Rabbis Moshe Weinberger and Alan Kalinsky at OU West
The theme of the Orthodox Union West Coast Torah Convention in L.A. this year is "Bringing Light to a Darkened World." Rabbi Moshe Weinberger delivered the keynote address, “Illuminating the Darkness” on Thursday, 11 December at Young Israel of North Beverly Hills, organized by Rabbi Alan Kalinsky, photographed together here.
The theme of last year's conference was“Traditional Judaism in the New Millennium.” The concluding panel on Sunday was called "Talking Tachlis –
Rabbi Moshe Weinberger delivers keynote address
Dealing with the Contemporary Challenges Facing Today’s Orthodox Families,” featuring Dr. Yocheved Dubow, Dr. David Pelcovitz, and Rabbi Reuven Bulka, moderated by Rabbi Steven Weil.
JooTube transports you there- in audio and video. Would you please continue our work through your mitzvah of a donation (link in right margin) according to your ability?
Presentation: "Challenges Orthodox Families Face" OU West Conv; Rabbis Adir Posey, Steven Weil, Dr. David Pelcovitz, Dr. Yocheved DeBow:
Discussing sex & intimacy with your religious family- Dr. Yocheved DeBow
Annually, on the first Sunday in June, the Celebrate Israel Parade is put on along New York's Fifth Avenue. The parade is organized by the Jewish Community Relations Council, headed by Peter Kohlmann, its executive producer, and director Michael Mittleman.
At the sounding of the shofar (ram's horn), Mayor Mike Bloomberg led a procession of dignitaries along with the Shomrim Policemen's Societies and the N.Y.P.D. Police Band to open the parade of tens of thousands of participants.
JooTube was on
the scene and takes you onto Fifth Avenue, to enjoy the revelry and talk
to the participants, Jewish and gentile, about why they are marching.Among the paraders who spoke with JooTube are members of Jewish War Veterans, American Veterans of Israel (Machal), employees of the State of Israel led by Israeli Parliamentarian Silvan Shalom, El Al Airlines crew and staff (who sing and dance freilachs) led by Danny Saadon, and Christian Zionist group, Eagles Wings.
Enjoy video clips from JooTube's coverage of the Celebrate Israel Parade 2012. The coming parade will be held on Sunday, June 2nd, 2013. The parade is typically followed by a Concert with a Message at the SummerStage in Central Park.
Orthodox Rabbi Gerald Meister, a leader in Jewish-Christian relations, challenged Jewish leadership on their ineffectiveness in confronting the Jew-hatred in Muslim culture and politics, which underlies anti-Zionism. (JooTube recorded this interview with Rabbi Meister in Nashville, February, 2012. He passed away erev Pesach, 2013).
"This Passover, Free Us From A Failed Jewish Leadership" Stella Paul in American Thinker, April 23, 2011. This week is Passover, the season of deliverance, and I'm praying for deliverance from America's failed Jewish leadership. As Jews confront the most dangerous era since World War II, whom are we stuck with for leaders? A clueless bunch of mini-Pharaohs, strutting around proclaiming their moral superiority, blissfully unaware the Jewish people's mortal enemies are pulling down their pants and laughing at them.
Cataloguing their collective acts of evasion, cowardice, appeasement, and surrender is not for the faint of heart, but, luckily, I'm fortified by matzo balls and ready to rock. At the Passover Seder, Jews recite Dayenu, a prayer listing the many blessings bestowed by the Almighty, each of which would have sufficed (Dayenu) in its own right. Here, alas, is a woeful Dayenu of the failures of the American Jewish establishment. Can anyone tell me why these preening big shots haven't been forced to resign in shame? Why, in God's name, are our purported "leaders" still collecting cushy paychecks when their credibility is bankrupt?
If they only had allowed a storm of anti-Semitism to rise in the West, and hate crimes against American Jews to skyrocket to unprecedented heights, while they declined to muster even a listless response -- Dayenu -- they would have failed. If they only had stood aside, shrugging, while America's college campuses became battlegrounds in the war against Israel, where anti-Semitic lieswere force-fed to America's next generation of leaders, and Jewish students were intimidated and taught self-hatred and alienation from their own identities -- Dayenu -- they would have failed.
