Boker tov, Boulder!

Good Shabbos

Highly Recommended: Rabbi Lazer Brody's post for Parshat Ki Tavo - Trusting in Hashem. Print it out now, so you can read it over Shabbos.

.... As our sages promised, charity certainly does save a person from death.

As we see time and again, Rebbe Nachman's teachings are not simply lofty theoretical ideas for parlor discussions – they are absolute Torah truths and guidelines for living our lives. By virtue of implementing the tzaddik's advice, all of Klal Yisroel will surely live lives of spiritual and material abundance. Amen.

Amen.

XXXXXXXXXX - GD FORBID - XXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Olmert Offers Judea, Samaria, Divides J'lem in Draft Accord

Am posting it all.

(IsraelNN.com) Israel's government has agreed, in writing, to hand over 6,250 square kilometers of land – the equivalent of its entire biblical and strategic heartland - to an Arab terror state.

So reports Dr. Guy Bechor, a leading expert on Arab affairs, who also supplies some of the details of the negotiations. Bechor reports, based on "leaks from the Palestinian side," that Israel has, in the past few days, presented Palestinian Authority chairman Mahmoud Abbas at least one draft of an "agreement of principles."

• The agreement calls for a state named Palestine to be established alongside Israel, and have a territory of 6,250 square kilometers: the equivalent of all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
• "Palestine" will be demilitarized.
• Most of the Jewish communities built in Judea and Samaria over the past 40 years are to demolished and their inhabitants expelled, according to the plan. The remaining communities are to be concentrated in small salients for which the Arab state will be compensated with additional territory elsewhere in present-day Israel.
• A passage of some sort will connect Gaza and Judea and Samaria. It will be under Jewish sovereignty and Palestinian administration.
• Israel agrees to redivide Jerusalem. Arab neighborhoods will be under Arab sovereignty and Jewish ones under Jewish sovereignty. Mention is made of "religious areas," but further details are not known as of yet. Each side will recognize the other's spiritual needs.
• The "refugee" question is not mentioned at all, and Bechor reports that this is the main sticking point. Abbas is insisting that Arabs descended from those who fled Israel in 1948 be allowed to return to Israel, at least in principle.

Bechor says that Abbas and his men have gone over the draft and are not pleased; they know how to negotiate, he notes. In a recent interview with PA TV, Abbas said that "declarations of principles are a waste of time" and "useless." What the PA wants, he said, is a clear timetable for establishing Palestine, as well as an Israeli pullback, demolition of Jewish communities and "return of refugees" (i.e., the flooding of Israel with Arab citizens).

The Arabs are hoping Israel will become more pliable in November, when an international diplomatic conference, sponsored by the US, is to be held in an attempt to hammer out an accord.

An official close to Mahmoud Abbas, Mustafa Bargouti, said that the idea of a conference is "an Israeli trap" and that nothing will come of it.

Dhimmedia gives Muslim narrative Top Billing

Remains of the Jewish second temple may have been found during work to lay pipes at the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in east Jerusalem, Israeli television reported Thursday.

The AFP article gives preferential treatment to this explanation of the "compound" at the Temple Mount:

"The compound, which houses both Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock, is located in east Jerusalem, which Israel occupied in 1967 and then annexed. It is the third holiest site in Islam after Mecca and Medina."

Then adds, as if it were an afterthought:

"For Jews it as known as the Temple Mount, which they revere as the site of the King Herod's second temple, which was destroyed by the Romans in 70 AD. It is the holiest site in Judaism. All that remains today is the temple's Western Wall, or Wailing wall."

ARGH. Maybe I'm overreacting [after all this is not the actual destruction, just coverage of the destruction] but what we "revere" happens to be historical reality, not some dream somebody had about riding a horse with wings.

King Solomon started building the First Temple in Jerusalem about THREE THOUSAND YEARS AGO.

Imagine a yardstick as a rudimentary timeline. The zero mark is when we Jews made Jerusalem our capital, and the 36-inch mark is Now. For the first half of the yardstick, for the first foot and a half, there was no Islam.

When Mohammed was still running around in diapers, Am Yisrael had already built and rebuilt kingdoms, built and rebuilt our Temples, been defeated, conquered, banned, expelled, returned and defeated, conquered, banned and expelled again.

By the time Islam came into existence, we had already completed six magnificent (and not-so-magnificent) historical epochs... as follow in this timeline from History.com:

THE FIRST COMMONWEALTH (ca. 1004 - 586 BCE)

ca. 1004 King David captures Jerusalem from the Jebusites. Makes Jerusalem the capital.
(As some scholars point out, King David did not found Jerusalem, but conquered an already-inhabited city that had been in existence for 2,000 years.)
1010 - 970 Reign of King David.
ca. 960 King Solomon begins to build the First Temple.
928 Division of Kingdom into Israel (north) and Judah (south).
722 Assyrians conquer northern Kingdom of Israel.
701 Hezekiah successfully withstands Sennacherib's attack on Jerusalem.
597 Babylonians capture Jerusalem.
586 Nebuchadnezzar destroys city and First Temple and exiles Jews to Babylon.

THE PERSIAN PERIOD (539 BCE - 332 BCE)

539 Fall of Babylon.
538-37 Cyrus allows Jews (about 50,000) to return to Jerusalem from Babylon
520 Works begins on the building of the Second Temple under Zerubbabel.
515 Completion and rededication of the Second Temple.
445 Nehemiah appointed governor of Judea by Artaxerxes and rebuilds city walls.
397 Ezra the Scribe initiates religious reforms.

THE HELLENISTIC PERIOD (167 BCE - CE 63)

332 Alexander the Great conquers Palestine.
323 Death of Alexander in Babylon - Wars of Succession begin.
320 Ptolemy I captures Jerusalem.
320 - 198 Rule of Egyptian Ptolemies.
198 - 167 Rule of the Syrian Seleucids.
167 Antiochus IV of Syria outlaws Juda and desecrates the Second Temple.

THE HASMONEAN PERIOD (167 BCE - CE 63)

167 - 141 Maccabean War of Liberation.
164 Judah Maccabee recaptures Jerusalem and restores Temple.
166 - 160 Rule of Judah the Maccabee.
160 - 143 Rule of Jonathan.
143 - 135 Rule of Simon Maccabeus.

ROMAN PERIOD (63 BCE - 324 CE)

63 General Pompey and his Roman legions conquer Jerusalem.
63 - 37 Hasmonean rules continue but under protection of Rome.
40 Rome appoints Herod King of Judea.
40 -
CE 4 Reign of Herod the Great.
37 King Herod captures Jerusalem.
18 Herod commences rebuilding of Temple.

ca. 7 BCE - ca. 31 CE Life of Jesus of Nazareth

4 BCE Jerusalem is governed from Caesarea by Roman procurators. Herod dies.
26 - 36 Pontius Pilate, Roman procurator of Judea.
27 - 31 The ministry of Jesus.
31 Crucifixion of Jesus.
63 Temple completed.
66 Jews revolt against the Romans.
70 Jerusalem is demolished by Titus; survivors are exiled or sold into slavery.
132 Bar Kochba leads a doomed revolt against Rome.
135 Emperor Hadrian rebuilds Jerusalem; builds new walls and renames the city Aelia
Capitolina and country Palestine; bans Jews from Jerusalem.

BYZANTINE PERIOD (324 - 638)

313 Emperor Constantine legalizes Christianity.
324 Constantine becomes sole ruler of the empire.
326 Queen Helena discovers Gologotha and other holy sites; her son, Constantine, builds the Anastasis (Church of the Holy Sepulchre).
438 Empress Eudocia allows Jews to live in Jersualem.
614 Persian conquest of Jerusalem.
628 Emperor Heraculis recaptures the city.

EARLY MUSLIM PERIOD (639 - 1099)

638 Six years after the Mohammed's death, Caliph Omar captures Jerusalem; Jews readmitted.
691 Dome of the Rock is built by Caliph Abd al-Malik.
715 Al-Aqsa Mosque is completed by al-Walid al-Malik.
750 Power shifts from the Umayyards of Damascus to the Abbasids of Baghdad; Abbasids continue to enhance Jerusalem.
969 Fatimid conquest is soon followed by destruction of churches and synagogues.
1071 Seljuks devastate Jerusalem.

See also this BtB post from last year.

Aaron Klein, WorldNetDaily:

JERUSALEM – Contradicting most of his colleagues, a former senior leader of the Waqf, the Islamic custodians of the Temple Mount, told WorldNetDaily in an exclusive interview he has come to believe the first and second Jewish Temples existed and stood at the current location of the Al Aqsa Mosque.

