Desicritics Author: Ruvy

Israel Attacks Gaza: Over 200 Killed

Ruvy — Sat, 27 Dec 2008 14:38:04 EST

On Saturday, striking Arab terrorists on the Jewish sabbath, the Israel Air Corps attacked the Hamas compounds in Gaza City. According to Debkafiles the attacks began a half hour before noon, Israel Winter Time, and have continued throughout the day, with the latest attack occurring this evening (27 December) as a vehicle was bombed in Khan Yunis in the southern portion of the Gaza Strip. This came after Arab terrorists launched over 200 rockets at Israel's south after the conclusion of a so-called "truce". It should also be noted here that Arab terrorists from various groups have fired over 6,000 rockets and missiles at Israel since the unilateral Israeli destruction of Gush Qatif and withdrawal from the Strip in 2005.

Latest casualty figures in Gaza are 205 dead, over 300 wounded and thousands of shock victims. According to Israeli officials this is "just the beginning" but past experience with such statements from the IDF of late have proven to be more bluster than reality although no Israeli news source will come out and say this openly. According to the Debkfiles report, Egypt condemned Israel for the attack, but on the other hand condemned Hamas for failing to protect the Arab population under its control and for failing to heed its warnings.

Arab retaliation has already begun. A man was killed by a rocket launched at Netivot this evening and it can be expected that if the Arabs follow through with their threats, rockets will be launched to hit targets in Ashkelon, Ashdod, Kiryat Gat, Yavne and other towns and cities extending all the way to Be'ersheva. According to Arutz Sheva, during the day in Jerusalem there were a number of rock throwing incidents in Arab neighborhoods and in the Old City, and this evening, an Arab driver attempted to run over a policeman.

If one can attempt to analyze the events cold-heartedly, the Israel regime is trying to eliminate Hamas as a political factor in the region because it has had reasonably good relations with the PLO in the past and Hamas is getting in the way of a good business deal. It should not be forgotten that the same man who was Ariel Sharon's personal advisor, Avi Weissglass, also was the attorney for the Arab firm handling business for the late Yassir Arafat. There has been an on-going civil war in the Arab controlled portions of Judea and Samaria, with PLO operatives arresting and torturing Hamas operatives with the backing of the IDF and the Israel government.

However, the far more relevant question for residents of South Asia is this: Is Israel providing India a model for what it should do in the wake of Mumbai?

Honoring Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and Rebbetzin Rivka Holtzberg, Martyrs of the Jewish People Who Died in Mumbai

Ruvy — Wed, 3 Dec 2008 00:28:41 EST

As Mumbaikars mourn their many dead and comfort their many injured, Rabbi Holtzberg and his pregnant wife were buried in Jerusalem today.

It may not be clear what the Haba"d does or why. Let this tale from my own life be an illustration.

When I was living on the streets of Saint Paul twenty-five years ago, there were barely any Jewish agencies to help homeless Jews. But there was the Haba"d House. On a cold winter day I walked from downtown to a large residence in the Highland Park neighborhood and knocked on the door. I was tired and hungry. I was welcomed in as though I were a lost son.

The rabbi didn't care that I didn't know what blessings to say over the food (I do now). The rabbi didn't care whether I was dressed as he deemed a Jew ought to dress. He didn't care that I had not said the afternoon prayer or the evening prayer. None of this interested him. The Rabbi offered me food. He was concerned that I had not eaten a decent meal, and insisted on feeding me a decent meal. He asked how it was that I came to be homeless. The story was simple and I told it to him.

I ate, drank some soda. I ate some more. When I was satisfied and full he made his proposition: if I wanted, he would pay for my transport to study Torah, Talmud and all the things a Jew should concentrate on learning. This would be either in Jerusalem or in Brooklyn. I was interested. I wanted very much to go to Israel. But I didn't want to grow the beard I had shaven off in law school; I already had a streak of white hair in my beard from the spot I had pulled at and pulled at in tension trying to comprehend principles in case law. I had forgotten how to wrap tefillin around my arm and head and it embarrassed me terribly (I know now). And most of all, as nice as this guy was, I didn't want to lose my intellectual independence.

So I thanked the rabbi, and told him I would get back to him with an answer in a few days. I never did. He knew he had not made his sale. But, nevertheless, he paid for a motel room for me to sleep in. I showered, and shaved and cleaned all the dirt from the street off of me. I watched cable TV. The next morning I was a homeless bum again.

This rabbi did for me what Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, z"l, hy"d (may their souls be remembered for blessings and may G-d avenge their blood), did for thousands and thousands of Jews passing through Mumbai. They served kosher meals, they explained Torah and Law and tried to do with each of these Jews what the rabbi at the St. Paul Haba"d House had attempted to do with me - to draw me closer to G-d. They gave them a place to sleep and rest their weary heads.

That is their mission. That is the mission the Lubavicher Rebbe gave them many years ago - to reach out and get Jews to perform mitzv�t - commandments and good deeds - and thus draw them to G-d bit by bit. If asked, they will explain to non-Jews the Seven laws of Noah, which we Jews believe to be universal laws upon all of mankind. But they will not proselytize nor attempt to convince a non-Jew to become a Jew, nor will they preach the Seven Laws of Noah.

Last week, terrorists, whose actual aims remain unclear, tortured and murdered Rebbetzin Rivka Holtzberg along with seven other Jews at the Haba"d headquarters in the Nariman House in Mumbai, a place they had carefully targeted. Just before Indian Commandos liberated the Nariman House, they murdered Rabbi Gavriel Holtzberg. His body was found still warm. And that is why they were buried today. Another couple will continue their work in Mumbai. The Haba"d will not be deterred by the evil of a terrorist. They will light not merely a candle in the darkness, they will light a torch to drive away the darkness.

This link is a You tube video of an Israel National News report of the funeral of Rav Gavriel and Rebbetzin Rivka Holtzberg, zikhron�m l'brakh� v'HASHEM y'nakém dam�m. It is about eight minutes long. I ask you to watch. It says more than this Jew in the mountains of Samaria can, no matter how hard he tries. Rav Holtzberg and his wife Rivka are survived by their son Moshe; may he become a great man in Israel.

ברוך דיין האמת

BLESSED IS THE TRUE JUDGE

Some Thoughts on Uri Avnery's "Manifest Destiny"

Ruvy — Tue, 7 Oct 2008 14:40:13 EDT

I first read Uri Avnery's work, Israel Without Zionism: A Plan for Peace in the Middle East in 1971 or 1972, not long after it was published. At the time, Avnery was the publisher of the Hebrew newspaper העולם הזה ha'ol�m hazé - This World. The title of the publication was not without irony. Jews pray for Redemption and to be deserving enough to live in the world of truth, the world after the messiah's arrival, and regard this world as "the world of lies", העולם השקר ha'ol�m hashéker. Avnery's publication was very much concerned with "this world", a world of scandals, sex crimes and politics. His publication set the standard for the preesent day surviving Hebrew dailies, מעריב ma'ar�v and ידיעות אחרונותyedi�t aHron�t, which scream headlines in huge sized font, but are as all forgettable as the paper one uses to wrap fish in. Only הארץ ha'�retz has retained its reputation as a real newspaper that writes in literate Hebrew.

Avnery's politics were "pro-peace" and revolutionary for his day, in that he envisaged Israelis as adopting a "Canaanite" identity whereby they rid themselves of the essential tenets of the "ingathering of the exiles" and worked at integrating themselves into the Middle East as Hebrew-speakers in a world of Arabs. He proposed withdrawing from what was then the barely settled Judea and Samaria and the Heights of Golan, and renouncing the special law that grants citizenship to any Jew coming home within ninety days. He believed then, and still does, that an Israel without its Zionist ideological underpinnings would be accepted by the Arabs in the region. In all truth, I no longer have this book, and forgot what he proposed to do about Jerusalem, but at the time, religious belief seemed on the decline all over the world and I suppose that he imagined that both Judaism and Islam would be consigned to museums in some dusty corner somewhere while folks enjoyed life, eating shwarma, drinking Turkish coffee and dancing the debka.