If they only had refused to educate the Jewish people about the growing threat from radical Islam, and remained silent about the long, tragic history of Jews forced to live as oppressed dhimmis under Muslim rule, as mandated by Koranic law -- Dayenu -- they would have failed.
With a list of swing states painted blue as the vote count proceeded, Obama’s Democratic victory was clinched with narrow predicted victories in the battleground states of Florida and Ohio, both with significant Jewish populations.
Obama cemented his win by keeping a firm grip on the Democratic base, including Jewish liberals, along with a massive victory among African Americans and a huge win among Latinos.
Jewish Republicans have conducted their largest ever mobilization of activists and of funds, arguing that Obama, now poised to enter his second term in the White House, would maintain an unfriendly attitude toward Israel. The results of this massive Republican effort, according to exit polls conducted on election day, are mixed.
The early data indicates that 70% of Jewish voters chose Barack Obama, a slight decline compared to the 2008 election in which Obama won 74% of the vote according to a compilation of national and local exit polls. (Republicans maintain that Obama’s showing last night among Jewish voters should be compared to his national exit poll outcome in 2008 which was 78%.) Either way, the polls reflect some decline in the support of Jewish voters for the Democrats. ... Florida, one of three key swing states that determined the election and the prime target of Republican and Democratic Jewish outreach effort, seemed to have been a bit more receptive to the Republican message, with 34% of Jewish voters, according to exit polls, voting Romney. Still, the heavily Jewish populated counties of Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade, voted heavily toward Obama, accounting for his narrow lead in the state.
In contrast, you will recall that last week I reported that American Jews living in Israel voted for Romney over Obama 85-14%. Are American Jews and Israeli Jews out of touch with each other?
I don't believe that American and Israeli Jews are out of touch with each other. I don't have the numbers to prove this yet, but my guess is that the Orthodox Jewish numbers in the US will be very close to those Israeli numbers. That's partly because most American Jews who move to Israel are Orthodox, and partly because American Jews, like their Israeli counterparts, make Israel, rather than abortion rights or gay marriage, their top concern.
What Israel might need to work on is convincing American Jews of the importance of supporting Israel. That may sound surreal 64 years after the Jewish state declared its independence, but as the Holocaust recedes into memory, the younger generation just doesn't see the importance of a Jewish state. And that's partly because many of them have a very weak sense of Jewish identification. They've never been to Israel, and they've probably not had a whole lot of Jewish education.
Alternatively, we can wait around for most of the uncommitted Jews to intermarry and then the remaining Jewish vote will be strongly pro-Israel and, if current trends continue, more Republican. That seems to be what's happening anyway.
The movie, The Frisco Kid, (1979) which stars Gene Wilder and Harrison Ford (son of a Jewish mother), offers a glimpse into Jewish survival on the frontiers of America, Israel, and Judea/Samaria.
Concatonated version in under 9 minutes:
In a television interview, Inside the Actors Studio, shown in August 2000, when asked about what influence his Irish Catholic and Russian Jewish ancestry may have had on his life as a person and as an artist, Ford humorously stated "As a man I've always felt Irish, as an actor I've always felt Jewish."
Excerpted scene: Gene Wilder's rabbi character is put on the stake and challenged - what you do to save a Torah?
Non-Jewish American supporters of Israel never tire of asking how it is that so many American Jews voted for Obama in 2008. Perhaps the easiest explanation is because the American Jewish leadership papered over his hostility.
Read it all
AIPAC Policy Conference attendees, attorney, Mrs. Claire Meadows, and her husband, Mike are representative of the segment of attendees not willing to march to AIPAC's cadence of support for Pres. Obama's Middle-East policies towards Israel.
THE PRESIDENT: "Welcome to the White House. I want to thank all of you for joining us in celebrating the second night of Hanukkah. Happy Hanukkah, everybody. (Applause.)
