Remembering
From Naomi Ragen:

Friends,

One of ther reasons I started this mailing list was to try to share that which we in Israel are experiencing. All day long today, Memorial Day for Israel's fallen soldiers and (for the first time) victims of terror, I tried to think how I could explain to someone outside the country what we here go through.

How can I make someone who doesn't live here understand what it means to sit by your television set hour after hour watching family after family break down in tears as they describe the pain of losing a beloved son or daughter? And the pictures of the fallen, how they flash by, the handsome young men, the winning grin, the dark blue eyes, the strong young bodies, the beautiful young women --and all so young, so young, so very young.

There was one show that filmed mothers and fathers describing the last conversation they had with their child, and then how they learned the terrible news. Some feared it all along; others never suspected. Some were furious at the soldiers who came to tell them; others didn't want to open the door at all; and still others didn't believe a word, trying again and again to call the cell-phone number.

There was the Russian immigrant who had lost her lovely young daughter in a Tel Aviv disco bombing: "I dreamt about her wedding, having grandchildren. Now that will never happen." Was she sorry she'd moved to Israel? "No," she said. "This is our country. This is what my daughter wanted. It was her dream." And the Ethiopian mother who had lost her soldier son....and the friends we have known for years talking about losing their son, a war hero. I remember when David Granit was born. His mother didn't know she was pregnant with twins, identical twin boys, redheads like their mother. Their father Menachem saw one son born, then went home. When he came back to visit his wife, she said: "We have a son." I know, he answered, confused. "No, another son." How we all laughed at this story. David was killed in Lebanon saving the lives of his soldiers who were under heavy fire. "I didn't want a hero," his sister wept. "I wanted my brother."


On the radio, I heard a bereaved mother talking about the importance of memorial day. "For one day the whole country feels like I feel every day." It was important for people to call, to enquire, to comfort. To make those suffering from loss feel surrounded by a cocoon of warmth and love and solidarity, she said. That is so hard, I thought. Because the last thing in the world you want to do is intrude on someone's private grief. But Memorial Day makes that grief public, giving all of us a chance to say: We live because your son, your daughter, your father, your brother, your sister gave their lives to guard and protect us. Our country continues to function because your grandmother, your little girl, took a bus, bought a pizza, sat in a park, and in so doing, lost their lives to those who wish to take our country away from us. Too cowardly to fight our soldiers, they fight our old people, our babies.

When Memorial Day is over, we will dry our tears. We will go out into the streets of Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, our hearts still heavy with cumulative grief, and watch the fireworks. And little by little, we will start to smile again, to celebrate that our little country--our little miracle-- is 56 years old. And that, despite everything, we love her and wish her well and would give anything --anything--to protect and nuture her and her people, the bravest and most compassionate people in the world.

Happy Birthday Israel. God Bless the Jewish people, the People of Israel. May He heal our wounds, and dry the tears from all faces.
- posted by Joel @ 12:57 PM

 
Poor "Palestinians"
From http://www.nationalreview.com/hanson/hanson200404230833.asp


The Palestinians will, in fact, get their de facto state, though one that may be
now cut off entirely from Israeli commerce and cultural intercourse. This is an
apparently terrifying thought: Palestinian men can no longer blow up Jews on
Monday, seek dialysis from them on Tuesday, get an Israeli paycheck on
Wednesday, demonstrate to CNN cameras about the injustice of it all on
Thursday — and then go back to tunneling under Gaza and three-hour, all-male,
conspiracy-mongering sessions in coffee-houses on Friday.

Thanks, Naomi!
- posted by Joel @ 3:13 PM

 
Naomi's back
Dear Friends,

I'm back! I had a wonderful time (sunsets, rainbows, beaches, orchids. Peace.) But I have to say my eyes misted when my plane finally touched down on my little country. And of all the wonderful sights I saw, and all the joy I experienced, there is was nothing like the coastline of Tel Aviv as it neared. The weather is warm and balmy, with no cloud in sight.

My short stay in London was enough to fill me with compassion for the British. Their climate is their punishment. Freezing cold and rainy. As for their security, it is non-existent. Those deep underground subways are a terrorist's dream. After Madrid, Mr. Frost shouldn't be sympathizing with terrorists and condemning Israel. He should be urging his own government to follow suit. But appeasement seems to be part of the British arsenal when it comes to dealng with evil. I have no doubt the British will eventually figure it out as they did the last time. I shudder to think at what cost.

I return to you and my list with renewed vigor and faith. The present of Sheik Yassin in little pieces on the morning of my return was cause for real celebration. As we near Passover, I can't help remember that it was this little Hitler that targeted my family at the Park Hotel on Seder night two years ago.

