as being essentially a map from Oslo was wrongly interpreted by Barack Obama to be evidence of Israeli land grabs.
This story, rather than illustrating Israeli expansionism, perfectly illustrates the antipathy towards Israel shown by Kerry and Obama and their staffs.
(h/t Andrew, Avi)
[I'm not getting into the incorrect population figures on the map.]
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On the negative side, an escalation in anti-Semitism has reduced the quality of life for most Jews. Most European governments do not conceal their contempt for Israel, and their foreign policies and U.N. voting records display an absence of moral compass.
Nothing illustrates this better than their reaction to Israeli self-defense against incursions by Hamas terrorists and rocket attacks. To depict Israel's efforts to defend itself from violent mobs as a disproportionate response to "peaceful demonstrators" is obscene. No country would have shown as much restraint.
The behavior of the ailing Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas and his acolytes has descended to levels of anti-Semitism that would have made the Nazis proud.
A rabid hatred for U.S. President Donald Trump has led many American Jews to distance themselves from Israel. Forty-two percent of them even opposed moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem.
On the broader Jewish political level, the Anti-Defamation League, the once respected apolitical body whose mandate was to combat anti-Semitism, today aggressively seeks to slander Trump and often criticizes Israel.
The Democratic Party has become radicalized with the emergence of anti-Israeli agitators. The primary election defeat of Rep. Joe Crowley, the Democratic caucus chairman and a firm supporter of Israel, was a significant blow. Jewish voters were not dissuaded from supporting his opponent, 28-year-old Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who has made no secret of her hostility to Israel. She is affiliated with the Democratic Socialists of America, which supports the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.
The situation for Jews on college campuses has worsened. Many pro-BDS agitators are fringe Jews working with radical Arabs and far-left extremists.
How did we get here? For the better part of a century, Labor Zionism was a major ideology in the pre-state Zionist movement and in Israeli political life, and a major player in the Socialist International, where the Poalei Zion movement became a member in 1923. Shimon Peres was vice president and honorary president of the Socialist International, and Collette Avital, a former Labor MK, is currently a vice president.
But the progressive world has been hijacked by the idea of intersectionality, which creates a hierarchy of grievances in which Israel’s success is considered a demerit, and the Palestinians somehow are championed by all. The Socialist International reflects a trend seen in Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party in the UK – with whom Israeli Labor has already cut ties – and a slow but steady rise in ultra-leftist candidates running with the Democrats in the US midterm elections this year.
Never mind that Labor and Meretz members advocate for progressive causes – whether for women, LGBT people or the Arab minority in Israel – while Fatah, the Palestinian party in the Socialist International, led by Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, is far from progressive on social issues, reeks with corruption and openly rewards terrorists who murder and maim Israeli civilians to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars each year.
It’s no wonder that Labor left an organization where it had no say and was doomed to lose, despite the party’s storied history in the Socialist International. This only begs the question of why Meretz chose to remain in this den of hypocrites.
Argentina’s government voiced its frustration with Russian President Vladimir Putin’s administration on Thursday, after Moscow ignored a formal request from an Argentine judge to arrest a senior visiting Iranian official implicated in the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish center in Buenos Aires.
Putin met on Thursday with Ali Akbar Velayati, a senior adviser to the regime’s “supreme leader,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, greeting him warmly in front of reporters. Velayati was Iran’s foreign minister at the time of the AMIA atrocity on July 18, 1994, when 85 people died and hundreds more were wounded after a truck packed with explosives drove into the Jewish organization’s main building in the Argentine capital.
Velayati was also present at a meeting of top Iranian security officials in the city of Mashhad on August 14, 1993, where the decision to bomb the AMIA building is understood to have been made.
Velayati’s face-to-face with Putin on Thursday came just 36 hours after Judge Rodolfo Canicoba Corral requested his arrest by the Russian authorities. It was Judge Corral who issued international arrest warrants for Velayati and seven other Iranian and Lebanese operatives in 2006. Corral also tried unsuccessfully to secure Velayati’s arrest under the same warrant in 2016, when the Iranian visited Singapore and Malaysia.
Argentine news outlet Infobae.com reported that both Argentina’s foreign minister, Jorge Faurie, and its ambassador to Moscow, Ricardo Lagorio, had reached out personally to their Russian counterparts to enforce Corral’s arrest warrant.
