| Do Palestinians have love for the "Ibrahimi Mosque" in Hebron, or hate for Jews?noreply@blogger.com (Unknown), 26 Mar 04:45 AM The official Palestin | | The official Palestinian Wafa news agency reported that thousands of Muslims jammed the Tomb of the Patriarchs and the surrounding streets on Friday, the first Friday of Ramadan.
It is one of the ten days of the year that Jews are banned from the sacred site, the second holiest site in Judaism.
Wafa interviewed one of the worshipers, who explained why she came. "It is our duty, we, the people of Hebron in particular, and Palestine in general, to stay in it by praying in it, because our presence here enrages the occupation and its settlers who are trying to Judaize the Haram, and we must protect it through our permanent presence and prayer in it."
The main reason to go to the site is apparently not for prayer, but to send a message to Jews and enrage them.
This point was repeated by Palestinian officials as well. The Director General of the Hebron Endowment, Nidal al-Ja'bari, told Wafa, "Today, thousands of worshipers came the first Friday of Ramadan in all the Ibrahimi Mosque's corridors, squares, and internal and external courtyards. The sanctuary will remain purely Islamic, and the Jews have no right to it." He added, "Jerusalem, Hebron, and Palestine, along with the unified Arab and Palestinian sanctities in them, will remain, and will not be the legacy of the abhorrent Israeli occupation." The preacher of the sanctuary, Sheikh Atta al-Muhtaseb, urged during his Friday sermon that Palestinians flock and pray in the...Read More |
From Ian: Sham and shame at Sharm el-Sheikh Earlier this week, I made the mistake of reading the communiqué published at the end of the March 19 Sharm el-Sheikh multilateral conference. I say "mistake" because the document, which sums up various points agreed upon by Israeli, Palestinian, American, Egyptian and Jordanian political and security leaders, is so one-sided and infuriating that it is difficult to comprehend how the government could have agreed to such shameful terms. Thankfully, the decisions published in such communiqués are usually worth little more than the cost of the ink used to print them. But that does not take away from just how deplorable the summit's statement is. Israel gives concessions, the Palestinians give nothing
Over the course of two pages, one will not find a single Palestinian concession – not one! – while in exchange, Israel offered up several overly generous gestures regarding important issues. After an initial standard boilerplate text invoking the usual vacuous diplomatic phrases such as "enhancing mutual trust," the second paragraph states that both Israel and the Palestinians "reaffirmed their joint readiness and commitment to immediately work to end unilateral measures for a period of three to six months." This is followed immediately by the declaration that Israel has made a "commitment to stop discussion of any new settlement units for four months and to stop authorization...Read More |
From Ian: David Friedman: The battle for Israel's soul: If either side wins, everyone loses To all my friends in Israel, Right, Center and Left, religious and secular, the first thing I need to say is that "I love you all." The State of Israel, which you have created, has sustained me and countless other Jews in the Diaspora for generations. Most of us see no future in Judaism without Israel and, whether you realize it or not, we are all deeply invested, in ways far more important than financially, in Israel's future. Israel has done much for the Diaspora, but now it's time for Israel to learn something from the Diaspora. We in the Diaspora see the value of all Israel's citizens. We think the Israel Defense Force is holy; it is not only one of the most powerful, but also one of the most moral, armies on earth. A Jew risking his life in the military defending the Jewish state, even if entirely secular, is performing a great mitzvah, perhaps equal in magnitude to all others. And a Jew committing his life to the study of the Torah, accepting the poverty and self-sacrifice that accompanies such a choice, is performing a great mitzvah as well. Indeed, the midrash on the Book of Genesis speaks approvingly of the relationship between Jacob's fifth and sixth sons, Issachar and Zevulun, by which the latter went to work to provide support for his brother's Torah study. Perhaps you in Israel are too close to the trees to see...Read More |
Richard A,. Posner
In 2007, The New Republic published an article by Richard A. Posner reviewing The Judge in a Democracy by Israel's former chief justice Aharon Barak, who had spearheaded the judicial revolution that many in Israel now want to turn back.