As for all the remarks on how "now-you've-made-them-mad. Now -you've- made-them- really-really- mad", please. I have always felt that our enemies will kill us as long as they can, and they'll stop when they can't. May all those who mourn the passing of Yassin soon follow in his footsteps. After all, didn't Yassin say that the day of his martyrdom would be the happiest day in his life? I wish all of his mourners many, many such happy days in their lives.

I'm enclosing Bret Stephens' excellent piece.

Every blessing,

Naomi


The Fear Factor

By BRET STEPHENS March 23, 2004; Page A22, The Jerusalem Post

JERUSALEM -- Are Palestinians weeds? It would seem many people think they are. Following Israel's assassination early yesterday morning of Ahmed Yassin, spiritual leader of Hamas, the gist of international reaction was that the strike would bring new converts to the Islamist cause and incite a fresh wave of terrorist violence against Israel. In other words, Palestinians are weeds: Mowing them down, as it were, only has the effect of making them grow back stronger and faster.

There are moments (Monday morning was one of them) when I find myself tempted by the metaphor. As I write, my TV screen is filled with images of Palestinian mourners thronging the streets of Gaza, praising Yassin as a martyr and vowing deadly vengeance. This looks like the reaction of an emboldened people, not a frightened one. So what's the sense, in purely utilitarian terms, of further Israeli attacks? Alternatively, what's the sense of showing any restraint at all? If the weed metaphor is right, either Israel should sue for peace on whatever terms the Palestinians extend or it should resort to extreme measures like population transfer. Anything else just fruitlessly prolongs a cycle of violence.

But of course Palestinians aren't weeds. They're human. They think in terms of costs and benefits, they calculate the odds, they respond more or less rationally to incentives and disincentives. And what makes us afraid can also make them afraid.

This is a trite observation, but it's one Palestinians would rather have us forget. Over 42 months of conflict, their strategy has been to persuade Israelis that they, the Palestinians, are made of different stuff. Why else the suicide bombers? Not because of their proven capacity to kill civilians in greater numbers than any other weapon currently in the Palestinian arsenal. That's only a second-order effect. The deep logic of suicide bombing lies in the act of suicide itself. People who will readily die for their cause are, by definition, beyond deterrence. By showing that Israel's tanks and fighter jets are just so much scrap metal in the face of the Palestinians' superhuman determination, they aim to disarm Israel itself.

How does one respond to such a logic? It helps not to be fooled by it. Again, allow me to make the trite observation that Palestinians love their children too. To date, there has not been a single instance in which a Hamas leader sent one of his own sons or daughters on a suicide mission. I once interviewed a Hamas leader, since deceased, as he bounced his one-year-old girl on his knee. Contrary to myth, this was not a man who was afraid of nothing. Unsparing as he was with the lives of others, he was circumspect when it came to the lives of his own.

Indeed, when one looks closely at just who the suicide bombers are (or were), often they turn out to be society's outcasts. Take Reem Salah al-Rahashi, a mother of two, who in January murdered four Israeli soldiers at the Erez checkpoint on the Gaza-Israel border. In a prerecorded video, Rahashi said becoming a shaheed was her lifelong dream. Later it emerged she'd been caught in an extramarital affair, and that her husband and lover had arranged her "martyrdom operation" as an honorable way to settle the matter. It is with such people, not with themselves, that Palestinian leaders attempt to demonstrate their own fearlessness.

In the early months of the intifada, this macho pretense was sustained by the Israeli government's tacit decision not to target terrorist ringleaders, for fear such attacks would inspire massive retaliation. Yassin and his closest associates considered themselves immune from Israeli reprisals and operated in the open. What followed was the bloodiest terrorist onslaught in Israeli history, climaxing in a massacre at Netanya in March 2002. After that, Israel invaded the West Bank and began to target terrorist leaders more aggressively.

The results, in terms of lives saved, were dramatic. In 2003, the number of Israeli terrorist fatalities declined by more than 50% from the previous year, to 213 from 451. The overall number of attacks also declined, to 3,823 in 2003 from 5,301 in 2002, a drop of 30%. In the spring of 2003, Israel stepped up its campaign of targeted assassinations, including a failed attempt on Yassin's deputy, Abdel Aziz Rantisi. Wise heads said Israel had done nothing except incite the Palestinians to greater violence. Instead, Hamas and other Islamic terrorist groups agreed unilaterally to a cease-fire.

