Saturday, October 04, 2014
Israelis Mark Yom Kippur With Prayers for Peace and Life
On the eve of Yom Kippur, Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu returned to Israel after speaking to the international community at the United Nations this past week.Michael Lumish: Obama's Veiled Threats
“I went out on a national mission on behalf of the citizens of Israel,” recounted Netanyahu. “I told our truth on the UN podium, at the White House and at other meetings that I held,” he said after landing at Ben Gurion Airport on Friday morning.
The prime minister also wished a “Gmar Hatima Tova to all the citizens of Israel,” the traditional blessing for the successful sealing in the “Book of Life” during the days leading up to Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year for the Jewish people that entails praying and fasting.
The Obama administration just keeps doubling-down, again and again, on precisely the very same mistake that it failed to learn out of the gate in 2008. He still thinks that peace is dependent upon making sure that Mahmoud Abbas gets a veto over where we may be allowed to live on the very land where our ancestors come from. Not only is Obama's policy racist toward Jews, and not only does it justify Abbas' insistence upon ethnically cleansing Jewish people from Judea and Samaria, but it also plays directly into Arab settler intransigence.While Refusing to Support Hong Kong's Democracy, Obama Strongly Condemns Israel
If Jews insist on living in Judea, and if Obama agrees with Abbas that they should not be allowed to do so, then naturally Abbas can refuse a negotiated conclusion of hostilities and blame it on those Jews with Obama's blessing.
From a strategic standpoint, the Obama administration's obsession concerning where Jews live in Israel was a monkey-wrench in the works from the very beginning and is partly responsible for the failure of the peace process during his tenure.
For him to continue to throw the very same monkey-wrench into the very same gears year upon year is beyond foolish.
What do you suppose accounts for it? While I do not believe that Barack Obama is half so intelligent as they kept telling us he is, he certainly not dumb. He is at least of average intelligence, and probably above-average, so how could he not comprehend that trying the same thing over and over again, and failing each time, might indicate counterproductive policy?
Hong Kong's pro-democracy demonstrators protesting China’s attempts to quash their rights to self government appear to be only the latest pro-Western group forsaken by the Obama administration. Meanwhile, its high volume criticism of Israel continues unabated.
Meanwhile, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was again forced to downplay harsh criticism against the Jewish state leveled by President Obama and other members of the administration during their White House visit Wednesday. Media reports claim that Obama harshly condemned the recent issuance of building permits for 2,610 apartment units inside the Israeli capital city, without seeming to understand that those decisions are made at the local, not the national level.
A Jerusalem real estate developer recently purchased seven apartment buildings in the predominantly Arab neighborhood of Silwan and purchased advertising to encourage Jewish families to buy them.
Netanyahu pushed back hard against the President’s condemnation. He told Spanish language Univisión TV that “Jews buy apartments in Arab neighborhoods. Arabs buy apartments in Jewish neighborhoods. I wouldn’t dream of interfering with that, and couldn’t even if I wanted to." "It is a municipal issue,” he said.
Pointing out President Obama’s hypocrisy of siding with those who seeking to prevent Jews from certain neighborhoods in Israel’s capital city, Netanyahu pointed out “there would be an uproar” if neighborhoods in the US, Mexico, or anywhere but Israel tried barring Jews from moving in. In comments that also appeared aimed at the Obama Administration, Netanyahu seemed to chide the White House and State Department for thinking they were empowered to micromanage the Jewish state down its most granular bureaucratic level: “It would be worth at least learning the correct information before jumping to take a position like that.”
Sweden to be first EU country to recognize Palestine
Sweden’s new government is set to recognize the State of Palestine, in a move that will make it the first member of the European Union to do so.Swedish politician: Mossad trained IS to kill Muslims
During his inaugural speech Friday, Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven said “the conflict between Israel and Palestine can only be solved with a two-state solution, negotiated in accordance with international law.”
“The two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to co-exist peacefully. Sweden will therefore recognize the state of Palestine,” he added.