Thirty-seven years ago, any philosophy that proposed to strip Israel of its Zionist underpinnings seemed heretical and ridiculous to most Jews and to most Israelis. But a number of Israelis did read his book and it planted the seed of what became known as "post-Zionism", a deconstruction of Israeli history that paints Jews (and Zionists in particular) as imperialist agents from the west with no real right to live in the Middle East. The white and blue k�va tembél of the kibbutznik was doffed and the black hat of the evil robber tying the Arab woman to the train tracks while robbing her of her home was donned. Ths is the predominant view today of most of the teaching staff at the various universities in the country, of much of the rich Ashkenazi business elite, many commanders in the IDF, as well as that of the publishers of the Hebrew dailies in Israel. For a time following the signing of the Oslo Acords, many work-a-day Israelis tried to persuade themselves of this idea as well, as difficult as it was to swallow, however the bloodlust of the Arabs in their terror attacks awoke most of them from the delusions of peace. But I get ahead of myself here.

Avnery espouses views which I tend to view as traitorous, but one cannot just label someone like Avnery as a traitor without first acknowledging that he fought for the indedpendence of this country from the British, first with the Etz'el, the city-based Revisionist Zionist military force of Ze'ev Jabotinsky and later MenaHem Begin, and then with the IDF in the Sinai campaign. After the war of independence, he watched, as did most Israelis in the 1950's, as the Algerians fought against the French and he drew his ideas from the fact that his sympathies were with the FLN, the force fighting an imperial power, and from the possibilities that he felt that he saw rise from the existence of the FLN and other nationalistic Arab organizations.

Avnery seeks peace. One cannot condemn a man for following the mitzv� (commandment) of seeking peace. But, it is necessary to look with whom he seeks to deal. Is it realistic? Loving a woman who spurns you continually is seeking love, but it is not practical. The Arabs, in most parts of the Arab world, reject peace with Jews and with Israel. Thirty-eight years ago it was on nationalistic grounds - today it is on religious grounds. But either way "the Arab woman" is spurning "the Jewish man" courting her love. Avnery pursues this course anyway, despite 68 years of experience that tells him the contrary. That he does so is insanity. After nearly seven decades, he should have figured out that his overtures will be spurned and that he is nothing but a useful idiot. But unfortunately, it is also treasonous and endangers the lives of his fellow Jews. Nevertheless, I still get ahead of myself here.

In April 2008, Avnery wrote a piece published at Global Research called "Manifest Destiny?" dealing with what he believed to be the problem facing the Israeli establishment in dealing with what he views as their Arab peace partners. For all my disagreements with the venerable Mr. Avneri, he makes a fundamental point in this essay that needs to be emphasised and re-emphasised to anyone looking at the issues that face Jews in this part of the world.

Avneri sifts through the positions ot various Israeli leaders and comes up with what he views to be the the common thread that creates the problem: their refusal to agree to a fixed border. This is what he criticizes the late and unlamented Moshe Dayan of expressing in a speech to kibbutzniks years ago, this is what he criticizes David ben-Gurion of when fighting for the independence of the country sixty years ago, this is what he criticizes even George W. Bush of in that Bush appears to "buy" the stance of the present "power-holders" in Israel. Let's look at Avnery's words:

That is the reason for David Ben-Gurion's refusal to include in the Declaration of Independence of the new State of Israel any mention of borders. He did not intend for a minute to be satisfied with the borders fixed by the United Nations General Assembly resolution of November 29, 1947. All his successors had the same approach. Even the Oslo agreements delineated "zones" but did not fix a border. President Bush accepted this approach when he proposed a "Palestinian state with provisional borders" - a novelty in international law.

In this respect, too, Israel resembles the United States, which was founded along the Eastern seaboard and did not rest until it had reached the Western shores on the other side of the continent. The incessant stream of mass immigration from Europe flowed on westwards, breaching all borders and violating all agreements, exterminating the Native Americans, starting a war against Mexico, conquering Texas, invading Central America and Cuba. The slogan that drove them on and justified all their actions was coined in 1845 by John O'Sullivan: "Manifest Destiny".

This then, is the "secret" agenda against what Avneri views as "peace". In his final paragraphs of his essay he states

Dayan, who was well versed in the ancient texts, probably had in mind the phrase in the Chapter of the Fathers (a part of the Mishnah, which was finished 1,800 years ago and formed the basis of the Talmud): "It is not up to you to finish the work, and you are not free to stop doing it."

That is the hidden agenda. We must haul it up from the depths of our unconscious minds to the realm of consciousness in order to face it, to reveal the terrible danger inherent in it, the danger of an eternal war which may in the fullness of time lead this state to disaster.

Approaching the 60th anniversary of the state, we must draw a line under this chapter of our history, exorcise the dybbuk and say clearly: yes, we have ended the chapter of expansion and settlement.

This will enable us to change the course of the river. To put an end to the occupation. To dismantle the settlements. To make peace. To effect a reconciliation with the neighboring people. To turn Israel into a peaceful, democratic, secular and liberal state, that can devote all its resources to the creation of a flourishing, modern society.

And first of all: to agree on a border.

Avneri is not wrong in all that he says here. We Jews, in dealing with the outside world, must honestly face our past. We must honestly face our heritage and stop trying to weave around it like garden snakes sneaking into a patch of greenery. At bottom here is a call for honesty. And just a day or two before Yom Kippur, when we Jews ask G-d for forgiveness of our sins against Him, honesty is a very good policy. Our biggest problem is not the Arabs, nor the Americans, nor the Russians. It is our fear to face ourselves honestly in the mirror and be honest - brutally so. That is what G-d demands of a people who would call themselves "chosen"; a people who would view themselves as high priests to the peoples of the world.

But Avneri has provided a border, or rather he has quoted one from Yisrael Eldad, a member of the Stern Gang, the smallest military group that fought the British in days of the Mandate. Let's have one more look at Avneri's essay.

Israel Eldad, one of the Stern Group leaders, distributed for many years a map of the Israeli Empire that reached from the Mediterranean to the Euphrates and included all of Jordan and Lebanon, with great chunks of Syria and Egypt thrown in. His son, the extreme right-wing Member of the Knesset Arieh Eldad, has not given up this map.

I have not given up that map either - for it is drawn from our holy books. The exact lines are less important than the concept - that in the world of truth, Israel will control all of the Holy Land, both banks of the Jordan River, a good hunk of Lebanon and a good hunk of Syria extending all the way to the Euphrates.

In the World of Truth העולם האמת ha'ol�m ha'emét, we will live in peace with our neighbors and the foreign nations that stir war between the Children of Abraham will no longer have a voice here. The occupation - the Arab occupation of our land - will end, and the Children of Nevayot and Kedar will sacrifice at a rebuilt Temple on our Temple Mount just a few kilometers south of here in Jerusalem. Jewish and Arab children will play together near the mountains of Moav as their parents pray together in the afternoon sun.

It is time to recognize at long last that there is no such thing as Palestine. It is time to recognize at long last that seeking "peace" with the terrorists who now control the Arab population in the Land of Israel is nothing less than insanity. It is time to be honest and forthright with our Arabs neighbors and tell them that the Prophet David will be ruler here. They will listen, and they will understand - they too respect Sheikh Da'�d el-Nebi.

If we are honest and forthright with ourselves, we will be able to be honest with our Arab neighbors, who deserve to live in peace, prosperity and security, just as we do.

And all of us, all of us Children of Abraham, will be able to look to our Creator and seek forgiveness for our transgressions and hope for a lenient judgment from He Who sits on the Throne of Mercy - rather than stern condemnation from His Seat of Judgment.

Finally, as a Jew who has had a very difficult year, I must ask forgiveness of those of you whom I have hurt. I apologize for the hurtful actions that I may have done, or the hurtful words I may have uttered, in the past thirteen Hebrew months.

g'm�r Hatim� tov� May you all be inscribed in the Book of Life for goodness.

Why Neither India nor Pakistan Should Rely on America: Part I - Who Really Runs America?