In this context, it bears notice that between 2002 and 2003 the number of Palestinian fatalities also declined significantly, from 1,000 to about 700. The reason here is obvious: As the leaders of Palestinian terror groups were picked off and their operations were disrupted, they were unable to carry out the kind of frequent, large-scale attacks that had provoked Israel's large-scale reprisals. Terrorism is a top-down business, not vice versa. Targeted assassinations not only got rid of the most guilty but diminished the risk of open combat between Israeli soldiers and Palestinian foot soldiers.

Now a few words about Yassin, the international reaction to his killing, and the likely result for Israel. It may be recalled that Israel released the good sheikh in 1997, after having sentenced him to life in prison, with the promise that he would never again promote terrorism. This was during the Oslo years, when serious people actually thought that such conciliatory gestures served the interests of peace. Today, that is beyond comprehension. At any rate, Yassin didn't keep his promise.

Meanwhile, assorted foreign ministers are in full throat against Israel. "All of us understand Israel's need to protect itself -- and it is fully entitled to do that -- against the terrorism that affects it, within international law," says British Foreign Minister Jack Straw. "But it is not entitled to go in for this kind of unlawful killing."

It would be interesting to know exactly what, according to Mr. Straw, Israel is lawfully allowed to do in self-defense. Perhaps it would be as well if the minister also reminded the Palestinian Authority of its obligations, under the Road Map, to "undertake visible efforts . . . to arrest, disrupt, and restrain individuals and groups conducting and planning attacks on Israelis." But if Mr. Straw and his colleagues do not do so, it is not from an excess of respect for the Palestinians, but rather its lack. They will, after all, be viewing them merely as weeds, not as humans capable of acting in their own best interests.

Mr. Stephens is editor in chief of the Jerusalem Post.

URL for this article: http://online.wsj.com/article/0,,SB108000585017162510,00.html (Requires WSJ subscription)

=======================================
Naomi Ragen
Please visit my Web page at: http://www.NaomiRagen.com
and subscribe to my mailing list by sending an empty email to: naomiragen-on@mail-list.com
email:Naomi@NaomiRagen.com
- posted by Joel @ 4:09 PM

 
Sarah Honig in JPost: Sleep no more
Jerusalem Post, March 11, 2004


It came to me while trying to avoid decking myself out in a full-blown Purim costume for a party we were invited to. Why not go as a replica of myself, my own impostor? So I drew and cut out a giant lapel-label in the shape of a seedpod and imprinted a bold "snatched body" inscription across it.

My humble homage to the 1956 film Invasion of the Body Snatchers, a sci-fi cult classic about human doubles hatched from mysterious pods, became an unexpected attention-grabber and conversation-sparker. In no time, the chitchat gravitated to current affairs and speculation about which leading politico's body may have been replaced.

By the end of the evening there was unanimity among the merrymakers. Though Ariel Sharon may look, sound, and move like his old self, he's no Arik. We hypothesized elaborate scenarios about his alien abduction, takeover by a mind-controlling physical look-alike, eventual altering of his life-force, and erasure of all emotions and ideals that had moved him previously.

Then someone quipped that "it's as good an explanation as any" for Sharon's bizarre behavior and disquieting surprises, which no longer shock the desensitized population.

Why indeed search for an elusive psychoanalytical diagnosis to account for the settlement champion's out-of-the-blue resort to the term "occupation"? Why construct fanciful concoctions to account for the "constriction minister's" submission to an outsider's road-map-to-ruin? Why burrow for clues to account for the super-hawk's sudden penchant for cowering behind a fence with very mutable lines? Why beat our tired brains trying to account for the quintessential warrior's quizzical propensity for retreat?

We don't need to conjure undying devotion between the PM and his erstwhile produce marketer, who was also the erstwhile father-in-law of Elhanan Tannenbaum, to account for the hardliner's suddenly turning soft on Hizbullah and submitting to its extortionist ransom demands.

THE BODY-SNATCHING theory is as valid as any convoluted cerebral contortion to make sense of the strange goings-on around the national control-board. In fact, it probably makes better sense. The bottom line is that the Sharon currently in the prime minister's office isn't the Arik we once loved or feared, each according to his/her political predilection.

Someone inhabiting Arik's exact likeness is behaving in ways diametrically opposed to Arik's. Thus the very notion that Sharon today can regret Begin's refusal to allow the Egyptian army into Sinai boggles the mind. The whole idea was to make the Sinai vastness a buffer, military movement into which would tip Israel off in time to counter any offensive. The basic logic was to keep the still-menacing Egyptian military machine away from Gaza, the historic highway for numerous invasions of Eretz Yisrael. The rationale was to prevent a re-enactment of 1948, when attacking Egyptian forces endangered Tel Aviv.

