From the JTA: Woman wearing tallit arrested at Western Wall

From the JPost: Woman wearing talit at Kotel detained

From Haaretz: Police arrest woman for wearing prayer shawl at Western Wall

From ArutzSheva: Police Arrest, Release Woman with Prayer Shawl at Kotel.

In fact the articles are completely different — JPost says a woman was detained after trying to read from a Torah near the Kotel. The JTA, that she was arrested for wearing a Tallit.

The prayer shawl was not the reason she was detained. She was not arrested, obviously, because she was immediately released. I am not judging what should happen there — I advocate some kind of compromise — I am judging the sensational headlines, and the damage they do to the Jewish people, by our own news sources.

Forget the whole CNN vs FOX vs MSNBC debate. We have our own headline battles, though more subtle.

The woman detained was interviewed by the Jpost:

Frenkel said that as the women unrolled the Torah scroll and began to prepare to read, officials from the Kotel Foundation arrived and demanded that they leave the premises.

Frenkel said that the women agreed to roll up the Torah scroll and take it to the Robinsons Arch. But on their way out Frenkel, who was wearing a talit and was carrying the Torah, was seized by police.

I was pushed into a nearby police station and transferred to the main police station at Yaffo Gate, she said.

About 40 women who attended the prayer formed a procession and followed the police and Frenkel through the Old City to the Yaffo Gate where they congregated and sang songs until Frenkel was released.

The Jewish headlines are helping to divide an already divided people desperate for some kind of unity to face external threats.

“The road to hell is paved with good intentions” – St. Bernard of Clairvaux, 12th century.
By Lyon Roth
Globes Magazine

Today, most political roads seem to lead to Washington DC. Once there, you will also discover that nearly every letter of the alphabet enjoys a real road or street named after it in one or more of the four quadrants of the city. Poor letter J does not have any street named after it in any quadrant. However, it now adorns the name of a new lobby that, according to its web-site, purports to be the “political arm of the pro-Israel, pro-peace movement.”

J Street founder Jeremy Ben-Ami emphasizes passionately that the organization “is so clearly pro-Israel, is grounded in and based in Jewish values and a Jewish desire to support the State of Israel.” It also boasts its own political action committee to fund candidates who endorse the group’s objectives. Unfortunately, many legacy pro-Israel advocates, Jews and non-Jews alike, are confused. Perhaps trying to be all things to all people, J Street disregards what is still a rather complex matrix of issues arising from the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Ben Ami stresses that J Street rejects the “us versus them” thinking, opting instead for a non-partisan approach to the vexing dilemmas plaguing the Middle East. Sadly, however, its Pollyanna notions of regional peace neither conform to the practical realities confronting the parties who will have to achieve such peace, nor recognize certain partisan positions that remain diametrically opposed.

For example, the Palestinian insistence on a right of return for refugees is fundamentally incompatible with Israel’s essential identity as a Jewish state. These can’t be preserved simultaneously any more than one can be both Jewish and Christian simultaneously. J Street isn’t convinced. According to Ben Ami, Israel need not be referred to as a “Jewish state.” Rather the label “Jewish, democratic home in the state of Israel” ought to suffice.

All this reminds me of another faction pretending to advocate –with neither authority nor mandate — the genuine best interests of its “constituents.” Jews for Jesus was founded by Moishe Rosen in 1973. Born Jewish, Rosen converted and became a Baptist minister. His organization seeks to convert Jews who have not yet embraced the enhanced version of their theological beliefs. The group’s efforts have been overwhelmingly rejected by all Jewish denominations. While its evangelical activities may be perfectly appropriate for Christians, aside from using a few Yiddish and Hebrew expressions, they have nothing to do with Judaism.

So, as Israelis like to say, “we’ve been in this movie before.” Much as Jews for Jesus distorts the definition of membership (Jews) in order to expand its tent of adherents, J Street similarly manipulates the definition of “pro-Israel” to achieve its peculiar goals. And, like most distortions, it winds up resembling a bad movie. Some call the J Street version a comedy. Others think it’s a horror film. To me, it’s still mostly a mystery — on multiple levels.

For starters, we have the burgeoning list of unanswered questions: How much of J Street’s funding is actually contributed by Arab sources? First we heard 3%. A few weeks later, it was adjusted to 10%. What will the numbers be next month? Are there five major Arab donors, as initially reported, or over 30 major Arab donors, as recently disclosed? Does it matter? In my view it does.

When an organization receives hundreds of thousands of dollars from entities that are historically hostile to Israel’s existence, all sorts of motive-related questions need to be addressed. Has founder Jeremy Ben Ami severed his ties to Fenton Communications, his former Washington lobbying firm, whose client, the Qatari government, retained the company this past March to spear-head an 18-month anti-Israel campaign on college campuses? Is that connection in any way related to J Street’s abject refusal to criticize the UN-commissioned Goldstone Report, a pre-packaged anti-Israel screed that is blatantly short on facts, sloppy on law, and unilateral in its condemnations? What is the real motivation behind J Street’s decision to fight Israel’s efforts to secure US sanctions against Iran?