He didn’t say when or how that would happen.
Several European countries including Hungary, Slovakia and Romania have given their recognition of Palestine as a state but did so before they became members of the EU.
A local politician with Sweden’s ruling party said that Israel trained the jihadist ISIS group to wage war on Muslims.Al-Durah Whistleblower Launches New Campaign to Counter France 2 Advertising Blitz
Adrian Kaba, who represents Sweden’s Social Democrats in Malmo’s city council, made the statement this summer during a discussion on Facebook, the Sydsvenskan newspaper reported on Thursday. Reacting to the report, the chairman of the party’s regional branch, Joakim Sandell, said, “An elected official should not be spreading conspiracy theories.”
In his Facebook post, Kaba wrote on July 21: “ISIS is being trained by the Israeli Mossad. Muslims are not waging war, they are being used as pawns by other peoples’ game.”
Sandell said the party intends to deal with the issue internally, but did not elaborate.
Philippe Karsenty, the French-Jewish activist who became internationally renowned after he charged the France 2 television network with having used staged footage in its report on the apparent killing in 2000 of Muhammed Al-Durah, a 12 year old Palestinian boy in Gaza, has announced a new campaign against the state-owned network.The Few Brave Men of Turkey
In an interview with The Algemeiner, Karsenty explained that his campaign was being mounted in response to an advertising blitz by France 2 across the country.
The France 2 campaign features images of their top presenters above slogans like “En Quete 2 Verite” and “Zone 2 Turbulences.” (In French, the number 2 is spelled “deux,” a word that is pronounced exactly the same way as the preposition “de.” ) Using a picture of Enderlin and al-Durah, Karsenty’s counter campaign is based on word plays: for example, instead of “En Quete 2 Verite” (“Looking for the Truth”,) Karsenty substitutes “En Quete 2 Mensonges” (“Looking for Lies.”)
“France 2 is spending money on advertising while still defending the worst blood libel of our times,” Karsenty, who now serves as deputy-mayor of the Paris suburb of Neuilly, said. “They are still covering up their mistake which is responsible for the beheading of [Wall Street Journal reporter] Daniel Pearl. They were responsible for the first terrorist beheading of the 21st century.”
Earlier this year, a study by the Anti-Defamation League found 69% of the Turks to be anti-Semitic as opposed to 56% in Iran. More recently, Gonzo Insight, a Turkish research company, found that 27,309 Turks had tweeted 30,926 contents explicitly supporting "Hitler's Holocaust of Jews." Not just ordinary Turks, but apparently more important ones. Samil Tayyar, for instance, a member of parliament from the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) tweeted, addressing "Jews," that "may you never be deprived of a Hitler!" Tayyar has never been taken to the disciplinary board of the AKP party, which has governed Turkey since 2002.Turkey’s Jihad Against Online News Portals
In another revealing example, Ali Ihsan Goker, head of the physics department at the Bilecik University, challenged Louis Fishman, an assistant professor at Brooklyn College, City University of New York: "Treblinka will soon be ready. Presently, they are making the railroad ready for the Jews' transportation (to Treblinka)," the Turkish professor wrote. "If I were the (Turkish) prime minister I would gather all the Jews and send them to a concentration camp!" (Treblinka was a Nazi extermination camp in the northeast of the General Government area of Poland. The camp was established in the summer of 1942 as part of Operation Reinhard. Under this plan, the Nazis sought to murder all the Jews living in the area known as the General Government).
The Turkish professor proposed to revive the death camps of the Holocaust era because Fishman had written in Haaretz, "However, it seems safe to say that in the wake of the current atmosphere of blatant anti-Semitism, more Jewish families [in Turkey] will be convinced that the time has come to leave, a decision already made by many of the Jewish members over the last decade. If they stay, they are choosing to survive within their own psychological and physical bubble, or to carry on by ignoring the fact that many of their compatriots see them as the enemy." (July 23, 2014)
What happens if a university professor in a sane country in the year 2014 proposes to rebuild concentration camps to kill "all the Jews?" Indictment for hate speech? Termination of academic contract? Both? In Turkey, the man was awarded a fund to sponsor his research. The sponsorship came, a month after his proposal to rebuild the death camps for Jews, from Turkey's state scientific research institute.