We are joined tonight by Ambassador Michael Oren, of Israel. Where’s Michael? (Applause.) He’s way back there. And so I want to begin by offering our deepest condolences to the families and loved ones of all of those who’ve died as a result of the terrible forest fire in northern Israel.
As rescuers and firefighters continue in their work, the United States is acting to help our Israeli friends respond to the disaster. A short while ago, our ambassador in Tel Aviv, Jim Cunningham, issued a disaster declaration, which has launched an effort across the U.S. government to identify the firefighting assistance we have available and provide it to Israel as quickly as possible. Of course, that's what friends do for each other.
And, Mr. Ambassador, our thoughts and prayers are with everybody in Israel who is affected by this tragedy and the family and loved ones of those in harm’s way.
Tonight, it’s an honor to welcome so many friends and leaders from the Jewish community and beyond. And I want to start by recognizing my Special Envoy for Middle East Peace, George Mitchell, who is here. Please give him a round of applause. (Applause.) And all the other outstanding members of the diplomatic corps who are here...
So on this second night of Hanukkah, let us give thanks to the blessings that all of us enjoy. Let us be mindful of those who need our prayers. And let us draw strength from the words of a great philosopher, who said that a miracle is “a confirmation of what is possible.”
And now I’d like to turn it over to Susan, who by the way has been on this stage before, receiving a presidential award for her outstanding work. But she happens to be joined by a beautiful family -- Donald, Ben, Molly, Dina and Rebecca. (Laughter.) Rebecca is down here. So I want to turn -- there she is. Yes, she is adorable. (Laughter.) As Michelle -- (Laughter.) As Michelle said as we were getting on stage, she will be stealing the show. (Laughter.) So we’re going to turn it over to Susan and her family for the blessings.
(The blessings are offered.)
THE PRESIDENT: So happy Hanukkah to all of you. We’re going to see most of you downstairs. Be patient in the line. (Laughter.) And I just want to let everybody know that, yes, they will be able to Photoshop my lip for the picture. (Laughter.) Happy Hanukkah, everybody. (Applause.)" (Full Transcript)
October 26 (JTA) -- Joseph Stein, the Tony Award-winning writer of "Fiddler on the Roof," has died.
Stein died Sunday in Manhattan after fracturing his skull in a fall. He was 98.
Stein wrote more than a dozen Broadway musicals, but is best known for "Fiddler," which won nine Tony Awards in 1965, including Stein's "Best Author of a Musical."
He began his career in writing after meeting comedian and actor Zero Mostel, who played Tevya in the original Broadway production of "Fiddler," and writing him some material, according to The New York Times.
Stein also wrote "Enter Laughing," a comedy based on an autobiographical book by Carl Reiner about a Jewish boy who wants to become an actor, as well as "Zorba" and "Rags." He wrote screenplays for three shows including "Fiddler," and also wrote a handful of television projects.
Stein earned a degree in social work from Columbia University in 1937 and worked for a decade as a psychiatric social worker.
While most think first of Fiddler's score, by Sheldon Harnick and Jerry Bock, it was story and dialogue like this introduction of Perchik to Tevye and the Anatevka villagers which gave Fiddler's characters their flavor.
The Israeli Leadership Council of Los Angeles will honor Ambassador John Bolton at its annual Gala on May 12, 2010. Amb. Bolton has been an outspoken critic of the Obama Administration's handling of Middle-East players, Iran (nuclear threat to the world, treated with kid gloves) and Israel (regional stabilizer and ally, treated with disdain).
The I.L.C.'s mission is to fortify and enhance a productive and continuous relationship between Israeli-Americans and the State of Israel through community empowerment, activism, and philanthropy. Executive leaders disclosed details with Joo-Tube on video at last year's event:
Israeli Leadership Council co-founder Dr. Eli Marmur reveals the purpose and function of Los Angeles' I.L.C.:
I.L.C. executive, Mr. Adam Milstein, describes the mission and function of the Israeli Leadership Council:
The I.L.C. will also honor Israeli-American activists, Naty and Debbie Saidoff, for their dedication at this year's event.