One question that has been answered already is why J Street pulled the “pro-Israel” prefix from its messaging to students. It learned that several potential new recruits were turned off by that emphasis, so it’s been reduced to “pro-peace.” Moreover, much of the debate at the student sessions within J Street’s recent conference focused on whether divestment initiatives should be directed only against products from the Israeli settlements or against all Israeli merchandise.

The deeper one digs, the sillier this gets. Designating J Street as a pro-Israel lobby seems as logical as having Michael Jackson, while he was alive, serve as the spokesperson for all Caucasians or nominating Renee Richards as the poster child for female tennis players. Theo Epstein, the manager of the Boston Red Sox, doesn’t seek advice from the New York Yankees when reviewing next year’s draft picks. Pepsi doesn’t consult Coca Cola on branding new products. India doesn’t cooperate with Pakistan on defense procurement strategies. These entities compete with each other on the field, in the marketplace, and in battle. Any organization that sees moral equivalence between Hamas raining thousands of lethal rockets on Israeli towns for eight years and Israel’s Gaza incursion to disable those batteries all the while insisting on an immediate Israeli ceasefire — simply doesn’t get it.

Therefore, as one might expect, nearly all Israelis and most American Jews who see themselves as pro-Israel have never heard of J Street and certainly don’t subscribe to the J Street agenda. Furthermore, while Ben Ami and friends remain frustrated that it is taking so long for Jews and Muslims to resolve their issues like good Christians, my thought is that if it doesn’t look like a duck, doesn’t walk like a duck, and doesn’t talk like a duck, it isn’t a duck.

To date, J Street doesn’t look like a pro-Israel lobby, it doesn’t walk like a pro-Israel lobby, and it certainly doesn’t talk like a pro-Israel lobby. It merely quacks along a street leading nowhere.

Lyon (Lenny) Roth is a senior executive at an international wealth management firm, a member of Ben Gurion University’s Board of Governors and the Jewlicious Board of Directors.

© Copyright of Globes Publisher Itonut (1983) Ltd. 2009

Charred coins my ass

While digging wantonly under Al Aqsa Mosque, Islam’s 3rd holiest religious site, the Zionists usurpers conveniently claim to have discovered a trove of approximately 70 allegedly Jewish coins dating from the time of the 2nd Temple – you know, the one that never really even existed?

NPR reports:

About 70 coins were found in an excavation at the foot of a key Jerusalem holy site. They give a rare glimpse into the period of the Jewish revolt that eventually led to the destruction of the Second Jewish Temple in A.D. 70, said Hava Katz, curator of the exhibition… The Jews rebelled against the Roman Empire and took over Jerusalem in A.D. 66. After laying siege to Jerusalem, the Romans breached the city walls and wiped out the rebellion, demolishing the Jewish Temple, the holiest site in Judaism… The coins sit inside a glass case, some melted down to unrecognizable chunks of pockmarked and carbonized bronze from the flames that destroyed the Temple.

Hava Katz is SUCH a liar! So she scorched up a bunch of coins. So what? Everyone knows that there was no temple in Jerusalem 2000 years ago because all the Jews where in Khazaria. And they weren’t even Jews yet. This is just another provocation by the Zionist Apartheid regime meant to justify their destructive digging under Haram Al Sharif which threatens the foundations of the mosques, and justifies the further dispossession of eternal Palestinian rights extant from time immemorial. Should you find yourself in the Zionist entity, and wish to witness this hoax for yourself, you may do so at the Davidson Center, adjacent to the entrance to the so called “Wailing Wall.” I’ll show you a wailing wall you rotten Zionists.

If you are anything like me, you hate pretty much all Israeli t-shirt designs that you see at Shuk HaKarmel.   I think the one I hate the most is

No direct object or adverb to say HOW Uzi does it! Or whom he does it to.

Don’t worry.  Benji Lovitt, from What War Zone,   is remedying the situation by selling his own wittily-captioned t-shirts based on some content from his blog and Israeli life in general, which you can buy here and which are wittier than anything currently available on Ben Yehuda.  I should take this opportunity to mention that Benji is my favorite Israeli comedian, aside from Avigdor Lieberman.

My favorite shirt is this one :

Yihyeh B'seder, Bernie Madoff! (no, it doesn't actually say Bernie Madoff. Just implied.)

But he has a bunch of great shirts available, so check them out and support!

]]> http://www.jewlicious.com/2009/11/chumus-larious-t-shirts-from-benji-lovitt/feed/ 0 http://www.jewlicious.com/2009/11/oh-syria/ http://www.jewlicious.com/2009/11/oh-syria/#comments Mon, 09 Nov 2009 14:41:58 +0000 dahlia http://www.jewlicious.com/?p=11412

“Resistance of the occupation is a national duty and to support it is a moral and legal duty…and an honor which we are proud of,” said Syrian Prime Minister Bashar al-Assad at the Commercial Cooperation of the Organization of the Islamic Conference, currently being held in Istanbul. Though, resistance to whom, one might ask. After all, when the Muslim Brotherhood tried to “resist” Syrian rule, tried to assassinate Hafez al-Assad in Damascus, killed a number of  ‘Alawi military Generals, and declared the town of Hama to be an independent Muslim state, Assad surrounded the town with artillery, and bombed the city for 11 day, killing 38,000 people. Clearly, that type of resistance is frowned upon. So let us clarify Assad’s statement: resisting Israel is honorable.