In 2002, Reporters without Frontiers ranked Turkey 99th in the world in terms of press freedom. That was a poor showing for a country aspiring to join the European Union, but it still placed Turkey well above countries like Burma, Russia, Ethiopia, and Iraq. No longer. Over his more than decade-long premiership, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has used a number of tools to constrain press freedom.Bibiyonce? Not so fast, says PM
After replacing technocrats on Turkey’s banking and tax boards with political loyalists, Erdoğan levelled ever-increasing tax liens against media organizations that criticized him or his agenda. If his targets did not forfeit their media outlets, Erdoğan would confiscate them. While, in theory, these media companies would come up for auction, Erdoğan would ensure that the only permissible bidders would be loyalists to his political party and, preferably, members of his own family.
Erdoğan would simultaneously employ other strategies as well. Turkey imprisons more journalists than Iran and China. It harasses female journalists and has recently begun targeting journalists working for foreign outlets as well. (I have not been immune; after I criticized Turkish corruption, Erdoğan aide Cuneyd Zapsu and (now disgraced and fired) EU Minister Egemen Bağış sued me in a Turkish court). He targeted authors to confiscate unpublished manuscripts; Turkey now prosecutes thought-crime rather than actual crime.
Now, alas, Turkey is no longer willing to simply go after traditional outlets. While Erdoğan’s jihad against social media is long standing, Erdoğan increasingly seeks to control what can be published online. Quite simply, the Internet—and, more broadly, free discourse—frustrates Erdoğan, who would much rather crush dissent than accept the accountability and transparency a free media encourages or address the merits of his opponents’ arguments. As journalists have moved to online outlets to escape Erdoğan’s authoritarian ambitions, the number of Turkish news portals has exploded online.
Benjamin Netanyahu, speaking on Fusion, the Hispanic-millenial targeting network, reacts to the J Street campaign in which his caricature appears in a Beyonce pose, captioned “If You Like It, Then You Should Put a Border On It.”BREAKING: J Street Supporter’s Prius Towed
“You’ve never been compared to Beyonce, I’m sure,” interviewer Jorge Ramos says.
“Wow,” Netanyahu says. “There are a few differences, you know.”
I must say, like Netanyahu, I’m confused by the campaign. J Street — echoing the Palestinian Authority — wants Netanyahu to “put a border on” a peace proposal.
Shouldn’t that be Mahmoud Abbas, hips askance? Isn’t Bibi more of the Jay Z in this scenario?
A Toyota Prius brandishing a bumper sticker from anti-Israel group J Street advocating for “two states for two peoples” was towed on Friday afternoon in Washington, D.C.ZIM reported to ready to abandon Oakland Port
It is unclear whether the J Street supporter and Prius owner was towed for the illegal occupation of a parking spot, or if it was due to a mechanical problem with the mid-sized hybrid electric hatchback vehicle.
The Prius’ lone bumper sticker is from J Street:
Based on the condition of the Prius’ bumper, it can be assumed that the owner of the car is also a terrible parker.
One pro-Israel insider said that the incident serves as a metaphor for J Street as an organization.
“This is a metaphor for J Street as an organization. A metaphor the size of Judea and Samaria. There is the pretension and boastfulness of a hybrid car and an organization that claims to be pro-Israel but isn’t. There is the Prius driver and the organization that both believe the rules don’t apply to them–so the Prius gets towed, and the organization gets busted lying about its donors,” said the pro-Israel insider, who claims to have no outstanding parking tickets.
“The only difference is that one day the Prius will be off the streets and in a junkyard, whereas J Street will probably just be absorbed into the PLO,” he added.
