Is World Waking Up?

Prominent non-Jews start to understand anti-Semitism threatens their societies.

by Manfred Gerstenfeld

The international attention about the Second Conference of the Inter-parliamentary Coalition for Combating Anti-Semitism in Ottawa earlier this month has largely focused on the outstanding speech by Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, leader of the Conservative Party.

It is indeed rare in today’s world to hear any prime minister say about the United Nations: “There are, after all, a lot more votes in being anti-Israeli than in taking a stand. But as long as I am prime minister, whether it is at the UN or the Francophonie or anywhere else, Canada will take that stand whatever the cost. And friends, I say this not just because it is the right thing to do, but because history shows us, and the ideology of the anti-Israeli mob tells us all too well if we listen to it, that those who threaten the existence of the Jewish people are a threat to all of us.”

For many people abroad, Harper’s statement came as a surprise. His government, however, has a long record of pro-Israeli actions and statements. He was barely in power when he withdrew Canada’s financial assistance to the Palestinian Authority government when Hamas' Ismail Haniyeh became its prime minister in 2006. Harper supported Israel in the 2006 Lebanon War. In that year, Canada also opposed a resolution condemning Israel at the gathering of French-speaking nations. To reach unanimity the text was modified and didn’t mention Israel. Canada was also the first country to announce that it would not attend the Durban II Anti-racism conference in 2009 in Geneva.

Canada has indeed paid for this pro-Israeli attitude. In the recent elections for a seat in the Security Council it was defeated by Portugal. Portuguese sources said that Iran and Venezuela together made an effort to promote the country’s election to the Security Council. One will have to follow Portuguese Mideast policy to see whether the country will pay back Iran and Venezuela or ignore them now that it has been elected.

Will US follow Canada's example?
Opposition Leader, Michael Ignatieff of the Liberal party, made a very positive speech as well. One of the remarks of this historian and former Harvard professor was: “We should seek to end the parade of one-sided resolutions at the United Nations. We should use whatever influence we have to restore the balance in the work of the United Nations human rights bodies. We don’t claim that Israel is perfect but singling out one country for repeated denunciations while ignoring the human rights abuses of others is a flagrant misuse of the United Nations.”

The problem with the Liberals - which traditionally draw the majority of the Jewish vote - is their record toward Israel. Under the last Liberal Prime Minister, Paul Martin, then-Foreign Minister Pierre Pettigrew went to Arafat’s funeral in November 2004. At that time, it was already widely known that Arafat had personally authorized and financed suicide attacks against Israeli citizens in the years after he received the Nobel Prize for peace. In 2005 Pettigrew laid a wreath on Arafat’s grave.

Irwin Cotler, the driving force behind the Ottawa conference, was Justice Minister on behalf of the Liberals in the Martin cabinet. He succeeded to bring parliamentarians from 45 countries to Canada. His accomplishment in establishing - as an opposition parliamentarian - the Canadian Parliamentarian Commission for Combating Anti-Semitism as an interparty body was even more major, in view of the partisan atmosphere in Canadian politics. The commission report will be ready this spring and I have been told by some of its members that it will inter alia devote attention to the substantial problems of anti-Semitism at a variety of Canadian campuses. The Parti Quebecois, which promotes sovereignty for the French-speaking province left the Commission midway. Yet its leader attended the Ottawa conference and did not cause problems.

When attending such a conference so much is going on, that one can only see part of it. In one of the commissions I attended, the question was raised whether one will ever hear US President Obama or Foreign Minister Hillary Clinton make statements like Harper’s. These remarks were well in place because Obama was at the time in Indonesia and criticized Israel’s plan to expand settlements and remained silent about the fact that 25% of Indonesia’s Muslims share the world view of Osama bin Laden and 13% support suicide bombing. The American president there also made the ridiculous remark that Indonesia’s democracy and tolerance should be an example for the world.

Genocidal anti-Semitism
A crucial issue in the discussions at the conference was the genocidal anti-Semitism coming out of parts of the Muslim world. Many examples of hate mongering by Muslims were mentioned. One of the pioneers of the parliamentary combat against anti-Semitism has been British Labor Parliamentarian John Mann who represents a constituency almost without Jews. He has explained that Jews helped his grandparents in difficult times and that story was passed on through the generations in his family.

At the gala dinner where Mann spoke, he mentioned that the Muslim Public Affairs Committee UK had called for the defeat of six candidates whom it considered pro-Zionist. Four of these lost in the last elections, though not necessarily because of this. This opposition to pro-Israelis happens elsewhere as well. A former Portuguese European Parliamentarian told me that the Iranians managed to get him off the Social Democrats’ list of candidates in the last European election because of his pro-Israeli positions.

Despite all, the attention to Muslim mass murder threats, violence and hate mongering, the Ottawa Protocol accepted by the conference doesn’t mention the word "Muslim." The political climate in Canada is such that the text would be decried as Islamophobic despite all the evidence of the major genocidal forces in the Muslim world. That is as much a sign of the times in which we live as the fact that many prominent non-Jews start to understand that anti-Semitism threatens their societies.

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld has published eighteen books, several of which deal with anti-Semitism.





Ynet News

We Need More Jews

Both Israel, US Jewish community must implement population growth methods

by Lawrence J. Epstein

The two major centers of the world’s Jewish population, Israel and the United States, both have demographic challenges, though for different reasons and of different kinds. Both need to implement methods for demographic growth.

Israel’s demographic problem comes from two sources. Zionist theorists didn’t grasp that the Arab world around Israel viewed itself, even if more in theory than practice, as a nation of Arab and Muslim nations and Israel as a foreign and unwelcome minority nation in that nation of nations.

That is, the Jewish population in Israel is demographically comparable to earlier Jewish minority groups. Their regional minority status currently prevents them from assuming the attributes of a normal sovereign nation. No one questions whether Argentina should exist or whether Austria will still be around in 50 years.

The second source of the problem emerges from a demographic competition between Israeli Jews and Israeli Arabs. Demography is destiny in a democracy. As a democracy, Israel will have its political, economic, religious, and cultural soul determined by who votes in elections and therefore control the nation’s institutions.

For Israelis, more Jews also means more personnel for the various organizations devoted to communal self-defense and more workers to contribute to Israel’s already impressive economic growth. A larger Jewish population would be of immense symbolic value by illustrating to the world Israel’s determination to defend its land. A larger Jewish population would help create a larger Israel through such efforts as expanding artificial islands into the Mediterranean Sea. The excitement of growth will itself spur solutions to problems such as an adequate water supply.

Declining political clout
American Jewish declining numbers will have serious political and social effects. To some extent, this reality has been blunted for American Jews primarily because the majority of American gentiles support Israel and Jewish rights. Additionally, Jews are perceived by some to be influential beyond their numbers. American Jews continue to reside in large states with significant electoral votes and can be a swing vote, have had no genuine opposition politically for more than half a century, and, perhaps most importantly, donate extensively to political candidates, parties, and efforts.

But as their numbers decline, their political clout will decrease, especially if younger Jews don’t donate for specifically Jewish reasons, or if anti-Israel Muslim Americans rise to challenge pro-Israel American Jews in number and economic impact, or if there is public financing of elections, rendering the Jewish economic clout much weaker.

With declining numbers, American Jews will have trouble meeting basic communal needs. There will be too few young people taking care of too many adults. Demographic decline means fewer Jewish students from day schools to graduate schools, synagogue members, Jewish organizational supporters and members, potential marriage partners, consumers of kosher food, subscribers and readers of Jewish media, and supporters of Jewish institutions.

There will also be fewer patrons of Jewish cultural events, political activists, for example, on behalf of Israel and against prejudice as well as a wide range of social actions, people producing Jewish books, films, music, and other artistic works. Even if, as demographic optimists claim, American Jewry is not declining in absolute numbers, it is declining as a proportion of the population, a phenomenon sure to be aggravated by the fact that American Jews are statistically seven years older than the general population.

There is a limited number of ways to increase the Jewish population. In Israel those have been primarily through Jewish births and immigration. But pronatalism, that is, birth encouragement, has its limits. There is, for example, the famous case of David Ben-Gurion proposing that the Israeli government provide a cash bonus to every Israeli woman who gave birth to a 10th child. The plan was discontinued when too many Arab women collected the bonus; as a democracy, the government was obligated to give equal treatment to Jews and Arabs.

Israel has made heroic efforts to attract and keep Jewish immigrants, but it has failed to attract American Jews in large numbers and available populations elsewhere remain both limited and uncertain in their desire to make Aliyah.

Meanwhile, American Jews have a negative population growth and high assimilation rates. And American Jews don’t control and so can’t when necessary or at will increase Jewish immigration to the US.

But if encouraging births and immigration both in Israel and the US are insufficient efforts, what will work? Efforts most likely to succeed include welcoming back to Judaism those with Jewish ancestors and warmly embracing all those who wish to join the Jewish people on its historic spiritual journey by converting to Judaism. It is time to organize, staff, and fund large and practical efforts to increase our numbers.



Ynet News

Why America Loves Israel

by : Carol Gould

(First published on JewishComment)

In recent months, and most strongly since the events of September 11th, there has been a growing call around the world for the United States to 'stop its blind support' of Israel. Arab academics have even begun to conjure up an image of a cowering United States being the 'lackey' of Israel.

Notwithstanding a feeling of despair at the level to which military confrontation has grown in the territories conquered by Israel after the 1967 War, the concept of 'American blind support' must be examined in perspective.

There are many remarkable similarities in the collective destinies of these two young countries. The earliest settlers in the New World were religious sects who had been suffering terrible persecution in Europe. William Penn, who landed in what is now the Port of Philadelphia in the seventeenth century, was a Quaker who, like so many other marginalised persuasions arriving on the shores of the spartan continent, was confronted with native Americans, fierce weather and, in the end, starvation. However, and much to the present-day shame of politically correct America ' subsequent waves of Pilgrim Fathers and their feisty women took up arms against savage attacks by native Americans who were attempting to defend their ancient land. Soon, the 'Indians,' as they came to be known, retreated as wave upon wave of new European settlers arrived, but not before many blood-curdling battles had unfolded across the frontier. If the Indians did not die in confrontations, they suffered the devastating effects of European diseases to which they had no immunity. The final great war of white man against the native Americans happened as recently as just over a century ago in South Dakota.

Growing up in North America in the 1950s and 1960s, before the days of political correctness, one was taught of the supreme heroism of the Pilgrim Fathers and of the frontiersmen in resisting the brutality of 'savage Indian tribes.' Without doubt the tribes in question perpetrated horrendous atrocities against the white arrivals, including the barbaric practice of scalping.

Nevertheless, American history was taught as a series of 'us against them' sagas of spectacular heroism, culminating with the defeat of the 'Japs' in 1945. My mother and her sister served in the United States Army, and their visceral dread of the Japanese was akin to that I encounter, even today, in elderly British veterans of the Pacific War and in survivors of Japanese POW camps. (Needless to say I was touched by the metamorphoses of human nature and its power to forgive when on a 1987 visit to my late mother she excitedly announced to me that 'We are going straight from here for sushi ' when I had just arrived at Philadelphia Airport!)

Just as Israelis celebrate Yom Ha'atzmaut (Independence Day) with barbecues and fireworks, so do Americans on July 4th. Just as Israelis observe the major Festivals, so do Americans enjoy the four-day weekend feast of Thanksgiving. (All one has to do is see the African-American, Jewish, Latino and Vietnamese families passionately organising their respective turkey banquets in the film 'What's Cooking' to appreciate the universality of American Thanksgiving.)

Israel, like the American colonies, spectacularly threw off British rule with considerable force and bloodshed. It must be stressed here that The American War of Independence was a protracted, widespread and complicated affair. In Palestine, the departure of the British triggered the War initiated by the Arabs countries against a tiny, ragtag Jewish State already in existence as a sovereign nation but with pitiful resources.

It is therefore natural for Americans to feel an affinity to a small country that excoriated the rule of a large colonial power. It is also of significance that The United States' legacy of the Emma Lazarus 'Give me your tired, your poor..' poetry runs parallel to the Israeli Right of Return laws. Nearly a million Soviet refugees have become Israeli citizens, as have hundreds of thousands of Jewish asylum seekers from numerous Muslim countries. The 'nation of immigrants' concept appeals to Americans, their history books now acknowledging with sorrow the displacement of hundreds of thousands of Native Americans, just as Israelis, still painfully only one generation from the Holocaust, have been forced by Benny Morris to reflect on the issue of displacement of indigenous peoples in 1948.

The mass immigration to the United States, though resisted by many in Congress and in the predominantly Anglo-Germanic Protestant-American institutions of the day, brought even more prosperity to America. Though Thomas Edison pressured the New York legislature to outlaw the formation of 'moving picture' companies by 'foreign nationals' (meaning Jews), the 'outlawed' Louis B Mayer, Sam Goldwyn, Jesse Lasky and others promptly set up shop in California; the rest is history.

Taking the issue to the present day, there is another aspect of American-Israeli solidarity that is not often discussed. Notwithstanding the fact that British colleagues and friends love to tell Americans what they REALLY studied at school and what America is REALLY LIKE, (fascist, racist dictatorship filled with people who are too stupid and uneducated to recognise that they are victims of brainwashing and oppression) one has to have grown up in the United States to fully understand the impact of organised religion on everyday life. Americans go to church more often in one year than the average Brit does in a lifetime. Christianity ( I am not referring to Evangelism) has great meaning to Americans and the church is often the centre of life even in big cities and amongst sophisticated business people. Likewise, American Jewry is a dynamic community that wears its identity on its sleeve. Both communities are, for the most part, at ease with each other and it is common to find a non-Jew asking for a 'heimesche' dish at a local eatery. In my early years, it was common for a non-Jewish friend to attend a one's Passover Seder.

Conversely, my father, as distinguished a naval architect as he was, would never have gained admittance to the WASP bastion known as the Union League, nor would my mother have ever felt welcome at a DAR (Daughters of the American Revolution) function. Anti-Semitism is still rife in the United States, but it has not crippled the Jews from making a staggering impact on food, culture, science, architecture, the arts and commerce.

Israel, therefore, holds a significant Biblical symbolism for American Christians. Americans know their Old and New Testament and feel comfortable identifying with the events and places that pepper that remarkable tome. Church attendance in Great Britain is at an all-time low, and at a recent Good Friday service the local vicar in St John's Wood lamented the tiny turnout. Not so in the United States, be it a Sunday or a festival.

From the days of Benjamin Franklin, the American tradition of a free press has been its salvation; over and over again it has rescued the United States from the grips of its own folly, from slavery to Prohibition to the McCarthy witch-hunts to the Vietnam War. It was the American press that exposed the Watergate scandal, saving the nation from an endless dynasty of Nixon and from mass imprisonments of 'Dean's List' subversives. Israel's press has always been dynamic to the point of near-irresponsibility. In recent weeks the Israeli media revealed the late Daniel Pearl's father as a distinguished Israeli scholar, perhaps in the end compromising Daniel's safety. The Israeli press has always been brutally critical of its successive governments; in the Arab regimes nearby, such press freedom would result in long jail terms or beheadings.

Israel and the United States afford women equal rights with men. Although the Orthodox authority governs Israeli Halachah (Jewish religious law), therefore discouraging the ordination of women rabbis and often perpetuating the problem of agunot (chained wives), women are not vassals of their husbands nor must they be covered lest they be stoned to death...

The United States and Israel have a grand tradition of farming and technological advances. Like the American pioneers, the early Jewish immigrants, alongside their sabra brethren, turned a desert into an orchard under unspeakably harsh conditions and under constant attack from marauding Arabs (as did the pioneers in conflict with the native Americans.) This unites the two countries in a cultural bond that European critics cannot readily comprehend.