Equally mind-blowing is the notion of these chillingly unfriendly Egyptians curtailing weapons smuggling into Gaza. Who's Arik kidding? These are the very Egyptians who at present aid and abet such illicit arms-supplies. They honestly caution that they've no intention of becoming our guardians, so why should we delude ourselves otherwise and not take their word for it?

We already tried to entrust our fragile defense into enemy hands (the Oslo fiasco), and see where that brilliant stroke got us. Who's to guarantee that the latest gamble would pay off, while its predecessor literally keeps exploding in our faces?

How do we know we can now trust Sharon's professed omniscient wisdom any more than we could safely swallow his assurances on the eve of the swap that brought Tannenbaum back? That deal, which only risked returning terrorists to their training bases, was finally exposed as a folly at best. Sharon's grander schemes could risk lots more.

Even his words erode our position. Only the concessions remain, none of the compensations. In the Tannenbaum affair, we didn't rescue a tortured compatriot. Israel's 14 road-map reservations are forgotten. The security fence's beyond-the-Green-Line bulges are fast disappearing, and the mooted annexations in return for a Gaza withdrawal are ephemeral red herrings.

Only dupes would put their trust in anything Sharon advocates or extraterrestrial duplicates.

Maybe Sharon isn't the only leading Likud light snatched. That would explain not only his increasing strangeness but also the lack of resistance from his party's cabinet contingent. Perhaps the Likud ministers too aren't who they claim to be. Their reactions also appear eerily modified. They don't seem to be themselves. That's what comes of prevaricating, acquiescing, letting one's guard down, shutting the eyes.

Indeed, in the relentlessly haunting flick, zombie-like aliens propagate only when folks sleep, when they aren't vigilant. The dormant victim is replaced by an emotionless drone. Eventually the entire town is possessed by pod changelings, and everything is threatened.

The B-picture's original name was Sleep No More. A message for us?

- posted by Joel @ 7:31 PM

 
Fence Cartoon
 Barrier For Peace

From Cox & Forkum Editorial Cartoons.

- posted by Joel @ 5:54 AM

 
Daniel Gordis: Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today
*** To join Daniel's list, send a BLANK email to: gordis-subscribe@topica.com. Or see www.danielgordis.org for more information.

*** Just published ..... The last five years of these Dispatches (a revised version of IF A PLACE CAN MAKE YOU CRY), plus other brief essays on life in Israel, are now available as "Home to Stay: One American Family's Chronicle of Miracles and Struggles in Contemporary Israel (Random House/Three Rivers Press).

The Amazon link is http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1400049598/


I remember the day they died. And I remember the day that they died again. They were killed, we now know, 1210 days ago in the attack in which they, or their bodies, were captured. The number 1208 was mentioned today by Hayim Avraham, Benny's father, as the number of days that they survived without knowing. Now, he's getting his son back. Not alive, but back. And for the first time in 1208 days, he and his family will go to sleep knowing with certainty that Benny is dead, that he's not in the hands of the same sorts of "people" who blew up a bus full of children and civilians in the heart of Jerusalem today, or who for more than three interminable years kept the most basic humanitarian information -- that the boys were dead -- from their suffering families.

Those families will go to sleep now knowing that their boys are not suffering. That they didn't suffer, at least for long.

The prisoner exchange, in which earlier today we returned more than 400 prisoners for three dead bodies and a probable criminal who apparently got himself captured by Hizbollah only by virtue of his involvement in some nefarious attempt to make money, has been the subject of intense, and now impassioned, debate in Israel. There are those who think we've made a grave mistake. And those who aren't sure. And those who believe that you simply have to "bring the boys home."

That's been the refrain of everyone today, those who agree, and those who don't. Israel "brings the boys home." No matter what. It may make strategic sense, it may not. It may get us information about Ron Arad, the navigator who was shot down five days after our daughter, Talia, who's now being drafted, was born. It may not. It may have been worth it. It may not have. But it has made one point clear. We bring the boys home.

Israeli national television has been broadcasting nothing else (except for periodic interruptions for coverage of the aftermath of the bus bombing -- the bomber, by the way, was a Palestinian policeman from Bethlehem .) all day. At one point, Avi had a friend over, and they joined me watching TV. Here they were, two 14 year olds, headed out to the same army, and perhaps the same fronts, in just a few years. I watched their eyes as they watched the screen, as they watched the video segments of parents who've been interviewed over the past three years and four months, who didn't know whether to mourn or to hope, as they watched the more recent pictures of parents who now know that the hope is over but that relief is ironically just beginning, and I saw them processing. Wondering. What will be. What could be. What would be. Who would do what. At what expense.