Ruvy — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 15:02:57 EDT

This series of articles is written as an object lesson for you as to why you cannot trust the United States government as any kind of partner. This is as true for Pakistanis as it is for Indians, Sri Lankans, Nepalis, Bangladeshis or any other residents of the Indian sub-continent.

The series has three parts.

This article examines how the United States got to the apex it did. The second uses Israel as an example of American duplicity regarding its supposed "friends" or "allies". The third views what might have happened and how the world would be different if indeed the United States supported the State of Israel as one-sidedly as so many charge.

These articles is not written in an attempt to "inform" you of events in Israel, the Levantine or the Arab world. Unless you have relatives or business interests here, you probably have no reason to care.

The point of this series is to allow you to apply the sad lesson we provide of how a great power double-crosses a small one. There are many such examples of this, but I can speak as a resident of the victim. Indeed, not only Jews in Israel have been victims of this double-cross, but Arabs as well.

Before continuing further, I want to make clear several things. First; I live in Israel, in Samaria to be precise. While I reside in Israel. I am not a Zionist. The word "Zionism" was originally invented by English Christian theologians in the 17th Century; as a Jewish idea, it was originally expounded upon by rabbis from Serbia and Russia in the early 19th Century (though not called by this name), and was made palpable and real by secular Jews who wanted little to do with ritual, religion, or even with G-d. The creation of Zionism, the State of Israel, has been a success until recent years. The essential goal of Zionism, bringing the majority of Jews in the world back to the homeland, has nearly been completed. It is evident to anyone who lives here that the closer we come to that basic goal, the weaker the movement to achieve it becomes, and the weaker the apotheosis of Zionist ideology, the State, becomes as well.

Second; even though I live in Israel, I was born and raised in the United States and lived there for several decades before coming home to Israel. My field of study was political science and public administration, and I added to these subjects comparative government and linguistics. In addition, I was active in politics in the United States in both major political parties. This gave me a good grasp of the American political system and how it evolved.

Finally; I'm not slamming the people who inhabit the United States, the average folks known as Joe Sixpack. Americans, by and large, are a decent, generous and kind people, even if they are too Amero-centered for their own good. Perhaps they are too naïve at times. But the decency of the average American should never ever be in question.

The government of the United States, now in the hands of an oil and banking establishment for some eight decades, is a very different story. In this article, when talking about "America", I'm not talking about her decent inhabitants; I'm talking about her evil régime.

One last point. Credit for much of what you see in this article goes to Joel Bainerman, an Israeli investigative journalist, economist and publisher. My errors in relaying the data he has taught me and others is my responsibility alone.

And now to business.

The first three words of the American Federal Constitution of 1787 are "We the People" and if you ask most Americans, "who runs America?" that is the most likely answer you will get. The people.

If it were only true.

It isn't. It probably never was.

First of all, the United States were not designed to be a democracy at all, but a federation of states with a republican form of government. While the word "republic" comes from the Latin rex publica (one sees the root in the Russian word respublik) meaning "the people rule", and in spite of the fact that modern Greece is called Ελληνική Δημοκρατία ('Ellinikí Dhimokratía) which is translated as "the Hellenic Republic", the two words "democracy" and "republic" do not have the precise same meaning in English.

A republic connotes a form of government which is not monarchical in nature. Thus, the Republic of Florence, where Niccolo Machiavelli was a mid-level bureaucrat, was not a state where the average Florentine had a real voice in government. Only a small class of Florentines had any voice at all, and they ruled the country.

But the Principality of Florence, which succeeded the Republic upon its fall, was a monarchy, with the son supposedly succeeding the father. Machiavelli's book, De Principatus, "The Prince", was in essence, his curriculum vitae submitted to the man who had exiled him to his estate after overthrowing the republic. While the book has long outlasted the la famiglia Medici that Machiavelli was trying to impress, Machiavelli did not get his job back.

When first established in 1776, the various states restricted voting to white males only, usually only Christians who owned property. So voting was restricted somewhat for several decades. For all of this, the states that comprised the United States did move closer towards popular rule, and the American republic did edge towards democracy in the 1800's.

But a business oligarchy took the country over after its civil war in 1865, and controlled its industrialization. As the 19th Century progressed to a close, the rich men who built huge industries out of the steel plants of the Midwest, the railways, the ships, the meat packing plants and the like realized that competition was not "rational", so they bought each other out, building huge monopolies known in America as "trusts" and "rationalizing" the industries they controlled. This is the kind of stuff most American kids skip over in school, because it is so damnably boring, but it is precisely these events in America that provided the model for the concentration of wealth in the succeeding decades.

What American teachers tend to focus on is not the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few, but the efforts of the American government to combat that concentration of wealth, known as "trust busting". To make a long story short, American businessmen felt stymied in building monopolies in the States and looked out at the wide world instead, and started investing money in it in the early 1900's.

They invested all over the world; Germany, Turkey, Russia, France, as well as China, Cuba and Latin America. And when a world war broke out in 1914, the profits of many firms went right down the tubes.

This had consequences. One consequence was that rich American businessmen determined that they would not be burned again in another world war. They examined the Treaty of Versailles that crippled post-war Germany, the Russian Revolution, and the way people were buying Henry Ford's affordable "Model T" and made their moves.

Their first presumption was that there would be a rematch between Germany and Britain or the United States. They set up a triumvirate of banks - one was the Thyssen Bank in Germany, the second was the Union Bank in New York, and the third was a bank in the Netherlands. The idea was that the Netherlands would probably be neutral in this coming war, and that Germany and America would be on opposite sides. That is what had happened in the first war, and so they expected the pattern would hold.

If the Germans won this second world war, then the rich businessmen would be compensated for their losses in America through the Thyssen bank "looting" the assets of the Union Bank (and presumably others). If the Americans won the second world war, the rich businessmen would be compensated through the Union Bank "looting" the assets of the Thyssen Bank. In either case, the Dutch bank was supposed to e the intermediary.

It didn't exactly work that way, but these rich businessmen had foresight.

They also had the brains to make sure that they would have some level of control over who ran the governments. In America, they set up a "Council on Foreign Relations" to infiltrate the State, War, Navy and Commerce departments of the American government with their employees. The idea was to provide a pool of "respectable" professors and administrative types who would watch over their interests. They did the same thing in the United Kingdom. These councils still exist today, and in either the United Kingdom or the United States, if you do not have ties to the respective councils, you get nowhere fast. Note how Ron Paul was locked out of the national debate before McCain sewed up the nomination.

Investing in overseas political control was a bit trickier.

One act of these businessmen was to invest in the Soviet Union in an attempt to bring it to stability. This might have been their first act, persuading Lenin to introduce the New Economic Plan (NEP) in the early twenties; but Lenin had the temerity to die, and his successor, Joe Stalin, was a xenophobe.

The next move was to try and find someone who could be controlled in the Weimar Republic that had succeeded the German Empire. These businessmen found an ambitious young man originally from Austria, and they invested in him, building him a fancy house. This turned out to be a better investment - Adolf Hitler eventually became Reichskanzler in 1933, and continued his business ties with his American investors, attempting to use them to get some foothold in the American economy. And as these businessmen had foreseen, there was another world war, and they made sure that they were compensated for their German investments through the Dulles brothers, one of whom was an attorney on the Allied War Compensation Board set up after the war.

The final big move was to invest in a source of fuel for the "Model T" and its successors, and to lay the groundwork for a continuing fortune. This came by investing some money in the wastes of Arabia, arming the ibn Saud clan to the teeth, and supporting them as they stole Makka and Medina from the Hashemi family, its traditional guardians for centuries. The Hashemi family had to be satisfied with emirates in Mesopotamia and "Transjordan"- the eastern two thirds of the territory the British had allotted for a Jewish national home. The money wasn't a gift to the ibn Sauds. It was a deal. American and British oil companies got to control the oil under the ground. The ibn Sauds - now "Saudis" - got the sand. At least that's how it looked in the 1920's.