But, such a statement, blatant and in the open is not politically correct for a nation which is attempting to make friends in the West. Therefore, Assad mentioned Syria’s “continuing desire for the realization of just and comprehensive peace on the basis of the return of the occupied territories, especially the occupied Syrian Golan.” What this really means is, “if Israel gives us back the Golan Heights, and establishes a Palestinian State, which really has nothing to do with us or our national interests, we would be inclined to sign a peace treaty with Israel, which would act as a semi-long term cease fire agreement, but include definite borders instead of cease-fire lines.”

Yet, Syria, somehow, missed the mark. You see, for a peace to exist both parties have to accept that the other one has a right to exist. If not, there cannot be peace but rather a secession of war. Assad went on to say that the core problem in the Middle East is “the Zionist occupation” [which] “we must begin to work to eliminate.” Note his terminology. Assad did NOT say “the Israeli occupation of the West Bank.” Rather, he said “the Zionist occupation.” What does this minor difference mean? Well, while the former refers to the territory of the West Bank being occupied, the later refers to all of Palestine, including Israel, as being occupied by Zionists. He then says that this entity’s occupation ought to be eliminated. So, Israel is at the heart of all problems in the Middle East and ought to be eliminated. In short, if one party is calling for the destruction of the other, they aren’t really calling for peace.

Does this sound like an arm extended in peace and friendship? I didn’t think so.

Last Friday, friends and relatives of Australian Jewish Philanthropist Richard Pratt gathered in Jaffa, to commemorate in words, music and dance, the life of a man who had touched so many. Pratt, who passed away last April, was Australia’s 4th wealthiest man. His Pratt Foundation helped support over 350 projects in Israel, from education to integration, from culture to health. You can read all about the event in this article in Haaretz.

Pratt first came to my attention a few years ago after his foundation decided to support my buddy and ROI alum Jeremy Hulsh’s Oleh Records, an organization dedicated to supporting Israeli artists gaining access to audiences abroad. Jeremy clued me into the awesome video above that is super cute and also allows one to see the width and breadth of the Pratt Foundation’s work in Israel. Mr. Pratt may be gone, but his legacy lives on and he won’t easily be forgotten.

Dura Reserve

HaYarkon Park

Herzliya

These three were taken by the exceptionally talented Tal Shavit and much of her beautiful work can be seen (in a larger size) on her account at Flickr. For those who want to see it, she also has a set she calls Palestine which includes images taken at checkpoints. It appears that sometimes even harsh politics can be depicted beautifully.

SHABBAT SHALOM!

Wow. From whatever shithole bunker, buried deep in the ground, he’s hiding in, Hassan Nasrallah is not going to be happy today. Israel captured the Francop, an Antigua registered cargo ship on it’s way to Syria with a special cargo of 36 containers, weighing in at 500 tons, on it’s way to Hezballah in South Lebanon. Once inside the containers, the IDF found 106 mm rockets, 107 mm rockets, 122 mm rockets, mortar shells and hand grenades. These munitions, hidden in polyurethane, were surely destined to be used against civilians in Northern Israel and represent a violation of UN General Assembly Resolutions 1747 and 1701. Just to put it into context, remember the Karine-A? Another boat full of Iranian supplied weapons captured by the Israelis before terrorists could get their hands on it? That was a big deal back in 2002, right? The Francop had 10 times more weapons. In fact, the Israelis are still opening up the containers!

The crazy thing is, this is just one they caught. The IDF really has no way of knowing how many weapons have gotten through. Shit.

According to CNN, Al-Shabab has issued a threat against Israel. Al-Shabab is the terrorist group which controls much of Somalia. It has known links to Al-Qaeda and many of its affiliate terrorist groups. Al-Shabab leaders have stated, “We will transfer and expand our fighting in the Middle East so we can defend Al Aqsa mosque from the Israelis.” The group claims that Israel is attempting to destroy the Al-Aqsa mosque (and compound?). The group, which is, also, known for its piracy activities, has claimed to have established a new unit, the “Al-Aqsa Holy Warriors” to act against Israel.

It is this author’s opinion that this group’s threats ought not be taken idly. Somalia sits strategically on the Gulf of Aden, across from Yemen. With Yemen believed to become the new Al-Qaeda headquarters, following a retreat from Afghanistan, Somalia’s position is likely to become more important, and more infused with terrorists. As such, they would be in a prime position to close down the Gulf of Aden, or more importantly, the Red Sea to Israeli shipping. Even without direct attacks on Israel’s soil, this is a most strategic threat. Moreover, given that Al-Qaeda is already known to exist in the Gaza Strip, more links cannot mean anything but trouble for Israel.