And for that moment, at least, it seemed worth it. Without question. Those kids watching TV with me need to know that we bring boys home.

Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. But they came home to a very different country than the one from which they were stolen. A country that's been at war for three years. A country that when they were killed was just weeks post Camp David, when we thought that virtually anything and everything was possible. To a country that no longer yearns for a peace that we suspect will not be, but still hopes for the sort of quiet that we had for a while. Until this morning. They were stolen on October 7, 2000, just weeks after everything began, when we were foolish enough to imagine that things were bad. We had no idea back then how bad they could get. Or would get. But we're still here. They've come home to a country that has stared evil in the eye, and has persevered. And that brought them home, against all odds.

Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. They came home to a country that is not afraid to cry. Israeli television tonight alternated between coverage of Beirut, and of the air force base at Ben Gurion airport. Beirut, with the fireworks lighting the sky, the backslapping among the prisoners, the sickening, endless speech by Nassrallah in which he intimated a threat of more kidnappings, and hinted at the possibility of information (just information, though) on Ron Arad in exchange for all the remaining hundreds of prisoners we still have, evoking laughs, jeers and clapping from the throngs of people listening. And then to the air force base, at which a quiet ceremony took place. A ceremony in which no one laughed. Where people cried. Where you could have heard a pin drop, and where you watched fathers and mothers, sisters and brothers, and a few grandparents, stifle their cries and wipe their tears away.

They came home to a country in which the carnage of burning buses in our cities, in parts of the country far from anything contested (unless, of course, the whole country is contested, which is clearly the case) has grown so intolerable that we're building a wall, a wall which keeps them out but also pens us in. But it's also a country in which many of us see, sadly, no real alternative to that fence, as problematic as it undeniably is. They've come home to a country that will be "brought to trial" at the Hague for the "crime" of that wall, a country that's now referred to in some quarters as an Apartheid State because of that fence.

I thought about that Apartheid accusation a few times tonight. When the coffins were carried from the plane to the jeeps waiting for them, and the coffin of Omar Souad, a Bedouin, a career soldier who decided that defending the Jewish State was how he wanted to spend his life, was carried to the jeep. Six soldiers, three on each side of the coffin, arrayed to carry him one step closer to his final home. Four who looked Jewish. One who looked Bedouin, though it was hard to tell. And one, an Ethiopian. All by the side of Omar Souad, and then, all saluting him. And then the Chief of Staff, and the bearded IDF Chief Rabbi, standing at the side of his coffin, saluting him and standing at attention. Quite an Apartheid state.

And then during the ceremony, the two Jewish fathers standing together and reciting Kaddish. And after the Kaddish, an Imam, by the side of Omar's father, chanting an Arabic memorial prayer, as his mother sobbed and the honor guard stood at attention, along with the Prime Minister, the President, the Chief of Staff and others. So much for the Apartheid state.

Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. To a country that's not been weakened by the past three years, but that's been hardened by it. I drove Talia's carpool for the first time in years, yesterday morning. She's got a five minute walk to school, so we never drive carpool, but this wasn't school. She and some friends had to be at the Jerusalem Convention Center at 7:00 a.m. to be bussed someplace else for part of their draft process, so I drove them. Three kids, not really kids anymore, whom I remember just years ago as chatty adolescents, now talking quietly as I drove through the still awakening city and its mostly empty streets, talking about what forms they'd filled out, what they'd have to do during the day. And when I got home from work at about 9:30 that night, she still wasn't home. She got home closer to 10, grabbed a bite, and went to sleep. No fanfare. No complaints. In the past three years, those girls have learned a lot. That the battle to stay here isn't over. That to stay here, they, too, are going to have to do their share. That we have real enemies.

We went to a parents' meeting about a month ago for parents of religious girls about to enter the army. One particular unit was trying to attract these girls, and this evening was for parents to find out more about it. Some of the parents were worried that the unit would make their girls work on Shabbat. The unit had assembled a few of the soldiers, a couple of them kids whom we knew from when they lived in the neighborhood before they left for the army, and a couple of rabbis (among others) to talk about life in this part of the army. Well into the meeting, one father got up and asked one of the rabbis, in a rather aggressive tone, whether the girls work on Shabbat. The rabbi paused for a moment to gather his thoughts, when one of the girls stared the father right in the eye and said, "Of course we sometimes work on Shabbat. The enemy works on Shabbat."