Thus is was that bit by bit, the oil and banking companies came to dominate America. One of the key parts of winning their dominion over America came from getting rid of trolley cars and replacing them with buses; getting rid of trains, and replacing them with trucks. These two moves guaranteed the dominion of oil over all other fuels. Gradually, the American State Department became the pliable tool of American corporations. Much of the Japanese drive for empire was a drive to control oil, and the same was true for the Germans. Americans never thought of using alcohol to fuel tanks, as did the Germans. They never had to.

With the Germans and Japanese broken and defeated by August 1945, the American oil and banking establishment bestrode the world like a colossus. And Americans, living the best lives that could be imagined at the time, never even dreamt that their country and that their democracy had been stolen from them.

Hepatitis, Food and Politics: Life in Israel During a Sabbatical Year

Ruvy — Wed, 19 Sep 2007 03:20:45 EDT

When you are as poor as we are, being forced to forget the affairs of the week and concentrate on thinking about G-d one day a week is well, a godsend. And that is one of the nice things about attempting to observe the mitzvót (commandments) of the religion of Israel. You get to truly enjoy the Sabbath because you have to forget your weekly concerns and concentrate on a taste of "the world to come".

There are other mitzvót that are a lot tougher to deal with on a daily basis. One is the commandment to allow the Land of Israel to lie fallow for one year every seven years. That is what is supposed to happen during this year, 5768, which according to the Christian calendar, began at sunset on 12 September 2007.

In life generally, you either eat or you perish, and if you eat a lot of fruits of the land - vegetables, nuts and fruit - you either grow the food or you die. Israel grows most of its own vegetables and fruit, and fruits and vegetables make up a really important part of the diet here. Partly, this is because fruits and vegetables contain water, something badly needed in a semi-parched land; partly this is because fruits and vegetables fill you up, another important requirement for food. One falafel sandwich on a láffa, a huge piece of thin bread used as a wrap, a sandwich filled with vegetables of all types, is enough to keep you going for quite a while. And vegetables come with every meal here. Pancakes do not come with eggs - they come with vegetables.

What is Shmitá?

If you are forbidden to grow vegetables for a year to allow the Land of Israel to lie fallow, you have quite a problem. But before going on, let's be absolutely clear about what we are talking about.

WHY is this an issue? According to the Torah, "...When you come into the Land I give you, the Land shall observe a Sabbath rest for HASHEM. For six years you may sow your field and for six years your may prune your vineyard and you may gather in its crop. But the seventh year shall be a complete rest for the Land, a Sabbath for HASHEM; your field you shall not sow and your vineyard your shall not prune. The after-growth of your harvest you shall not reap, and the grapes you had set aside for yourself you shall not pick. It shall be a year of rest for the Land." [vayikrá/Leviticus 25:2-5 THE CHUMASH; Stone Edition Torah, Haftarot and Five Megillot with a Commentary Anthologized from Rabbinical Writings, © 1993]

First of all, the laws of the Sabbatical (shmitá) year apply only to those lands ruled to be "within the Land of Israel" according to the Torah and the Talmud. This leaves some leeway, but the territory south of Be'ersheva towards Eilat may not necessarily be within the Land (being in the State of Israel is a whole different issue); the same is true for what were known as the Jewish settlements of Gush Qatif in the Gaza Strip. Second of all, the laws apply to working of the LAND. If you have a greenhouse that grows food and the floor of the greenhouse is plastic tarp separating the earth from the floor with drip irrigation coming down, it is not considering working the LAND. Thirdly, this applies ONLY to the Children of Israel and the righteous foreigners permitted to live in the Land. This does not apply to anyone else.

According to Machon Mamre's Laws of the Sabbatical and the Jubilee, (translated from the Hebrew) "There are in all, twenty-two commandments concerning the Sabbatical and the Jubilee." The most important that concern us here are:
1. Every seventh year shall be a Sabbath from creative work (i.e systematic planting and harvesting);
2. The land shall not be worked during this year (the only thing you are allowed to do is to weed the land);
3. Trees shall not be worked during this year (i.e. systematic harvesting of apples and other fruits of trees);
4. Reapers shall not cut the after-growth;
5. Your vintners shall not prune the vines;
6. You shall set aside all that the land has given;
10. You shall count a cycle of this kind every seven years;

The remaining fifteen commandments deal with cancellation of loans, freeing (Hebrew) slaves, sanctifying the fiftieth (Jubilee) year, and the rules concerning the Jubilee year.

So, how do you cope?

One obvious solution presents itself immediately: import the stuff. The problem with importing anything is increased cost. In addition, you do not have the supervision required to make sure that species have not been mixed in the same field, or have been handled properly. Finally, you can have issues of freshness, though refrigeration usually take care of that.

A second solution is to buy from your neighbors: our neighbors are Arabs who own their own land and grow their own vegetables and are more than happy to sell the produce they harvest. And the Haredím, the Jews known as "ultra-religious" in the popular press, are more than happy to buy. So is the army, lots of supermarket chains and a lot of restaurants.

The third solution is to grow fruit and veggies in greenhouses with a tarp underneath as had been done in Gush Qatif, or to buy from Jewish farmers who farm lands that are not part of the country according to the Torah and Talmud, but which are within the political borders of the State.

The fourth solution is to ignore Shmitá altogether, a solution preferred by secular G-dless types, but one which does not go over that well with the majority of us who believe in G-d. Our buying power dictates what the market carries.

And now to the Kike culture contaminating everything here

This e-mail came my way a couple of days ago.

From: L. L.
Sent: Saturday, September 15, 2007 11:49 PM
Subject: INFO FOR YOU - SHMITA PRODUCE WASH WELL

If you buy Bada"tz [the Haredi council that approves food - RiJ] vegetables during shmita, wash them very, very thoroughly as irrigation water of the Arabs in Judea and Samaria is often contaminated with sewage.

Last shmita (and the shmita before) there were outbreaks of hepatitis in
Bet Shemesh, mostly in the Kirya Haredit and in RBS B [Ramat Bet Shemsh, Beit - a Haredi neighborhood - RiJ].

This is not F.U.D.. I personally know people who ate Bada"tz vegetables and contracted hepatitis during shmitta."

The Haredím buy according to what their rabbis tell them to buy. Their rabbis (at least in Bet Shemesh) tell them to buy from Arabs. The Arabs have a habit of defecating in the fields where they grow food, in addition to allowing contaminated water to irrigate their produce. Whether this is done out of hatred of Jews, or just plain carelessness or laziness on the part of the Arabs is not for me to say, but the hepatitis breaking out during shmitá years does not lie.

Nor can I state that all the Bada"tz Councils (there is one for each significant Haredí community) endorse buying from Arabs. This is something I do not know. It may be that the Bada"tz Council in Jerusalem or Beitar Illit refuses to buy from Arabs. This I cannot say for sure. So it is unfair to paint all Haredím with the same brush.

Nevertheless, the danger of hepatitis or other forms of food poisoning does not appear to concern the "holy ones" leading the Haredí community in Bet Shemesh - or if it does, they do not communicate that concern adequately. Given that the army, police, and lots of supermarkets and restaurants also buy from Arabs during a shmitá year, and given that there are only seven public health inspectors in the entire country, this can be a bit of a problem.

A friend of mine replied to the original e-mail:

You buy Arab produce, you take your chances! Last Shmita year there were several outbreaks of hepatitis from eating dirty produce.

Another friend wrote:

THESE IDIOTS!!!

They TRESPASS ON A DOUBLE MITSVÁ MI-DE'ORAITÁ [two commandments written in the Torah - RiJ (USHMARTÉM 'AL NEFSHOTÉKHEM M'ÓD M'ÓD [and you shall guard your body and soul very carefully - RiJ]) by purchasing produce from SONÉI YISRAÉL [haters of Israel - RiJ] and MURDERERS, by giving money to our enemies, with which they purchase explosives and weapons; and [the Hareidim] purchase produce which is irrigated with sewer discharge and can KILL THEIR CHILDREN (from escherichia coli, to vibrio cholerae, etc.), so as to make POLITICAL STATEMENTS, which THEY THINK are just anti-Zionist, but are JUST AGAINST TORAH GIANTS LIKE RABBI ELCHANAN SPECTOR and against common sense.

