“Hey, Little Red Riding Hood, what is that dome on your head?” “Grandma-tech knitted it for me out of steel wool,” Little Red Riding Hood proudly answered. “Nice, isn’t it?” “Sure, it’s nice,” answered the wolf, licking his lips. “It fits you very well. But why is it made out of steel wool?”
Israel can play a role in undermining the radicals among its Arab community. The best way to weaken the radicals is by embracing the Arab citizens rather than alienating them. If Israel does not build a kindergarten or school in Nazareth, someone else will. And in this case, the someone else could be secular extremists or Muslim fundamentalists.
Last week I was quoted as saying that President Obama is a strong friend of the Jewish people and that anyone who calls him anti-Semitic is guilty of character assassination. I stand by that quote. But being a great friend of the Jewish people does not automatically make one a great friend of Israel.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
A million Arabs plan to march on Jerusalem highlighting strange "accusations" that Israel is seeking to retain the Jewish character of its holy capital.
Nothing is new. The recent murder of the Jews in France should surprise no one. It exposes a dismal reality that is taking shape in Europe and throughout the world.
President Obama continues to favor the creation of a "nuclear weapons-free world." This explicit preference is more than naive; it is also undesirable in principle. For Israel, in particular, Obama's solution could likely open the doors to unendurable enemy aggressions. However unintended, therefore, it could become an utterly Final Solution.
Is this what three thousand and three hundred years of Jewish tradition has come to, that a nation that has always dared to walk alone, with different ideals and values from the wider culture, should so fully capitulate to the most corrupt, misogynistic values, that we would advocate that our young women have plastic surgery in order to get married?
Ahmed Qurei and those who are working to promote the "one-state solution" ignore the facts on the ground: that the Palestinians already have two separate "states" next to Israel - one in the West Bank and the other in Gaza. They also ignore the reality that the two Palestinian entities have been at war with each other since 2007.
As the U.S. election season enters into high gear, an important Gallup poll released earlier this month offers Israel and its supporters much reason to cheer.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
The fight for Jerusalem continues, on a number of quiet fronts. And if "want of a nail" can lose an entire war, as per Benjamin Franklin's poem, Yerushalayim can certainly be won via our close attention to issues that may not appear decisive or crucial.
It would be unreasonable for Israel to draw any comfort from an argument that Iranian intentions are effectively harmless. Rather, such intentions could impact capabilities decisively over time. Backed by appropriate nuclear weapons, preemption options must somehow remain open and viable to Israel, augmented, of course, by appropriate and complementary plans for cyber-defense and cyber-warfare.
By Dov Gilor
While in Las Vegas, my wife, Barbara, fed several quarters into a machine that really cleaned us out. She then fed more quarters into another machine that dried all of our clothes.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
Rabbi Porat oncesaid that his proudest parliamentary achievement was having sponsored and ensured the passage of a law entitled “Do Not Stand by Your Neighbor’s Blood”—rendering it a legal duty to offer assistance to someone in mortal danger. Based on a verse in Vayikra, Rabbi Porat’s law ensures that sanctity of life is a national value not only in word, but in deed.
Defense systems are important, just as tank shields are vital. But that is true only when we are on the offensive and focused on victory. In defensive-defeatist mode, these systems draw the end near. They are like aspirin for cancer.
Turning Jordan into Palestine would mean the loss of a moderate and rational Arab leader at a time when Islamists are rising to power in Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco and Libya.
I oppose the proposed Biometric Law because of how easily it can chip away at a citizen's liberty, without him feeling a thing.
For forty years I have studied the stunningly complex problem of enemy rationality, especially in certain earlier published writings concerning the particular nuclear threat from Iran.
In the past, Hamas has proven that when it wants to, it can prevent attacks on Israel. It would be a mistake to allow these governments to have it both ways -- on one hand claiming they are legitimate and sovereign governments, while on the other hand avoiding responsibility for terror attacks.
On March 7, the PA President convened yet another urgent meeting of PLO and Fatah leaders in Ramallah to discuss the content of this "mother of all letters" which he intends to send to Israel. The meeting, which came less than 48 hours after Obama's speech, reflected the increased concern of the Palestinians over the world's fading attention to their problems.
By Dov Gilor
We left Santa Fe on our way to visit the Painted Forest and the Petrified Forest in Arizona. Part of our day was spent traveling on the historic Route 66 and we stopped at the state visitor's center as we entered Arizona. At each state visitor’s center, we stopped to gather information about interesting sites and to request coupon booklets with reduced entry coupons.