170 settlers and Talmudic students storm the Al-Aqsa Mosque
95 settlers and 75 students from Talmudic institutions stormed the Al-Aqsa Mosque on Thursday morning, from the Mughrabi gate, with heavy security guards from the Israeli occupation forces .
Our correspondent said that the settlers carried out provocative tours in the blessed mosque, while the Jewish groups carried out suspicious steps in the Al-Aqsa Mosque behind a wall opposite the Dome of the Rock amid Talmudic movements and gestures .
It would be nice if the majority of Jews cared about the (real) Talmud as much as the Palestinians do!
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Metropolis, July 11 - The world's greatest superhero granted an exclusive interview yesterday to PreOccupied Territory, in which he detailed his approach to pursuing truth, fighting crime, promoting individualism and democracy, and doing next to nothing while the Nazis systematically slaughtered the Jews of Europe and other minorities.
Superman, who burst onto the international scene in 1938, invited a reporter to his Fortress of Solitude in the Arctic ice Tuesday, where he reminisced and explained how he prioritizes crises to address. During the two-hour series of discussions, the Last Son of Krypton explored the minutiae of his exploits, in the main analyzing how he effectively ignored the industrialized killing of history's most-persecuted group yet still emerged from the 1940's with a reputation for defending the defenseless and serving justice to oppressors.
"No one really thinks anymore that the Holocaust was unknown to Americans while it was happening," acknowledged Superman. "For a couple of decades after World War II that served as a plausible enough excuse that no one really asked me what could be more important than preventing the systematic murder of six million Jews. But subsequent research - and a good number of contemporaneous sources - indicate that knowledge of the atrocities wasn't so hard to come by even across the ocean from where they were happening."
"What it amounts to," continued the Man of Steel, "is that ignoring Jewish suffering is actually an essential part of 'the American Way,' as demonstrated by immigration policy at the time, and no effort on the part of the Allies to disrupt the killing. In retrospect, and I'm glad for this opportunity to clarify things, that means 'Truth, Justice, and the American Way' are not three equally important values, but that the first two are subservient to the third. If promoting truth or justice in a certain case would deviate from the American Way, in this case shutting our doors to people desperate to escape the Nazi persecution and killing machine, lest domestic antisemites get upset and make political trouble, then truth and justice must take a back seat to that."
For similar reasons, the Son of Tomorrow explained, he has taken no measures to stop North Korea or Iran from developing nuclear weapons, and stayed home on September 11, 2001. "My whole ethos is one of an immigrant who becomes the embodiment of the American Way," he noted. "My Jewish creators made me the assimilated ideal. There's no way I can betray that by doing anything that might indicate I harbor special sympathy for Jews, as that would go against my assimilation axiom."
"Barack Obama is no longer in office so I no longer have the excuse of not undermining government policy in terms of Iran," he concluded. "But I'm a lifelong Democrat, and unlike some of my hypocritical political colleagues, I did move north when Trump was elected."
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Mahmoud Abbas and his West Bank-based government seek to prolong the suffering of the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. They want the international community to continue to believe that Israel is responsible for the ongoing, intense suffering of the Palestinians. They are hoping to use the crisis there to pursue their campaign to delegitimize Israel.
Palestinian leaders would prefer to see their people starve than make any form of concessions for peace with Israel. Yet Al-Aloul and Abbas are not the ones who are facing starvation. There is nothing more comfortable than sitting in your fashionable house in Ramallah or Nablus and talking about starvation and humanitarian aid.
The Palestinians of the Gaza Strip, who are desperate for jobs and a better life, do not really care about Trump's upcoming peace plan. They also do not really care about a settlement or a checkpoint in the West Bank.
This is the essence of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: The Palestinians' number one priority -- the Palestinian leadership and the Palestinians in general -- is destroying Israel. They would rather die than give up their dream of destroying Israel.
The Israeli military struck three Syrian military targets overnight on Wednesday in retaliation for a Syrian drone that infiltrated into northern Israel hours earlier.
"The IDF holds the Syrian regime accountable for the actions carried out in its territory and warns it from further action against Israeli forces," read a statement released by the IDF Spokesperson’s Unit.
Footage released by the Israeli military showed missiles hitting a hut, a two-story structure and a five-story structure.
The official Syrian news agency SANA reported that Israeli jets “fired a number of missiles towards some military posts” near the Druze town of Hadar and Tal Kroum Jaba in Quneitra countryside, causing only material damage. Another strike by rockets and mortar shells targeted the village of Jaba causing significant damage to the houses.