In the present situation, the world outside Israel and the United States has decided that Israel must be left to fend for herself (translation: at last the Jews will be wiped out and we don’t have to hear about bloody Israel anymore on the 10 o'clock news), and that the United States must be censured for supporting an 'apartheid, racist, terrorist entity.' It is always the case that entities who themselves are seriously inadequate or 'racist and terrorist' love to present the United States or Israel as the world's biggest Beelzebub. Various anti-Israel countries are at present in the grips of so many internal crises of their own that it is a miracle they can function at all. European kingdoms during the height of Empire contain episode after episode of shameful repression, as does the legacy of every country heaping criticism on Israel and the United States.

How interesting that the continent that started World War I and World War II is the most vociferous critic of Israel. Had it not been for European imperialism and massive anti-Semitism culminating in the obscenity of the Shoah, the mass immigration to America of talented Jews would not have happened nor would Israel have had to be created.

Reality posits that Israel is a strategic ally of the United States and that its safety is crucial to the security of the American presence in that region. American money has helped build her massive military arsenal. Israeli genius has also helped develop weapons systems so advanced that the rest of the world drools in envy. Without doubt, the United States has funded Israel's road to supremacy. But Israel is also a beautiful, free, enterprising, culturally rich and technologically awesome democracy and if the American people want to support her it is their right in a free world. There are 22 Arab states and 55 Muslim nations flourishing in a world with over a billion adherents to Islam. It is offensive to hear the world condemning America for choosing to support a tiny First World oasis in the Third World. It is abhorrent to hear the representatives of the rest of the world, at Durban in September 2001, shouting 'Jew! Jew! Jew!' every time an Israeli or Diaspora delegate left the various venues at that shamefully hijacked conference.

Condemnation of the United States for supporting Israel, most recently in 'The Guardian' newspaper, ( they refer to the Jewish State as 'Palestine,') is a dangerous and frightening development that can be equated with anti-Semitism. It is the equivalent of saying, 'If you don't stop helping Jews, you too will be taken away' (Gestapo, 1933 to 1945.) Whatever Israel's shortcomings and grave, trigger-happy miscalculations in this new Intifadah, she has as much right to allies as do any other sovereign nations. The Palestinians have had the support of a clutch of Arab League countries for decades. The American media have even suggested that the most diabolical of extremist movements ' all haemorrhaging money -- have infiltrated Palestinian strongholds on Israel's doorstep.

Those of us who have lamented the proliferation of settlements and America's lack of criticism of this post-1967 phenomenon-- would nevertheless like to know if Arabs who have inhabited the hundreds of thousands of Jewish homes in lands from which Jews were forced to leave are also going to vacate those homes.

Much as one wishes to continue to support the Israeli peace movement, it is with increasing concern that one sees the non-Jewish press referring with excessive venom to 'illegal Jewish settlements' and to 'provocative Jewish claims on the Temple Mount.' (The Temple Mount is of profound importance to Jews.) When has a Muslim been turned away from a synagogue in the rest of the world, or been stopped from living in any neighbourhood they choose in London, Chicago or Paris' Except for the madman Baruch Goldstein, when have settlers set out to instigate waves of terror against their Arab neighbours' The settlers I met were hard-working Jews who wanted their children to lead virtuous lives out of harm's way. They were not teaching their children to hate Arabs. What good does the British 'Boycott of Israeli Goods' campaign serve when it is Palestinian workers (on settlers' lands) who are also deprived of a livelihood? The disproportionate condemnation of Israel by the world is becoming distasteful and merits regular vetting by Jewish communal protection groups in every corner of the Diaspora.

The accusation that a 'Zionist lobby' drives American politics is another folly. Had this 'lobby' been so all-powerful would the Al Gore/Joe Lieberman ticket not have buried George Bush in the 2000 presidential election? The number of Jewish legislators is pitifully small. The huge majority of influential American businesses? -- still run by the old Protestant families. It should also be pointed out here that Jews around the world would deplore the instigation of any violent act against Muslims despite the deaths of so many Israelis since September 2000 and despite the appalling rise in violence against Jews in France. Furthermore it would be unthinkable for any Jewish cleric anywhere in the civilised world to exhort his or her congregations to go out and kill Muslims. The Israeli and worldwide Jewish peace movement is substantial and it would be refreshing to see such outreach occurring in the Muslim world.

The United States should continue to support Israel. It would be nice to wake up one morning and read European newspapers staunchly supporting the brave little Jewish State and hearing Arab media lauding the rich maelstrom of Israeli cultural life. America loves Israel because it is a mirror of itself, and the reflection is more attractive than anything else on offer on the rest of this carping, resentful planet.

Israel is the Heart of Our Civilization

by Nidra Poller

The airwaves are thick with the sound of raucous voices and clashing swords. O Jerusalem — well, ok, East Jerusalem — and the thundering hooves will brook no opposition! Get Israel!

At the slightest twinge of international pain from a geographical region known as the "Mideast conflict" they cry out, "Cut it off! Get rid of it, and the worldwide body politic will finally live in peace."

Ahmadinejad has promised hundreds of times to wipe Israel off the map without provoking much of a reaction. His proxies stock arms, poke and prod, without raising international eyebrows. Then Israel approves housing construction in Jerusalem and the sleeping warriors awake. Grrrrrr!

The Obama administration bares its fangs and the troops go into action. General Petraeus warns that the unresolved Israel-Palestine conflict is disturbing Muslim nations, stimulating extremism, and putting our boys in danger. Walt & Mearsheimer point the finger at homegrown Zionists who are twisting the arm of this vast nation, bringing it to its knees, and forcing Israel down our throats. The brave Petraeus denies he ever implied that our friendship with Israel could be a direct or indirect cause of American military casualties in friendly Muslim countries like Iraq and Afghanistan. But the hot potato has already been passed to Robert Gates who runs it smack between the White House goalposts and into the mouth of President Obama who can scold Israel off the top of his head.

Naughty [Zionist] boys... you're costing us "blood and treasure." Nothing less.

Israel is a pain. Dr. Quack has the solution. Cut out that festering appendix and the ummah will welcome us with open arms.

And just when we start to catch on, the president and his hired guns speak from the other side of their mouths. They were only kidding. Treating Prime Minister Netanyahu like a vacuum cleaner salesman at the White House was a sign of unfailing friendship. Israel and the United States are bosom buddies. Count on us! If blood and treasure must be spent by Big Friend America to save the neck of little guy Israel, we won't be stingy. All we ask in return is...

Make peace.

THE "TWO-STATE SOLUTION that everyone knows will resolve the conflict" is brandished like a scimitar: Israeli withdrawal to the '67 ('49 armistice) lines, dismantlement of settlements, a mini territorial tradeoff, a "solution" to the refugee problem, and the creation of a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital... Why is this "everyone knows the solution" religiously repeated when it has been amply demonstrated that neither Israel nor any Palestinian entity can accept it?

It is not a solution, it is a lethal narrative. A soft outer wrapping of apparently legitimate Palestinian aspirations hides a knife aimed at the heart of Jerusalem that would cripple Jewish sovereignty in the homeland. The insistence on a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem is inextricably joined to claims for statehood conceived as a natural right. The aim of the narrative is lethal — the destruction of Israel — and its constant repetition is a form of warfare.

On what grounds can Islam lay claim to any part of Jerusalem?

WHAT MAKES JERUSALEM SO PRECIOUS? — THE JEWS.

Mecca was sanctified by Islam, even though the black stone pre-existed the founding gesture, and Jerusalem was sanctified by Judaism. Subsequent religious claims to the city are accretions to the original consecration. Jerusalem is the Christian holy land because Jesus was a Jew. And Islam's claim is based on a scriptural injunction to supersede Judaism and Christianity. If claims to Jerusalem are based on religion, Judaism takes precedence.

If Muslim claims to Jerusalem are not religious but secular they are inexplicable. Ramallah would be more suitable as the capital of a Palestinian state that truly intended to live peacefully side by side with Israel. Why should the world be dragged into a fierce tug of war when the territorial issue — if that is what it is really about — could be so easily resolved?