On Sunday night, after not being able to unload at the Port of Oakland, the ZIM Shanghai headed to the Port of Los Angeles. According to The Jewish Press, ZIM may not call on the Port of Oakland again. Other shipping companies wary of the port’s unreliability may also consider the same.World Vision Getting the Message, More Needs to Be Done
With an estimated 150 ZIM visits a year, that’s a lot of business and perhaps even jobs for the City of Oakland to lose, says the news agency.
It has been reported that Zim has made the decision that the Port of Oakland is too poorly managed to be a reliable partner in the international shipping business, and is moving their business elsewhere. Other shipping companies, seeing how vulnerable the port is to disturbances may follow suit. And Oakland Mayor Jean Quan is too caught up in her own re-election campaign to pay this issue any attention.
While the BDS holes will likely claim victory over this, there are no winners. The Port of Oakland will now live with the consequences of weak leadership. It has lost more than jobs. It has lost credibility.
Anyone who has any doubt about the anti-Israel animus that has taken root in the organization, which is comprised of national affiliates in donor and recipient nations throughout the world, needs to listen to a World Vision ad that aired on the radio in Ireland during the month of August.Code Pink to exploit Ferguson “Weekend of Resistance” to bash Israel
“Children should never be a target, yet right now children in Gaza are suffering,” the ad states before making a plea for financial support for World Vision Ireland.
The ad doesn’t come right out and say so, but it is implicitly (and falsely) accusing Israel of targeting Palestinian children during its fight with Hamas this past summer.
Fortunately, it appears that some people who heard the ad when it aired in August made it perfectly clear that they are outraged. They left angry messages on World Vision Ireland’s Facebook page.
Apparently, World Vision has taken note.
On Wednesday, Oct. 1, 2014, I contacted World Vision USA and asked if the organization has disavowed the ad that aired in Ireland. Here is the response I got today (Friday, Oct. 3, 2014):
"World Vision regrets any offense the radio ad caused. The message was not meant to accuse the Israelis of targeting children, but only to highlight that children have been killed, and to emphasize the impact the conflict is having on children."
Capitalizing on the two month anniversary of the death of Michael Brown, Code Pink is among the groups organizing a Weekend of Resistance, and is equating Ferguson to Gaza:Columbia, Harvard, Yale anthropologists among 360 backing boycott of Israel
This Weekend of Resistance is meant to bring awareness to Gaza, Ferguson, and people who put their hands up in the air (emphasis theirs, not ours):
"From the 10th to the 13th of October we will gather in Ferguson Missouri to stand with and support the activists of Ferguson, especially Hands Up United, as well as the Palestine solidarity contingent drawing the connections between these struggles. We will bring our fight to the doors of the prosecutors office, and the people of St. Louis County. We will break bread and build community. We will have difficult but necessary conversations and we will overcome dis-empowerment with understanding that the only recognizable feature of hope is action."
The statement was posted on Oct. 1 on the website jadaliyya.com with 231 signatories and a call for others to add their names to the list. On Friday, the list had reached 360 names.Andrea Mitchell Grills Netanyahu: Did Israel 'Poison' Peace Process?
“As a community of scholars who study problems of power, oppression, and cultural hegemony, we have a moral responsibility to speak out and demand accountability from Israel and our own governments,” reads the statement, which endorses “boycott[ing] Israeli academic institutions that are complicit in these violations.”
Israeli academic institutions, the statement said, “are complicit with the occupation and oppression of Palestinians” with “intimate connections between Israeli academic institutions and the military, security, and political establishments in Israel.”
In a contentious interview with Benjamin Netanyahu aired on her 12 p.m. ET hour MSNBC show on Thursday, host Andrea Mitchell badgered the Israeli Prime Minister by repeatedly parroting a nasty attack line from the Obama administration: "...the White House and the State Department say that the new settlements in Arab East Jerusalem undercut your commitment to peace. That it could poison the atmosphere, it could turn the world against you. What is your response to that, when the President says that to you?"UNRWA expresses deep concern on water situation in Yarmouk
After Netanyahu explained that the supposed "new settlements" were already existing Jerusalem neighborhoods, Mitchell repeated the White House talking points: "But what do you say when the President says that this undercuts your commitment to peace and is poisonous to an agreement with the Palestinians?"