With Syrian government forces continue to advance in an offensive to retake the strategic Syrian Golan Heights from rebels groups, the IDF has stressed for the 1974 separation of forces agreement between Israel and Syria to be upheld and the demilitarized buffer zone along the border be respected.
On Wednesday a Syrian drone flew some 10 kilometers into Israel before being intercepted by a Patriot missile.
Footage of the Patriot missile intercepting the Syrian UAV that infiltrated Israeli territory today pic.twitter.com/g5MnjZLdyl
Earlier tonight, Wednesday July 11th, the IDF targeted three military posts in Syria in response to the infiltration of the Syrian UAV into Israel that was intercepted by the IDF earlier today pic.twitter.com/BvaEOfHNDv
“You keep using that word… I do not think it means what you think it means.”
I keep hearing and reading statements from Jews, usually from America, prefaced by “my Jewish values.” Usually what follows is some sort of accusation against Israel that has little to do with facts – or an understanding of Jewish values.
The basics are really simple, if you take the time to actually look at them:
1)The Ten Commandments, not “Tikkun Olam”
The Ten Commandments are the fundamental guidelines of Jewish values, not the concept of Tikkun Olam. These are predicated on the Shema, the monotheistic declaration of faith in the One God: “Hear oh Israel, the Lord our God is one God.” Deuteronomy6:4–9
The Ten Commandments are the guidelines that spell out what it means to be decent and provide the fundamental guidelines of moral society which have been accepted by to most of the nations on earth, including ones that do not adhere to Judeo-Christian faith. Societies that have not accepted these rules of behavior, (for example, those that permit murder for the sake of “honor”) are deemed immoral societies.
Tikkun Olam seems to be a very popular term with American Jewry. Interestingly, it has no basis in the Torah.
So where does Tikkun Olam come from?
The concept of Tikkun Olam can be found in in the prayer “Aleinu leshabei'ach” and the Kabbalistic understanding that the world is not whole because the male and female aspects of God are separated rather than united. At the time of redemption these aspects will unite and the world will be repaired. These references are so esoteric that many Israeli Jews have no familiarity with this concept at all.
Tikkun Olam does NOT mean social justice.
The literal translation of Tikkun Olam is “repairing the world.” It is not difficult to comprehend that the world is broken but who has the power to fix it? Why doesn’t God fix the world?
If one takes the time to actually consider this question, it is shockingly arrogant to conclude that a certain group of individuals have the ability to repair the world. Can any single group decide what is the “right” way for everyone to do things and by convincing (forcing?) others to comply, fix all that is wrong in the world?!
Judaism is not a missionary based religion and does not push faith or lifestyle on others. Jews never took part in Crusades or sent missionaries around the world to convince the “heathen” to adopt our religion and our ways of life. In fact, Judaism does the exact opposite, making it extremely difficult to become Jewish – so why would anyone think it is “Jewish” to “crusade” for social justice?
Judaism provides a very clear guidebook of how to live a good life and be a decent human being. The commandments of Judaism are for Jews and are not directed at non-Jews. By extension, redemption (at which time the world will be “repaired”) has nothing to do with what non-Jews do or don’t do but rather the behavior of Jews. Our influence on this process has to do with fixing ourselves, not changing others, fulfilling our own obligations, not demanding others do what we think is right.
History has shown that Jews, living a Jewish life (in contrast to Jewish-by-birth radical atheists) have a positive influence on the societies in which we live but this is not a result of being a “social justice warrior” but rather social justice, the creation of a good and moral society, is a by-product of adhering to the principles of Judaism.
To put it simply – be Maimonides (the Rambam) not Karl Marx.
2)“Do not kill” vs “Do not murder”
Recent condemnations of Israeli policy in regard to Gaza draw on “Jewish values” to declare that killing is wrong and accuse the IDF of massacring Gazans. On face value, the idea that the Jewish State implements policy that goes against Jewish values seems like a potent argument - unless you actually know what Jewish values are and have familiarized yourself with a factual accounting of events in Israel.
So, first things first –
Does Judaism say that killing is wrong?
No! The Ten Commandments say that murder is forbidden, not killing.
If killing was forbidden we would all be vegetarians. Instead of extensive chapters on the laws of warfare and the wars of Israel, the Torah would simply say that Jews must be pacifists.
But it doesn’t.