LAST TIME AROUND THEY OBVIOUSLY GOT PUNISHED AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THEIR ACTIONS, this time it will be no different.

My friend's righteous anger was all good and well, but I needed to buy vegetables (remember those pancakes and veggies?)

So I went to the owner of a makólet (a small supermarket) in the yishúv (village). I was told that the yishúv only buys from Jews since the Intifada of 2000 - because of the Intifada. So, hand it to the Arabs for shooting in the foot their own chances to make a decent living. But at least, if we buy our veggies and fruit in the yishúv, we will not be buying Arab piss and defecation or increasing our chances of hepatitis.

But eating falafel in restaurants, or shwarma, or any salad of any kind in a restaurant, is out until the shmitá year is over. The year 5768 is a leap year on the rabbinic calendar, so that means it will be 384 days long. It's worse than "364 shopping days till Christmas." It's 384 days (plus however many days it takes to use up the Arabs' pissed on "produce") till the next mouthwatering falafel sandwich.

That is going to be one long wait....

Life and Death in Israel: Automobile Accidents

Ruvy — Fri, 13 Jul 2007 13:17:30 EDT

Folks reading the news overseas or watching CNN, "Faux" News, the BBC, CBC, or TV1 or TV2 in France, read about peace plans, and peace processes, terror attacks and terrorists, the "poor Palestinians" and American Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice swishing her spiked heeled derri�re and her nasty face from one place to another, spinning one lie after another while she attempts to pursue "America's best interests" and the lie the Americans and Europeans call "peace in the Middle East".

But life and death in Israel is about a whole lot more than the trash you folks see or read overseas.

First of all, to my surprise, Israel has a drinking problem - something I did not realize was true, but is. Secular Jews have taken to driving with open bottles as they go to and from the nightclubs that open on Friday night (in violation of the Jewish Sabbath), and the inevitable happens when liquor gets mixed with people who drive like madmen, hate to be taken for suckers, and who are chasing a good time. Every weekend, more human sacrifices are made at the altar of secular madness because of the drunkenness of the drivers. Just like in America.

The biggest cause of death outside of disease here is automobile accidents.

Unfortunately, not all automobile accidents are caused by drunk driving. Working days here are long, and the trips that one makes from home to work or school can be long and very tiring. I regularly fall asleep on the bus ride to Jerusalem from Ma'aleh Levona and back.

A couple of days ago, Aviatar and a neighbor boy were hitching a ride - a common practice in Judea and Samaria for teenagers (and adults) who do not drive. The driver fell asleep at the wheel; the rider at the passenger's side grabbed the wheel, the driver roused himself and the two managed to swerve the car out of the direction of an on-coming car, avoiding a head-on collision. But the two cars did collide. Aviatar, apparently in the back seat, was hit by the on-coming car, and suffered brain stem damage and bleeding around the brain. Of all the passengers, he was the only one hurt. He was taken to Hadassah 'Ein Kerem Hospital, put in intensive care and seemed to be improving - but yesterday, Thursday 12 July, the blood around his brain was apparently too much for him to survive as other than a vegetable; Aviatar slipped away to the other side...

So it was that last night I went to a funeral at the Shilo cemetery, a funeral that started at 11:00 at night. Holding outdoor funerals at night is apparently a common practice in Israel. Jewish law requires that the body be buried as soon as possible, and particularly within 24 hours. Headlights dotted Highway 60 as car after car pulled into Shilo, parking along the road and unloading more passengers who walked up quietly to the cemetery. When the ceremony began, there were something on the order of 500 people there; come to pay honor to Aviatar Mordekhai ben Akiva v'Malka, z"l, a youth not even eighteen years old, and one of six children of a village family.

It was here that you could see the people of the village of Ma'aleh Levona and the village of Shilo knit and pull themselves together, as grown men cried and wept out loud, inconsolable in their weeping. My sons, used to the stoicism and denial of emotion that encompasses so much of American society, could not believe this. My younger boy commented that he had never seen nor heard grown men cry so hard and so loud.

Jewish funerals are simple events. The rabbi of the village began what are called hesped�m - a term that loosely translates as eulogies - and others who knew Aviatar continued. After a while, someone said "éfo �bba?" (where's dad?) and Akiva was given the microphone. Some parents are, at such events, able to say some remarks of farewell. Akiva, unable to, did what any male Jew does upon the death of a loved one. He recited Kadd�sh, a prayer that indicates moving from one stage in the prayer liturgy (or in life) to the next. Aviatar's brothers who were aged 13 and above also recited Kadd�sh and the body was brought up to the grave that had already been dug. Aviatar's body was lowered into its final resting place, covered in only a shroud, as Jewish law requires. The final prayers were said, and one individual, the father of the young man who had fallen asleep at the wheel said the final remarks, asking the forgiveness of Aviatar for all that he had done, before the ceremony ended with the bereaved father reciting Kaddish once more.

All I can hope for was that those whom I or my loved ones ride with in future will either stay awake at the wheel, or pull over to the side of the road and grab forty winks for a few minutes...

A life might be at stake.

Bar�kh Day�n haEmét - Blessed is the True Judge.

May the memory of Aviatar ben Akiva v'Malka be only for a blessing upon his family and friends and upon all who knew and loved him. May the Almighty comfort his family, all who knew and loved Aviatar, z"l; may the Almighty comfort all the mourners in Israel.

Shabbat Shalom from the Hill of Frankincense (Ma'aleh Levon�) in the mountains north of Jerusalem, the Eternal Capital of the People of Israel.

War on Israel's Gaza Front - Repeating The Past

Ruvy — Tue, 22 May 2007 04:56:52 EDT

Ma'aleh Levona, Israel

It appears that once again open hostilities have broken out between Israel's military forces and the reinforced Hamas terrorists based in the Gaza Strip in southwestern Israel. It is not as if Hamas had ever ceased attacking the country. Almost as soon as Israeli military forces withdrew from the Gaza Strip in September, 2005, Qassam rockets no longer fell on the villages of the abandoned Gush Qatif, the sacrificial offering made for the sake of peace; they fell instead on S'derot, with missiles also aimed at Ashkelon, where about one third of the country's electricity is produced.

Upon reflection, while Ashkelon will be a target, it is apparent that rockets will not attempt to hit the Ashkelon electric plant - crippling that plant will cut off the Gaza grid as well. Unless the Hamas leaders in Gaza are far stupider than I give them credit for, they themselves will not cut off their own electric supply. Benyamin Netanyahu, prime minister from 1996 to 1998, called for cutting off electricity and water to Gaza a few days ago, but the gutless fools in office will not pursue this route. Their masters in Washington would not approve.

There have been a number of Arab casualties of this conflict over the few days or so that raids have taken place from Israel, and one woman, Shirel Feldman, z"l, of S'derot, was killed last night when a rocket found her car and blew it up with her in it.

It is relatively clear to this writer that the IDF is not at all prepared for this conflict. Many of the reasons for this were given me in confidence, and they are structural in nature. Beyond that I'm not at liberty to go into specifics. But the Egyptian army facing us in 1948 was in similar condition, and describing it will not breach security. In a sentence, it's officers were over-funded while the soldiers on the field were under-supplied.

These conclusions were confirmed in whispered discussions near Government Hill Sunday with a man whose son had been sent to the Gaza front. He said, "My son is near Gaza. You know when he got to his base, there were no supplies; no bullets, no artillery shells, barely any rifles, no underwear, no food, no water – nothing.” When standing guard at the village gate a couple of months ago, a young kid was telling me of his experiences in Lebanon last year; what the man talking to me about on Sunday was describing was the exact same logistical nightmare we faced in last year’s war with (it really hurts to type this) HizbAllah.

Hamas, by contrast, has learned from the conflict in 2006. When HizbAllah blanketed northern Israel with Katyusha rockets, the government ran away and the residents, deserted by its corrupt timeservers, fled themselves. They fled to Tel Aviv, then to Jerusalem, Eilat, Modi'in, and to the interior of the country, to places like Efrat, Ariel, Ofra, and this village that I write from.