The lethal narrative carries a double secular-religious warhead.
Topography trumps chronology in a dazzling Muslim claim to the centrality of Jerusalem staked on the Al Aqsa mosque and the gilded Dome of the Rock that dominate the Temple Mount (the French call it l'esplanade des mosquées). That's not centrality, it's replacement theology! If that claim is granted, the heart of our civilization will be broken. The precedent established in Jerusalem will be extended to Paris, New York, London, the Hague, Detroit, Washington D.C... wherever a mosque is built, Islam will extend its political sovereignty. It will be the end of separation of church and state, the end of religious and political freedom.

Al Aqsa, built on the ruins of the Jewish Temple, is not proof of centrality, it is the emblem of replacement theology. Europeans, who are so eager to impose the division of Jerusalem, are awakening to the dangers that threaten their own capitals. The Swiss said no to minarets, France and Belgium don't want veiled women in their streets, plans for mega-mosques in Rome and London, were nixed...

But the belated, timid European awakening pales in the face of an American president who has raised anti-Zionism to new heights. Take this sequence: Last month, mosque-goers threw rocks down from the Temple Mount at Jews worshipping at the kotel (Western Wall). Local Islamists regularly stir up the masses with false claims that Israel is violating the sanctity of al Aqsa.

Then President Obama worked up a fury against the Israeli government with false claims that housing construction in "East" Jerusalem (as if it were another state, like South Dakota!) jeopardizes the peace process. Ramat Shlomo is in north Jerusalem but ideology doesn't have a compass. The restoration of the Har Hova synagogue, "right next to Islam's holiest sites," was a further affront to Islam dutifully relayed by the world's pundits, bereft of the slightest notions of logic and chronology. Barack Hussein Obama dragged Benyamin Netanyahu into the coal shed and bound him hand and foot with ultimatums. Add it all up: in the space of two short weeks the free world bowed to the will of Temple Mount Islamists!

The faulty religious justification for the division of Israel's capital alternates with a secular narrative that stands on a falsified baseline where all of Israel was Palestinian land stolen by Jewish colonizers who created an illegal state which was subsequently extended by military conquests to include "East Jerusalem." Out of the goodness of their hearts the Palestinians will reluctantly accept the fait accompli for a rump state within the 1949 armistice line. But that's all!

Everything else is illegal and all means of reconquest are justified.

Jerusalem was divided by the sword. The neighborhoods claimed today as exclusively reserved for Arab-Muslims are Jewish neighborhoods that were emptied of their rightful residents by atrocious massacres during the first war of independence. The survivors fled for their lives. Arabs moved in. When Europe — followed now by the United States — validates that sort of zoning regulation, the rules will apply to their own cities. No need for tanks rumbling down the Champs Elysèes or bombs raining down on Coventry. Just increase the pressure on the pesky State of Israel, cut off its blood supply, and discover — too late — that you've given yourself a massive heart attack.

Hillary Clinton's "tough love" AIPAC speech concluded with a Passover homily. Moses led the children of Israel out of Egypt, preached the Secretary of State, and at every step of liberation and up to the threshold of the Promised Land, there were always hangers-back who said it was "too dangerous, too hard, too risky." Today, she would have us believe, the Promised Land is a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital.

Israelis, like their hero Moses, should just do the right thing!

Was there a rabbi in the house?

THE LESSON OF PESACH is that the children of Israel were liberated from slavery in Egypt by the alliance between their own determination and the "outstretched hand." The Jewish people have remained faithful to this Alliance, which is inseparable from the integrity of Jerusalem. The Pesach seder is not the commemoration of a dead past, it is expressly the here and now of liberation. "I was a slave in Egypt..." We do not bow our heads to pharaohs, to presidents, or to international opinion.

The emissaries sent to Canaan to get the lay of the land came back and warned that it would be too hard to redeem the divine promise. "It's no Paradise. And besides there's all kinds of tough guys there," they said, shivering in their sandals. Deemed unworthy of the promised homeland, the liberated slaves spent forty years in the wilderness, learning to be free. They gave birth to a new generation that had the courage to build a sovereign Jewish nation with Jerusalem as its capital.

The values they forged during that period of apprenticeship are at the heart of Western civilization. The most salutary lesson of the current crisis is that Israel is not suicidal. Jews will choose life, and assaults on Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem and its outskirts are stabs in the back of the free world.

