Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Sunday, October 10, 2004

Over 40,000 Visit Hebron During Succot Holiday

During the Succot holiday, over 40,000 people visited Hebron, praying at Ma'arat HaMachpela and touring the Jewish neighborhoods in the city. On Sunday and Monday all of Ma'arat HaMachpela was open to Jewish visitors, including Ohel Yitzhak - the Isaac Hall. The entire building was packed with worshipers. At times, over 3,000 people filled the huge structure atop the Caves of Machpelah. Others stood in line outside, waiting to enter the building. Monday's events included the semi-annual Hebron music festival, which included the best of Hassidic music in Israel today. Over 10,000 people sang and danced to the tunes of Haim David, Soul Farm, Amiram Dvir, and many others, who sweetened the Succot celebrations with their lively music.

Some 20,000 people participated in the annual Sukkot holiday Jerusalem Parade Monday, starting from the Yad Kennedy memorial in southern Jerusalem and stretching 9 miles towards the city center. About 12,000 participated last year, according to city officials. Included in the march was an estimated 4,000 Evangelical Christians from 80 nations.

Tens of thousands of people - 35,000, according to ISRAEL RADIO - participated in the semi-annual Birkat Cohanim ceremony at the Western Wall plaza Sunday. The event takes place twice each year, on the 3rd or 4th day of the Sukkot and Pesach holidays. It features special holiday prayers in which up to hundreds of Cohanim - descendants of Aaron the Priest - jointly blessing the congregants. At the same time, dozens of religious Jews visited the Temple Mount.

israelinsider: Views: A proud Israeli Bedouin questions American-Jewish apathy

Two years ago, a few proud Bedouin Israeli citizens like myself asked: what is our position and status in the State of Israel in the midst of its current situation? After all, Bedouins are part of Israel's success story. During current times, when Israel is being attacked and accused of being a racist state, an 'aggressor and an oppressor', we decided that the smallest and probably most effective thing we could do is to spread our story as part of Israeli society.

I, Ishmael Khaldi, am Israeli. I served with the IDF, with the Israel police, and with the Israeli Defense Ministry. In the last year, I have lost two Bedouin friends on army duty (God bless their memory) defending the State of Israel. My friends and family feel that we have a common destiny with the Jewish people in Israel: our grandparents created this land with Jewish immigrants who arrived during the 1920s, '30s and '40s to build a democracy.

Because of this connection to the State of Israel, I cannot stand on the sidelines during Israel's time of need. I feel that I must speak up and be heard.

I recently returned from a two-month campus speaking tour in North America, mostly organized by Hasbara Fellowships. This was the fourth tour I had done over the past year. I've traveled the United States coast to coast (of course, being a Bedouin nomad, I mainly took Greyhound!) and flew for a ten day tour across Canada.

The tour was certainly miraculous - a Bedouin shepherd who had never been to any major city before, all of sudden found himself in downtown Manhattan! It proved to be one of the most adventurous, challenging and enriching experiences of my life.

I came to the U.S. and Canada to speak on college campuses about Israel, as one who certainly holds a perspective that is rarely heard - a proud Israeli that is not Jewish. I came to share one man's tale of Israel's culture, society and politics from the perspective of a Bedouin minority in the Jewish State.

Arriving in North America, committed to defending Israel from the poisonous venom of hatred and attacks that I had heard much about, I expected to see the same commitment on campuses among the Jewish students. Unfortunately, this wasn't the case.

I had heard much about the struggle of pro-Israel student activists, attempting to counter the unbalanced, biased and false accusations made against Israel. I had not come to North America to preach that Israel was perfect. As all Israelis know, Israel has problems like all nations of the world. Still, many students tried to stop me from speaking. There were even students who had the audacity to compare me to Joseph Goebbels, the Nazi propaganda minister, making false claims that I was doing the same for Israel.

The United States has always been described as being the 'land of the free' and a home for free speech. How can New Hampshire's slogan read, "live free or die" if the student union is allowed to ban me from telling a cultural story? I can't believe that the hatred for Israel is so strong that student governments are able to defy their own dignity as free American citizens, in order that the truth about Israel should remain a secret.