The American-born, centrist Israeli thinker and writer, Yossi Klein Halevi, (who is published in The New Republic) returned to the U.S. to explain to Americans how Pres. Obama's behavior and policies towards Israel are intentionally undermining the friendship between the countries. Worse, he describes how detrimental, he feels, the Obama Administration's contemptuous treatment of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu bullies all Zionists. This transmits a signal to the world that "it's now open-season" against the Jewish State.
An obvious example of that, Mr. Halevi says, is Britain's expelling the head of the Mossad desk in the Israeli Embassy in London. The message to the jihadists, he believes, is to encourage Iran (through its proxies Hizbollah or Hamas) to open a limited front of attacks against Israel, with the expectation that Obama will step-in and prevent Israel from comprehensively eliminating the threat, while publicly diminishing Israel's public image by portraying him as having to restrain their aggression.
In our video of Mr. Halevi's speech in Los Angeles from April 22nd, Halevi explains many of his views on the relationship and the situation, including how Obama's ambition to force creating a Palestinian State with a hostile Palestinian population would be an existential threat to Israel. If Obama doesn't stop Iran from going nuclear, there will be no possibility of peace in the Middle East, as Jihad forces (Hamas) in the mid-east will be united around Iran against Israel.
"Obama will be judged by Israel by how he handles the nuclear issue with Iran. And from what we've seen so far, with one deadline after another, we in Israel frankly have zero confidence in the backbone of this Administration." "We are seeing potentially a tragedy of historic proportions."
Mr. Halevi deconstructs what he sees as Washington's misguided priorities of achieving stability in the Middle-East. Halevi spoke at Nessah Israel Synagogue in L.A. at an 22 April event organized by 30 Years After (and co-sponsored by the Jewish Journal, and OLAM Magazine). Here is Part II of the event - the interactive question and answer period.
Olam's editor, David Suissa, postulates on Obama's motives with Halevi during the question and answer session in this video - characterized in Mr. Suissa's Op/Ed in the Jewish Journal of L.A.:
"For about an hour, Halevi had us riveted with his anatomy of a deteriorating relationship. At the end, the big question lingered: Why would Obama act this way toward a great ally? If it’s not anti-Semitism or tough love, is there a larger narrative that speaks to the soul of the man — a narrative that might explain why he bows to America’s foes and mistreats America’s friends?
Here’s one possibility: Maybe Obama sees his calling as bigger than America, and he wants to be President of Humanity.
"His speeches and remarks are filled with references to himself in a ratio that surpasses anything yet seen in the history of the American presidency,” writes professor James Ceaser in a recent piece in The Weekly Standard titled “The Roots of Obama Worship.”
“He awakened at some point in the campaign to the realization that he was no longer running merely for president of the United States. He was being selected to the much grander ‘office’ of leader of a new world community.”
Most seriously, Ceaser worries that “the conflicting demands of the Religion of Humanity and the presidency of the United States have become most apparent in the administration’s approach to dealing with the threat of Islamic terrorism.
Supporters of the Religion of Humanity [therefore] believe they have good reasons to deny or minimize the danger of terrorism in order to save the world from the even greater danger of the triumph of the retrograde forces. This is the dogmatic basis of political correctness and Obama and his team have gone to considerable lengths by their policies and by their use of language to hide reality. But reality has a way of asserting itself, and it is becoming clearer by the day that being the leader of Humanity is incompatible with being the president of the United States.”
It’s hard to say how much truth there is in Ceaser’s analysis, but it does add to the debate of understanding Obama’s behavior toward Israel. At least it gives us something more noble than the hysterical “Obama’s an anti-Semite” accusations that I see in my inbox every day.
And let’s face it, there is something noble about having a heart for all of humanity. The problem for Israel, of course, is that most of humanity already hates Israel, and if you’re Obama and you want to woo all of humanity, well, I can see how tiny Israel would be a major irritant."