Judaism instructs that life is sacred thus we must protect life – first and foremost OUR own lives. When attacked by someone attempting to murder you it is necessary to make sure that the murderer does not succeed. If the murderer dies in the process this is regrettable but justifiable. Had they not been attempting to murder, they would not have been hurt.
Killing in self-defense is not murder.
So how does this translate to Israeli policy and IDF actions?
On May 14th some 40,000 Gazans rioted on Israel’s border with Gaza. They had explosives, knives and firebombs. Their leaders had openly declared that the goal was to storm the border, break through and eat the hearts of Jews. Many of the rioters used little children and even babies as human shields to hide behind as they a ttempted to breach the border.
IDF snipers killed 62 of the rioters.
Israel was promptly accused of massacring “peaceful protestors” and using “disproportional force.”
A massacre is the deliberate, indiscriminate and brutal slaughter of a large number of people.
Two days later Hamas, an internationally recognized terrorist organization, announced proudly that 50 out of the 62 dead were Hamas professionals, trained operatives who had left their uniforms at home to blend in with the civilian Gazan population while attempting to attack Israel. Islamic Jihad took responsibility for most of the remaining dead. These were not innocent or peaceful protestors. They were professional terrorists.
Hamas official, Dr. Salah Al-Bardawil is clear about terrorist involvement in the riots pic.twitter.com/p5My6JGQRr
Had the IDF decided to drop bombs on the rioters that would have constituted a massacre. All of the 40,000 could have easily been killed. That would have stopped the subsequent 100 days of violent riots, missiles and arson attacks on Israeli communities. It would have been much easier for the IDF, faster and more effective. Israelis who lost their livelihood to arson terror would not be in the position they are today.
But we don’t do that.
The IDF, knowing that terrorists were hiding within the civilian population managed, astonishingly, to eliminate the terrorists and not the innocents they were using as human shields. This is an unprecedented level of pinpoint accuracy, discriminant, minimal violence made necessary after all other options were exhausted.
The accusation that the IDF “massacred” Gazans, using disproportional force, is utterly baseless and in fact contrary to Jewish values which demand that the State must defend the lives of her citizens. It would be immoral to do otherwise.
3)Arguing and questioning are the birthright of the Jewish people
Unlike religions that came before Judaism and those that came after, Jewish tradition demands questioning, not blind obedience. One can and in some cases, should, argue even with God. The best example of this is probably the story of Sodom and Gomorrah where God tells Abraham that the cities will be destroyed and Abraham critiques God for this decision, bargaining for the lives of the people living there.
It is imperative to ask “Why?” This is the mindset that has differentiated the Jewish mind from all others, made Jewish scholars extraordinary and is the driving factor in the success of the Start-Up Nation. The constant need to question, arguing sometimes for the pure joy of the mental gymnastics of debating makes Jews annoying but it also makes us exceptional.
In Judaism there is always a reason why. The problem is that those who do not know the answers and do not bother to search for them often jump to incorrect and even baseless conclusions. My Jewish values direct me to not accept bombastic statements but to question everything, think for myself and if I don’t know they answer, ask “why?” until I get an acceptable answer – particularly when it comes to big issues such as my Jewish identity and my right to live free in my ancestral homeland.
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On Tuesday evening, I checked out the protest by BDSers outside the Joyce Theater in New York where Israel's Batsheva Dance Company was to perform.
The BDSers had a small band and one person would start a responsive verse about some trendy intersectional issue interspersed with verses about "Israeli apartheid" that would be repeated by the 15 or so drones.
It was pretty boring.
I spoke to one lady handing out flyers with typical anti-Israel lies, and asked her if I can ask her a few questions. I asked if she was anti-Israel or pro-Palestine, and she said she wasn't anti-Israel at all. Then I asked her what about the slogan "from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free" and she answered that she wanted a single democratic state (obviously not Israel.) I then asked her if she was against a Jewish state, and she said she didn't want Israel to be like Iran where there is a state religion (which Israel doesn't have.) When I asked her about every Arab state save Lebanon that says they are Muslim states in their constitutions, she claimed I was wrong and then called over one of the others because she realized she was in way over her head. They told her not to talk to me.
The JDL was there doing a counter-demonstration. while I thought that people holding signs saying "Punish Gaza" do not do anything at all positive for Israel, Zionism or Jews, at least they countered the other hate.
