יום שבת, 7 באפריל 2012

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Elder of Ziyon Daily News

Link to Elder of Ziyon

Chag Sameach!

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 12:08 PM PDT


I wish all of my Jewish readers a wonderful and meaningful Pesach. May we all celebrate next year in Jerusalem.

Also, for those who celebrate Easter, have a great holiday as well.

I will not be blogging until Sunday night or Monday.

Pre-Passover Snippet-dump

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 10:34 AM PDT

More links and things before the holiday:

Guy Bechor:
Today, when the Muslim Middle East is disintegrating into religions, ethnic groups, minorities and distinct regions, when the slaughter in Syria is merely intensifying (the number of fatalities is already nearing 10,000,) when Libya's militias are killing each other, Yemen is crumbling and Egypt is facing deep trouble, it turns out that relatively speaking, the Palestinian issue is the most stable in the Mideast.

Truth be told, that was always the case, yet for self-interested reasons the situation was distorted by various elements.

The Palestinians encountered another grave calamity: Israel's public opinion lost interest in them. For dozens of years, Israel's leftist camp turned the Palestinians into its defining issue. Yet suddenly the Left discovered that Israel moved on and that the issue is no longer on its agenda. When the Left also discovered that the Palestinians have no interest in peace or negotiations, just like Syria's Assad, it replaced the Palestinian agenda with a new one, premised on social issues like cottage cheese and the tent protest.

Reuters:
Some 2,350 Syrians fled across the border to Turkey from the region of Idlib within 24 hours, a Turkish official said on Thursday, more that double the highest previous one-day total.
Tablet:
The Jews of Malmö, a community of about 1,500 in a city of 300,000, are living through a new form of anti-Semitism. This kind does not stem from neo-Nazis or right-wing extremists—traditional perpetrators of European Jew-hatred—but has come to the city through immigrants from North Africa and the Middle East and is part of a larger, countrywide problem of failed integration. According to the 2011 census, one in 10 Malmö citizens comes from the Middle East and North Africa, and ethnic Swedes are no longer in the majority among 15-year-olds. In 2009, 60 hate crimes against Jews were reported in Malmö, ranging from hate speech to assault. The city's Chicago-born Chabad rabbi, Shneur Kesselman, estimates that he alone has been the victim of 100 incidents during his few years in the city. A dozen families have already left Malmö for Stockholm, Israel, or the United States because of anti-Semitism, according to community leaders.

If only this were the whole problem. But Malmö's mayor of 17 years, Ilmar Reepalu, has "Tourettes syndrome with respect to Jews," according to Kvällsposten, a Swedish newspaper. Last week, Reepalu, a Social Democrat, made headlines across the country after I published an interview with him in which he said that Sweden Democrats, an anti-immigrant party with its roots in the Swedish neo-Nazi movement, had "infiltrated" Malmö's Jewish community in order to turn it against Muslims. On Monday, he was publicly reprimanded by the head of his party.

Reeplau has promised that he is no anti-Semite, but this is far from the first time that he has put his foot in his mouth on the subject of Jews.
Michael Oren:
Is Israeli democracy truly in jeopardy? Are basic liberties and gender equality -- the cornerstones of an open society -- imperiled? Will Israel retain its character as both a Jewish and a democratic state -- a redoubt of stability in the Middle East and of shared values with the United States?

These questions will be examined in depth, citing comparative, historical, and contemporary examples. The answers will show that, in the face of innumerable obstacles, Israeli democracy remains remarkable, resilient, and stable.

CAMERA: A Sad But Incomplete Story

A remarkable shadow theatre retelling of the Exodus I had missed last year:



BBC:
Prince Nawaf bin Faisal said his body was "not endorsing any female participation at the moment."

Sue Tibballs, chief executive of the Women's Sport and Fitness Foundation, said the Saudi stance was unacceptable.

"We would expect the International Olympic Committee to exclude Saudi Arabia," she said.

Here's a 1907 Haggadah with lots of Hebrew commentary, one of the better ones I've seen.

