Israeli Soldiers MIA: Gilad ben Aviva, Guy ben Rena, Ron ben Batya, Tzvi ben Penina, Yekutiel Yehuda Nachman ben Sara, Zechariah Shlomo ben Miriam
Shaul ben Sirrel passed away please remove him from the Tehillim list. For this week only as it is hard to follow and trace: Baruch ben Chava, Shlomo ben Edit(h).
This issue is dedicated in memory of Shmuel ben Yosef my step father who passed away 11 years ago in his 101st year.
Ruth sent me the following notice: Posted on Facebook by an Israeli: "Dear Egyptian rioters, please don't damage the pyramids. We will not rebuild. Thank you."
Among many of the requests that a Rabbi receives for pray are those of the Righteous Among the Nations that need healing and people looking for a Shidduch others looking for employment. Of course every once in a while a spam engine sends me to pray to a foreign and strange god that my fathers did not know.
I have no way of following this up so please say for one time at least even though more are needed: Please help us Daven and say Tehillim for our friends baby girl in Johannesburg who has just been diagnosed with leukemia. She is only 7 months old and all our prayers can help! Her name is Noa Batya bat Daniella Rut.
א נַחֲמוּ נַחֲמוּ, עַמִּי--יֹאמַר, אֱלֹהֵיכֶם. Yeshaya 40:1 Comfort ye, comfort ye My people, says your God. With thanks to HASHEM and at a propitious and successful hour, my daughter gave birth to a little girl. This is the first girl in my family since my mother passed away and finally a comforting to me at my loss. For the Hebrew: www.rabbipauli.blogspot.com
Note for those who print this Drasha the Psalm has the Tetragrammation in Hebrew and the part with the Psalm as well as relevant sections should be put in Shamus at the Synagogue or in a place for such purposes. They may also be buried in the ground.
Parsha Teruma
This section begins the study of the building of the Mishkan (Tabernacle) in the desert. The Mishkan had dimensions of 100 by 50 Amos (cubits). In modern terms this would be precisely 150 by 75 sq. feet using 18 inches to the cubit or according to the Chazon Ish 50 by 25 meters or the dimensions of an Olympic Swimming Pool in area. However you view it, the Mishkan was a large building to be taken down and reconstructed by the Leviim on their journeys through Midbar Sinai and through Shilo.
During the journeys, the Leviim would mantle and dismantle the Mishkan when entering or leaving each encampment. The sides would be delicately put up and taken down each time. Curtains were to be stored for travel, the heavy pieces of wood joined or disjoined and taken on and off the carts/wagons that the Leviim had.
Due to a number of Simchas this week, I am giving you an edited selection on the Parsha.
25:1 And the LORD spoke unto Moses, saying: 2 'Speak unto the children of Israel, that they take for Me an offering; of every man whose heart makes him willing ye shall take My offering.
From Rabbi Pinchas Winston and the Torah Organization: Let us talk about gifts. Though the word ‘terumah’ used in this week’s parshah literally means ‘elevated offering,’ it is also used to mean a ‘gift’, specifically with respect to contributions made to organizations that depend upon the generosity of others to further the cause of Torah and the Jewish people. When you give such a gift to such an organization, it is considered to be giving a gift to God, just like in this week’s parshah.
Not that God needs our gifts, of course, especially since, as Rashi alludes on the above verse, that everything belongs to God in the first place. Rather, as Rashi explains, what we’re supposed to do is give the gift for the sake of God, to benefit Him, so-to-speak, and not ourselves. Or, perhaps more accurately, we’re supposed to give the gift on behalf of God.
To appreciate this idea, it is worthwhile to review what might be intellectually obvious to many people, but not so emotionally obvious. Warning, though: when we’re finished, giving to charitable organizations might be easier than you had hoped.
As God says, all the money belongs to Him, even after we work for it. However, man was created with free-will in order to be able to make moral choices and earn his portion in the World-to-Come. Therefore, God created a world in which people can possess things to such an extent that they can believe what they have is theirs.
As we are taught by the Talmud, every year on Rosh Hashanah it is decided who gets what and how much. The only question that remains after the Ten Days of Repentance is how they will get their allotted portion, easily or with difficulty, in a timely fashion, or in an untimely manner. Who needs money when you already have enough of it, and what is good is future or past money if you need it right now?
That is with respect to what is coming to us. However, with respect to what is due to others, another question is, what role will we play in that process? God can decide that a person is meant to receive $1,000 on January 23, let’s say, but it will be up to other people who will have the merit to act as God’s messenger to deliver that money, earning reward in the World-to-Come for doing so. http://www.torah.org/learning/perceptions/5771/terumah.html?print=1
3 And this is the offering which ye shall take of them: gold, and silver, and brass; 4 and blue, and purple, and scarlet, and fine linen, and goats' hair; 5 and rams' skins dyed red, and sealskins, and acacia-wood; 6 oil for the light, spices for the anointing oil, and for the sweet incense; 7 onyx stones, and stones to be set, for the ephod, and for the breastplate.
Overcoming Laziness by
The Torah portion begins with God instructing Moses to tell the people to bring the raw materials necessary in order to build the Mishkan (Tabernacle). "This is the portion that you shall take from them: gold, silver, and copper; and turquoise, purple and scarlet wool; linen and goat hair; red-dyed ram skins; tachash skins, acacia wood; oil for illumination, spices for the anointment oil and the aromatic incense; shoham stones and stones for the settings, for the ephod and breastplate."
The Ohr HaChaim points out that the order of the materials mentioned is difficult to understand; the shoham stones and the 'stones of the settings' are the most valuable of all the items in the list, therefore logically they should have been mentioned first.
He answers by bringing the Midrash that informs us of the background to the donation of the precious stones. They were brought by the Nesi'im (princes) after everything else had already been donated. The Nesi'im had initially planned to wait for everyone else to bring their contributions to the Mishkan, and whatever was lacking, the Nesi'im would then give. But their plan backfired when the people, in their great enthusiasm, gave everything that was needed with the exception of the precious stones. The Medrash goes on to say that God was displeased with them because they were so late in giving to the Mishkan. Their 'punishment' was that the 'yud' in their name was omitted at one point in the Torah.(2) Accordingly, the Ohr HaChaim explains that since the donation of the precious stones involved some kind of error, they are mentioned last in the list of the materials given to the Mishkan. Despite their great material value, the spiritual failing that resulted in their donation by the Nesi'im meant that they were inferior to all the other materials in the list.
Rav Chaim Shmuelevitz asks that it is still unclear why God was displeased with the Nesi'im. Their reasoning for delaying their donation seems to be very understandable; why are they punished for a seemingly innocent miscalculation? He answers by quoting Rashi's explanation for their punishment: Rashi states; "because they were initially lazy, they lost a 'yud' in their name." (3) Rashi is revealing to us that the real reason that the Nesi'im tarried in bringing the gifts was because beneath all their seemingly valid justifications for their actions lay the trait of laziness.