Netanyahu pushed back:
"Well, I find that curious because the criticism was leveled, one, at a new neighborhood that was mixed. It had a substantial part of the apartments that apportioned, parceled out to Arabs, to Palestinians, alongside Jews. So why not have them live together? The second part of the criticism was actually baffling to me. Because it criticized individual Jews who bought apartments in an Arab neighborhood. Now, Jews buy apartments, private property, in Arab neighborhoods. Arabs buy apartments in Jewish neighborhoods. And I find – that's the right thing to do."(h/t MtTB)
The United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine refugees (UNRWA) is deeply concerned by a severe shortage of clean water in Yarmouk. Since the first week of September, the mains water supply has been disrupted, apparently as a result of damage to pipes in a contested area inside Yarmouk. Drought conditions have forced Yarmouk’s 18,000 civilian residents to rely on untreated groundwater and a single well. These water sources are unsafe and insufficient to meet minimum water and sanitation needs. Yarmouk’s civilians now contend with the threats of acute dehydration, poor sanitation and communicable and water-borne diseases. This is in addition to worsening food insecurity and other dire humanitarian conditions caused by armed conflict and the closure of Yarmouk in mid-2013.Islamic State beheads British hostage Henning
Yarmouk experienced a major outbreak of typhoid in July 2014 that was only contained through the rapid intervention of UNRWA health staff working in cooperation with the Palestinian Red Crescent Society. The supply of clean, pipe-borne water to Yarmouk must be urgently restored and maintained to prevent further outbreaks of communicable disease. Such outbreaks would have grave consequences for civilians in Yarmouk and threaten surrounding areas of Damascus.
British Prime Minister David Cameron on Friday night confirmed the “brutal murder” of aid worker Alan Henning by the Islamic State group and vowed to bring his killers to justice.Obama sent ‘wrong message’ by not hitting Syria, says Panetta
“The brutal murder of Alan Henning by ISIL (another term for IS jihadists) shows just how barbaric and repulsive these terrorists are,” Cameron said in a statement released by his Downing Street office.
The White House said that a video showing the execution of British hostage Henning was yet another example of the “brutality” of the Islamic State group.
Former Defense Secretary Leon Panetta is criticizing President Barack Obama for leaning toward, then deciding against military action against Syria for its use of chemical weapons.Biden says Erdoğan admitted ISIL mistake
“By failing to respond, it sent the wrong message to the world,” Panetta says in his new book in which he also reveals his differences with the president over the decision to withdraw completely from Iraq in 2011.
“President Obama vacillated, first indicating that he was prepared to order some strikes, then retreating and agreeing to submit the matter to Congress,” according to the book. “The latter was, as he well knew, an almost certain way to scotch any action. By mid-2013, a majority of Congress could not agree on what day of the week it was, much less a resolution authorizing the use of American force in the Middle East.
“The result, I felt, was a blow to American credibility. When the president as commander in chief draws a red line, it is critical that he act if the line is crossed. … Assad’s action clearly defied President Obama’s warning.”
Panetta’s book, titled “Worthy Fights,” is scheduled for release next week.
U.S. Vice President Joe Biden has said that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan admitted mistakes that paved the way for the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL).UN: More Than 5,500 Killed in Iraq Since June
"President Erdoğan told me, he is an old friend, said you were right, we let too many people through, now we are trying to seal the border," Biden said during a speech on foreign policy at Harvard Kennedy School on Oct. 2.