"In a stunning turnaround, President Obama has lost roughly half of his support among Jewish voters.
A poll by McLaughlin and Associates found that, while 78 percent of Jewish voters cast their ballots for Obama, only 42 percent of Jewish voters would vote to re-elect him. A plurality — 46 percent — would consider voting for anyone else. That compares with 21 percent who voted for John McCain.
Ever since he learned of Obama’s ties to the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Morton Klein, president of the Zionist Organization of America, has been warning fellow Jews that Obama would be antithetical to Jewish interests, not only as they relate to Israel but also to issues that affect all Americans.
Before Obama was elected, Klein, whose organization of 30,000 members is the oldest pro-Israel group in the country, felt like a pariah. Now, as he speaks to Jewish audiences on a weekly basis, he has found that the climate has changed dramatically.
“As I speak at synagogues now around the country, I haven’t had a single person during Q and A or after my talk ask how I could be so critical of Obama,” Klein tells Newsmax.
Klein tells his audiences they should not be surprised that Obama’s left-leaning policies appear to tilt more toward the Palestinians than to Israelis. He cites the fact that Obama and his wife, Michelle, spent 20 years listening to Wright, who routinely denounced Israel as a racist state and America for allegedly having created the AIDS virus to kill off blacks." Read it all
Israeli satirist troupe, LatmaTV, creates a musical look into what drives Obama's priority to create a hostile Palestinian state adjacent to Israel.
American Jews, I have one request of you: please pull your heads out of your posteriors.
I mean that in all sincerity. Your continued support for Democrats and an administration that is openly anti-Semitic is a disgrace. Your embrace of a party that seeks to hamstring Israel in the name of a wholly fictitious Middle East peace process is contemptible. Your loyalty to a president who consistently sides with Palestinian and Iranian mass murder-supporters is disgusting.
Your backing of a man who has spent his life surrounding himself with the worst anti-Semites America has to offer -- Jeremiah Wright, Rashid Khalidi (former Palestinian terrorist spokesman), Louis Farrakhan ("I don't like the way [Jews] leech on us"), Samantha Power, Robert Malley, to name a few -- is nothing short of reprehensible. Rahm Emanuel's presence in the Obama cabinet doesn't ameliorate Obama's anti-Semitism -- it just provides it convenient cover. Al Sharpton wrongly called Condoleezza Rice and Colin Powell "house negroes"; Emanuel is a kapo. Read it all.
The ascendancy of the Jews of New York can be viewed as a Hollywood-style triumph, but it can also be read as the tragedy of a group of brilliant outsiders who remade a city in their own image, only to cut themselves off from the roots of their tribal genius, ensuring that the future will belong to the children of the new outsiders—Koreans, Indians, Russians, and Chinese. ...
I know plenty of Jews who protest the tribal insularity of their community and deny any attachment to religion while proclaiming their fervent attachment to universal values. They fear what it is that makes them signify so powerfully to others. They root for the Mets and vote Democratic out of an atavistic attachment to the idea of the underdog. There is something ineffably sad and utterly American about the communal progression from tribal Judaism to a vague and watered-down idea of “Jewishness.”
Tens of thousands of people marched up Fifth Avenue on Sunday in the annual Salute to Israel Parade celebrating the 1948 founding of the Jewish state. Parade Grand Marshalls included actress Lainie Kazan, Broadway's "Golda's Balcony" star, Valerie Harper, Ron Rifkin, and television actor, Richard Hand. Highlights included a bagpipe and drums rendition of Hava Nagila.
Charles Jacobs and Seth A. Klarman of the David Project made this call for new leadership almost 2 years ago (courtesy Unity Coalition for Israel). With Yom HaShoah on Thursday, May 1, it is time to reconsider this appeal.