I almost laughed out loud. These kids get it. They understand that there's nothing automatic about our being able to stay here. They understand that staying here means having real enemies. And watching the ceremony tonight, watching the agony of families who should have known three years ago that their sons were dead, I watched Tali watching them. With eyes of steel. Because she, like her friends, knows that the enemy isn't a concept. They bomb the cafes she eats in. The blow up the buses she still rides. And they keep these parents awake for 1208 nights, not knowing if their sons are alive or dead, suffering or in peace. Our kids get it. They know what sorts of neighbors we have.

And they're not running. They grow up too fast, I think, but they know who they are and what they stand for. Few of us would want it otherwise.

These kids get it long before they get drafted. A father of one of Israel's POW's (not one of the three returned tonight) came to Avi's class last year. He talked about how his son was captured, and what they're doing (and have been doing for more than twenty years) to try to get him back. But kids will be kids. They're not afraid to ask what they want to know. So at the end, one of the kids asked him if he's worried that they're torturing his son. No, he said, he didn't think about that. "But when I get into bed each night," he continued, "I worry that maybe he's cold." Avi talked about that for days. And on the rare occasion that he still lets me tuck him into bed at night, I think about that, too. You know, at moments like that, that we just have to bring the boys home. No matter what.

The country to which the boys came home tonight is one in which kids who shouldn't have to be hardened, unfortunately are. When we heard the news of the attack on the bus this morning, I SMS'ed the kids to make sure that they were OK. They were supposed to be in school, but who knew where they really were? So I SMS'ed them on their phones: "There was an attack in Jm this morning. Sms me to tell me you're OK." Talia wrote back to say she was fine. Avi wrote back a short while later.

He wrote, in classic SMS fashion: Im fine and all my friends are fine.

It was my friends bus tho so if he would have been late 2day he would have been killed

That was the whole message. When Adi, Avi and Benny were captured, it would have been unthinkable to us that a fourteen year old could talk about such things so matter-of-factly. Or that he could home and tell us that the mother of one the kids in his school is still unaccounted for, but half an hour later want to discuss the relative merits of the iPod versus the new Dell MP3 player. But that's what things have come to. And perhaps because of that ability to compartmentalize, and to stare evil in the face, we're still here. And no one's thinking of budging.

I remember the second time that Adi, Benny and Omar died. For a year, every Shabbat, our shul had been mentioning them, and the other six (Tenenbaum among them) just after the Torah reading, in a prayer for Israel's captured soldiers. First a prayer for the State. Then for the

army and its soldiers. Then for those in captivity. Nine names only,

so after a while, you know the list. You know it almost by heart, and you certainly notice if someone changes it. Then, about a year after they were captured, the army declared them dead based on new intelligence. Some of the families sat Shiva, but didn't really believe it. And in our shul, that next Shabbat, the person reading the "mi she-beirach," the prayer in which their names were mentioned, started reading, and then stopped. It was as if he couldn't bear to read the list without their names. As if even though he didn't know them, he couldn't give up on the hope. So he didn't mention any of the names, and instead, said something like "all those held in captivity." It was a moment that few of us who were there will ever forget. I was struck then by how personal this was. How despite everything that is wrong here, and that's quite a bit, there is so much that is right. And how, the more they push us, the more we are bonded even to people we never knew. It is, I think, one of those immeasurable things that makes living here so compelling, despite everything. It's one of those things that remind us what a real home is.

As does the evening news. Throughout the entire broadcast tonight, there were two Hebrew words at the bottom right hand side of the screen -- "ve-shavu vanim." "And the sons will return." It's a quote from Jeremiah 31:16, of course. The entire verse reads, "And there is hope for your future, declares the Lord, your children shall return to their country." And that's exactly what happened.

Adi Avitan, Benny Avraham and Omar Souad came home today. Tomorrow we'll bury them, along with the victims of today's bus bombing.

Yehi zikhram barukh. May their memories be a blessing.


(c) 2004 Daniel Gordis

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- posted by Joel @ 3:33 AM

 
IsraelPizza.com: pizza and soda for Israeli soldiers!
IsraelPizza.com: Click here to tangibly express your appreciation.

Pizza and a Chat
Arutz 7

Being a soldier in the Israeli Defense Forces has its perks – defending the Jewish nation, fulfilling a 2,000 year old dream to control our own destiny and for soldiers serving in Hevron... free pizza.