The deep-seated hatred manifested itself clearly throughout the country with the many loaded questions asked by anti-Israel students. For example, a Muslim student at Rutgers University completely ignored the fact that Israel is a free state and asked, "how could you support a Hebrew state if you're not Jewish?" Another questioner asked, "don't you think that if Israel didn't exist, then the Palestinians wouldn't have any problems?"

In Milwaukee, I was asked "how many Palestinian old men and women have you humiliated while serving in the Israeli police?" How can such a question be asked? Only if the truth were known, that Israeli soldiers have on many occasions helped Palestinians.

The situation I encountered on many of the campuses in North America and Canada was horrifying. I was not as shocked by the Arab questioners as I was with the personal threats, and the severe apathy of the majority of Jewish students.

In my years of speaking to people, I've never received threats or personal attacks like I did speaking on campuses. There were threatening incidents at both the University of Florida and at California State University. Both were chilling. The crowd in Florida was one full of anger and hatred, yet I had to stand before them unsure of the enemy who had sent threats earlier that day. In California I spoke facing a young student who wore a T-shirt with a swastika on it, chewing on a piece of paper as some sort of protest against my talk.

Even more upsetting, I expected to see many more Jewish students aware of the situation in Israel, but that wasn't the case. I expected the Jewish students to realize that the situation was not only affecting Israel and Israelis, but Jews all over the world.

On the other hand, the Arab students and their supporters knew almost all the last minute news clips from the Middle East. How can Israel's voice be heard if the Jewish students don't have the facts or the knowledge to speak up? I don't take the mass of Jewish students to task for not agreeing with all of Israel's policies, but I do take them to task for not caring about Israel or what happens there. It is the apathy which allows the anti-Israel propaganda to strengthen itself more and more over time.

As a personal aside, sixty years after the horrors of the Holocaust, Israel is going through one of the most critical times in its history. More than 60 years after my grandparents joined their destiny to that of the Jews coming to the Land of Israel, I feel that history is somehow moving backwards. Antisemitism and hatred towards Israel is soaring. Comparing me, a Muslim Bedouin who supports Israel, to the Nazis is just another clear piece of evidence.

And yet, 60 years after the horrors of the Holocaust, I felt that on campus, the Jewish voice is silent. Where are the Jewish students fighting back? My commitment in these crucial days, while Israel is struggling for its right to exist, is to continue the heritage of my grandparents and to stand together to fight for the State of Israel.

History will not tolerate us if we keep our voice silent. We must roll up our sleeves once again to build a better future for Israel and all of its loyal citizens. Israel's right to exist is my right and my people's right, just as Israel's destiny is our destiny.

But just as history demands for me to fight for Israel, history also will not tolerate a generation of Jews who don't care.

High Church hypocrisy and other humiliations

In his speech to the U.N. General Assembly last week, President George W. Bush mentioned with disfavor Israel's 'humiliations' of Palestinians. The irony of the president's misplaced concern (though the speech contained other passages reflecting this country's friendship with Israel) was highlighted when, a day later, a female Palestinian suicide bomber was halted at a checkpoint near a Jerusalem bus stop.

Just before border guards were about to 'humiliate' her by asking questions or searching her bag, the woman exploded her bomb, killing two soldiers.

For all of the outcry about Israeli behavior, few noted that this attempt to question the woman saved the lives of dozens of innocents who might have perished had the soldiers failed to prevent her from boarding a bus.

But the president isn't the only one who has been misled on this issue. Some churches are using the concern about Palestinian sensibilities to push an agenda of anti-Zionism.

Following the outcry about the recent vote by the Presbyterian Church USA to endorse divestment of Israel to express their condemnation of Israeli measures of self-defense, it wasn't clear whether other mainline liberal churches would follow suit -- or listen to the better angels of their nature and refrain from such despicable behavior.

But the Presbyterians' high-church Episcopal cousins seem ready to follow in their footsteps.

The decision to recommend a divestment of Israel was announced last week in Jerusalem by representatives of the church's 75 million adherents. They did so after a ten-day tour of the country which included a meeting with arch-terrorist Yasser Arafat in his Ramallah lair but no meetings with Israeli officials other than one with an Arab member of the Knesset who actually opposes the country's continued status as a Jewish state.