Given that the goal of Hamas is to eradicate Israel from the map, one of the points they need to cover is depriving Jews of a refuge from their attacks. So, they have decided to extend rocket attacks to Judea and Samaria. This will effectively cut off Judea and Samaria as a refuge, as well as to deprive the country of the strategic depth it needs to defend itself.

At this point, it appears that Israel's government will restrict itself to pin-point attacks, tank incursions and targetted killings. Needless to say, this will not stop the Qassams flying over our country. What is not mentioned in the press is the possibilitry of HizbAllah deciding to join in the fray, attacking Israel much as a vulture picks the eyes out of a sick animal in the desert. We have the ability to end all this nonsense very quickly. We have nuclear missiles that we can use to destroy the main bases of our enemies, like Damascus, Teheran, and Riyadh, and the Aswan High Dam (to prevent Egypt from ever threatening this country again) but using these missiles will not solve the immediate problems of under-supply or give our soldiers the ability to destroy the Hamas bases in Gaza, or the HizbAllah bases in Lebanon. Using nukes there is just not wise policy. Ironically, the American demands on the criminal régime (calling it a government is a travesty in using English, and an insult to the actual functioning governments in the world) in Jerusalem to avoid infrastructure damage and civilian casualties may save its butt in the short run.

But only in the short run.

So the immediate threats will remain, potential knives in the back for Ehud Olmert and his crew of clowns, including the eminence grise behind it all, Shim'on Peres. And reservists, if again treated as they were last year, may arise and ditch the idiots and perhaps even wield those knives. One can be an incompetent restaurant manager and get away with it, or be an incompetent bureaucrat and get away with it, but being an incompetent military commander can bring swift justice at the hands of soldiers who will have felt stabbed in the back as though by a traitor.

When I stopped being the bagel and lox Jew I had been all my life and came to actually believe in G-d, I realized that the day would arrive when our military would not be enough to withstand the murderous onslaughts of our enemies, and that we would have to call on the help of the Almighty to succeed in battle.

That day appears to have arrived. But the situation may have to get a lot worse before leaders arise who will humble themselves before the L-rd. One can only pray.

The Winograd Report on Israel's Defeat in Lebanon Hits The Fan

Ruvy — Wed, 9 May 2007 07:46:35 EDT

9 May 2007
Ma'aleh Levona

May Day! May Day!

That has been the cry going out from the "prime minister" Ehud Olmert and "security minister" Amir Peretz, the Two Stooges whose goose was cooked when the Winograd Report hit the fan during the evening hours of 30 April. The Third Stooge, former IDF "chief of staff" Dan Halutz, had already been sacked and is now hiding out at Harvard in the groves of academe. Various press reports have talked about how scathing the report was etc., etc., and of the "political earthquake" that hit Israel.

Gimme a break!

From hundreds of anecdotal reports, Israeli soldiers were sent forth without adequate supplies to engage the enemy in the north, HizbAllah, attacking them along the line of expectation, the precise path that HizbAllah expected to be attacked.

Woo hoo! Way to go, retard!

The sins of Olmert and crew have already been hashed over hundreds of times since last July, when the fool brazenly bragged about recovering hostages "kidnapped" by HizbAllah in the north and Hamas in the south - and then refused to follow even a reasonable strategy to do so. Everyone has been calling for the idiots' heads since being sent home from the north with reservists leaving huge signs at the edge of Jerusalem - "Take Responsibility For Your Mistakes! Quit and Go Home!"

When the Katyusha rockets began hitting the northern third of Israel last July 12th, the government and administration ran away, leaving the citizenry to fend for themselves. The government has not even transferred to the "responsible authorities," the idiots who ran away, the millions of shekels needed to enable the recovery of the northern part of the country. Today (Thursday 3 May), there is a general strike to protest that fact.

All the Winograd Report has done has been to put the obvious into official language that not even the pretendedly magisterial Olmert, or the "little captain" Peretz, can deny.

Getting Around the Rule of Law

Let's do a little analysis of all this, remembering these points. Olmert, who was the Vice Prime Minister when Ariel Sharon had his major stroke early in 2006, was kept in office by a subterfuge of the law. Ariel Sharon did in fact die in Hadassah, as David Bedein reported. But he was dragged back from the dead, and stuck on life support machines for political reasons.

According to Israeli law, had Sharon been declared dead, the head of the political party he headed when he became prime minister in 2003 would have succeeded to the position of interim prime minister, and new elections would have been called. The head of the political party that Sharon headed upon accession to the prime minister's office in 2003 was the head of the Likud party, Benyamin Netanyahu.

By declaring the prime minister "impaired," Attorney General Menahem Mazuz avoided the possibility of Netanyahu becoming prime minister and thus allowed Ehud Olmert, and Sharon's fake political creation that Olmert now headed, "Kadima," to continue in office and attempt to form a government if it won a sufficient number of seats in the elections.

So an operation was done upon a corpse, and reports came out regularly about Ariel Sharon's condition to maintain the fiction that he was the sitting prime minister, while Ehud Olmert ran for office while sitting in the prime minister's chair. Now that Olmert has been in office for a year and half, Sharon has been airbrushed out of the political photos. Scarcely a word is said about the body of a man now hooked up to life support machines.

Why?

Way back in 2004, Sharon, after declaring his intent to pull out of Gush Katif, offered to hold a referendum within the Likud party to allow the members of the Likud, whom he represented, to decide on pulling out. It appeared at first that he would actually follow the desire of the voters, his own supporters, in the matter. In the end, he lost the referendum, and declared that he would go ahead with a withdrawal anyway. But, deferring to the voters of his party, he would only order a withdrawal from a few of the 24 towns and villages in Gush Katif. A report harshly critical of this referendum and of Israel's presence in Gaza noted the following:

Predictions from within Likud are that he will now offer only a partial withdrawal from the Gaza Strip of only those of the 21 settlements "most exposed" to violence. The occupation of the Gaza Strip would be essentially unchanged.

Enter Menny Mazuz. The attorney general declared that Sharon had to pull out of the entire bloc of Gush Katif as he said he would. What power had Mazuz, whose position as attorney general did not qualify him to try to make security policy? Mazuz had possible indictments sitting in his drawer - indictments of Ariel Sharon and his son Omri to begin with, for various kinds of fraud, campaign violations, and the like. Mazuz, who had been a protegé of Yossi Beilin, a staunch advocate of withdrawal from Gaza, Judea and Samaria, was merely following "his" party line, and using the indictments in the drawer as his weapon.

By 6 May 2004, Mr. Sharon, picking up the hint, returned to the line of pulling out of Gush Katif entirely, and stonewalled his way through the entire effort. And what was the central plank of the "Kadima" party that Sharon founded in 2005 after the withdrawal from Gush Katif? Withdrawal from all of Judea and Samaria, unilaterally, if need be. This was the policy known as "convergence".

The loss in Lebanon basically did in that policy. Oh, Olmert will pretend to support it, and his foreign minister Tzipi Livni will talk about a "Palestinian state" and all that trash - but the people of Israel are not willing to buy that bill of goods any more. But if a knight on a white horse comes to the nation's rescue...

the Knight on a White Horse

So we see Olmert facing the desertion of his coalition as Kadima minister after Kadima minister tries to figure out a way to replace Olmert without facing the danger of new elections. Labor Minister Eitan Cabel quit the government urging his fellow ministers from the Labor party to do likewise, including Mr. Peretz; the chief of the coalition quit, calling upon Olmert to do likewise, Tzipi Livni has already tried a putsch within the Kadima party - and failed. If you examine this page listing articles in Haaretz, you'll see one major name in Israeli politics absent.

Deputy Prime Minister Shim'on Peres has been the eminence grise in this government, the fellow who knows where all the bodies are buried (literally). While Olmert has publicly faltered, Peres had remained quiet awaiting the release of the interim report of the Winograd Committee to confirm the incompetence of Mr. Olmert, his security minister and former chief of staff. But Peres moves carefully, and has been campaigning quietly to oust Olmert and take the position himself. A Stratfor analysis dismisses him as a possible replacement for Olmert, arguing that the situation calls for someone strong in security, rather than diplomacy. That would rule out Tzipi Livni, who appears to enjoy the support of the Hebrew press.