It is impossible not to make a connection between the intentional running over of the policeman this Friday night by an Arab car thief and the Shahar Mizrahi story.
The "Arab Spring" is anything but a "great revolution." It is a spring of massacres, destruction and violence, as Patriarch Beshara al-Rai, the head of Lebanon's Maronite Church, put it. "We are with the Arab Spring but we are not with this spring of violence, war, destruction and killing," he told Reuters. "This is turning to winter. We cannot implement reforms by force and arms. How can it be an Arab Spring when people are being killed every day?"
As only a distinctly last resort, Israel needs nuclear weapons for nuclear war fighting.
The presence of Israel physicians in Ramallah drew furious reactions from workers at the Palestine Medical Compound and many Palestinians, including the Western-backed Fatah faction headed by Mahmoud Abbas. The fact that thousands of Palestinian patients receive medical treatment in Israeli hospitals each year did not stop their vociferous oppostion.
Feiglin: I know that religious Zionists think that their army service will pave their way into the heart of Israeli legitimacy. But that is not the case. Army service is a very important value. But those holding the reins will never let go in exchange for religious Zionist cannon-fodder.
US President Barack Obama's sentiments notwithstanding, nuclear arms are not per se destabilizing or "warmongering." They are not necessarily anti-peace. Rather, in certain identifiably volatile circumstances, nuclear weapons can actually be indispensable to the avoidance of catastrophic war.
By Aaron Klein
NATO Considering Attack On Bashar Assad’s Regime...Dershowitz To Launch Crusade Against Media Matters...Koch Not A Santorum Fan
The two parties are telling Palestinians that Israel does not want peace or a two-state solution and is only interested in maintaining control over Palestinian lands and "Judaizing" Jerusalem. The stepped-up anti-Israel rhetoric has resulted in a sharp increase in Palestinian violence soldiers, policemen, and civilians in Judea and Samaria and east Jerusalem.
To my fellow Israelis, I say this: The door is open. Just start marching toward leadership, toward liberty, toward destiny. It is not easy, but it is doable. That is what we proved in these elections. The nation is waiting. It is yearning for a life of national meaning and anticipates your leadership.
In the strict Islamic view, not merely in the more narrowly Jihadi or Islamist perspectives, Israel must be seen as the individual Jew in macrocosm. The Jewish state must be despised on account of this relationship – that is, because of the allegedly “innate evil” of each individual Jew.
By Dov Gilor
Shabbat in Santa Fe, New Mexico with the local Chabad reminds the author of the fantastic kiddush Hashem done by the Chabad emissaries; impressed anew each time by the warm and wonderful families who willingly suffer their personal isolation from the centers of religious Jews in order to bring a little Yiddishkeit into the lives of their fellow Jews.
By Aaron Klein
The revelation of The Tides Foundation donations to Media Matters may raise more questions about the partiality of the media group. Tides is one of the biggest financial backers of progressive and radical left groups in the U.S.
The Palestinian Center for Human Rights announced that Palestinians -- not Israel -- were to blame for the electricity crisis.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
Over the past year, KeepJerusalem has been keeping you informed in these pages about developments in Jerusalem that are likely to affect its Jewish future, for better or for worse. We strive to educate readers regarding the importance of a United Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty.
International law is not a suicide pact. Indisputably, Israel has a peremptory right to remain alive. It was entirely proper for Netanyahu to have previously opposed a Palestinian state in any form. Both Fatah and Hamas still see all of Israel as part of "Palestine."
Recent polls show yet again that the vast majority of Israeli society is traditional, holds from its religious faith and shies away from coercion. Thus, hasn’t the time come for our national leadership to express the desires of the large Jewish majority?
With the stroke of his pen, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas sealed the fate of the peace process, effectively declaring an end to any chance of reaching an agreement with the Jewish state.
By Aaron Klein
Attack On Iran May Trigger Al Qaeda Counterattack....Middle East Christians Facing Increased Persecution....Senator Inhofe: Obama Is Disarming America
Jordan has recently witnessed weekly demonstrations calling for far-reaching reforms and an end to financial corruption. King Abdullah did not take the protests seriously at first, but is now desperate to restore calm and order; going as far as ordering the arrest of some of his most trusted officials.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
While Republican presidential contenders Mitt Romney and Newt Gingrich vie with each other in expressing ever-stronger support for Israel, polls show Romney has a better chance of unseating President Obama in the November election. It is for this reason that many Israel supporters would like contender Rick Santorum to withdraw from the Republican race to ensure Romney is chosen over Gingrich.