The residents of Kiryat Arba and Hevron have established an organization called “Israel Pizza” to strengthen the morale of the IDF soldiers on duty there. The organization has a “restaurant” in Kiryat Arba where the soldiers in the vicinity (there are about 2,000 of them stationed in the region) come and enjoy free pizza and beverages.

They have set up a live web-cam so people can speak with the soldiers through the computer as they enjoy the food and drink that has been donated. The web-cam can be viewed between the hours of 6:00 pm-9:00 pm Israel time, 11:00 am-2:00 pm Eastern Standard Time. Just enter the Israelpizza.com site and click on "live" and then "chat".

Kiryat Arba resident Tsivya Tezza described why such services are so helpful. “The army is closing many of its kitchen for lack of funds, leaving soldiers with airline style meals three times a day from now on. Fresh pizza will surely be an improvement on that. Also, with the entire world seemingly against our young soldiers, they need to know that there are people who care about them from all over the globe sending them this food so they can defend the Jewish people. And lastly, by developing a visual relationship with an Israeli soldier through the live web-cam both the donors and the soldiers benefit immensely from the powerful bond of brotherhood."

Four families have been maintaining the pizza distribution. The husband of one of the organizers was seriously injured in the ‘Worshipers’ Way” terror attack last year.

Pizza for the IDF soldiers stationed in Hevron can be ordered by going to the Israel Pizza site at Israelpizza.com. After clicking "Welcome", just click on the pizza picture to the right of the screen to donate a pizza.

For more information and to send a message to the soldiers through email, write to: Israelpizza@hotmail.com


- posted by Joel @ 4:11 PM

 
Why Palestinian statehood is a mistake
by Joseph Farah

I now think I understand Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's thinking when it comes to his acceptance of the U.S. "roadmap" plan for the creation of a Palestinian state as early as this year. For a long time I wondered if there was any coherent thought behind Israel's capitulation to Washington and the international community.

I knew there was no moral justification for the creation of a new state of Palestine ­ one that has never existed in the history of the world. I knew it was a bad idea to reward terrorism ­ which is exactly what the creation of the state does. I knew it was wrong to dismantle Jewish communities in traditionally Jewish lands. I knew it was a bad deal for Christian Arabs who happen to live in the territory. I knew it would result in a new totalitarian, Islamic state. I still know all this. But now I think I understand why Sharon is going along with the bad plan.

He's doing it because he believes it is honestly in Israel's best security interests to do so. While I appreciate his position, I still think he is wrong. Sharon believes if this action is not taken, Jews will some day be outnumbered by Arabs in Israel. He sees the creation of another Arab state on lands where Arabs are already in the majority as a defensive measure. By carving up the West Bank, dismantling some Jewish communities and moving Jewish population inside a new green line, he believes he will be acting in Israel's best, long-term security interests.

In addition, by establishing a real Arab state where none currently exists, Sharon will be ensuring that future terrorism will have a real address ­ one that can be held accountable for attacks on Israel. Here's why he is wrong. Here's what he is missing. Here's what he is not projecting because he can't think like his enemy.

The day a new Arab Palestinian state is created, other Arab nations will begin ejecting their own Palestinians to live in the new nation. They will come from Syria. They will come from Lebanon. They will come from Iran. They will come from Egypt. They will come from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

The Arab nations keep the Palestinians and their descendants in squalor. They are denied citizenship rights. They are denied work. They are denied property. They are denied their human rights because they are and always will be a political football in the Arab campaign against Israel.

How many will come? I would expect to see 500,000 at least in the short term. This will result in new refugee camps on Israel's border. This will result in more poverty and dislocation ­ conditions that breed terrorism and senseless violence, which is why Yasser Arafat hasn't minded destroying his own once-healthy economy.

These refugees will not complain about those who really victimized them ­ the Arab leadership. Their hatred will be directed at the Jews. With no more Israeli military patrols taking place, as they do now, the security situation will deteriorate on Israel's fence. The terrorists will develop new tactics and buy new weapons ­ including weapons of mass destruction.

If Israel dares respond to attacks by crossing the border, it will create new international pressures against the Jewish state. This is not a recipe for peace. This is a recipe for delaying disaster. By acknowledging the legitimacy of the Palestinian cause, when there is none, Sharon and Israel will have given up the moral high ground and invited more demands on Israel in the future.