Let's take another look at Peres, then. It can be fatal to under-estimate him. While he was never a general in the army, he has credentials that make him very strong in the area of security. He initiated atomic energy research in the 1950's in Israel and in the 1970's he was instrumental in Israel's "acquiring" nuclear material for its clutch of nuclear missiles. In 1976, he orchestrated the rescue of 100 Israeli hostages from Uganda, the daring operation at the Entebbe airport that killed Yoni Netanyahu and brought his brother Benyamin into the political limelight.

In addition, Peres has a resource that virtually none of his contemporaries, friend or foe, has - a solid Jesuit education. The Jesuits are famous for their ability to teach strategic thinking, and Peres learned at their knee. Considering the woeful strategic abilities of the present crew of stooges, and keeping this in mind, let us look at three possible scenarios for the medium future.

1. One is that Olmert is driven from office and is succeeded by Peres, who promises to bring a fresh approach and to save the Kadima party from its natural fate - extinction. But there is a corollary to this scenario, one that I've examined before. This is that Katzav is also driven from office in one way or another, and that Peres steps forth as the deGaulle of the country, seeking to combine the posts of state president and prime minister and end the instability of the counry's political system. This is the "knight on a white horse scenario." Given that there is virtually nobody else to run the country who has any level of competence (with a couple of execptions), the Israeli "maiden" kisses this knight whom she has spurned so many times before.

2. The second is that Olmert is driven from office and that either Tzipi Livni or Avi Dichter takes his place. Katzav is driven from office in one way or another, and is replaced by Peres as state president. Because of Peres' ties overseas, he exercises considerable behind the scenes influence, far greater than his office warrants, and he seems again to be a "knight on a white horse", serving as mentor for the younger cabinet members and being invited to sit in on their meetings.

3. The final scenario is that Olmert is able to hold onto the "seat" of prime minister but will be forced to accede to rule by others - like his deputy prime minister, Peres.

What do all three scenarios have in common?

The European Union, with some help from NATO, will be invited in to "expedite" the "peace process" - that is to say drive out Jews from their homes in Judea, Samaria, the Heights of the Golan, and very possibly parts of Jerusalem itself. It is unlikely that the IDF, more and more composed of religiously observant soldiers, will be either willing or able to carry out this vicious anti-Jewish act.

In the week since the Winograd Interim report has come out, little has happened here in terms of real change, except that people are beginning to think seriously of a government without Ehud Olmert. Amir Peretz brags about Israel being "more prepared for a war in Gaza than they were in Lebanon" but nobody takes the idiot seriously. The power lines, that is to say the European fleet off of Lebanon and the American fleet off of Iran, have gone nowhere. But, we do see
Olmert trying desperately to save his seat by having secret negotiations with the Arabs over kicking us out of our homes.

Evil men never learn, do they?

Restaurant Review: Sbarro's in Jerusalem's City Center

Ruvy — Sun, 25 Feb 2007 00:52:01 EST

I first became acquainted with Sbarro's a quarter of a century ago when I lived in the Bensonhurst section of Brooklyn with my first wife. It was located on 86th Street where the "B" train runs on an "el" in the Italian section of the neighborhood. It looked like a typical salumeria (sausage shop) with salamis and various other treif (non-kosher food) hanging down from the ceiling. They sold hero sandwiches and the like, lunches for the Italian working classes of Bensonhurst. We never ate there - period.

I next became familiar with Sbarro's after the marriage to my first wife fell apart and I was living in the streets of Saint Paul. I had managed to secure a bed in a Catholic shelter (the Jews run no homeless shelters in St. Paul or Minneapolis- a different, far less pleasant story) and had made friends with a fellow from Wisconsin named Dan Ehmke who, like the shelter, was Catholic. I had finally managed to secure temporary employment with the State of Minnesota (for just a little over minimum wage) and, since I had no real expenses, my bank account was beginning to fill up.

I first got rid of the trappings of living on the streets was when I got my first check from the Minnesota Department of Administration. The bank was closed and I wanted to celebrate. Dan Ehmke's "banker" was Jim Flaherty, the beefy ex-marine of an Irishman who owned Flaherty's just off East Seventh Street. Jim Flaherty cashed my check and I bought a few beers. Those few beers at Flaherty's bar in the summer of 1983 were the absolute closest I came to inebriation in my entire life. Even half drunk, I realized that alcohol on my breath would cost me my room at the Catholic shelter. I did not want to sleep in the bus station or the flea and cockroach and infested Union Gospel Mission (the main Protestant homeless shelter in Saint Paul). So I dragged Dan out of his favorite haunt and the two of us stumbled down Seventh Street toward downtown where there was a Burger King. There I ate two double whoppers and regained my sobriety. After the whoppers we cut back to the Catholic shelter via what was then a prosperous commercial building with a large food court. Passing though the food court I saw Sbarro's - and the sign that really caught my eye - "All the pizza you can eat for three dollars every Wednesday".

After that, every Wednesday the two of us pigged out at Sbarro's. We ignored the charitable dinner handed out to the rest of the bums at the Catholic shelter; we avoided their grace over meals. We didn't stand in line to pay with our dignity for what was called free food. Instead we paid with our own money and ate in style.

Inside the restaurant, the sausages hanging from the ceiling were still there, but they were all artificial. Sbarro's had made itself over into a pizza shop and mall inhabitant and had lost much of the distinctive Italian flavor it had had in Brooklyn. But the pizza was still much better than most of the pizza obtainable in Saint Paul. And ten slices of pizza (we couldn't stuff ourselves with more) for $6.00 dollars (plus tax) was a deal not to be avoided. Finally, it gave me a chance to brag about the superiority of food from New York. After Labor Day the sale at Sbarro's ended. Dan Ehmke and I found a different hang out.

A short time after Adina married me in 1988, Dan Ehmke died in a car accident. He's watching as I write this story now. This brings us to Sbarro's in Jerusalem. Now of course, everyone knows how an Arab blew himself up at this restaurant and killed some twenty people in the process. And those who have followed the news know that Sbarro's made a big stink about rebuilding their restaurant on the corner of King George V Street and the Jaffa Road. What did not make the news was that a week or two ago my oldest son got stuck in an elevator at the Absorption Center. A young Iranian girl found him two worry-filled hours later and in our gratitude, we treated her to dinner at Sbarro's.

Immediately after Shabbat ended, we took the bus downtown and there it was, complete with guard at the door. Inside is a large sign in Hebrew stating how Sbarro's is with the Israeli people. Also there is a small electric memorial light burning for those killed in the terrorist attack. There are no artificial sausages hanging from the wall. Any signs of the salumeria I saw twenty five years ago in Bensonhurst are gone. There is a big sign saying that the restaurant is kosher. But it is kosher dairy. Meat is verboten.

As I remembered the delicious pizzas I gulped down in Saint Paul eighteen years ago, my mouth watered with anticipation. It took more than a few minutes for the slices of pizza to arrive at the table. When they did, it was disappointment city. The pizza, which was very expensive, was not hot but greasy and oily. It just didn't have the kick that New York pizza has and I can't imagine any respectable Italian from Boston (Sbarro's originated in Boston) liking this stuff. But that wasn't the worst part, though it should have been. When Shimon had to go to the bathroom he was faced with a one shekel (23�) charge. You would think that a restaurant that charges its patrons to go to its bathroom would have a clean roomy facility complete with soap and towels. There was no soap and no hot water. When Adina went to the bathroom, there was no toilet paper - not even the cheapest kind - and there was water all over the floor. Dan Ehmke was probably having one hell of a laugh from his place Upstairs watching this. In my tortured Hebrew (we had been in Israel only one month) I wrote a note to the manager complaining of the conditions in the restaurant.

So the moral of the story - a bomb attack and international publicity do not, in and of themselves, improve the quality of food in an establishment. If you ever come to Israel to visit us, the pizza shops on Ben Yehuda serve better pizza for less. And do come and visit!