They seem particularly unwilling to listen to any evidence -- such as the thousands of dead, wounded and maimed Israelis over the course of the last four years of Palestinian terrorism -- that would justify any measures of Israeli self-defense. They seem especially irate about Israeli moves, such as checkpoints and the erection of a security fence, which hamper the ability of Palestinian killers to move to their targets with impunity.

The motive of the Anglicans (known in this country as the Episcopal church), they say, is to bring an end to the conflict between Israel and Palestinians. But given the nature of their proposed solution, the only thing they seem to really want to end is Israel's existence.

They intend to follow up on this initiative with the Episcopal Church USA.

Given the incendiary nature of many anti-Israel statements made by local and national Episcopal leaders, the chances of this step being adopted must be assessed as good.

It is interesting to note that although the call for divestment from companies that do business with Israel is making progress among church groups just as it seemed to fading on college campuses. That a sector of our society can be found to be more hostile to Israel than American universities really says something about the current state of the Protestant church.

As in the case of the Presbyterians, the drift of Episcopal activists toward support for anti-Israel measures is not necessarily reflected by the general membership of the church. Most ordinary American Episcopalians, like their Presbyterian counterparts, will soon wake up to discover that their representatives have signed on to a measure that obligates them to wage economic warfare on the Jewish state. This will be a surprise to most of them, but that will not make the problem any less serious.

Divestment is just the latest tactic adopted by those who excuse Palestinian terror. They are motivated not by a real concern for the plight of Palestinians, who, it should be remembered, would be living in their own sovereign state by now had their leaders accepted Israel's offers of peace. Instead, the embrace of divestment will send an unmistakable signal that the Palestinian war to exterminate Israel via terror is justified.

This is an act of such blatant immorality so as to render the church unqualified to speak with any moral authority on any topic, even the very real suffering of the Palestinians.

Though American Jews have invested decades of effort in interfaith dialogue with these churches, the Episcopalians and any who would follow them should understand that they cannot continue on this path and still pretend to maintain a friendship with the Jewish community.

The message that they must receive from every sector of responsible Jewish opinion must be clear: Divestment in Israel isn't merely wrong. It is a declaration of war on the Jewish people."

Iraqi arrested in Nashville for terror

The F.B.I. says it has foiled a terrorist plot in Nashville by arresting a man who bought automatic weapons at a local Krispy Kreme donut shop on Thompson Lane.

33-year-old Ahmed Hassan Al-Uqaily was caught Thursday after buying machine guns, handguns, ammunition and hand grenades from an undercover agent.

He told investigators he was angry with the Jewish community, but as far as Channel 4 knows, there was not a specific target.

Channel 4 News’ Susan Harding reported that Al-Uqaily has lived in Nashville since 1991 and lived at at least four different addresses. His name has often appeared in the media over the last few months as an outspoken critic of the war in Iraq.

Federal authorities said Friday they arrested Al-Uqaily during a sting operation set up after he made threats about "going Jihad."

Palestinian who allegedly sold land to Jews killed

Gunmen belonging to Fatah's armed wing, Aksa Martyrs Brigades, on Wednesday night shot and killed a Palestinian who had been suspected of selling land to Jews.

Sources in Ramallah said three gunmen stormed a local hospital and kidnapped Sami Burnat, 51, a resident of Balin village west of the city.

The kidnappers took Burnat to a nearby field, where they sprayed him with bullets, killing him instantly, the sources added.

EU diplomat admits success of Israel wall

The EU's representative in the Middle East has conceded that the controversial wall being built by Israel in the West Bank has stopped Palestinian extremists from carrying out suicide attacks in Israel.

His comments, made in an interview with Financial Times Deutschland, make him the first high-level EU diplomat to publicly say that the barrier has fulfilled its aim.

'The barrier has drastically sunk the number of attacks', said the Belgian diplomat.

However, although he admitted that the number of attacks has fallen, he told FT Deutschland that it does not mean that he finds the wall good."