Joseph Farah is a Christian Arab who has a nationally syndicated column originated in WorldNetDaily, where he serves as Editor and Chief Executive Officer
- posted by Joel @ 12:53 PM

 
Scapegoating the "settlers"
By Shalom Freedman

Originally published by Israel National News

There were no settlers in Judea and Samaria and Gaza in 1967. There were none in 1956. Those Jews who lived there in 1947 and 1948, and were murdered or driven out by the Arabs, were not called "settlers," but rather Jews of Palestine living in Eretz Yisrael. Yet, even without the settlers, the Arabs tried to destroy the Jewish presence in the Holy Land, managed to kill Jews in whatever cruel ways they could. This was also true in the 1920s and 1930s. It did not take settlers to 'create a quarrel' between the Jews and their Arab neighbors. And it did not take settlers to induce the Arabs to try to make all of Israel/Palestine Judenrein.

The settlers are not now, and have never been the real cause of Arab hostility to Israel, unless, that is, you regard every Jew in the Holy Land as a settler. In that case, it really is the settlers with whom the Arabs are not willing to live in peace, at all.

Despite this, the world media, under Arab propaganda instruction, see the settlers as the main obstacle to peace. And this despite the fact that the overwhelming majority of them live on land that no Arab lived on. In fact, many of those very left-wing Jews who also 'blame the settlers' do live on properties that Arabs once lived on; while the settlers live on state lands, which were never settled before.

Arab hatred of the settlers comes, I suspect, in part because they understand that the settlers share a certain value with them. The settlers value 'the land' and the Arabs value land above all. The settlers are their rivals in a way that Jews content to dwell in high-rises in the cities are not. The Arabs hate the settlers, because they consider them their real rivals in claims of possession of state lands, which no one really owns.

The scapegoating of the settlers is also the means by which the Israeli Left makes the conflict a 'rational' and 'solvable' one. In order to be balanced, in order to give justification to their vision of peace, the Israeli Left must find the Jewish bad guys. The settlers are given this role. The Israeli Left, because of this vision of 'balancing it out,' has made terrible mistakes of judgment, which have caused Israel many lives. The Left does not understand that the heart of the conflict has nothing whatever to do with the settlers, but has everything to do with the right of Jews to have a state of their own in the Holy Land.

The world too, in order to be fair, has to find a Jewish source of evil to balance against Arab evil, such as Palestinian suicide bombers. The settlers play that role. The absurdity of comparing people whose major crime is living in their ancestral homeland with terrorists, who deliberately kill Jews wherever they can, does not seem to deter Middle East pundits. They know if the settlers would only go away, real peace would be established.

The truth is that it is not because there are too many 'settlers,' but because the Jewish people failed to bring another two million people into Judea and Samaria we continue to hear demands to make these parts of the ancestral Jewish homeland free of a Jewish presence. The great shame and error is not that there are too many settlers, but that there are too few Jews in those parts of the land of Israel that are closest to us historically and religiously.
- posted by Joel @ 1:03 PM

 
A plan to rid the US of Arab terrorism
My friend Professor Jon Ruthven suggests the US do what it wants Israel to do:

In light of the horrible terrorism that struck the US on 11th Sept, we would like to recommend that the US follow the method of dealing with terrorism that the State Dept. has been recommending to the State of Israel:

1. Give the entire US east of the Mississippi to Osama Bin Ladin.

2. Invite him to negotiate a peace agreement AFTER the transfer of land has been completed. If he shows up for negotiations, the US will give him more land [as a reward].

3. Offer Syria, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and Iran each a state west of the Mississippi if they offer to join the negotiations.

4. No retaliation against the perpetrators because that will increase [continue] the cycle of violence.

5. Offer Osama bin Ladin extra guns so he can police his new territory and prevent terrorism in it.

6. Call the victims "sacrifices for peace" and don't talk about revenge. Actually, it was the fault of the victims to go to work in the World Trade Center, since they knew for many years it was a prime target of Islamic terrorists. In fact, it was the fault of the US for not evacuating the World Trade Center earlier, and it is the fault of the US government for allowing US citizens to occupy buildings or areas of land that could be targeted by bin Ladin. The US should draw up plans for turning potential targets such as the Sears Tower in Chicago and the White House over to bin Ladin.

7. No closure of US borders or airports because that has a negative and unfair impact on people coming into the US. Rather, let more foreigners, particularly from Moslem countries, enter the US as a confidence-building measure.

8. Condemn the US for oppressing foreign countries at the same time that any denunciations of terrorism are made. After all, both sides are morally equivalent.

9. Allocate US tax dollars for bin Ladin to build up his infrastructure. In addition, take the taxes from money that Moslems earn in the US and deliver that money to bin Ladin.

10. Bring UN observers to the US to monitor excesses of violence on the part of the US government and to allow US citizens to be taken hostage from UN-controlled areas.

After all, fair is fair.


- posted by Joel @ 2:09 AM