Epilogue: This was written originally in October 2001. Since then, Sbarro's has had to move from its roost on the corner of King George and the Jaffa Road to more modest quarters down the Jaffa Road a few doors away from Zion Square. I have not seen fit to revisit the restaurant, and have lots less money now than I did in October 2001. Additionally, after suffering a heart attack, pizza does not have the attraction for me that it once did. So it is unlikely that I will give them a second chance. But I do hope they have learned to stock a bathroom better...

News Analysis From Israel – Is Expulsion From My Home In My Future?

Ruvy — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 00:31:09 EST

Ma'aléh Levon�, Israel
29 January, 2007

I did patrol duty last night in Jerusalem (28 Jan.). It was much easier than the usual duty of standing in the cold (or heat) with a rifle. I got to sit in my partner's vehicle, where it was warm, watching the heavy downpour of rain and driving wind as people tried to flag down rides at one of Jerusalem's trampiadas. It was cozy in the car. All that was missing was Dunkin' Donuts and some coffee.

We left patrol a bit early so that I could try to catch the 9:00 p.m. bus out of town. But because my cell phone (which doubles as my watch) was five minutes slow, I missed the 9:00 p.m. bus going to Ma'aléh Levon� out of Jerusalem and was stuck waiting for the 11:15 bus. Staring at the station clock which read 9:05, and seeing no bus at my platform, I made the best of a bad deal and rushed to a nearby supermarket, hoping that they were open. They were, so I bought some toilet paper (even police volunteers need toilet paper) humus, dates, and cornflakes (Kellogg's – the good stuff).

I schlepped all this to the Central Bus Station, bought some bourekas and strong coffee, and finished writing an article on Dr. Gerald Schroeder's appearance at a Root & Branch presentation at the Israel Center on 28 December last. I was tired and very much looking forward to getting home. I had been in town on one patrol or another since 9:00 in the morning.

The 148 pulled out of the station at 11:20 traveling north to French Hill, P�sgat Ze'év and some villages on the way home – Kokh�v Ya'ak�v, Ofr�, Shvut RaHél, Shil�, 'El�, and Ma'aléh Levon�. The bus winds up in Ariél where I think the driver holes up for the night.

I was contemplating what I would do if confronted with the question of being evicted from my home by the Israeli army, and whether my kids should serve in a military that might try to make us homeless, when the young woman in front of me threw up in the aisle.

A bunch of people gathered round on the bus to help her, getting a barf bag for her, giving her tissues, encouragement, etc., and offering her a beverage to sip on. I kept waiting for the stink of vomit to fill the air. It didn't. Instead the faint odor of bad beer wafted up, just enough to make me aware of it, but not enough to disturb me. I began to wonder about the young woman in front of me when the bus slowed to a crawl.

In front of us, one vehicle down was a long IDF flatbed truck, the kind that hauls tanks and artillery pieces. But this flatbed was not carrying any tank. The vehicle on it was huge. I couldn't help breaking into English. "What is that thing?" I asked, more to myself than anyone else.

The fellow standing next to me looked at me and said in English, "that's a D9. It was used to destroy houses in Gush Qatif. It took about five minutes to destroy a house. I remember seeing them do it in Am�na."

He then got into a discussion (in Hebrew, discussions often sound like arguments) with some of the others on the bus as they started to pay attention to the D9 themselves. I asked the bunch talking about this in Hebrew, "is this our future?" They were silent. So was I.

I studied the machine, looking for weaknesses in it that might be exploited. If there is to be a D9 in my future, I can't just sit there and let my jaw drop as it approaches. Somehow, I (and others like me) will have to stop it. Rachel Corrie tried to stop it by standing in front of it. I'm not that stupid.

It seems unreasonable, if not criminal, to say I'll shoot at someone who tries to destroy the home I live in. But the government planning to destroy my home – and the D9 I saw moving to a military base in Samaria last night is proof of these plans – is not asking me.

I remember Rachel and Moshe Saperstein waging a valiant, but law-abiding battle against the expulsion from their beachside home in Nevé Dekal�m, one of the villages in Gush Qatif. Moshe, a retired humor columnist for the Jerusalem Post, wrote articles for Judy Lash Balint's Jerusalem Diaries and made trips overseas to try to garner support. Rachel, whom Moshe had referred to as La Passionara in his articles, gave interviews to journalists world wide, raising a hue and cry (a geshrei in Yiddish) to anyone who would listen. And they were not the only ones. But the government of Israel was determined to suppress their voices, arresting teenagers as young as twelve and jailing them for weeks at a time as "security risks" for participating in demonstrations and expressing their rights to petition and freedom of assembly as supposedly guaranteed under law. All the classic techniques of a Soviet dictatorship were employed here to suppress freedom of expression and to distort it into something it wasn't. Israel is not a democracy.

But more to the point, Moshe and Rachel Saperstein were expelled from their home in Nevé Dekal�m. Nothing stopped the government juggernaut and for months, the Sapersteins lived in a hotel room in Jerusalem. They now live in what is known as a "caravilla," a slightly enlarged version of a pre-fab made from spit and cardboard, and they live in a "caravilla" colony. Rachel Saperstein has a will of iron. But Moshe is a broken man.

Seeing that D9 on the bus pushed back to front and center in my mind the fact that the government most assuredly had an agenda to make me and 200,000 more like me homeless within the near future and that in spite of all that it had said in the recent past about not pushing for an expulsion in the future, it was definitely back on the table.

When I saw that the Israeli government had reportedly offered to give control of Judea and Samaria to the European Union, in order to expel Jewish residents to clear the way for yet another Arab state in our midst, I was reminded of all the warnings I had read from Emmanuel Winston, Dr. Eugene Narrett, Barry Chamish and others. Several years ago, Winston had speculated that a European "swift reaction force" would be used to bring down a government here in order to erect an Arab state. Barry Chamish had said repeatedly that this would be done at the invitation of the Israeli government, with the initial purpose of expelling Jews from their homes here in Judea and Samaria.

Writing in the Jerusalem Post, Ephraim Inbar, the director of the Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies at Bar-Ilan University of Tel Aviv, whose presentation at Root & Branch inspired my article "Lo Nor�" recommends foreign (as in Jordanian & Egyptian) rule for Judea and Samaria, arguing that the "two state solution" advocated for so long by the ruling elites here, is a failure and the Arabs are incapable of self-government.

I draw you once more time to the story that got this series going some time ago, which appeared in Debkafile on 4 September 2006. We finally see why there has been a buildup of European forces off of Lebanon for the last several months, one which has not yet dissipated. Indeed, they are to be sent here, just as I speculated they would be months ago.

There are just a few more points that need to be made here. First, when the Israeli government/media want to hide a major news development, they cover it up with a "crisis." While this story about turning over control of Judea and Samaria to the EU was breaking, it was being drowned out by the "crisis" of Moshe Katzav being indicted for rape, and by stories of Shimon Peres circling the office of the presidency like a vulture. Except for Arutz Sheva and David Bedein, the Israeli media has not touched the issue of who will control Judea and Samaria. Indeed, had I not seen that D9 on the Shekhém Road last night, I would not have had my own attention attracted to the plans being drawn behind closed doors.

When thinking about all this, my mind is immediately drawn to the lines in the Book of Daniel describing the "handwriting on the wall" that affrighted King Belshazzar of Babylonia [Daniel 5:25-28].

Now this was the writing that was inscribed: M�NE M�NE T�KEL, UPHARS�N. This is the interpretation of the matter: M�NE (counted) - G-d has counted the years of your kingship and terminated it. T�KEL - (weighed) you have been weighed in the scales and found wanting. P�RES (broken up) - your kingdom has been broken and given to Media and Persia.

But even more appropriate to the present situation are words inscribed on a parchment nearly a quarter millennia ago and a third of a world away, words that are barely visible, but which ring out with a clarity of a bell proclaiming freedom throughout the land.

…when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such a Government and to provide new Guards for their future security." [American Declaration of Independence, July 1776]

The road to redemption may well be through revolution.