The Mesilat Yesharim (Path of the Just) writes at length about how laziness can prevent a person from fulfilling his obligations properly. He writes: "We see with our own eyes many, many times, that a man can be aware of his obligations, and he is clear about what he needs for the goodness of his soul... yet he weakens [in his Avoda/Service] not because of a lack of recognition of his obligations or any other reason, rather because of the powerful laziness that overcomes him." He continues that what is so dangerous about laziness is that one can find several 'sources' to justify his inaction. "The lazy one will bring numerous sayings of the Sages, verses from the Prophets, and 'logical' arguments, all of them justifying his confused mind into lightening his burden ... and he does not see that these arguments do not come from his logical thought, rather they stem from his laziness, which overcomes his rational thinking." (4) Accordingly, he warns us that whenever we have two choices we should be very weary of choosing the easier option, because the root reason for doing so may very likely be laziness.
The Mesillat Yesharim is teaching us that even the most 'valid' arguments may simply be veils for a person's desire to avoid pushing himself. We see a striking example of this in the Introduction to the great ethical work, Chovos HaLevavos (Duties of the Heart). He writes that after planning to write the book he changed his mind, citing a number of reasons: "I thought my powers too limited and my mind too weak to grasp the ideas. Furthermore, I do not possess an elegant style in Arabic, in which the book would have been written… I feared that I would be undertaking a task which would succeed [only] in exposing my shortcomings... Therefore I decided to drop my plans and revoke my decision." However, he recognized that perhaps his motives were not completely pure. "I began to suspect that I had chosen the comfortable option, looking for peace and quiet. I feared that what had motivated the cancellation of the project had been the desire for self-gratification, which had driven me to seek ease and comfort, to opt for inactivity and sit idly by."
To the eternal benefit of the Jewish people he decided to write the book. The reasons that he initially cited why he should not write the book seem fair and logical, but he recognized that, on his level, they were tainted by a desire for comfort. If someone as great at the author of Chovos HaLevavos nearly fell victim to the yetzer hara (negative inclination) of laziness, how much is everyone at risk of being ensnared by this destructive trait. A person generally does have seemingly valid reasons for why he may choose to ignore possible avenues in which he could improve his Divine Service, but he must be very vigilant that our true motivation is laziness.
The yetzer hara of laziness is so cunning that it can clothe itself in some of the most admirable of traits, in particular that of humility. Rav Moshe Feinstein addresses a common tendency of people to underestimate themselves by claiming that they are greatly limited in their talents and that they can never achieve greatness. He writes that this kind of humility really emanates from the yetzer hara.(5) It seems that this attitude actually derives from laziness, which is really a manifestation of the desire for comfort. It is not easy to achieve greatness; it requires great effort and the willingness to face setbacks and even failure. This is difficult, therefore it is very tempting for a person to 'write himself off' and thereby exempt himself from even trying - this is certainly the more 'comfortable' option.
Constantly, throughout a person's life he is given the opportunity to improve himself and attain great heights in his own Divine Service and his influence on others. We see from the lesson of the Nesi'im that perhaps the single most powerful factor preventing him from achieving his potential is a desire for comfort that stems from laziness. This causes a person to 'create' numerous 'reasons' as to why he does not push himself in the way that he could. The Mesillas Yesharim teaches us that he should recognize that these excuses often originate with the yetzer hara and that he should disregard them and proceed in his efforts to grow and accomplish. May we all merit to overcome this powerful yetzer hara and make the correct choices even if they are difficult.
8 And let them make Me a sanctuary, that I may dwell among them.
Our Sages point out that it is written "in their midst" and not "in its midst," explaining that the true Divine Sanctuary is located in the bosom of the Children of Israel and from there it extends to the structure erected by them. Divinity resides in the person who, fulfilling the Torah's commandments, becomes the faithful image of his Creator.
The eternal Sanctuary only exists by virtue of the existence of the sanctuary within and remains pure through consecration of our acts, our words and our thoughts, to Divine service. But a wrong action, a wrong word or even a wrong thought is equivalent to a profanation of he sanctuary. G-d only resides in the Temple if His Truth resides in our hearts and is put into practice in our lives.
So G-d warned Solomon while he was building the Temple, "this House which you are building, though it be the finest of all constructions, I will only dwell in it if you follow all my laws and you perform all my commandments, for then I will reside in the midst of the children of Israel and I will not forsake my people Israel" (Kings 1:6,11).
If we trespass, we cause the divine presence to be "exiled". The Temple is then doomed to destruction. G-d does not reside in it any more. Its existence is no longer justified. Nebuchadnezzar and Titus could not have destroyed the Temple had it still held G-d's sanctity, but since the sanctity had been withdrawn as a result of the People's sins, what was destroyed was only "wood and stones", not the beloved of G-d.
Even if man is in a state of spiritual "destruction" and therefore deprived of the Divine Presence, a Divine spark will always remain within him by virtue of G-d's covenant with the seed of Abraham which guaranteed that its destruction would never be a total one (Gen. 15,1). In this state, however, the spirit of impurity which enters the person as a result of his sins prevents this spark from glowing. It remains quenched in him. This is the concept of "Divinity in exile".
Similarly, the destruction of the Temple was never total. The Western Wall, the "Kotel", was never demolished in spite of numerous attempts made during history to pull it down, and it never will. The "Kotel" stands as a manifestation of the permanence of the divine presence in the Temple, a remnant of holiness which will never forsake this place and from which it will be rebuilt, Speedily in our Days. It is the symbol of the eternity of the people of Israel that no human force can annihilate, and the guarantee that the Torah will never be forgotten by its seed, the Children of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob. Sources: Exodus 25,8, Kings 1:6,11, Genesis 15,1, Rabbi Chaim of Volozin , Rabbi Hassan. Yaffa
9 According to all that I show thee, the pattern of the tabernacle, and the pattern of all the furniture thereof, even so shall ye make it. 10 And they shall make an ark of acacia-wood: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof, and a cubit and a half the height thereof. 11 And thou shalt overlay it with pure gold, within and without shalt thou overlay it, and shalt make upon it a crown of gold round about. 12 And thou shalt cast four rings of gold for it, and put them in the four feet thereof; and two rings shall be on the one side of it, and two rings on the other side of it. 13 And thou shalt make staves of acacia-wood, and overlay them with gold. 14 And thou shalt put the staves into the rings on the sides of the ark, wherewith to bear the ark. 15 The staves shall be in the rings of the ark; they shall not be taken from it. 16 And thou shalt put into the ark the testimony which I shall give thee. 17 And thou shalt make an ark-cover of pure gold: two cubits and a half shall be the length thereof, and a cubit and a half the breadth thereof. 18 And thou shalt make two cherubim of gold; of beaten work shalt thou make them, at the two ends of the ark-cover. 19 And make one cherub at the one end, and one cherub at the other end; of one piece with the ark-cover shall ye make the cherubim of the two ends thereof. 20 And the cherubim shall spread out their wings on high, screening the ark-cover with their wings, with their faces one to another; toward the ark-cover shall the faces of the cherubim be. 21 And thou shalt put the ark-cover above upon the ark; and in the ark thou shalt put the testimony that I shall give thee. 22 And there I will meet with thee, and I will speak with thee from above the ark-cover, from between the two cherubim which are upon the ark of the testimony, of all things which I will give thee in commandment unto the children of Israel.