Saddam paid off French leaders

Saddam Hussein used a U.N. humanitarian program to pay $1.78 billion to French government officials, businessmen and journalists in a bid to have sanctions removed and U.S. policies opposed, according to a CIA report made public yesterday.
The cash was part of $10.9 billion secretly skimmed from the U.N. oil-for-food program, which was used by Iraq to buy military goods, according to a 1,000-page report by the CIA-led Iraqi Survey Group.
According to a section of the report on Iraqi weapons procurement, the survey group identified long-standing ties between Saddam and the French government. One 1992 Iraqi intelligence service report revealed that Iraq's ambassador to France paid $1 million to the French Socialist Party in 1988.
The CIA report stated that the Iraqi ambassador was instructed to 'utilize [the $1 million] to remind French Defense Minister Pierre Joxe indirectly about Iraq's previous positions toward France, in general, and the French Socialist party, in particular.'
In the late 1990s, Iraq also used an oil-purchasing voucher system through the U.N. oil-for-food program, which began in 1996 and ended in 2003, to influence the French to oppose U.S. initiatives at the United Nations and to work to lift sanctions, the report stated.
The Iraqi Intelligence Service paid off French nationals by dispensing vouchers that allowed the holders to make hundreds of thousands of dollars in commissions by selling them to oil buyers.
The payoffs help explain why the French government, along with Russia and China, opposed U.S. efforts in the United Nations in the months leading up to the March 2003 invasion, U.S. officials said.
Iraqi intelligence agents also targeted French President Jacques Chirac, by giving gifts to a spokesman, two of his aides and two French businessmen, the report said.
One Iraqi intelligence report stated that a French politician assured Saddam in a letter that France would use its veto in the U.N. Security Council against any U.S. effort to attack Iraq. "

(Former?) Al Aqsa terrorist speaks

TONY EASTLEY:
While the Islamic groups are vowing to fight to the end, one wanted militant from the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades believes the Palestinian Intifada or uprising has achieved nothing.

In an interview with AM he says Israel has been successful in crushing the resistance, leaving his group a leaderless rabble involved in extortion and kidnapping.

Middle East Correspondent Mark Willacy reports from the West Bank.

MARK WILLACY: Well, I've just been driven by a Palestinian contact to a house here in the West Bank village, to meet a man who used to be a gunman in the al-Aqsa Martyr's Brigades. He's wanted by the Israelis for carrying out a number of attacks against Jewish targets.

But Abu Yasser, as he wants to be called, says he's turned his back both on violence and the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades.

Over some thick black Arabic coffee, Abu Yasser tells me how he began carrying out attacks for the al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades just months after the intifada broke out.

"The al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades is composed of a number of de-centralised cells," he says.

"Our cell was made up of gunmen who would shoot at Israelis – both soldiers and civilians – who came into our area," he tells me.

Throughout our interview Abu Yasser's leg shakes almost uncontrollably. He knows he's a hunted man. But the 29-year-old says he left the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades months ago, disillusioned with the direction the militant group was heading.

"The al-Aqsa Brigades here in the West Bank has lost its leadership. There's no one left to lead," he says.

And what remains has split into two groups – one that wants to stop the killing and start talking and another that is made up of thugs.

"These thugs steal, kidnap and run protections rackets," he says. "The Palestinian people now fear the al-Aqsa Brigades rather than respect them," he tells me.

A recent poll commissioned by a Nablus University found that more than two-thirds of Palestinians believe it's time to end the killing and sign a ceasefire with Israel. Previous polls had found that most wanted to continue the fighting.

Abu Yasser says ordinary Palestinians are tired of the killing. And the former al-Aqsa Brigades gunman says he's tired of hiding.

"Psychologically I have become used to running from the Israelis," he says. "What keeps me going is thinking of my family and how they would cope if I was arrested or killed," he tells me.

Israel will certainly never forget Abu Yasser and the dozens of attacks he helped carry out. But it's only a matter of time when they come hunting for him once again.

Have a good yom tov

I'm off again until after the weekend; chag kosher v'sameach!