"A rush of shocking events is creating a "tipping point" in Jewish consciousness. Increasingly, Jews feel our situation has substantially changed, and for the worse. The events include Iran’s nuclear threats and Holocaust denial, Hamas’ electoral victory, the torture and murder of Ilan Halimi in Paris by a Muslim gang, the "discovery" by a Harvard dean that Jews actually do conspire to control Congress and American foreign policy in the service of Israel and to the detriment of U.S. interests, and the British academic boycott. All of these demonstrate for many that there is a new assault on the world’s Jews. The hostility is based on a unique and intense hatred of Israel and deep resentment of its supporters, accompanied by a growing willingness to use violence. As though in a "perfect storm," two global ideologies, rooted in different radical critiques of the West, have suddenly aligned against us:
1. Islamic anti-Semitism. Fueled by Saudi petro-dollars and Iranian revolutionary zeal, a global campaign in mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools) teaches hundreds of millions of Muslims that Jews are the sons of monkeys and pigs, and killing them is a holy deed. The internet and television embellish the message: docudramas in Iran, Egypt and Jordan depict Jews harvesting the organs of Muslim children, killing non-Jews to make matzo, and plotting to rule the world. This poison reaches Muslims in the West. Europe’s Jews are besieged and violently assaulted -- on the streets and in the no-longer varnished rhetoric of polite society. In America, Freedom House told Congress it found Saudi-produced hate literature aimed at Americans, Christians – but mostly Jews – in mosques across the U.S. 2. In the West, "Palestinianism" -- the notion that an innocent, indigenous people suffers a senseless, cruel oppression by the Jews of Israel (who ought to know better) threatens to become the standard view. It is the basis for an attack by Western radicals on Zionism, Jewish national self-determination, and by extension on Jews everywhere. The "oppression" of an Arab people by Westerners is, for the far Left, morally and politically more consequential than the massacres, enslavements, beheadings, bombings, and ethnic cleansings committed by Arabs and Muslims from London to Sudan, from Spain to Indonesia. These are treated by radicals as distractions from (even caused by) the deeper Zionist evil.
Rooted in separate critiques of the West, Islam and the radical left are now allied – in Europe and increasingly in segments of America’s professoriate, media, human rights community, and the leadership of certain Protestant churches.
In America, Jews fret as a vicious anti-Israel movement has taken root on American campuses, and Jewish organizations reeled last summer when five mainline Protestant denominations passed anti-Israel resolutions. Most Jews don’t yet know the extent to which public high school texts – and teachers – are delegitimizing Israel. Anti-Semitism is a virus that morphs. In the West now, hostility to Jews has little to do with the familiar hatreds – of Judaism or the Jewish "race." Today’s antipathy makes Israel "the Jew" and its "crimes" the old "Jewish crimes" – killing of the innocent, theft (this time of land), arrogance, and the control of business, finance, government and the media by international cabals. As before, "Jewish crimes" stand out as uniquely, even cosmically evil. And as such, they call for correction. We were unprepared; we remain confused. Arab and Muslim Jew-hatred was misread as mere "street talk" that would dissipate when Oslo brought peace. Instead, Jew-hate is an engine of the global jihad. We are flummoxed by the new breed of Western adversaries. After centuries of attack by brutes, illiterates, right wing lunatics, and Christian anti-Semites, antagonism to the Jewish collective is now generated by soft-spoken moralists with high ideals, by "anti-racists" – some of the most articulate of whom are Jews. Set to defend against thugs yelling "kike," we are attacked instead by college professors – today a far more insidious enemy – who berate us for supporting "immorality." No one wants to think that sixty years after the Holocaust, a new storm threatens Jews everywhere. But reality cannot be avoided or minimized. Confused, with our defenses down, Jews need to consider the profound impact of losing the ideological battle that can destroy the Jewish state. This new time requires courageous and talented leaders to grasp these new realities and create strategies to defeat the latest defamations, grounded in a libelous portrayal of the Arab-Israeli conflict. A leadership correctly prioritizing the threat would convince us to lay aside our furious left-right debates, and teach us instead to make Israel’s basic case – from the left as well as from the right. It would gather the support of non-Jews and distinguish clearly friends from enemies. Most important, a new leadership would bravely and tirelessly tell us the truth about our new situation and recruit our talent and resources to the task. If current Jewish leaders – in this country which has been so good to the Jewish people – can’t or won’t do these things, then this small but enormously talented people will have to get new leaders. For in this, the Jewish community cannot and must not fail."