Inside and Out
Betzalel was given the task of constructing all the pieces of the Tabernacle in the desert. In making the Aharon - the box that held the Tablets of the Law - he used wood and gold. It would seem to have been sufficient to cover the wooden box with gold, but actually God required it to be also covered inside with gold. So it was a gold box inside a wood box inside a gold box. Why all the unnecessary gold?
When a car advertiser puts a pretty woman astride a car to help sell it, they add to the falsehood in the world. Many people put on a fake face for the public, or cover up what's undesirable with a false exterior. You can paint over a rust spot on a car, sell it, and the buyer will only find out months later when the rust peeks through again.
WYSIWYG stands for "what you see is what you get." This concept has many ramifications. When you can tell what you're getting you have trust and confidence in the producer of the goods. The fakers of the world cause us to mistrust everyone. They not only damage their own credibility, but they ruin things for the rest.
IMITATION OF GOD
Who is God? Does He put on a fake exterior? Does He pretend to be what He's not?
God is infinite. He does not change. He is through and through the same. A oneness that has no equal.
Therefore any hint of falsehood or fake exterior is the opposite of Godliness. The Talmud says that one of the telltale signs of a true scholar is that his "outside reflect his inside." Someone who wants to be an example and a representative of holiness in the world must aspire to this trait.
And in fact it's something that each of us, on whatever level we're on, should strive for. One of the most important commandments in the Torah is to emulate the Almighty. Since truth, honesty, and integrity are part of God's definition, we need to emulate those traits.
That's what the Aharon represents: the quality of the inside and the outside being one.
TRUTH
God has a signet ring.
When I was young, it was very popular to get a ring with your initials on it. I had one with and "M" and a "W." Because a ring like that had my initials, it wasn't just a piece of jewelry, it represented something about me.
God has a ring that spells the word "truth," emet in Hebrew. Emet is spelled aleph, mem, and tav. Aleph is the first letter of the alphabet, mem is in the middle, and tav is at the end. The letters of the word itself show us that truth is meant to be through and through (A to Z, in the vernacular). Truth represents God in the world. It's a piece of Him that we can express and envelop. Each individual can be a torch bearer of God merely by being honest and true.
There was a time, not that long ago, when you could hear someone say the phrase, "He's a man of his word. When he says something, you can count on it." Nowadays it doesn't seem as important to people; I wonder if it's even valued.
God's word is 100% reliable.
LOYALTY
Another trait being lost these days is loyalty. Baby boomers are known to have more loyalty than the present younger generation. In the 60s and 70s it was more common to find young people dedicated to causes. When people worked for a company, the employer and the employee tried to work out their differences if there was a conflict. People would stay with the same company for 40 years, then get a gold watch when they retire.
Nowadays, many people are constantly on the lookout to be leaving their job. Some take this attitude into marriage, fully anticipating the possibility of divorce.
Where's the loyalty anymore?
Loyalty doesn't mean you are forced to accept or condone any problems that arise. It means that you do your best to work out the problem, because you are indebted to each other. You are committed to the relationship unless you're forced to dissolve it.
DIFFERENT ROLES
How many masks do you wear?
It's not a question of "if" we wear masks; it's a question of "how many?" We have a mask for our boss, our employee, our spouse, our children, and our rabbi. Each mask is bound up in our ego and hard to throw away. The masks save us from embarrassment, or feeling bad about ourselves. They can make us feel smart and sophisticated. They are wonderful tools in society.
There's only one problem: Each and every mask is a tiny falsehood in the world. In order to be Godly, and experience the ecstasy of spirituality, you need to cling to every piece of God in the world you can. The key is to discard those masks, to have your outside and your inside matching as much as possible.
Spiritual Exercise:
For the next week, every person you speak to, ask yourself if you are wearing a mask at that very moment. If so, can you adjust it to a more core truth?
Halachos from Danny Shoemann
This year - 5771 - is a Jewish leap year; the 12th month (starting on Shabbat) will be Adar-I and the 13th month will be Adar-II. If a person dies during Adar in a non-leap year, then on leap years the Yahrzeit is observed during Adar-I. However, Kaddish should be said in both Adar-I and Adar-II. Nevertheless, in Adar-II he doesn't have the usual precedence given to a Yahrzeit; in places where only one person says Kaddish at a time, all other mourners get to say a Kaddish first, and if there are any left, he does too.
Source: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 221:3
The 2 days of Rosh Chodesh Adar-I start on Thursday evening. One increases joy when Adar begins. Adar is a good time to deal with court cases involving non-Jews. I have not been able to establish if - during a leap year - the above is also valid for Adar-I (being the "real" Adar; the 12th month) or it only refers to the Adar closest to our joyous month of redemption (Nissan), viz. Adar-II. Source: Kitzur Shulchan Aruch 141:1 The reason for having a legal battle in Adar is because legally we defeated Haman through the agent of Esther an Legally Mordechai nullified Haman’s laws. In Av it is the opposite due to the destruction of the Temple.
The 2 days of Rosh Chodesh Adar-I start this evening - Thursday evening. On Rosh Chodesh one adds יַעֲלֶה וְיָבוֹא into Birkas Hamazon and the Amida. On Friday we will call up 4 people to read from the Torah, between Hallel and Mussaf. On Shabbat we will take out 2 Sifrei Torah after Hallel. In the first one we will call up at least 7 people to read from Parsha Terumah. Then we call up the Maftir to read from the 2nd Sefer Torah. The Haftorah this week is הַשָּׁמַיִם כִּסְאִי for Shabbat-Rosh Chodesh, consisting of the last chapter in Sefer Yeshaya. In Mussaf one says the אַתָּה יָצַרְתָּ version (usually found at the bottom half of the Shabbat Mussaf pages) which includes both Shabbat and Rosh Chodesh.
Source: Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 425 Chodesh Tov and Shabbat Shalom - Danny
Down Went the Clown
One Saturday night in the year 5656 (1896), a wealthy businessman in Bagdad decided to celebrate his great success. To enliven the party, he invited Nissim the comedian, who used humor to mock others publicly. Standing on the table and sipping from a cupful of strong drink, Nissim made all sorts of bold gestures while he drew from his repertoire of cruel jokes and witty insults, filling the hall with noisy laughter.
During his performance he was offered a piece of fish, and ate from it while continuing to amuse the crowd. Suddenly, a large bone got stuck in his throat. Not knowing how to assist him, the spectators helplessly watched as Nissim turned blue and then fell to the floor, lifeless. Horrified, the wealthy host screamed in panic, for he feared he would be blamed for the comedian's death!