Nidra Poller in author, novelist, translator and journalist. She is based in Paris and writes about the Muslims in Europe, anti-semitism and the French media and politicians.





This essay was received April 23, 2010. An earlier version was published by www.atlasshrugs.com and Makor Rishon.

The Jewish Symbols On The U.S $1 Bill

General Washington's financial advisor and assistant was a Jewish man by the name of Hyam Salomon. During the cold winter months at Valley Forge when American soldiers were freezing and running out of food, it was Hyam who marshaled all the Jews in America and Europe to provide money in relief aid to these stranded American troops and turned the course of history. Without this help, Washington's Continental Army, and the fate of the American Colonies would have perished before they could have defeated the British.

If you take a one dollar bill out of your pocket and look at the back at the Eagle, the stars above the Eagle's head are in the six point Star of David to honor Jews. If you turn the Eagle upside down you will see a configuration in the likeness of a Menorah....both at the insistence of George Washington who said we should never forget the Jewish people and what they have done in the interest of America.

Obama Wants to Split Jerusalem

It all started when Vice President Biden visited Israel recently to pledge America’s support for Israel’s security. The Israeli Interior Ministry blind-sided Biden by announcing that the Israelis intended to build 1600 units of housing in a Jewish section of Jerusalem. Obama is trying to court Arab countries, hoping to gain their support for American aims and initiatives. The Palestinians want to make East Jerusalem the capital of the country they hope to create. Prime Minister Netanyahu has vowed to never divide Jerusalem. The whole point is moot: The homes are being built in a Jewish neighborhood,

BUT.... Obama forgot very important facts about Jerusalem:

In Jerusalem, the theological and historical arguments matter, serving often as the functional equivalent of legal claims. The strength of these arguments will ultimately help determine who governs the city. Already we hear the ritual and relativistic cliche that Jerusalem is "a city holy to both peoples." But like most cliches, this one is more false than true. Jerusalem stands as the paramount religious city of Judaism, a place so holy that not just its soil but even its air is deemed sacred. Jews pray in its direction, invoke its name at the end of each meal and close the Passover service with the wistful statement "Next year in Jerusalem."

Jerusalem, the ultimate word in every seder and in every Jewish wedding as say: "If I Forget Thee, O Jerusalem, Let My Right Hand Forget Her Cunning." - Psalm 137:5. Jerusalem is at the heart of the conflict between Palestinians and Israelis.

JERUSALEM FACTS:

1) Israel became a state in 1312 BC. 2 millennium before Islam.

2) Arab refugees from Israel began calling themselves Palestinians in 1967, 2 decades after the modern Israeli statehood.

3) After conquering the land in 1272 BC. Jews ruled it for thousands years and maintained a continuous presence for 3300 years.

4) For over 3300 years, Jerusalem was the Jewish capital. It was never the capital of any Arab or Muslim entity. Even under Jordanian rule, east Jerusalem was not made the capital, and no Arab leader came to visit it.

5) Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Bible, but not once is it mentioned in the Quran.

6) King David founded Jerusalem, Muhammad never set foot in it.

7) The holiest Jewish site in the world and a renowned symbol of Jerusalem's Old City is the Western Wall

8) Jews pray facing Jerusalem, Muslims pray facing to Mecca.

9) Before 1865, the entire population of Jerusalem lived behind the Old City walls (what today would be considered the eastern part of the city). Later, the city started to expand beyond the walls because of population growth, and both Jews and Arabs began to build in new areas of the city.

10) Muslim dominance first came to Jerusalem in 638 when the army of Caliph Omar conquered the Holy City.

11) Muslims claim the Jews occupy Arab lands, when in fact the Arabs are the occupiers in the Middle East. They belong in Arabia and have no right to Jerusalem. Jerusalem is not Israeli-occupied territory but Arab occupied territory.

12) The Koran does not mention Jerusalem even once, meaning their claim to Israel's and Judaism's capital as their third holiest city is fraudulent and aimed at stealing the city from the Jews.

13) Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock are built exactly in the middle of the Jewish Temple Mount.

So Mr. Obama, from now on.... Let's talk facts, not fiction!!!!