Personal thoughts on current events, cultural events, Israel, Judaism, Jewish/Israel innovations and life from a Jewish perspective - read into that what you may.

Monday, December 22, 2003

A response to the Editorial Column of the Jewish Week edition for Shabbat 12/21/03

http://www.thejewishweek.com/top/editcolcontent.php3



Letter to the Editor:



Dear Gary,



I would like to disagree with your editorial. How can we expect American college students to feel proud about Israel, regardless of what we teach them, if Israelis do not feel proud about Israel???!!!



Today’s war in Israel is not about borders, as the media makes it out to be, rather at its core it is a war about an idea – the idea that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people. The Arabs have always fought against this idea and we see today that they have succeeded in convincing most of the world, most of the Jews and many Israelis too!



In order to win this war, we need leaders who can stand up for the right of the Jewish people to live in all of the land of Israel, anything less is a symbolic gesture to the Arabs that we are wrong and they are right

!

In the Madrid conference, it is said that a Syrian official confronted an Israeli official and asked him if he believes that the Land of Israel belongs to the Jewish people and the Israeli official answered yes. The Syrian official then responded to the Israeli that obviously he doesn’t believe it because he is in Madrid talking about giving away parts of the Land of Israel to others!

In our eyes we might see practicality, but in the Arabs eyes this is a symbolic weakening of the Jewish people that has continued until this day!



When we have Israeli leaders who stand up for our right to live in all of Israel, regardless of the pressure, then Israelis, Americans, and even American college students will feel proud of Israel. Until then, we will all be embarrassed by Israel’s existence, because it is not standing up for us, actually, it is barely standing at all.



May we soon experience the type of pride in the Land of Israel that world Jewry felt after the 1967 war, operation Entebbee and the bombing of the Iraqi nuclear reactor. Pride based on the knowledge that the Land of Israel is a proud country that stands up for itself and for the Jewish people.



Avi

Friday, December 19, 2003

Goooooood Morning Am Yisrael!!!!!!!!!!

Hello one and all and Erev Chanukah Sameach!



It is time to wake up!! Time to wake up to reality.



Please tell me when will we wake up, when? When will you wake up?



We all spend our days and nights trying to make a parnasah, trying to be good Jews, doing what we were taught to do. What else should we be expected to do? Life is hard and busy and few of us have the guts, the time or the energy to really do what is necessary to stand up for the right of the Jewish people to live in the Land of Israel. (This message is for everybody, those living in chutz laaretz and those living in Israel).



Nobody prepared us for this moment, not our Rabbis, not our teachers and not even our parents.



What moment, do you ask?

G-d couldn’t be more of clearer about the moment we are up against, if only we begin to open up our hearts and minds a little and realize the holiday we are about to celebrate. A true sign from heaven.



How ironic that we are about to celebrate the holiday of Chanukah, where the few beat the many, the righteous ones beat the evil ones, where our fiercest enemies were our own brothers who wanted to assist in eradicating the Judaism of the Jewish people, allowing the takeover of the land of Israel with the impure Greek culture of the time.



Now wake up to reality!!! Don’t you get it? This whole peace process is a scam. There is no peace and there will be no peace. There is nobody to talk to from our enemies (because “you only make peace with your enemies” – remember that propagandist line that got Oslo started?), yet we must constantly make gestures for our enemies to prove our sincerity for peace. Hmmmm…



The Antiochus of our time, the Haman of our generation, the Hitler who lives in our own backyard, Arafat, - is a known terrorist, the father of airplane hijacking and essentially a mass murderer, and an “obstacle to peace”. YET, he is the most protected person on this planet. Unlike Osama Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein, we don’t have to look all over the world and in holes in the group to find Arafat, we know exactly where he is. But he is a VIP, protected by the great world leaders free from receiving justice from the Israeli people. Again, Hmmm…..



And yet, in this comical reality, our own leaders seem to be bending to the pressure to transfer Jews from their homes. You got to love the moral compass of the Left – transfer of Arabs is immoral, but transfer of Jews is moral. (If you fell for that moral inequivalence, I’ll sell you the Brooklyn bridge tomorrow)



The Israeli government is planning on transfering the Jews from Migron, in the Shomron, 10 minutes from Yerushalayim. Migron is a settlement of 43 families, with a playground, a library and a kupat cholim (health clinic). Families have set up their homes there, their children were born there. And you fell for the argument that, no matter how painful, it is moral to transfer them from their homes???



However, all is kosher for that elusive peace, oh yes, no wrong can be done if it is in the name of peace. Peace, the new religion of the modern world, THE pinnacle of morality. This is the poppycock that we all have internalized, hook, line and sinker!



Wake up!! The Greeks are coming, the Greeks are coming and we are caving into their pressure??!!!



You know there is a famous quote about honor that I want to share with you. It goes like this “he who runs after honor chases it away, yet he who runs away from honor, is chased by it”.



I think it is about time we start to realize that the same formula also exists vis a vis peace --- he who runs after peace chases it away, yet he who runs away from peace, is chased by it. Read these few lines again, internalize it and think. Now continue...



Chanukah was one of our finest moments as a people because we stood up for ourselves, against our own brothers, for our religion, for our holy places…..against all odds, and especially against the greatest power of the world at the time. It is not just ok to stand up for our beliefs, it is a must because that is our purpose in the world as Jews. Don’t you see, we can only become an ohr lagoim if we are true to ourselves and to our beliefs. And that is hard work!



That is why we are the “chosen people” - chosen to struggle against all odds to bring light into this world of darkness, to align the moral compass of the world according to the moral compass given to us by Hashem. We are not doing our duty if we give up on our beliefs because of the pressure of the many – that is failing ourselves, and failing humanity.



So let’s not go through this upcoming Chanukah as robots – lighting the candles, singing the songs, and eating latkes – because that is what we always do, reflecting upon it only as a part of our history. This year, realize that it is not just our history, it is also a sign of our present and a ray of inspiration for our future. This Chanukah internalize the greatness of our beliefs, the valor of our virtues as a nation, the greatness of the Maccabbees and their actions and the guts it takes to be part of a nation that stands up for itself against all odds - and begin to act the way we are supposed to act.



Then think if your mundane life really encompass what it means to be a Jew.



We are living in a historic time, a time where we in Israel are coming to realize that we must be inspired by the Maccabees to resist our own elected leadership, who have been blinded and bribed by the modern Greeks, to stand up for our right as a people, to live freely in our own country.



Migron is only the test of our will. But it is the beginning of the battle over our right to live here, not just in YESHA, but in all of Israel. (If you think I’m exaggerating then just pay more attention to the details of all the so called peace plans promoted by the world - not the media reports, but the details!)



May we all wake up, be inspired by our history and do what we must for Am Yisrael, Eretz Yisrael and Torat Yisrael.



On that note….



Boker Tov to reality and have an inspiring Chanuka,

Avi

Tuesday, December 02, 2003

Beilin is a Trojan Horse for the EU in Israel

By: Avi Abelow

The following should be spread as far and wide as possible:

In practicallity, all support for Beilin, his ideas, his agreements and his new party is support for the European Union running Israel and Israeli policy.

Investigative reporter Yoav Yitzchak reported in the February 8th, 2002 issue of Ma'ariv
that
former Labor Party MK Yossi Beilin is drawing an annual salary of NIS
350,000 - NIS 400,000 from The Economic Cooperation Foundation (ECF), a
Tel
Aviv based organization that he formed with Yair Hirschfeld at the end
of
1990.

Yitzchak notes that the bulk of the ECF budget is covered by the
European
Union. In addition to the salary, ECF covers Beilin's heavy travel
expenses - including meetings with Palestinians overseas.

For all practical purposes, Yitzchak writes, the European Union is
paying
for Beilin to negotiate with the Palestinians.


For the original investigative article in hebrew (at the bottom of the article):
http://images.maariv.co.il/cache/cachearchive/08022002/ART245622.html

For other articles (in english) on the direct involvement of the European Union in Israeli politics:

http://israelvisit.co.il/cgi-bin/friendly.pl?url=Jun-27-01!EU - Another investigative article by Yoav Yitzchak from Maariv

http://www.jcpa.org/jl/vp418.htm - A Jerusalem Center Public Affairs Article by Gerald Steinberg

http://www.cdn-friends-icej.ca/medigest/may99/midwife.html

http://www.ourjerusalem.com/news/story/news20010719a.html

Please pass this email on in all directions.

Remember - G-d helps those who help themselves,
Avi