One of the onlookers suggested they place Nissim upstairs, in front of Saadia the Doctor's door, and so a group of volunteers from among the many guests carried the dead comedian to the second floor, knocked on the doctor's door and hurried away.
Saadia, hearing the knock, came to the door, but because it was dark, did not notice the man lying on the floor and tripped over Nissim's feet, causing them both to roll down the steps, one over the other. Recovering from the fall, he looked at the other fellow and gasped; by tripping over this man and making him fall, he had killed him! Not wanting to be punished for murder, he stood the body against a nearby wall and left.
Ezra the tailor, still busy working at this late hour, suddenly noticed someone looking into his window and was overcome with fear; perhaps a thief was trying to break in? He ordered him to leave immediately, but when there was no response, he took a hot iron and threw it, hitting the dead Nissim in the face and knocking him down. Seeing the body collapse, he was mortified, thinking that he had killed a man! Not wanting to be caught, he dragged the body into the street and stood him up against a tree.
Soon after, a drunkard passed by and thought this man was laughing at him, so he took his bottle of whiskey and hit Nissim on the head, causing the dead body to fall to the ground. At that moment, a police officer was walking by, and seeing what the drunkard had done, arrested him. The news spread around town that in two days the drunkard would be hung for having killed Nissim the comedian. Feeling guilty, the rich businessman, the doctor and tailor, each on their own, went separately to the police to admit that in truth, it was they who had killed Nissim.
The judge was unsure how to pass judgment. Never had he encountered such a strange situation, that four people should admit to killing one man! He decided to seek the advice of the nearby great Jewish sage, Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Bagdad, the Ben Ish Hai.
The day of the court case arrived and many gathered to see how this episode would be resolved. The judge proclaimed his verdict: "All four men are free from punishment! My decision is according to the wisdom of the great Rabbi." The judge went on to explain what he had learned. "Nissim the comedian caused his own death through his public mockery, and therefore he received punishment corresponding to all four forms of execution that Jews could have been sentenced to during the time of their Holy Temple."
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Source: Adapted by Yerachmiel Tilles from a passage in Lma'an Yishme'u 47
Rabbi Yosef Chaim of Bagdad, the Ben Ish Hai (27 Av 1834 - 13 Elul 1909), is one of the most important Sephardic Jewish sages in the last two centuries. At the age of 25, he succeeded to his father's rabbinical position and continued in it for 50 years. In 1869 he visited the Holy Land and was offered the position of Rishon LeZion (Sephardic Chief Rabbi), but he did not accept. A great scholar and Kabbalist and highly regarded as a pure and holy man, is rulings are adhered to still today by many Sephardim world-wide. He published many important books on Jewish law, Midrash, Kabbalah and Ethics. http://www.ascentofsafed.com/Stories/Stories/5771/687-21.html
From Gene Alberts: And it should be a sign on your arm (Shemos 13:16)
To weigh 100 gram Pistachio, 1 gram or 2 less or more really doesn’t matter to the seller or the buyer, but when you buy diamond, every karat, every shade, every color, the cut, and the tiniest flaw makes a great difference in the value of the diamond.
In last week’s Parsha (Bo) we are commanded about Tefillin, a diamond mitzvah that should not be treated like buying pistachio.
The importance of it being 100% kosher, the black color of the case and straps should be preserved completely at all time. The tefillin should be placed correctly on our head (in the front, not under the hair line and not too low on the back of the head) and the hand tefillin should be placed on the middle of the top of the arm towards the heart.
Otherwise it would be exactly like a defected radio transistor that would not be able to broadcast.
The commandment of putting on Tefillin is a daily reminder that Hashem redeemed us from Egypt (Tur 25).
And also have in mind that our soul and heart must serve Hashem at all times.
A story was told about Rabbaynu Yaakov Abukhatzira z"l, that once he asked a very special Sofer (scribe) to write for him a Tefillin with special kavanot of Rabenu HaAri Hakodesh, and with the maximum purity possible.
The Sofer was extremely happy to find such an opportunity to write Tefillin for Rabbaynu Abukhatzira.
Finally, when he was done, he brought the Parshiyos to the Rav. HaRav was very happy and started looking at the writings. As he was reading it all of a sudden he stopped and asked the Sofer, “Am I right that you forgot to have the special Kavannah (concentration) on this name of Hashem?"
The Sofer shocked and also embarrassed, replied apologetically, “Yes it is right.”
He wrote a new Tefillin Parsha for Rabbaynu Hakodesh.
When you treat the mitzvah like a diamond, then the receiver works perfectly like the transistor inside a radio.
As a result, you will be able to connect to the main source (Hashem) and you will make the right decision, and you won’t be confused or stuck. You’ll always be happy. When you do the mitzvah correctly you become a perfect RECEIVER.
- Binyamin Jadidi
The strategic value of the Shomron to Yisrael and note the picture of the airport was not taken too far from where I live see page 2: http://shomroncentral.blogspot.com/
I have been active in Israel for 40 years fighting for the complete land of Eretz Yisrael and Moshiach this is an obituary for an American Jew whom I heard the name for years as zealous for our land: http://www.globalyeshiva.com/profiles/blogs/afsi-mourns-loss-of-founder
One time all of Israel is United – for the first time since the Six Day War from the far right to even the way out left agree upon is that we cannot trust in treaties with the USA. We are watching the US abandon the Egyptian Moderates and talking about the Egyptian Brotherhood and Sharia law. (For information on whom can we trust read Talmud Sotah Daf 49 A and B through to the end.) As David Melech Yisrael wrote: Tehillim 121 - א שִׁיר, לַמַּעֲלוֹת: מֵאַיִן, יָבֹא עֶזְרִי. אֶשָּׂא עֵינַי, אֶל-הֶהָרִים-- 1 A Song of Ascents. I will lift up mine eyes unto the mountains: from whence shall my help come? עֹשֵׂה, שָׁמַיִם וָאָרֶץ. ב עֶזְרִי, מֵעִם יְהוָה-- 2 My help cometh from the LORD, who made heaven and earth. Suzanne on Facebook sent me this on my comment: Tehillim 125 - ב .יְרוּשָׁלִַם-- וַיהוָה, סָבִיב לְעַמּוֹ מֵעַתָּה, וְעַד-עוֹלָם הָרִים, סָבִיב לָהּ: 2 As the mountains are round about Jerusalem, so the LORD is round about His people, from this time forth and forever.
New Scam: Attention: Rabbi Rachamim Pauli I am Barrister Evason Kane, a solicitor at law and a personal attorney to Late Mr. P. A. Pauli, a relative that never existed.
Inyanay Diyoma
From Lynette: ANTI-SEMITISM AND ANTI-ISRAEL ON NJ CAMPUS: http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=257241
Egypt: http://www.debka.com/article/20598/
From Joe: http://www.americansagainsthate.org/press_releases/PR-Bassem_Alhalabi_4.php
Kassams and Katuyshas are back in stile again: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4022042,00.html
Dangerous Precedent and probably unconstitutional: http://www.americanindependent.com/165186/texas-rep-berman-files-resolution-to-ban-religious-or-cultural-law
My opinion precisely: http://jerusalemdefender.blogspot.com/2011/01/as-egypt-shakes-it-is-time-for-knesset.html
Further to my Torah mention above about the lack of trust in the USA: http://rubinreports.blogspot.com/2011/02/egypt-american-debate-has-gone-stark.html Even Jordan has had a Prime Minister Change and in Yemen the President is also going to step down and his son will not inherit. In Israel the gas station boycott worked and the new tax is being repealed.
After the coldest Dec. in the recorded temperature history of FL. The most record snowfall 36 inches vs. 27.4 in Central Park NY for any January on record. Al Gore has not given up. Roger G. wrote me: Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The great and powerful wizard Gore says he isn’t finished yet; despite appearances apparently – which one might think would be important to a man who has nothing else in his arsenal. http://mensnewsdaily.com/2010/03/06/al-gore-appears-note-to-warmers-no-more-do-overs/
9 or 10% of the Egyptian Population is Christian not to mention a few Jews in Cairo and other cities: http://westforwestwing2012.com/2011/02/02/christians-fear-for-their-lives-in-australia/
Tel Aviv going downhill: http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4023026,00.html
A BOOM FOR CAR THEIVES WITH NON-COMPAS MENTIS KEYS: http://autos.aol.com/article/protect-smart-keys-from-hackers/?icid=main%7Chtmlws-main-n%7Cdl5%7Csec1_lnk3%7C198869
Egypt fears the Manchurian Candidate: http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=258937
RJC Rejects Senator Rand Paul's Plan to End U.S. Assistance to Israel
Washington, D.C. (January 27, 2011) - Republican Jewish Coalition Executive Director Matthew Brooks today issued the following statement in response to freshman Senator Rand Paul's budget proposal, which would end all U.S. assistance to Israel:
"We share Senator Paul's commitment to restraining the growth of federal spending, but we reject his misguided proposal to end U.S. assistance to our ally, Israel.
"Moreover, based on his comments in an interview with CNN, we are concerned that Senator Paul may not grasp the fundamentals of our alliance with Israel. In 2007, the U.S. and Israel signed a ten-year 'Memorandum of Understanding' (MoU) to govern U.S. assistance going forward. A critical aim of the MoU was to preserve Israel's qualitative military advantage. Accordingly, any concern that U.S. assistance might undermine Israel's security is groundless.
"We are heartened to know that, with very few exceptions, congressional Republicans understand and appreciate the importance of this alliance to America's national security. And we are confident that few - if any - of Senator Paul's Republican colleagues will cosponsor a plan that reneges on an agreement with a critical ally."
During an interview with CNN on Wednesday, Wolf Blitzer questioned Senator Paul about the effect of the Senator's budget proposal on foreign aid. Blitzer then asked specifically about aid to Israel:
BLITZER: What about the $2 billion or $3 billion that goes every year to Israel? Do you want to eliminate that as well?
PAUL: Well, I think what you have to do is you have to look. When you send foreign aid, you actually quite a bit to Israel's enemies, Islamic nations around Israel get quite a bit of foreign aid, too.
BLITZER: Egypt gets almost the same amount?
PAUL: Almost the same amount so really you have to ask yourself, are we funding an arms race on both sides? I have a lot of sympathy and respect for Israel as a democratic nation, as a, you know, a fountain of piece and a fountain of democracy within the Middle East.
But at the same time, I don't think funding both sides of the arm race, particularly when we have to borrow the money from China to send it to someone else. We just can't do it anymore. The debt is all consuming and it threatens our well being as a country.
BLITZER: All right, so just to be precise, end all foreign aid including the foreign aid to Israel as well. Is that right?
PAUL: Yes. Both Ron and Rand Paul are not my cup of tea whether they are backed by the Tea Party or any Party. RP
The selling of the 'Palestine Papers' By Jackson Diehl
Anyone familiar with Israeli-Palestinian negotiations over the last decade will find nothing surprising about the supposed revelations in the "Palestine papers" published this week by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera and Britain's Guardian newspaper. Since at least the time of the 2000 Camp David talks brokered by President Bill Clinton, Palestinian leaders have accepted that Jewish neighborhoods of East Jerusalem will be annexed by Israel in a two-state settlement, and that only a handful of Palestinian refugees will "return" to the Jewish state -- the leading "news" reported so far.
What's sensational about the leaked documents, which appear to come from advisors to the Palestinian negotiating team, is the way they are being marketed by the two news organizations -- and how Palestinians are reacting to them. According to Al Jazeera, the negotiating positions on Jerusalem and refugees are shocking betrayals of the Palestinian cause, if not the Arab world as a whole. For the Guardian, they demonstrate the intransigence and the perfidy of Israel and the United States -- for supposedly failing to embrace such far-reaching concessions.
"PA selling short the refugees," Al Jazeera announced Tuesday on its English-language website, referring to the Palestinian authority of Mahmoud Abbas. "Barack Obama lifts then crushes Palestinian peace hopes," proclaimed The Guardian.
These are gross distortions. Not only have the reported Palestinian compromise positions been widely (if quietly) accepted by Arab governments, they were broadcast years ago in the Geneva Accord, a model agreement between Israeli and Palestinian leaders that was endorsed by Abbas, among others. Israel, for its part, responded with far-reaching compromises of its own: Prime Minister Ehud Olmert offered Abbas a Palestinian state with sovereignty over Jerusalem and all but six percent of The West Bank. It was Abbas, not Olmert, who refused to go forward during those 2008 talks.
The leak of the documents seems motivated by a desire to bury the already moribund peace process. "Al Jazeera is trying to destroy Abbas, and the Guardian wants to get Netanyahu," an Israeli official observes. They may well succeed, at least in the case of the aging and weak Palestinian president. Palestinian negotiators have felt obliged to deny and repudiate the reported concessions, even as they are denounced by their hard-line rivals in the Hamas movement.
Of course, the Palestinians helped to create their predicament. For years they have systematically failed to prepare their public opinion for the concessions that will have to be part of any two-state settlement. Is it really conceivable that Israel would or could tear down East Jerusalem neighborhoods where 190,000 of its citizens now live, or allow hundreds of thousands of Palestinian refugees to move inside its pre-1967 borders? No one seriously engaged in Middle East diplomacy -- American, Arab or European -- thinks so. But that has never been explained to most Palestinians.
In fact, Abbas and his Palestinian team are currently refusing to negotiate with Netanyahu in part because he has refused to freeze construction in East Jerusalem Jewish neighborhoods -- the same neighborhoods that the Palestinians have agreed that Israel will keep.
The sad irony is that if the Palestinian papers reveal anything, it is the yawning gap that continues to exist between the most generous Israeli and Palestinian offers. While accepting the inevitability of Israeli annexation in Jerusalem, the Palestinians are shown to reject the transfer to Israel of several of the largest West Bank settlements -- including Maale Adumin, a development that Abbas conceded to Israel in the Geneva Initiative. As a simple matter of practicality, it's difficult to imagine Israel evacuating a town that lies just outside Jerusalem and contains 35,000 people.