Berlusconi: Italy will support Israeli EU membership

'Italy will support Israeli membership in the EU,' Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Industry Trade and Labor Ehud Olmert during a meeting in Rome last Wednesday evening.

Berlusconi told Olmert, 'As far as Italy is concerned, Israel is completely European in terms of its standard of living, heritage and cultural values. Geography is not a determinant.'

Berlusconi added that he supported Israel's disengagement plan. He noted that he had refused to meet Palestinian Authority chairman Yasser Arafat during a visit to Israel, and announced that Italy would include Hizbullah in its list of terrorist organizations.

Berlusconi is scheduled to visit Israel in March 2005.

Olmert and Italian Minister of Communications Maurizio Gasparri signed an bilateral cooperation agreement on information and network security. The agreement will help Israeli companies penetrate both Italian government and private markets.

JTA NEWS Evangelical Christians rally en masse for the Jewish state

JERUSALEM, Oct. 5 (JTA) — “I Stand by Israel” reads Christel Diekmann’s T-shirt as Star of David earrings dangle above her shoulders.

On her 34th pilgrimage to Israel, she is one of more than 4,000 evangelical Christians from across the globe who have gathered here to pledge their unconditional support for the Jewish state.

“If I believe in the Bible I have to help Israel,” said Diekmann, 51, who runs a Jewish-Christian outreach organization in Oberursel, Germany.

Dismissing any skepticism about the unflinching support for Israel offered by the evangelists, American television evangelist Pat Robertson, the highest profile of the pilgrims, who has spoken out vehemently against Palestinian statehood and militant Islam, said, “I’m one of the best friends you’ve ever had.”

As other Christian groups consider divestment campaigns against Israel and anti-Israel sentiment across the world grows, many here welcomed the visiting Christians.

Israel’s minister of Diaspora affairs, Natan Sharanksy, who spoke to and was honored by the visiting pilgrims, told JTA that the evangelical Christians are good for the Jewish people.

“First of all, they are friends and secondly they are very important allies,” he said in a phone interview, adding that the evangelicals have “moral clarity” about the Israeli-Arab conflict.

Sharansky noted that the evangelicals’ theology about the Messiah is different from that of the Jews, but said that it did not matter for now, noting it could be a long time till the Messiah comes.

The Christians have gathered in Israel this week to celebrate the Sukkot holiday in what they call their annual Feast of the Tabernacles, a festival they say was traditionally a time for non-Jews to celebrate along with Jews during the period of the ancient Temples.

The festival is organized by the International Christian Embassy, whose officials dub the event the largest solidarity mission to Israel this year.

“We found that Israel has not run out of adversaries and she needs friends,” said David Parsons, spokesman for the International Christian Embassy in Jerusalem.

“When we read our Bibles, we see it has wonderful things to say about Judaism and Israel,” he said.

“It’s a biblical basis of support and we find that from many different backgrounds” the thing the pilgrims have in common “is the Bible and a God-given love for Israel.”

The Christian Embassy was founded 25 years ago, Parsons said, “to minister comfort to the Jewish people” and to show Jews that there are those who were dismayed by the history of Christian anti-Semitism and wanted to stand with Israel and its right to exist.

According to Parsons, with its representatives in 80 countries, the International Christian Embassy is probably the world’s largest Christian Zionist organization.

The organization said it did not believe in the End of Days scenario that Jews are to be gathered back to Israel for their eventual destruction after Armageddon.

“We don’t think they are being gathered back to be annihilated. We believe God will protect this nation no matter what comes,” Parsons said.

At a news conference, Robertson evaded the question of whether in the long run, Jews and Christians were at odds theologically.

“I don’t know,” he told reporters, “It’s in God’s hands.”

Part of God’s plan, he said, is for the ingathering of Jews back to Israel. He and other evangelists see God’s hand in the creation of Israel. And he said he sees Arabs’ attempts to foil the state part of “Satan’s plan.”

Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein is probably the Jewish figure most intensely linked with Christian evangelists. As the founder of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, he has been working with them for almost 30 years.

He said in that time he has seen more Christian support for Israel and increasingly positive Jewish attitudes toward such Christians.

“I’ve seen a change in Jewish attitudes, people are much more positive and open and saying, ‘Thank you.’

“They are aware that these people are our friends,” he said, adding that having Christian friends is a critical asset for Israel and the fight against world anti-Semitism.

Eckstein said it is especially important for Jews now to link up with Christian supporters when there are so many born-again Christians at the top levels of the American government, including President Bush, Attorney General John Ashcroft and the majority leader of the House of Representatives, Rep. Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

Eckstein’s organization raises some $20 million a year from Christians abroad for causes in Israel such as soup kitchens and immigrant absorption.

He said his organization encourages churches not only to pray for Israel but to contribute financially and lobby for Israel.

Some Orthodox Jews in Israel are especially wary of Christian evangelists because of potential proselytizing.

Orthodox Jews here worry about missionary activity “of which there is no small amount in Israel,” said Jonathan Rosenblum, director of Jewish Media Resources, an Orthodox media resource organization.

Singing “We Love Israel,” waving Israeli flags and blowing shofars, thousands of pilgrims from the 80 countries represented at the Sukkot gathering took to Jerusalem’s streets Monday to express their support for Israel.

They passed out their country’s flags as well as candy to the large crowds of Jerusalemites who gathered to watch their parade wind through downtown.

People are here “because we believe in God and God is the God of Israel, so we love the people of the land,” said Ruben Pavia, 43, a bank clerk from Belem, Brazil, wearing Brazil’s national colors of green and yellow and waving his country’s flag along with dozens of his fellow Brazilians.

Dancing with a group representing the Ivory Coast, 34-year-old Jean Paul Dogo, who works as a translator for his West African country’s first lady, praised Israel.

“We love Israel, our hearts are with Israel without conditions. They are our brothers,” he said.

In the crowd of onlookers there were smiles and hands grasped in greeting with the marchers. Many waved and shouted “Shalom” in return to the greetings of the pilgrims.

“You see I am crying. I am very moved because we are so alone and this gives us feeling that someone cares,” said Miriam Bennet, 57, a homemaker from Bnei Brak.

She said she did not mind that the marchers were devout Christians. “We can’t all be Jewish,” she mused. “It’s just nice to see we are not alone.”

Israelis, American Win Nobel for Chemistry

STOCKHOLM, Sweden - Israelis Aaron Ciechanover and Avram Hershko and American Irwin Rose won the 2004 Nobel Prize in chemistry Wednesday for discovering a key way cells destroy unwanted proteins — starting with a chemical "kiss of death."

Their work provides the basis for developing new therapies for diseases such as cervical cancer and cystic fibrosis.

The Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences honored Ciechanover, 57, Hershko, 67, and Rose, 78, for work they did in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Each human cell contains about 100,000 different proteins, busy bees that carry out jobs like speeding up chemical reactions and acting as signals. At least five Nobel prizes have been given for research into how cells make proteins, but the question of how they destroy proteins has received much less attention, the assembly said.

The three scientists uncovered a process that starts when a doomed protein is grabbed by a particular molecule, marking it for destruction. Such marked proteins are then chopped to pieces.

The process governs such key processes as cell division, DNA repair and quality control of newly produced proteins, as well as important parts of the body's immune defenses against disease, the academy said in its citation.

Scientists are trying to use the process to create medicines, either to prevent the breakdown of proteins or make the cell destroy disease-causing ones. One example is the cancer drug Velcade, approved last year in the United States, which interferes with the cell's protein-chopping machine.

Many other drugs that harness the protein-destroying process are in development, said Ciechanover, who is director of the Rappaport Family Institute for Research in Medical Sciences at the Technion, in Haifa, Israel. Hershko, originally from Hungary, is a professor there.

Rose is a specialist at the department of physiology and biophysics at the college of medicine at the University of California, Irvine.

Ciechanover told reporters, "I'm happy that I can speak on the phone at all and that I remember I my English. I'm not myself, that's for sure, not for a while."

It's the first time an Israeli has won a Nobel science prize, although Israelis have won peace and literature Nobels. "I am as proud for myself as I am for my country," Ciechanover said.

The prizes, which include a $1.3 million check, a gold medal and a diploma, are presented on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel's death in 1896.