While speaking to the students for nearly an hour and a half, Biden defended the U.S. foreign policy, stressing that the White House was not late to move against the rise of the ISIL. He said that the regional allies of the U.S, determined to take down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, "poured hundreds of millions dollars, and tens thousands of tones of weapons into anyone who would fight against al-Assad, accepted the people who would be in supply for Al Nusra and Al Qaeda and extremist elements of jihadists coming from other parts of the world."
In a report Thursday, the United Nations revealed that over 5,500 Iraqis have been killed since an Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) offensive started in June.Iranian Nuclear Negotiators Attend Anti-Semitic, Anti-American Conference
According to The New York Times:
"Those deaths represent nearly half of the 9,343 civilians killed in Iraq from January through September, the United Nations said in a joint report by its mission in Iraq and its human rights office in Geneva, emphasizing that the figures were “absolute minimums.” The total casualty count for the year so far, including wounded, is at least 26,000. …
The accounts of atrocities were not limited to the Islamic State, a Sunni militant group also known as ISIS or ISIL. Iraqi government security forces and militias associated with them have also committed “gross violations” of international law, abducting civilians and hanging their bodies from lampposts in Baquba, summarily killing captured Islamic State fighters and launching airstrikes that resulted in “significant” civilian deaths and injuries, according to the report."
At least two former Iranian nuclear negotiators joined with Holocaust deniers, 9/11 truthers, and anti-Semites from across the globe this week in Tehran for Iran’s second annual New Horizons conference, an anti-American hate fest that U.S. lawmakers say highlights the country’s dangerous duplicity.British Police Investigate Anti-Semitic Tweets in Response to Soccer Club’s Rosh Hashana Greeting
Among those in attendance at the conference—which the U.S. State Department admitted it was not even aware of—were notorious Holocaust deniers, American anti-Israel activists, and Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei’s closest adviser.
They were joined by two of Iran’s former nuclear negotiators, Saeed Jalili and Ali Asghar Soltanieh, both of whom were once responsible for inking a deal with the West over Tehran’s contested nuclear program.
The presence Jalili and Soltanieh triggered concern on Capitol Hill, where lawmakers warned that this is another sign that Tehran cannot be trusted to deal honestly in ongoing nuclear talks, which have been extended through November.
As the Obama administration continues to provide billions of dollars in sanctions relief to Tehran in a bid to foster a final nuclear deal, some in Congress say that the White House is letting itself be fooled into backing a bad deal with Iran.
Kick It Out, a non-governmental body combating racism in British soccer, has reported to UK police a flood of anti-Semitic tweets posted in response to a tweet from Liverpool FC greeting its Jewish supporters around the world on the occasion of Rosh Hashana.Dutch police advise against sukkah in Muslim neighborhood
The Jewish Chronicle in London reported that Liverpool had posted the Rosh Hashana greeting on its Twitter feed, which is followed by 3.24 million people.
It read: “Liverpool FC would like to wish all our Jewish supporters around the world a happy new year. #RoshHashanah.”
The post prompted a flood of offensive replies, many referencing Hitler and calling for Jews to be gassed.
A few hours later the tweet was removed by the club, along with the replies, and replaced with a post stating that the club “believes in the practice of religious freedom — we seek a world in which we can send good wishes to supporters without hateful responses.”
Dutch police advised a municipality to forbid the public display of a sukkah out of concerns that it would be a target for vandalism, a Jewish resident said.Convicted Hacker and Darling of the Left 'Weev' Emerges From Prison a Neo-Nazi White Supremacist
Fabrice Schomberg applied last month for a permit to erect a sukkah, a hut designated for meals during the holiday of Sukkot, outside his home in the predominantly Muslim neighborhood of Schilderswijk in The Hague.
On Tuesday, city official Karin Wilthagen told Schomberg that the police advised the city against allowing him to build the sukkah, warning that it could be vandalized, he told JTA.
Despite the objection from police, the city approved his request Friday.