For an entire portion of the Jewish population to live under siege, while the remainder remains generally oblivious to their plight, is not only unseemly, but it places Jewish lives the world over in peril. Whatever is allowed to happen to a portion of Jews in Israel reverberates worldwide. For if Jews do not care enough to protect their own, surely the expectation for strangers to do otherwise is clearly whistling past the graveyard.
Furthermore, history will be totally unforgiving to this generation of Jews, who have been blessed to return to reclaim their homeland and to have the finest army in the Middle East, yet who remain passive as sheep to the slaughter. The calling to this generation of Jews - both in Israel and in the Diaspora - is to meet these deadly challenges we are faced with in a bold, resolute and unflinching manner. Our collective fate depends on how we answer the call to what history has placed before us, by confronting Israel's malignant leadership and our outside enemies seeking to destroy us.
(Zionist pioneer and former Parliamentarian, Elyakim ha' Etzni, once among Hebron’s original settlers, today a prominent publicist for Eretz Yisrael causes writes Where is American Jewry? in the Jewish Press).
"We address our cries to those for whom Eretz Yisrael still holds a place in their hearts – and to their organizations and institutions. We ask them the following: Where are you in our hour of need? Don’t you know that if we sink, the ground beneath your own feet will quake? Have you not yet learned that the very fact that the Jews have their own country has buttressed your status in the Diaspora?
Don’t you understand the danger looming over Israel? The entire world, led by the United States, is hunting Israel down to wrest from it Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria, the Land of the Bible – its entire raison d’etre as a Jewish state.
And faced with all this, you remain silent? Worse, most of your organizations support this anti-Jewish, pro-Arab policy! Today, missiles are flying from the ruins of Gush Katif and landing in the Negev. On the day that missiles are being launched from the ruins of the Jewish towns in Samaria, please don’t say, “We didn’t see. We didn’t hear. We didn’t know.”
You knew very well! The Annapolis Conference, in which a blind, stumbling, defeatist Israeli government open to American pressure knowingly consented to commit national suicide, occurred in your country. Rice, whose total identification with Palestinian interests is patently obvious, is applauded by your audiences. And you call President Bush, the man with the “vision” of a Palestinian state that will endanger every city and village in Israel, “the greatest friend Israel ever had in the White House.” You say this when in reality (and history will be the judge) he is the first president openly and explicitly raising the demand and exerting heavy pressure to establish in our midst a devil, a dragon, a dybbuk – in the form of an Islamic, Arabic, radical terrorist state called by the false name of “Palestine.” That state would transform every day in the life of the Jewish state to Hell. And all this for the sake of a fictitious people and a fictitious land that never existed throughout history.
Many Jews in America have good reason to be embarrassed that the only organized American community supporting the rights of the Jewish people to its historic homeland in Judea and Samaria and its eternal capital, Jerusalem, consists of non-Jews. They are the Evangelical Christians. For Jews faithful to their patrimony, some Christian churches are more open today than many Jewish temples. Their organizations and media are more open to nationalistic Jews than are the mainstream Jewish establishment. They visit Hebron, Shiloh and Beit El – places that many Jewish leaders stay away from.
Everyone talks about the political power of American Jewry, but from here we see only the weakness and lockstep obedience to every presiding administration. We ask ourselves, “Why do Christian pastors have no inhibitions about criticizing their president regarding his policy toward Israel, while Jewish rabbis wouldn’t dare?”
Please send comments to Zvi Katzover, mayor of Kiryat Arba, at Rivka@kiryat4.org.il.
Mr. Ha'Etzni's presentation "Worshipping the false G-d called 'Peace'" from the Knesset Christian Allies' Caucus' Days of Elijah Symposium continues here:
