| Proud to be a Zionist, 5781noreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 15 Apr 04:00 AM I wrote the original essay around 2002 and I have been modifying it every | | I wrote the original essay around 2002 and I have been modifying it every year since then. Here is this year's version:
======================== I am a Zionist and I am proud of it. I know that Israel has the absolute right to exist in peace and security, at least as much as any other country. Given Israel's unique history and the resurgence of antisemitism worldwide, Israel arguably has more moral legitimacy than any other nation on Earth. In last year's essay, I wrote: In a short period of time Israel made itself into a strong yet open nation that its neighbors can only dream of becoming. And they are indeed starting to dream. Arab nations are waking up to the reality of Israel and the desire to be more like her.. Despite the constant incitement against Israel in their media, ordinary Arabs know that Israel treats its minorities with more respect, and gives them more civil rights, than Arab nations give their own Arab citizens. Miraculously, in recent years, we are seeing some of Israel's enemies now accepting that Israel has the right to exist and seeking to partner with it. This was unthinkable a few years ago, and the reason is because of Israel's strength, both militarily and economically. The biggest (and artificial) dagger that has been used against Israel for 72 years, the Palestinian Arabs, is quickly losing its effectiveness in the Arab world except for lip service...Read More |
If you do a search Natalie Portman on Yahoo, you see that she is considered a "Palestine-American actress." It links to her Wikipedia page, which says no such thing.
Google's default results for searching for Portman says she is an Israeli-American actress. Bing says she is "an Israeli-born actress and director."
This is very weird. I couldn't find any other famous Israelis or Jews born in Jerusalem who were called "Palestinian." Also, the choice to say Portman is a "Palestine-American" actress and not a "Palestinian-American" actress indicates that someone who doesn't know English very well deliberately chose to edit her entry.
(h/t Stu via Adam) * * * * * *
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From Ian: Jpost Editorial: Independence Day: In 73 years, Israel has accomplished so much - editorial As Israel celebrates its 73rd birthday on Thursday, it is worth remembering that there are those who have said from the very beginning that it cannot survive. Pinstripe diplomats in the US State Department said as much in 1948, trying to convince US president Harry Truman not to recognize the nascent state. Arab leaders said it that same year in mobilizing armies to fight the Jewish state. European politicians said it before the Six-Day War as Israel's Arab neighbors were tightening the noose and threatening to destroy the country. Over the years pundits and politicians, columnists and authors have all spilled millions of words discussing how Israel cannot survive: how it will be overwhelmed by the enemies around it, torn apart by the divisions inside it, or swept away by pure demographics. For instance, in 2008 the Canadian newsweekly Maclean's front cover story was entitled: "Why Israel can't survive." Yet here we are, 73 years later, still standing, still kicking, still surviving. And more than that, flourishing in a way that those of little faith in the country, its people or their abilities ever imagined. Not without problems, not without dilemmas, not without blemishes, not without painfully fractured political moments, but still surviving and flourishing...Read More |
You can't see him in the photo below, but he's there. Right behind the guy with the Israeli flag. My son, my baby, the youngest of 12, representing his IDF battalion as part of an honor guard to welcome Lloyd Austin, the United States Secretary of Defense, on his first visit to Israel. I watched the livestream and for a moment I thought: there's the tip of his boot! Seconds later I thought I caught a glimpse of his back. But you know, it didn't matter whether or not I could actually see him. I got Jewish nachat\* just knowing he was there, my baby, standing tall and straight and proud. Like all my children, Asher is a dual citizen of both the United States and Israel and somehow that made it all the more thrilling to know he was there (even if I couldn't see him). As the IDF band played first the American and then the Israeli anthems, I hoped my parents were watching from the heavens. No one knows these things, but that doesn't stop us from hoping. I hoped my parents were proud of Asher, proud they had a grandchild in this honor guard, a soldier in the IDF, greeting a US dignitary. I hoped they were proud I'd ended up in Israel, that I had raised a beautiful family in the Holy Land. It had been a long road here, to this place. When I first arrived in Israel, I felt I belonged nowhere. I didn't speak the language well, I didn't understand the cultural norms of Israeli society. It took a couple of years before I could successfully push my way through a pushing, shoving crowd...Read More |
Weekly column by Vic Rosenthal A few moments ago, at exactly 11 am, I went up to my roof to stand at attention for two minutes during the siren that honors the 23,928 people, soldiers and civilians, who have died since 1860 in the struggle to create and defend the Jewish state. Today, Wednesday, is Yom Hazikaron (Memorial Day) for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism. It's been said that on Yom Hazikaron we consider the price of having a state, while on last week's Yom Hashoa, we think about the price of being without one. Most Israelis understand that the latter's cost would be much greater, but still, the pain of those who have lost loved ones is almost unbearable. And that pain is worsened when the loss was avoidable, perhaps caused by incompetence, laziness, or selfishness on the part of political or military leaders that failed those who put their trust in them (and who mostly had no choice in the matter). The 1973 war is considered the most prominent example of unnecessary losses in the history of the state. Repeated failures by military and political officials (including the PM, Golda Meir) to take seriously the warnings from numerous sources that an attack was imminent – even King Hussein of Jordan personally warned Meir – led to the catastrophic lack of preparation for the joint Egyptian-Syrian attack. At least 2,500 Israeli soldiers died in the war that followed...Read More |