Posner is one of the most influential legal scholars in the United States and the most-cited legal scholar of the 20th century.
It is worth reading his pretty scathing critique from 16 years ago, as the issues being wrestled with in Israel as the same that Barak justified in his book. Enlightened Despot Aharon Barak, a long-serving justice (eventually the chief justice) of the Supreme Court of Israel, who recently reached mandatory retirement age, is a prolific writer, and this is his most recent book. It is an important document, less for its intrinsic merits than for its aptness to be considered Exhibit A for why American judges should be extremely wary about citing foreign judicial decisions. Barak is a world-famous judge who dominated his court as completely as John Marshall dominated our Supreme Court. If there were a Nobel Prize for law, Barak would probably be an early recipient. But although he is familiar with the American legal system and supposes himself to be in some sort of sync with liberal American judges, he actually inhabits a completely different--and,to an American, a weirdly different--juristic universe. I have my differences with Robert Bork, but when he remarked, in a review of The Judge in a Democracy...Read More |
From Ian: Caroline Glick: The Biden Administration's Sinister Turn Against Israel On Tuesday, the State Department summoned Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog to demand an explanation for the Knesset's abrogation of the 2005 law banning Jews from living in four communities in northern Samaria. That law was passed in the framework of Israel's failed plan to disengage from the Gaza Strip and northern Samaria. In August 2005, Israel expelled 10,000 Jewish citizens from Gaza and northern Samaria in the hopes that the Palestinians would take the areas and build a mini-Singapore. Instead, they built a mini-Afghanistan. The Knesset's decision to abrogate the law was a rare example of a democracy acting to correct its prior mistake. But that's not how the Biden administration saw it. Around the same time Ambassador Herzog was summoned, the White House said the law was a breach of Israel's 2004 agreement with the Bush administration. That agreement, which was given expression in an April 2004 letter then-President George W. Bush sent to then-Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, essentially said that in exchange for Israel's forcible uprooting of the Jewish communities in Gaza and northern Samaria, the Bush administration would accept the permanence of major Jewish communities in the rest of Judea and Samaria. What is notable about the Biden administration's accusation...Read More |
Israeli and Jewish media reported on Monday: Israel is the fourth happiest country in the world, according to the 2023 World Happiness Report (WHR), which was released on Monday. The publication ranks happiness on a national level each year. This year, Israel earned the fourth spot out of 109 ranked countries, an improvement over last year's ranking of ninth. Well, most of Israeli and Jewish media, that is. Haaretz, which pretends to be Israel's leading newspaper to Western audiences, ignored the story. You can argue that the World Happiness Report is a meaningless index, but surely a jump from ninth to fourth place is newsworthy, isn't it? In previous years, Haaretz did cover the release of the report. And more than once it would go out of its way to disparage and ridicule the results - for example, this insane 2018 article by Rogel Alpher...Read More |
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The Detroit Free Press, July 13, 1919, writes about the Arab reactions to Zionism.
The article is very negative towards the Zionist movement and it describes it as a "peril" to the Arab population. It describes in detail how the Zionists are buying up land at 500% of its value, how Tel Aviv and Haifa have become beautiful Jewish communities - and how resentful the Arabs are about this.
The reporter spoke to a new group of Muslim and Christian anti-Zionists in Palestine where they describe why they believe Zionism is a peril to them. Some of their arguments can be seen today to be proving the opposite of what they intend.
"If the Jews have a right to Palestine, then...the Indians have a right to New York," went one argument, that unwittingly conceded that Jews were there first.
The most interesting argument was this one:
'If a Jewish army had beaten us in battle and had taken our land away from us by force of arms, we would have no word to say against Zionism. While our Jewish conquerors occupied our country, we would bow our heads and remain silent."
Somehow, between 1919 and 1949, that attitude changed dramatically. And what became clear is that there was no issue with living under the rule of non-Arabs, as they had for centuries, but living under the rule of Jews.
The article, and others from the region in the years immediately following the end of World War I, also shows that what little Palestinian nationalism that existed was purely a reaction to Zionism. And this article...Read More |
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