Abbas's number for returning refugees -- 100,000 over ten years -- was ten times higher than that of Olmert. Meanwhile both Netanyahu and principal Israeli opposition leader Tzipi Livni oppose any return of refugees.
Now, thanks to Al Jazeera and the Guardian, Palestinians are retreating even from their not-good-enough ideas. Far from coming under pressure to make new concessions, Netanyahu and his right-wing government can relax in the knowledge that the peace process is going backward. Leaks of documents are supposed to provide clarity. The Palestine papers have merely muddied the diplomatic waters. From: http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2011/01/the_selling_of_the_palestine_p.html
If this is true it is frightening! Look back a couple of hundred years or less, in history and you will see that the Western countries had a Foreign Trade Zone in Shanghai where all the business with Chna was conducted and where all the foreigners had to live and were kept out of the rest of China./ I guess this is tit for tat!
Shona
Subject: Foreign Trade Zones. This is unbelievable at first, but you will soon realize that there are several motives for the global communists to physically weave our United States territory together with communist China. Read On! Here's what is going on!
Each and every one of our state governors has approved and allocated a certain amount of acres of their U.S. state land to be inhabited by Chinese communists --communists straight from China! They are to set up little towns and live here, supposedly for the purpose of producing Chinese products for sale in the U.S.A. The land the states are giving them for their little towns will be considered "foreign territory"!!! We are told that the laws of the state (in which these Chinese communists dwell) will apply to the communist Foreign Trade Zone (FTZ). Comment: If so, why are they allowed in here!??! Isn't the whole set up unlawful??? There are 257 of these little communist towns to be built all over the United States. Go to this website and see the list of the states, and how many FTZ's are to be erected in each and every state! Our nation is being peppered all over with these communist closed towns called "zones"! This insane brainstorm by Washington, D.C. officials was just recently discovered by alert citizens in the State of Idaho, where an FTZ is being built there, just south of Boise, Idaho, possibly 30,000 acres of Idaho is going to be used for that FTZ. Check this site quickly before it is removed:
http://ia.ita.doc.gov/ftzpage/letters/ftzlist-map.html
When you get to this website, be prepared by having enough paper to print 40 pages, listing all the FTZ's to be built over the whole United States! 257 of these FTZ's! It is absolute insanity!! How gullible are we??? …
OBAMA'S LEGACY OF HOPE AND CHANGE IN THE MID EAST by Michael Widlanski 30 January 2011
President Barack Obama promised that his election meant not only "hope and change" for America but for the world, especially the Middle East. President Obama criticized America's past actions while touting his own Islamic connections-from his Arabic-sounding middle name to his youth in Indonesia.
After two years in office, a look at the record shows Obama has kept his promise about "change," but not necessarily about "hope."
. President Obama's first foreign trip was a journey to Turkey, where he saluted the extremist Islamist regime, and less than a year later, that regime has used the cover of "democracy" to impose its Islamist policies locally. Turkish Prime Minister Recep Erdogan leads a viciously anti-Semitic campaign against Israel, using a so-called "human rights flotilla" that was really a terror operation in support of the Hamas terror regime in Gaza.
. In a dramatic speech before thousands at Cairo University, Obama attested that America was one of the largest Islamic countries, expecting his statements would produce "moderation" in the Islamic sphere. Less than a year later, Obama and his top advisors appear clueless and impotent, as Islamic militants seem poised to seize power from the regime Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak (over issues ranging from corruption to high food prices). Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton are urging "restraint"
(the favorite theme of the US State Department) the same way Jimmy Carter urged restraint on the Shah of Iran in the face of Ayatollah Khomeini. We know how that ended. The Obama-Clinton public statements actually seem to be a disavowal of Mubarak who is far from perfect exemplar of democracy. Still, Mubarak, for all his faults, is a better friend to the US than Muhammad Baradei, the UN-foisted opportunist who helped cover up proliferation of WMD by despots on his way to winning a Nobel peace prize.
. Obama, Clinton and Vice President Joe Biden pushed a militant anti-Israel negotiating stance, including demands for no Israeli construction in Jerusalem, and surprisingly (for Obama et al), the Palestinian Authority stiffened its own demands and refused to talk to Israel directly-thus reversing 20 years of direct talks.
. Obama "engaged" the Iranian revolutionary regime, and the Iranians responded by speeding up their construction of nuclear weapons, while simultaneously brutally repressing real democratic protests over a pathetically rigged election.
. President Obama violated all tradition to send an ambassador to Syria, using a congressional recess to sneak through the appointment that would never have passed. And this has helped produce change. Under George W. Bush, Syria and its Iranian-funded Hezballah terror militia ally were forced to pull back from Lebanon. Under the engaging and smiling policies of President Barack Obama, Lebanon is falling once again into the hands of Hezballah, Syria and Iran. What will Obama do: recall America's ambassador from Syria or re-engage the killer regime in Iran?
"Islam has always been a part of America's story," Obama declared in his Cairo speech, but less than two years later, it seems that it will be radical Islam that will remain a central part of Obama's personal story and his administration's legacy.
Obama and Clinton are missing the real story in Egypt, which has some similarity to the story of Iran in 1978 and 1979: a pro-American authoritarian regime has invited protest because of personal and economic weakness combined with charges of corruption. The ailing octogenarian Mubarak (who has been in and out of hospitals) resembles the ailing Shah. Neither man would have been my choice as a contestant for American Idol, but the question was and is-who is the alternative? The ayatollahs of Iran have
certainly been worse than the Shah in every respect, and they established the worst terror-supporting government in the world (even more than North Korea). Of course, the ayatollahs were not the only ones protesting the Shah, but they knew how to exploit the general unrest-and calls for democracy-in order to come to power. Once in power, they epitomized Professor Bernard Lewis's adroit description of the Islamist desire for democracy: "one man, one vote, onetime only."
In Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood and its kindred groups al-gema'at al-Islamiyya and Takfir Wa-Higra as well as Egyptian Islamic Jihad are the kinds of organizations that spawned the groups that attacked the World Trade Center in 1993 and September 11, 2001. We should remember that every time Obama and Hillary Clinton rushed to scold Mubarak for trying to hold on to power, while they were strangely silent when the ayatollahs used far more abusive power against a non-Islamic democratic protest. WHAT ABOUT THE HEALTH CARE LAW AND OVER SPENDING IN THEIR OWN BACKYARD???
Obama-Clinton have also been very reticent about some of the mob behavior in Egypt, such as the looting of museums and stores. Why not urge a little restraint on the mobs, too?
Both the Sunni Islamists of Egypt and the Shiite Islamists of Iran pray on the gullibility of Western diplomats and pundits who usually cannot connect the dots in Arabic or any other Semitic language. In Semitic languages, the dots serve as vowels, and when you cannot read the dots, you cannot connect them or read the situation.
That is why Barack, Hillary and Jimmy see H-M-S and they read humus, and they take a big bite. Afterwards, when they discover they have Hamas in their mouths: and they have bitten off more than they can chew.
Too often Western leaders and journalists simply do not know the difference between Hamas and humus.
Like Muhammad Baradei and Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama has won a Nobel Peace Prize, but we should be asking ourselves how much is this award-winning performance going to cost us.
THE PRAGMATIC FANTASY by CAROLINE B. GLICK, Jerusalem Post January 28, 2011Forwarded with major commentary by Emanuel A. Winston, Mid East Analyst & Commentator
The Free West has yet to recognize many things in the Muslim Arab world and especially refuses to see reality. The role of the Strong-Man started with the desert tribes where the Muktar (tribal leader) ruled with an iron hand and the people he ruled accepted his ruthlessness.
That way of life was passed on to the nations after they were conquered and/or conquered by Islam. There was only one ruler and the streets were quiet. Now there are 57 predominantly Muslim countries in the world. 1,300,000,000 Muslims are a growing world population.
Under Islamic rule, riots were ruthlessly suppressed. The First Intifada under Yassir Arafat started in Rafah, Gaza December 1987. On the Egyptian side of the border, trucks pulled up to the rioters; flaps were thrown open and the Egyptian Army machine-gunned the PLO rioters in Gaza. No intifada continued on the Egyptian side but, it continued to build up on the Israeli side,killing some 1,500 Jews before ending in 1993.
In those countries ruled by Islam torture and death were the rule and not the exception. When the poor became angry beyond control, their rulers found a convenient enemy – like the Jewish Nation/State of Israel – to shout and wage war against. Perhaps they learned this M.O. (Modus Operandi) from the European Kings and the Church who did the same in their time.
Today radical Islamists/Jihadists (warriors for Islam) gain power by always preparing for war against the Jewish Nation/State of Israel. No doubt, they will continue to do so. Our best self-defense is for each of us to be strong and to insist that the Jewish State remain strong by not surrendering any of our G-d given Jewish Land for peace. Bullies won’t attack a strong, self-determined people or State – or if they do, they will lose.
We observe how Mohamed ElBaradei is climbing on the bandwagon of a peoples’ revolt in Egypt, although he himself seems to be a plant or stooge of Iran’s dictatorship, dedicated to protecting Iran’s rapid development of nuclear weapons’ capability.
Be assure that, if Egypt is finally taken over by the Muslim Brotherhood/Islamists, they will move to use the $80 Billion dollars of free U.S. high-tech armaments to take over (first) Saudi Arabia with its oil and money – much the same as Saddam Hussein moved to take over Kuwait’s oil and riches. Look where he wound up.
Once Jihadists are in control of Saudi Arabia, Israel might be vulnerable to a pincer maneuver of surrounding radical Muslim countries of the Middle East and North Africa.
COMMENTARY BY EMANUEL A. WINSTON
###
THE PRAGMATIC FANTASY by CAROLINE B. GLICK, Jerusalem Post January 28, 2011
The “Arab Street’s” overwhelming animosity toward Israel causes pragmatists to argue that Israel’s best play is to cut deals with Arab dictators.
Today, the Egyptian regime faces its gravest threat since Anwar Sadat’s assassination 30 years ago. As protesters take to the street for the third day in a row, demanding the overthrow of 82-year-old President Hosni Mubarak, it is worth considering the possible alternatives to his regime.
On Thursday afternoon, presidential hopeful Mohamed ElBaradei, the former head of the UN’s IAEA (International Atomic Energy Agency), returned to Egypt from Vienna to participate in anti-regime demonstrations.
As IAEA head, ElBaradei shielded Iran's nuclear weapons program from the Security Council.
He repeatedly ignored evidence indicating that Iran's nuclear program was a military program rather than a civilian energy program. When the evidence became too glaring to ignore, ElBaradei continued to lobby against significant UN Security Council sanctions or other actions against Iran and obscenely equated Israel's purported nuclear program to Iran's.
His actions won him the support of the Iranian regime which he continues to defend. Just last week he dismissed the threat of a nuclear armed Iran telling the Austrian News Agency, "There's a lot of hype in this debate," and asserting that the discredited 2007 US National Intelligence Estimate that claimed Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program in 2003 remains accurate.
ElBaradei’s support for the Iranian ayatollahs is matched by his support for the Muslim Brotherhood.
This group, which forms the largest and best organized opposition movement to the Mubarak regime is the progenitor of Hamas and al Qaida. It seeks Egypt's transformation into an Islamic regime that will stand at the forefront of the global jihad. In recent years, the Muslim Brotherhood has been increasingly drawn into the Iranian nexus along with Hamas. Muslim Brotherhood attorneys represented Hezb’Allah terrorists arrested in Egypt in 2009 for plotting to conduct spectacular attacks aimed at destroying the regime.
ElBaradei has been a strong champion of the Muslim Brotherhood. Just this week he gave an interview to Der Spiegel defending the Jihadist movement. As he put it, "We should stop demonizing the Muslim Brotherhood. ...[T]hey have not committed any acts of violence in five decades. They too want change. If we want democracy and freedom, we have to include them instead of marginalizing them."
The Muslim Brotherhood for its part has backed ElBaradei’s political aspirations. On Thursday it announced it would demonstrate at ElBaradei's side the next day.
Then there is the Kifaya movement. The group sprang onto the international radar screen in 2004 when it demanded open presidential elections and called on Mubarak not to run for a fifth term. As a group of intellectuals claiming to support liberal, democratic norms, Kifaya has been upheld as a model of what the future of Egypt could look like if liberal forces are given the freedom to lead.
But Kifaya's roots and basic ideology are not liberal. They are anti-Semitic and anti-American.
Kifaya was formed as a protest movement against Israel with the start of the Palestinian terror war in 2000. It gained force in March 2003 when it organized massive protests against the US-led invasion of Iraq. In 2006 its campaign to get a million Egyptians to sign a petition demanding the abrogation of Egypt's peace treaty with Israel received international attention.
Many knowledgeable Egypt-watchers argued this week that the protesters have no chance of bringing down the Mubarak regime. Unlike this month's overthrow of Tunisia's despot Zine El Abidine Ben Ali, they say there is little chance that the Egyptian military will abandon Mubarak.
But the same observers are quick to note that whoever Mubarak selects to succeed him will not be the beneficiary of such strong support from Egypt's security state. And as the plight of Egypt's overwhelmingly impoverished citizenry becomes ever more acute, the regime will become increasingly unstable. Indeed, its overthrow is as close to a certainty as you can get in international affairs.
As we now see, all of its possible secular and Islamist successors either reject outright Egypt's peace treaty with Israel or will owe their political power to the support of those who reject the peace with the Jewish state. So whether the Egyptian regime falls next week or next year or five years from now, the peace treaty [with Israel] is doomed.
Since the start of Israel's peace process with Egypt in 1977, supporters of peace with the Arabs have always fallen into two groups: the idealists and the pragmatists.
