According to a recent
poll the number of Israelis who support
further withdrawals from the West Bank has
dropped significantly in the years since the
2005 disengagement from the Gaza Strip and
northern Samaria.
The question asked by the "Motagim" poll
was: "In light of the results of the
disengagement process from the Gaza Strip,
are you in favor of a continued withdrawal
from Judea and Samaria?"
64.9 percent responded that they were
opposed to further withdrawals and 23.9
percent said they were in favor. The rest
refused to answer the question.
The poll also divided the results according
to various sectors in Israeli society,
showing that 95 percent of haredim were
opposed to further withdrawals, as were 90.9
percent in the religious community and 57
percent of the secular community.
Poll:
84% of Palestinians Back
Yeshiva Attack
Jpost.com Staff - Mar 20, 2008
The Jerusalem Post
The vast majority of
Palestinian Authority residents support the
terror attack on Jerusalem's Mercaz Harav
Yeshiva that killed eight students earlier
on March 6, according to a new poll cited in
the New York Times on Wednesday.
According to the survey, which was conducted
among 1,270 Palestinians in the West Bank,
84 % of those polled stood behind the
shooting attack. In addition, 64% supported
firing Kassam rockets at Negev towns.
"The anger that this poll is registering is
about equal to that at the very height of
the second intifada," the paper quoted the
pollster, Khalil Shikaki, as saying.
He added that he had never seen such a high
level of support for an act of violence in
all his 15 years of polling in Ramallah.
The survey also indicated that the majority
of Palestinians would choose Hamas Prime
Minister Ismail Haniyeh (47%) over
Palestinian
Authority President Mahmoud Abbas (46%) if
elections were called now, and that
three-quarters of Palestinians favored
terminating negotiations between the Abbas
and Prime Minister Ehud Olmert.
The poll had a margin error of plus or minus
three percentage points.
Israel shootout:
UN disagrees on
statement
Libya and it allies
blocked the UN Security Council from
issuing a US-drafted statement,
condemning the deadly attack by a
Palestinian gunman on a Jewish school in
Jerusalem as ''terrorist action'',
resultantly drawing a furious reaction
from Israel.
Within hours of the attack, the
deadliest in four years, which left at
least eight students dead, the 15-member
Council met in an emergency session and
Washington had hoped for a quick
statement condemning the attack.
Libya, however,
wanted the statement to also condemn the
recent Israeli action in Gaza. American
UN Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad rejected
the demand, arguing that the two
situations were quite different.
Palestinian Terrorist Kills 8 Students in Israel
On Thursday (March 6), a lone gunman
entered an Israeli seminary disguised as
a student and opened fire on a gathering
of students in the school library,
killing eight of them before he was shot
to death by an off duty soldier and two
undercover policemen. Yehuda Meshi Zahav,
head of the Zaka rescue service said,
"The students were in class at the time
of the attack. The floors are littered
with holy books covered in blood."
And just hours after the attack early on
Thursday morning, the Israeli police
raided the home of the Palestinian
gunman in Jabel Mukaber, an east
Jerusalem neighborhood.
The killings were greeted with
celebrations in the Gaza Strip and act
as a beacon to the dramatic escalation
of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,
rekindled last week by deadly clashes in
Gaza. The Hamas, an Islamist group
issued a statement prasing the attack.
Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesperson for the
Hamas said his group “blesses the attack
in Jerusalem, which was a natural
reaction to the massacre of Palestinian
civilians in the Gaza strip last week.”
Canada's top court
rules out
'Jerusalem, Israel'
in
passports
By Rhonda Spivak
OTTAWA - A
Canadian Jew has lost his court
battle to have his birthplace,
Jerusalem, recognized as part of
Israel on his Canadian passport.
The Supreme Court of Canada has
refused to hear an appeal by
Eliyahu Veffer, who wanted his
passport to show that he was
born in "Jerusalem, Israel,"
rather than "Jerusalem."
Veffer
appealed to the Supreme Court
after lower courts ruled that
Canada's policy did not
unreasonably violate his freedom
of religion, nor did it unfairly
discriminate against him.
"With the exception of
Jerusalem, Canada's policy is
that when a passport applicant
is born in a city that is in
disputed territory, the
applicant is allowed to choose
which country to include on his
or her application. But for
Jerusalem alone, Canada says you
cannot put Israel, you cannot
put Jordan, you cannot put
anything," said David Matas,
Veffer's lawyer.
Lawyers for
the Canadian government argued
that Canada did not want to show
favoritism to either side in the
Israeli-Palestinian conflict or
prejudice a peaceful political
settlement. In a court
affidavit, former Canadian
ambassador to Israel Michael
Bell added that "Canada opposes
Israel's occupation of East
Jerusalem and does not recognize
Israeli sovereignty over any
part of the City of Jerusalem as
defined in the UN Partition
Plan."
In response,
Matas said that Canada's current
policy has only been in
existence since April 1976.
"From 1948-1976, Canada allowed
Jerusalem, Israel in Canadian
passports, for East Jerusalem
and West Jerusalem, without any
apparent impact on Canadian
perceived neutrality," he said.
Matas did not take a position as
to what the passport office
ought to do if a Palestinian
chose "Jerusalem, Palestine" for
his passport. "That would be up
to the passport office," Matas
said. "But the problem would be
that Palestine is not a
country."
Hasbro pulls countries from Monopoly
site
after
Israel flap
PROVIDENCE,
Rhode
Island:
Monopoly,
the iconic
game of
capitalism,
has been
drawn into
the dispute
over
Jerusalem.
Hasbro Inc.
issued an
apology
Thursday
after an
employee,
responding
to
complaints
from
pro-Palestinian
groups,
eliminated
the word
"Israel"
after the
city in an
online
contest to
select names
for a new
Monopoly
board game:
Monopoly
Here and
Now: The
World
Edition.
The company
also pulled
all country
names from
other cities
on the site
when even
more people,
including
the Israeli
government,
complained
because
Jerusalem
was listed
as the only
city without
a country.
The
Pawtucket,
Rhode
Island-based
company is
asking
people to
vote at the
Monopoly Web
site on
which cities
will be
included in
the new
edition.
Until
Tuesday,
every city
on the site
listed a
country,
including
Paris,
France;
Cairo, Egypt
and
Jerusalem,
Israel.
"It was a
bad
decision,
one that we
rectified
relatively
quickly," he
said. "This
is a game.
We never
wanted to
enter into
any
political
debate. We
apologize to
our Monopoly
fans."
But an
employee
based in
London
decided on
her own
without
consulting
senior
management
to pull
"Israel"
from Jerusalem after hearing complaints from pro-Palestinian groups and bloggers who argue that the city is not a part of Israel, Hasbro spokesman Wayne Charness said Thursday.
The issue has been a sensitive one for decades: Israel captured the eastern part of Jerusalem — home to Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites — in the 1967 Mideast war and annexed it. The Palestinians want east Jerusalem to be the capital of a future independent state.
David Saranga, consul for media and public affairs at the Israeli consulate in New York, said Monopoly has a lot of fans in Israel, especially this year with Jerusalem a candidate for a spot on the Monopoly board. But after Israel was removed, he said the consulate started getting calls, first from Israeli fans, then fans elsewhere. He sent Hasbro a letter asking why Jerusalem had been singled out, he said.
"All the other cities had the country attached to their names," Saranga said. "We felt very upset."
Hasbro management was alerted to the change Wednesday when its London office saw a spike in traffic on the site and figured out what happened, Charness said. The company then pulled every country name, so Paris and Cairo also are now listed alone, he said.
Israel
Earthquake
Damages Only Temple Mount and
Shechem
reprinted
from
Arutz 7
11 Adar 5768, February 17,
2008 11:15
by
Ezra HaLevi
(IsraelNN.com)
An earthquake shook Israel at
12:37 PM Friday. The only damage
reported in Israel was on the
Temple Mount and near Shechem
(Nablus).
The
earthquake measured 5.3 on the
Richter scale; its epicenter was
located in northeastern Lebanon.
Earlier last week a quake
measuring 4.1 was felt in
northern Israel, also
originating from Lebanon, near
its northern city of Tyre.
A
large hole opened up on the
Temple Mount during the quake,
which was soon covered by
officials from the Wakf Islamic
Authority that administers the
mosques built atop Judaism's
holiest site.
The
only other reported damage in the
Holy Land was incurred between
Palestinian Authority-controlled
Shechem (Nablus) and Jenin, where an
old home collapsed, blocking the
main road to the village of Khufin.
The village is not far from the site
of the Biblical Joseph's Tomb, which
was set ablaze by Muslim vandals
last week.
At
least five people were injured and
two homes were destroyed in southern
Lebanon as a result of Friday's
quake.
Wakf
Officials Blame Israel
Wakf
officials tried to blame Israel for
the 6-foot by 5-foot hole, which is
about three feet deep, claiming it
was caused by Israel, which it
accuses of tunneling beneath the
Temple Mount. They demanded an end
to all Israeli excavations in the
area.
Though several excavation projects
are taking place around the Western
Wall Plaza, none of them entail
tunneling past the wall itself and
beneath the mount. The Wakf's
official position is that there was
never a Jewish Temple on the Temple
Mount and has gone to great efforts
to erase archaeological evidence of
Judaism's historical ties to the
site.