Before we wrap up the primary campaign, I wish to express a heartfelt thanks to all of my supporters. To push the faith-based alternative uphill, over long years and against all odds, is a task that I could never have done alone.
Jorge Luis Borges, the very special Argentine writer and philosopher, sometimes identified himself as a Jew. Although lacking any apparent basis in halacha, he clearly felt himself to be a kindred spirit: “Many a time I think of myself as a Jew,” he is quoted in Willis Barnstone’s, Borges at Eighty: Conversations (1982), “but I wonder whether I have the right to think so. It may be wishful thinking.”
By Dov Gilor
Is it true that creatures from outer space visited New Mexico and that the U.S. government suppressed the story to avoid worldwide panic?
If the recent pictures of destroyed outposts had been of Bedouin villages or illegal houses in the Galilee, the whole country would have been up in arms.
“Everything in this world exudes crime,” says Baudelaire, “the newspapers, the walls, and the face of man.” But this “face” does not belong solely to what classic seventeenth-century international law scholar Hugo Grotius called “men of deplorable wickedness.”
I do not like to give advice to people in times of distress. Every time a settlement facing destruction begins to debate whether to take the “offer” (in other words, the extortion) to leave or to cling to its principles and its place, I adopt our Sages’ advice to not judge others until I am in their place.
Everyone who has taught international law, or written about it, knows that the idea of crisis in actually inherent in the subject. More than anything else, this crisis, this continuing or protracted dilemma, is one of efficacy, of effectiveness.
By Dov Gilor
“Remember the Alamo” was an important lesson in history class when I was a child and this was our first visit. It was a bit unimpressive but we enjoyed the History Channel movie about the Alamo in one of the rooms.
By Aaron Klein
Moscow has been trying to water down United Nations Security Council resolutions targeting Syria in recent days, with Russia insisting that any Council action should not only focus on the Assad government, but also the opposition movement trying to end Assad’s rule.
This week marks the seventieth anniversary of one of the most chilling events of the modern era.
The following article by Professor Beres and Colonel (Israel Defense Forces) Yoash Tsiddon-Chatto was originally published in the April 18, 2007 issue of The Jewish Press. Its warnings and predictions concerning a nuclear Iran have been proven unassailable.
No coercion is good – religious or secular. Today, Israel suffers more from secular coercion than from religious coercion. Unlike the situation in the past, religious soldiers today are forced into combat with women soldiers.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
In a city of Jewish symbols, the Mount of Olives is perhaps the most symbolic of all: With a theatrical view of the Temple Mount and the Old City, it was the last stop for the Divine Spirit before the destruction of the First Beit HaMikdash and will be its first stop when Mashiach arrives.
By Aaron Klein
“I worry the publicly available information is giving only a very small picture and that Iran is actually even much further along,” Bolton said in a radio interview on “Aaron Klein Investigative Radio”
The negotiations Abbas is conducting with Hamas are intended to create a joint Palestinian strategy in the aftermath of the failure of the peace process with Israel.
According to ancient Jewish tradition, one that certain Talmudists trace back to the time of Isaiah, the world rests upon thirty-six just men, the Lamed-Vav tzaddikim.
It is wrong to throw rocks at IDF soldiers. We must do all that we can to uproot this phenomenon. But the mad witch-hunt that raged recently has nothing to do with concern for and loyalty to the IDF.
By Dov Gilor
After a good meal in Houston Thursday night, we spent the evening at the Quality Inn near the Space Center. Early Friday morning we left for the Space Center so that we could get an early start before Shabbat.
By Aaron Klein
A mysteriously funded, highly organized effort to secure the ballot for a third party candidate in this year’s election has ties to President Obama and top Democrats, KleinOnline has learned.
Until recently, most of the Arab countries had boycotted Hamas. But now many Arab leaders are competing who will embrace Hamas stronger than the other.
By Hillel Fendel and Chaim Silberstein / KeepJerusalem.org
Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, elected three years ago on a strong "Jerusalem will never be divided!" platform, has changed colors.
There we, Manhigut Yehudit’s strategy team, sat for our first strategy meeting ahead of the upcoming primaries. “According to Likud law, primaries for the party chairmanship will be held in about a year,” I said, “and we have to prepare now.”
By Aaron Klein
“You don’t need to hit only the immediate, direct nuclear infrastructure of theirs. You can achieve this goal by going after some other targets, without being more specific,” said Shabtai Shavit, who served as Mossad director from 1989 to 1996.