Led by Shimon Peres, the idealists have argued that the reason the Arabs refuse to accept Israel is because Israel took "their" land in the 1967 Six Day War. Never mind that the war was a consequence of Arab aggression or that it was simply a continuation of the Arab bid to destroy the Jewish state which officially began with Israel's formal establishment in 1948. As the idealists see things, if Israel just gives up all the land it won in that war, the Arabs will be appeased and accept Israel as a friend and natural member of the Middle East's family of nations.
Peres was so enamored with this view that he authored The New Middle East and promised that once all the land was given away, Israel would join the Arab League.
Given the absurdity of their claims, the idealists were never able to garner mass support for their positions. If it had just been up to them, Israel would never have gotten on the peace train. But lucky for the idealists, they have been able to rely on the unwavering support of the unromantic pragmatists to implement their program.
Unlike the starry-eyed idealists, the so-called pragmatists have no delusions that the Arabs are motivated by anything other than hatred for Israel, or that their hatred is likely to end in the foreseeable future. But still, they argue, Israel needs to surrender.
It is the "Arab Street's" overwhelming animosity towards Israel that causes the pragmatists to argue that Israel's best play is to cut deals with Arab dictators who rule with an iron fist. Since Israel and the Arab despots share a fear of the Arab masses, the pragmatists claim that Israel should give up all the land it took control over as a payoff to the regimes, who in exchange will sign peace treaties with it.
This was the logic that brought Israel to surrender the strategically priceless Sinai Peninsula to Egypt in exchange for the Camp David accord that will not survive Mubarak.
And of course, giving up the Sinai wasn't the only sacrifice Israel made for that nearly defunct document. Israel also gave up its regional monopoly on US military platforms. Israel agreed that in exchange for signing the deal, the US would begin providing massive military aid to Egypt. Indeed, it agreed to link US aid to Israel with US aid to Egypt.
Owing to that US aid, the Egyptian military today makes the military Israel barely defeated in 1973 look like a gang of cavemen. Egypt has nearly 300 F-16s. Its main battle tank is the M1A1 which it produces in Egypt [thanks to Casper Weinberger]. Its navy is largest in the region. Its army is twice the size of the IDF. Its air defense force constitutes a massive threat to the IAF. And of course, the ballistic missiles and chemical weapons it has purchased from the likes of North Korea and China give it a significant stand-off mass destruction capability.
Despite its strength, due to the depth of popular Arab hatred of Israel and Jews, the Egyptian regime was weakened by its peace treaty. Partially in a bid to placate its opponents and partially in a bid to check Israeli power, Egypt has been the undisputed leader of the political war against Israel raging at international arenas throughout the world. So too, Mubarak has permitted and even encouraged massive anti-Semitism throughout Egyptian society.
With this balance sheet at the end of the "era of peace," between Israel and Egypt, it is far from clear that Israel was right to sign the deal in the first place. In light of the relative longevity of the regime it probably made sense to have made some deal with Egypt. But it is clear that the price Israel paid was outrageously inflated and unwise.
In contrast to the Egyptian regime, as the popular outcry following Al Jazeera's publication of the Palestinian negotiations documents this week shows, the Fatah-run Palestinian Authority is as weak as can be. Yitzhak Rabin, the godfather of the pragmatist camp famously argued that Yassir Arafat and Fatah would handle the Israel-hating Palestinian Street, "without the Supreme Court and B'Tselem."
Rabin argued that it made sense to surrender massive amounts of strategically critical land to a terrorist organization because Arafat and his associates would repress their people with an iron fist, unfettered by the rule of law and Palestinian human rights organizations.
And yet, the fact of the matter is that Arafat commanded the terror war against Israel that began in 2000 and transformed Palestinian society into a Jihadist society that popularly elected Hamas to lead it.
The leaked Palestinian documents don't tell us much we didn't already know about the nature of negotiations between Israel and Fatah. The Palestinians demanded that the baseline of talks assume that all the disputed territories actually belong to them. And for no particular reason, Tzipi Livni and Ehud Olmert agreed to these historically unjustified terms of reference.
While this was well known, in publishing the documents, Al Jazeera has still made two important contributions to the public debate.
First, the PA's panicked reaction to the documents exposes the ridiculousness of the notion that the likes of Mahmoud Abbas, Saeb Erekat and Salam Fayyad are viable partners for peace.
Not only do they lack the power to maintain a peace deal with Israel. They lack to power to sign a peace deal with Israel. All they can do is talk - far away from the cameras - about hypothetical, marginal concessions in a peace that will never, ever be achieved. The notion that Israel should pay any price for a deal with these nobodies is completely ridiculous.
The Al Jazeera papers also expose Livni's foolishness.
Just as she failed to recognize the inherent weakness of the Lebanese state when she championed UN Security Council Resolution 1701 which called for the Hezb’Allah-dominated Lebanese army to deploy to the border with Israel at the end of the 2006 war, so Livni failed to understand the significance of the inherent weakness of Fatah as she negotiated away Gush Etzion and Har Homa.
And she didn't need Al Jazeera's campaign against the PA to understand that she was speaking to people who represent no one. That basic fact was already proven with Hamas's victory in the 2006 elections.
The truths exposed by the convulsive events of the past month make it abundantly clear that Israel lives in a horrible neighborhood. It is a neighborhood where popular democracy means war against Israel.
In this neck of the woods, it is not pragmatic to surrender. It is crazy.
Originally published in The Jerusalem Post. Posted on January 28, 2011 at 7:33 AM © 2011 Caroline Glick
Consider this:
Last night (Tuesday, Feb. 1st) the daughter of Michael and Malki Fuah married the son of Rabbi Uri and Ronit Cherky.
Michael Fuah is Moshe Feiglin’s "right hand man" in Manhigut Yehudit and responsible for all of Manhigut Yehudit's political activity.
Ronit Cherky is a member of Manhigut's Board of Directors.
The wedding was held in Bet Shemesh. 14 Likud Ministers, Deputy Ministers and MKs attended the festivities.
Ministers: Gideon Sa’ar, Gilad Erdan, Moshe Kachlon, Limor Livnat and Yuli Edelstsein Deputy Ministers: Leah Ness and Gila Gamliel Speaker of the Knesset: Ruby Rivlin
MK’s: Tzippy Hotoveli, Yariv Levine, Tzion Pinyon, Miri Regev, Danny Danon and Carmel Shamah
Why did these 14 major players in Likud attend this wedding?
It wasn’t held in the Hilton so being at a "fancy" dinner was certainly not the reason. It is not election season so they were not campaigning. No money people were at the wedding either.
The reason is simple.
These 14 men and women (representing over 50% of the Likud members of Knesset!) understand that without Moshe Feiglin, Michael Fuah and their supporters, their own political lives are in jeopardy. Ministers in the government realize the strength that Moshe and Michael have and they take us VERY SERIOUSLY.
Have a great Shabbos and pray for the welfare of Am Yisrael,
Rachamim Pauli