Andrew Auernheimer, a hacker and internet troll better known by his online pseudonym 'weev', has unveiled a swastika tattoo and declared himself an anti-semite and white supremacist in a post on notorious racist website The Daily Stormer.Moscow bans Islamic sacrifice ritual for Eid
On Wednesday, Auernheimer wrote of his "first tattoo... a 4.5 inch swastika on my chest," which features characters from Norse mythology, which is often invoked by white supremacists.
About Jews, he says: "They took control of our systems of finance and law. They hyperinflated our currency. They corrupted our daughters and demanded they subject themselves to sex work to feed their families. These are a people that have made themselves a problem in every nation they occupy, including ours. What’s saddest is that we are the enablers of this problem."
He goes on: "I look on Google Street View and see the place I used to live in, before I was kidnapped at gunpoint and held in foreign territories based on the lies of blacks and Jews. It has been bulldozed. A new house is there.
"It has become impossible not to empathize with the Palestinians. The first phrase I learned in arabic: 'al-maot lil yahood' (death to the Jews)."
This news will come as acutely embarrassing to a number of figures on the political Left who lauded Auernheimer during his trial and incarceration. New Statesman writer Laurie Penny praised Auernheimer in bylined opinion pieces as well as on Twitter, where she called for his release using the hashtag #freeweev.
Muslims in the Russian capital Moscow have been denied the right to celebrate the upcoming Eid al-Adhu (Feast of the Sacrifice) Islamic holiday after local authorities banned them from carrying out the traditional slaughter ritual.Yom Kippur Not Yet an Official U.N. Holiday, But Might be Next Year
The second of the two Eid holidays in the Islamic calender, Muslims typically celebrate the occassion by slaughtering a lamb, a cow or a camel and distributing its meat to relatives, neighbors and the poor.
However, a spokesman for the city's inter-regional cooperation, national policy and religious organizations department, told Interfax on Wednesday that the sale and slaughter of sacrificial animals will be banned in Moscow during the holiday.
The holiest day on the Jewish calendar isn’t among the 10 holiest days on the United Nations calendar. But Israel and many other countries hope that changes by the time next year’s Day of Atonement arrives.Israeli Library Reveals Page With Yom Kippur Liturgy From 12th-Century Prayer Book
In July, amid Israel’s summer war with Hamas and global anti-Israel protests, U.N. ambassadors from 32 countries wrote a letter to a U.N. General Assembly committee that urged the recognition of Yom Kippur (Oct. 3-4 this year) as an official U.N. holiday. The U.N. currently marks 10 holidays, including the Christian holidays Christmas and Good Friday as well as the Muslim holidays Eid al-Fitr and Eid al-Adha, but there is no Jewish holiday on that list.
The messages of Yom Kippur—that “every person’s deeds are weighed on the heavenly scales of justice and the blessings of the coming year are determined by the good deeds performed in the service of others”—are “universal” and as such deserve to be marked by the U.N., the letter said.
The letter came in support of an Israeli initiative on the issue that was launched in May. Israeli Ambassador to the U.N. Ron Prosor had sent his own a letter asking the 192 other U.N. envoys to join Israel’s campaign for the holiday’s recognition.
The only known remnant of one of the world’s oldest Jewish prayer books is now accessible to the general public through the National Library of Israel.
The now-digitized page is part of a Machzor (High Holidays prayer book) believed to have been written no later than the 12th century C.E. in Egypt. It features the famous poem Ein Aroch Lecha, which translates to “There is no Comparison to You (God).”
A scanned image of the page can be viewed on the National Library of Israel website and is expected to appear on its Facebook page. Only a few stanzas from the original poem appear on the artifact.
“This partially torn piece of paper has Yom Kippur liturgical poems on both sides,” the head of the Collections Division at the National Library of Israel, Dr. Aviad Stollman, told Israel Hayom.
“That is the only thing that remains of that prayer book, which may have been written in 1108 or earlier. It was originally composed by Elazar ben Killir, who lived in the 6th or 7th century, and who is considered one of the greatest Jewish poets of all times,” said Stollman.
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