From Ian: Amb. Dore Gold: The First Lesson of the Holocaust: The Jewish People Will Never Allow Anyone to Do This to Us Again Five years ago when I served as Director-General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Israel, I stood in the Bergen-Belsen Concentration Camp in Germany on Yom Hashoah. Jews from all over the Nazi Empire in Europe and North Africa were forced into Bergen-Belsen, where thousands died. What has the modern state of Israel learned from the horrors of Bergen-Belsen, and the Holocaust? Chaim Herzog served as an officer in the British forces that entered Bergen-Belsen in 1945. In April 1987 he went back, as Israel's sixth president, and declared that the victims bequeathed a responsibility to later generations to ensure that the Jewish people would never again be helpless. That meant, first, that we will never allow anyone to do this to us again. In modern times, there is a real physical threat to the Jewish people that emanates from a regime in the Middle East that parades missiles in its capital nearly every year and fastens to its launchers the words, "Israel must be wiped off the map." You cannot wipe a country off the map without posing an existential threat to the people who live there. Israel will deter and defend against any state or political movement which poses a threat to the Jewish people. This is not an obsession, but a sacred trust handed to us by the people buried under the...Read More |
A joke from 1930
noreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 14 Apr 10:15 AM This joke is taken from The Gentleman In The Parlour, a 1930 book by by William Somerset Maugham: It appears that on one occasion Monsieur Paderewski was pressing upon Mr. Wilson, Mr. Lloyd George and Monsieur Clemenceau the Polish claims on Danzig. " If the Poles do not get it," he said, " I warn you that their disappointment will be so great, there will be an outbreak and they will assassinate the Jews." Mr. Wilson looked grave, Mr. Lloyd George shook his head and M. Clemenceau frowned. "But what will happen if the Poles get Danzig? " asked Mr. Wilson. M. Paderewski brightened. He shook his leonine mane. " Ah, that will be quite another thing," he replied. "Their enthusiasm will be so great, there will be an
outbreak and they will assassinate the Jews." * * * * * *
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Both the Iranian response to the Natanz incident and the US lack of counter-response were painfully predictable. On Tuesday, Iran's deputy foreign minister and a top nuclear negotiator Abbas Araghchi told state-run Press TV that the International Atomic Energy Organization (IAEA) had been informed of Tehran's decision to ramp up enrichment to 60% purity, a big step up from the current 20% purity levels. The decision pushes Iran closer to reaching the 90% enrichment level that is considered weapons-grade. Iran has continually denied it intends to assemble nuclear weapons. The Biden administration said Tuesday that Iran's intention to enrich uranium up to 60% purity was a "provocative announcement" that both "calls into question Iran's seriousness with regard to the nuclear talks and underscores the imperative of returning to mutual compliance with the JCPOA." Iran and the US are playing different games - and Iran's game is winning. Because the Biden administration thinks like negotiators in a business deal. They think that both sides have a modicum of good faith and want the same goals, with everything else being mere details. Iran is treating the negotiations as war. It is worthwhile to look at Sun Tzu's Art of War to see how well Iran is following...Read More |
Here is a translation of President Reuven Rivlin speech at the ceremony at the beginning of Memorial Day for the Fallen Soldiers of the Wars of Israel and Victims of Terrorism at the Western Wall in Jerusalem:___________________________ "'They that sow in tears shall reap in joy,' (Psalm 126) wrote the psalmist. 'My silent father, full of his scream …how will I not remember that you sowed me in tears and weeping, you will reap me,' wrote Captain Be'eri (Beki) Hazak of Kibbutz Afikim, who fell on 17 October 1973 / 11 Tishrei 5734 in the fierce battles on the western side of the Suez Canal during the Yom Kippur War. Dear mothers, fathers, children, partners, comrades in arms, brothers and sisters, our brothers, members of the family of bereavement. Year after year, we meet you. We ask to join you, for one day, I the task of grief and memory. You do not need these days. Every day, he or she is with you, in your hearts. As you go to sleep and as you wake up, when you go home and as you go about, you bear the mountain of memory on your weary shoulders, the wound that cannot be healed, that pain whose burden cannot be shared with anyone. Two periods in the Jewish-Israeli calendar are days of awe for us. One is in Tishrei, and the other is in Nissan and the beginning of Iyyar. Alongside the pillar of clouds, the clouds of respect and splendor of Tishrei, stands the pillar of fire rising into the firmament – the fire of battle and campaign, the column of memory – between Yom Hashoah...Read More |
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