(h/t Ian)

For the first time, Egyptian Copts flock to Jerusalem for Easter

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 09:10 AM PDT

From Egypt Independent:
Aarsena Air Company in Egypt launched Friday airlifts between Egypt and Israel to transfer hundreds of Egyptian Coptic pilgrims to Christian landmarks in Jerusalem for the first time. The move comes in the wake of the death of Pope Shenouda III, who banned pilgrimages to Jerusalem due to the Israeli occupation.

The airlift is the first of its kind to transport Egyptians to Israel since the signing of the peace treaty between the two countries in 1979. One or two flights will depart daily on an aircraft with 104 seats, said Cairo International Airport officials.

The sources added that two flights bound for Jerusalem left Friday carrying 104 passengers each and that no obstacles faced them.

The Coptic passengers are scheduled to spend several days sightseeing at Christian landmarks in Jerusalem, in the context of celebrating Easter on 15 April.

Pope Shenouda III banned Coptic travel to the city of Jerusalem, and said more than once: "The Copts will not travel to Jerusalem, except in the company of their fellow Muslims."
In reaction, Coptic leaders in Europe reaffirmed their opposition to any Copts traveling on pilgrimage to Jerusalem, saying that this was a church-wide decision, not a personal ban by Pope Shenouda III.

It looks like there was a lot of pent-up desire by Egyptian Copts to visit anyway.

In wake of reports of the first plane-loads of pilgrims Thursday, Coptic officials said that "the Church is a religious institution that does not control the freedom of individuals does not impose laws on them." The Deputy Catholic Patriarch of the Catholic Church likewise said that the church does not interfere in the affairs of individuals, it is an institution of worship and can not track the movement of people and does not interfere in individual affairs.

It looks like Aarsena Air was set up to do only a shuttle between Egypt and Israel for the pilgrims.

Fisking part of "The New American Haggadah" (guest post)

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 08:10 AM PDT

I was sent this, and it looks right on target:
Devoted readers of the Forward and other progressive Jews are abuzz with the NEW AMERICAN HAGGADAH, edited by Jonathan Safran Foer and newly (and literally) translated by Nathan Englander. In his ferocious review of Leon Wieseltier takes a swipe at Lemony Snicket's contribution entitled "Playground," apparently addressed to the children (or the child in us).
But not even this degree of intellectual lightness can justify the lame improv called "Playground" by the American Jewish writer who calls himself Lemony Snicket. If there is anything innovative about the New American Haggadah, it is the introduction into the Passover literature of this voice—puerile, trivializing, supercilious, calculatingly quirky, painfully unhilarious—a punk in a yarmulke. Here, for example, is his tiresome gloss on the Four Sons:
In addition to all the throw-away dismissals Wieseltier offers, there are still greater insights to be gleaned from this passage about the mind-set of the folks who put this Haggadah together.
 Some scholars believe there are four kinds of parents as well.
Scholars is presumably the modern replacement of rabbinic authorities. Fair enough. People learned in the tradition, who take a more secularized approach to the literature, at once knowledgeable and freed from dogmas about "Torah from Sinai"… certainly worth consideration, if not credence. And the notion that one might do an inversion of the 4 children is actually very promising… if done with some depth and wisdom.
Don't hold your breath.
The Wise Parent is an utter bore. "Listen closely, because you are younger than I am," says the Wise Parent, "and I will go on and on about Jewish history, based on some foggy memories of my own religious upbringing, as well as an article in a Jewish journal I have recently skimmed." The Wise Parent must be faced with a small smile of dim interest.
Wow! Given what we know is coming (wicked, simple and doesn't know to ask), this is the best we're going to get. What we have here described is not a wise parent, but a superficial fool who mistakes age for wisdom, who has nothing of substance to say but bullshits his way through the situation on the basis of stuff he's skimmed. In other words, he's the epitome of the narcissistic secular Jew who had a minimal Jewish education which he maintains by reading "scholars" in journals, and expects to have the respect of his children. Not to get personal here, but could this me Lemony's dad? And this is the best Lemony can imagine from parents? He's like Peter Pan, eternally adolescent.
The Wicked Parent tries to cram the story of our liberation into a set of narrow opinions about the world. "The Lord led us out of Egypt," the Wicked Parent says, "which is why I support a bloodthirsty foreign policy and am tired of certain types of people causing problems." The Wicked Parent should be told in a firm voice, "With a strong hand God rescued the Jews from bondage, but it was my own clumsy hand that spilled hot soup in your lap."
Wow again. So the bad parent is the "conservative," the "hawk" who, having learned the lesson of the Holocaust, does not think that "war is not the answer." And Lemony, who knows better than the older generation because… because, well he's sure that if all Jews were liberals and progressives like himself, then there would be no anti-Semitism, has nothing but contempt for the bloodthirsty fool. As for the reference to "tired of certain types causing trouble," is that a reference to freethinkers (like Lemony?), or to the Alice Rothschilds and Norman Finkelsteins of the world who compare Israel to the Nazis?
The Simple Parent does not grasp the concept of freedom. "There will be no macaroons until you eat all your brisket," says the Simple Parent, at a dinner honoring the liberation of oppressed peoples. "Also, stop slouching at the table." In answer to such statements, the Wise Child will roll his eyes in the direction of the ceiling and declare, "Let my people go!"
Now here's an interesting fumble: mistaking license for freedom. As everyone from the rabbis to Erich Fromm have pointed out, there is no real freedom without discipline, and anyone who thinks that instilling discipline is restricting freedom has no real understanding. Here Lemony plays the role of the single uncle who encourages the kids to be wild, to show contempt for parents, to "let it all hang out." Why not just say "caca doodoo." Training the "rebels" of the next generation? Or the self-indulgent narcissists?
The Parent Who Is Unable to Inquire has had too much wine, and should be excused from the table.
Four of a kind – all the parents are contemptible. What a pathetic effort to mirror the Haggadah. And why did Safran Foer include this in his collection? Why didn't he send it back to Lemony for a major rewrite? Notes Wieseltier:
Is this the cry of a generation? A pitch for Zach Galifianakis? There is something sad about such a fear of adulthood. It is an Egypt of its own.
It's called never-never land. And if there were any self-condemning statement of a generation raised by largely secular parents who, met with a "generation gap" of their own, produced a host of self-satisfied pygmies, this is it.
If the Haggadah is a monument to memory in all its forms and the chain of transmission from generation to generation, this commentary is a monument to trivialization and breaking that chain.
Hopefully serious and playful liberals/progressives can do a lot better than this.

Morning links

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 07:01 AM PDT

Challah Hu Akbar has done some great work looking at a fake human rights organization set up by the Palestinian Authority in Geneva.

He also has nice photos of Islamic Jihad child abuse.

There was an assassination attempt against a leading anti-Hezbollah Lebanese politician.

I didn't cover the Günter Grass kerfuffle, but you can read about it here. An op-ed here.

Khaled Abu Toameh on the crime of "extending tongues" in Jordan and under the PA.

"Hezbollah has 300 operatives in NYC"

Egypt's top archaeologist who called himself "Indiana Jones" faces charges. He's a real anti-semite. 

Taking photos in Jordan, even for a tourist guidebook, is not a smart idea - if you have an Israeli passport.

Everyone has seen Cecil B. DeMille's 1956 classic movie The Ten Commandments. But how many have seen his 1923 silent movie version? Here's the splitting of the sea, very impressive for 1923!



You can see the entire film here. Too bad it glosses over nine of the ten plagues.

Here's the first New York Times (headlined) article about Passover, from 1869:



(h/t Yoel, Samson, Yid With Lid)

Fatah students damage model of Al Aqsa

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 05:52 AM PDT

During the student elections at Bir Zeit University this week, students who support Hamas would carry around a model of the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque at their rallies.


The election was hard fought and there is a lot of bad blood between the two parties. Hamas media are now publishing photos of damage done to at least one of these models, allegedly by Fatah students:


Will there be a fatwa calling for a jihad against Fatah? You never know.

Latest Latma

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 04:56 AM PDT

Israeli government and PLO agree: Jews cannot buy property in Hebron

Posted: 06 Apr 2012 02:37 AM PDT

From AFP:
A Palestinian man suspected of mediating in the contested sale of a house in Hebron to Jewish settlers has been detained, Palestinian security sources told AFP on Thursday.

Israeli security forces on Wednesday evicted a group of settlers from a house in the West Bank city, a day after they were ordered to leave the property.

Six settler families had moved into the property a week ago, claiming they had legally purchased one floor of the building from its Palestinian owners.

Palestinian sources in Hebron said the property belonged to the Abu Rajab family, some of whom live on the first floor of the building, and that it was possible that a member of the family had sold the second floor of the house.

But the buyer was not settlers, rather a Palestinian man originally from the Gaza Strip, who is suspected of acting as a middle-man for Jewish groups involved in buying Palestinian assets, the Palestinian security sources said.

This go-between, who worked for Palestinian national security in Ramallah before retiring, was detained earlier this week by Palestinian security forces, and was being held in Ramallah, the sources said.

They added that the member of the Abu Rajab family believed to have sold the asset to the middle-man had "escaped to Israel."
The Jewish Press has more detail:
At a press conference outside Machpelah House which had been evacuated Wednesday in Hebron, Shlomo Levinger and attorney Doron Nir-Tzvi told reporters that the purchase of Machpelah House had been in the making for some three years. The tenants had planned to patiently await government approval for their purchase of the house from a local Arab.

But the arrest of several Arabs by the Palestinian Authority on suspicion of selling real estate to the Jewish group – a crime which could be punished with death – changed the plan, and the group decided to move in despite the murky prospects of staying.

Knowing full well how hard it would be to establish residency in a newly purchased house—facing a hostile Israeli civil authority whose directive is to strictly limit the growth of the city's Jewish community, the group of buyers was moving slowly and quietly, through intermediaries and straw men, forever remaining below the radar for three years.

At the press conference, Levinger said they paid four times the value of the house, which has been estimated at around $250 thousand. Earlier in the day, when the Jewish Press asked Levinger to confirm a rumor that they paid half a million dollars for the house, he said, "I wish it would have been that amount."

The money for the purchase came from donations of Jews from Israel and abroad. "Every week we would travel to meetings in private homes, collecting one shekel after another," Levinger said. "There were times when we came back with only a few single shekels, other times we'd pick up thousands. We spent days and nights collecting this money, faithfully and lovingly.

"Once the money had been collected, we embarked on the purchase deal. It was a Sysiphian labor. We knew that the Attorney General's office would be looking everywhere for possible holes in the deal."

According to Doron Nir-Tzvi, in Judea and Samaria, real estate deals are conducted in an anachronistic fashion, whereby a deal must first be completed before the buyers are permitted to apply for government approval (Heter Iskah). Therefore, once every last T was crossed and I dotted, the buyers planned to wait patiently for their deal to go through.

Sources in the Civil Administration were telling them they couldn't find faults with the deal, that despite themselves they would end up having to approve it.

But then the PA arrested both straw men who had been carrying out different part of the bargain, followed by the jailing of their family members as well.

At this point, Levinger et al felt that their only recourse was to take possession of the property, or risk losing the deal altogether.

Both Levinger and Nir-Tzvi expressed concern for the jailed Palestinians. Levinger told the Jewish Press earlier that he was urging the Israeli government to demand their release of the Palestinian Authority.
It looks like no one is disputing that a sale occurred and it was legal. The Jews in Hebron say they have full documentation and video of the transaction.

But there are places in the world that Jews are not allowed to buy real estate because they are Jews. For example, Jordan, Saudi Arabia - and the ancient Jewish holy city of Hebron.
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