Police barricades were up to make sure that theatre-goers wouldn't be harassed. I didn't stay until the box office opened.
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Progressive Zionists of the California Democratic Party is concerned about candidate for Assembly Member in District 63 Maria Estrada’s public support of notorious homophobe and antisemite Louis Farrakhan and her repeated and extreme antisemitism in the guise of “criticism of Israel".
Candidate Estrada made repeated antisemitic remarks about the Jewish state in a series of Facebook comments.
On May 10, 2017 she posted a cartoon replacing the Magen David on the Israeli flag with the swastika of the Nazis, but the next day she apologized for her post. However, on October 6, 2017 she claimed non-Jews could not be Zionists without being influenced by Jewish friends or loved ones. In this same exchange--shortly after a detailed posting of many of Farrakhan's hateful statements about Jews--she commented that she “enjoys listening to Farrakhan’s sermons”, as well as claiming Democrats turn a blind eye to Palestinians, and “justify it by bringing up the Holocaust. As if what happened 70 years ago justifies what is happening now.”
On May 14, 2018 “calling out” Eric Bauman, Chair of the California Democratic Party, she admonished him for not keeping “your party, your religion and your people in check.”
Comparing Zionism - the movement for Jewish liberation and self-determination - to ideologies that support oppression and genocide against Jews is grotesquely racist. ...
Additionally, it is antisemitic to claim Jews spend too much time talking about the Holocaust, or compare the situation in Palestine to what the Nazis did to Jews. This comparison holds no real comparable value and is intended only to hurt Jews, especially those who lost the majority of their families to Nazis. Nazis intended to ensure there were no Jews left anywhere on the planet. We can and should be in dialogue about how Israel handles Palestinian concerns, but it is a deliberate and malicious contrivance to attempt to somehow hold these two as equal.
Moreover, Estrada saying that she “enjoy[s] listening to Farrakhan’s sermons”, a known and noxious public figure, is a slap in the face to the LGBTQ community and women as well as Jews. Farrakhan’s sermons are littered with homophobia and misogyny. The SPLC and the ADL label him as a hate figure. A truly progressive leader would spurn him from their spaces to make it as safe and inclusive for all identities.
I have no idea why the organization didn't say anything about the statement "Anyone who believes they are one of 'God's chosen people' automatically feels superior and justified and all they do" [sic]. That is more antisemitic than anything else they quoted.
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Happy Passover
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[image: Happy Passover]
Wishing all of my Jewish family, friends, and followers a Chag Sameach
v'Kasher. Blogging to resume Tues evening or Wed morning.
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Matza and Mattresses in Morocco
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Raquel Levy-Toledano spent her childhood in Casablanca, Morocco. For the
Arche magazine (October 2023 special issue) she recalled her memories of
Pesah ...
Happy Pessah!
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Wishing all our readers celebrating the festival of freedom a happy holiday
and hoping for the liberation of all the hostages.
The post Happy Pessah...
Happy Pessah!
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Wishing all our readers celebrating the festival of freedom a happy holiday
and hoping for the liberation of all the hostages.
The post Happy Pessah...
The New Jihadists Are Our Kids
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“I will use my knives and machete to slit their throats and kill them."
Coeur d’Alene, an Idaho city with a population of over 50,000, had too many
chur...
A Conversation on X with a Professor
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Basically starts here, with him responding to me reaction so:
Re: "That is the least disruptive way of occupying space on a campus”
Actually, it's one of...
Confrontation with Iran: Who Won?
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The West likes its Jews passive, dependent, and weak. When American
officials say “Israel has a right to defend [herself]” they mean that they
will allow h...
The Palestinian “Two-State” Plan: Duping the West
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One of the great unsolved mysteries of the 21st century is why, given what
a catastrophe it proved to be, anyone, much less a whole phalanx of
politicians,...
06-Feb-24: Obituary: Naftali Gordon
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The obituary that follows was published yesterday by *Times of Israel* under
the headline "*Master Sgt. (res.) Naftali Gordon, 32: A man of ‘honesty and
...
Closing Jews Down Under Website
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With a heavyish heart I am closing down the website after ten years.
It is and it isn’t an easy decision after 10 years of constant work. The
past...
‘Test & Trace’ is a mirage
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Lockdown II thoughts: Day 1 Opposition politicians have been banging on
about the need for a ‘working’ Test & Trace system even more loudly than
the govern...
Friday, July 13, 2018
Elder of Ziyon