Western Wall Rabbi Shmuel Rabinowitz
issued a statement rejecting the
Muslim claims. "These are mendacious
reports without a grain of truth,"
he said, adding that work in the
Temple Mount compound would be
contrary to Jewish law. "Such claims
are a desecration and cause hatred
and incitement for no reason
whatsoever," Rabbi Rabinowitz said.
He stressed that work on the Rambam
(Mughrabi) Gate ramp to the Temple
Mount is vital for the safety of
those who visit the Western Wall and
called on the authorities to finish
the work speedily.
A
Tour of The Temple Mount
with
Rabbi Chaim Richman
(Chessed)
:
The currency of a spiritual life
by
Jonathon Boze
Chessed is
the Jewish idea that we should go out of our
way to perform acts of charity and kindness
toward everyone around us. This is seen as
both a duty, and a service to God. While
there are many Jewish text that explain
this, I think one very fine description of
the process can be found in the writings of
a first century Jewish scholar named Paul.
You may be familiar with him.
In Romans 12,
Paul describes our lives as living
sacrifices. He gives us many different
examples of not simply fighting evil with
good, but ignoring the evil act completely
while performing acts of kindness.
14Bless
those who persecute you; bless and do not
curse.
What I think
may be missed in the reading is the
practical reason for doing this. Yes we are
to have the mind and heart of Messiah and be
good representatives of God on earth. But
there is also a practical healing
application.
21 do not be
overcome by evil, but overcome evil with
good.
That verse is what the entire chapter boils
down to. Every smile, every dismissal of
offence, every act of chessed, increases the
sum total of Good in the world by a little
bit.
Think of it as a
business transaction. A business will create a
product and sell it at higher than cost. The
consumer will then purchase this product. If the
transaction was honest, both parties come away
with added value. The business received the
customers'
money and profit's,
while the customer received a product that was
worth more to them than the money. This is the
process of creating wealth.
Acts of kindness
work the same way. The cost to produce an act of
kindness is your pride. if you, as Paul says "Do
not think of yourself more highly than you
ought, but rather think of yourself with sober
judgment," then the personal
cost to you will be far less than the market
value of your kindness. What this means is that
the margin of spiritual profit for even a small
act of kindness is huge. And because of the low
cost, we don't
have to be stingy. We can invest our kindness
everywhere. Most importantly, every act of chessed
you perform will increase both the spiritual
wealth of you and your customer. I think that
bears repeating.
Every act
of chessed you perform will increase both the
spiritual wealth of you and your customer.
Evil is not
some incredible force in the world, though
its effects are devastating. Like poverty
describes an absence of physical wealth,
evil describes an absence of spiritual
wealth. You cannot combat poverty with more
poverty, and you cannot combat evil with
evil. If you find yourself leaning toward
making a nasty comment, think of it as a
spiritual bank statement and consider
investing in a kindness generating market.
It's
no accident that Paul talks about the
Fruits of the Spirit.
While we often use fruit to describe
the effect of our labors, it's
also the cause. No tree was ever created
without a seed, nor was there ever a
business created without capital. By
planting whatever small spiritual seeds we
have now, we don't
lose them, we insure an abundance. By
investing wealth in a growing economy, we
create more wealth.
By providing
acts of kindness, we improve both ourselves
and the world around us.
Just think. If
you improve, even a little, the mood of just one
person, how much better will the lives of those
he touches be? And what about the lives the
touched touch. With just one act of chessed you
literally change the world.
The
Golden Menora: Moving Closer to its Destination
On the second night of Chanuka, 5768
(December 6, 2007), the golden menora
prepared by the Temple Institute and fit
for use in the Holy Temple, was moved
from the archaeological site of the
Roman Cardo in the Jewish Quarter of the
Old City of Jerusalem, to its new
location, alongside the Yehudah Halevi
staircase leading from the Jewish
Quarter to the Western Wall Plaza. There
it overlooks the Temple Mount, site of
the future Holy Temple. A small move,
perhaps, for the golden menora, but a
giant leap forward for mankind, as the
rebuilding of the House of G-d becomes
one step closer.
The Path To The
Final Solution
The path
to Hitler's "final solution to the
Jewish question" has branched and
deviated since his death, but it's
fundamental principle remains the same.
Antisemitism did not end with WWII, and
it's seen a fresh resurgence in recent
years. While some might have you believe
that talk of antisemitism is merely a
ploy on the part of Jews to divert
attention or curry some advantage, the
threat it poses cannot be ignored.
In an age of rogue nations armed with
WMD, a worldwide Islamic jihad and the
resurgence of various hard-left and
hard-right militias, how long before
someone will successfully enact Hitler's
'final solution'?
This video is dedicated to the men and
women of the Israeli Defense Forces.
(Chessed)
:
The currency of a spiritual life