The leader, who was dismissed from his Waqf position after he quietly made his beliefs known, said Al Aqsa custodians passed down stories for centuries from generation to generation indicating the mosque was built at the site of the former Jewish temples.

He said the Muslim world's widespread denial of the existence of the Jewish temples is political in nature and is not rooted in facts.

Tell it to Dhimmedia.

Where's the Israel Lobby on this?

And what is the Inter Press Service? I've never heard of it, but they're carrying an interesting story - published today at Asia Times Online

Israel urged US to attack Iran - not Iraq

By Gareth Porter

WASHINGTON - Israeli officials warned the George W Bush administration that an invasion of Iraq would be destabilizing to the region and urged the United States instead to target Iran as the primary enemy, according to former Bush administration official Lawrence Wilkerson.

Wilkerson, then a member of the US State Department's policy planning staff and later chief of staff for secretary of state Colin Powell, recalled in an interview that the Israelis reacted immediately to indications that the Bush administration was thinking of war against Iraq. After the Israeli government picked up the first signs of that intention, said Wilkerson, "The Israelis were telling us Iraq is not the enemy - Iran is the enemy."

The warning against an invasion of Iraq was "pervasive" in Israeli communications with the US administration, Wilkerson recalled. It was conveyed to the administration by a wide range of Israeli sources, including political figures, intelligence, and private citizens....

They went that-a-way >> <

Last week Dhimmedia put finishing touches on their obfuscation of an FBI investigation. On the national level, there was, for example, this NY Times article reprinted in the San Francisco Chronicle (Aug. 26) :

Racial profiling alleged in Seattle / Muslims decry FBI release of photos of 2 men on ferry

On the local level, we had the Seattle Times (Aug. 27):

FBI's release of ferry passenger photos resented

For Arabs and Muslims across the Puget Sound area, a rise in the nation's threat level or a bombing halfway around the world often can mark a period of unease.

In the years since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, leaders in that community say incidents of profiling and harassment have ebbed and flowed — increasing when Muslims are linked to news of the day.

Now the FBI's release of photographs of two men of unknown origin, who the agency says were observed acting suspiciously aboard as many as six different Washington ferry routes in recent weeks, is creating new worries in the community.

Muslim- and Arab-American leaders are upset that the FBI didn't consult them — as it has done in other instances — before releasing the photos on the Internet and to news organizations. They worry that the action may fracture the relationship the agency and the community have carefully built.

The FBI has stressed that the release of the photos is a rare move, taken only after it had exhausted other efforts to identify the men. The agency also has said the men's actions could be innocuous, but it needs to question them.

The photos were snapped by a ferry captain last month after crew members alerted him to suspicious activity. The men seemed inordinately interested in the operation of the vessel, took photographs of the interiors of the boats and went into areas tourists and commuters don't normally go, the FBI has said. The agency has received many tips but has not yet found the men.

Dozens of Muslims and Arabs have complained to community leaders about the photographs. The fallout has led to a meeting planned today between Muslim- and Arab-American community leaders and law-enforcement officials.

"We need to get some type of apology from them and figure out how to get back to where we were," said Rita Zawaideh, head of the Arab-American Community Coalition.

While Dhimmedia regurgitates Muslim organization press releases, sh*t happens. For instance, just days earlier, there was this item in the Peninsula Daily News (Port Angeles WA):

Car carrying four men speeds past Customs

PORT ANGELES - A car carrying four men reportedly sped through the U.S. Customs port of entry off the ferry from Victoria on Wednesday night.

The Port Angeles Police Department received a report through the PenCom dispatch center of the car failing to stop for inspection.

The car disembarked off the MV Coho at about 9:20 p.m. after the day's last southbound sailing. It reportedly raced past the checkpoint so quickly that nobody could determine a license plate number or even the plates' jurisdiction. The car turned left - or eastbound - onto Railroad Avenue from the port of entry, according to reports.

Police were looking for a four-door gray car or sport utility vehicle with four occupants, possibly Asian, headed east out of Port Angeles, said Sgt. Glen Roggenbuck.

Port Angeles police officers were unable to catch up with the vehicle and alerted the Clallam County Sheriff's Department and State Patrol, Roggenbuck said.

No more information was available Wednesday night. A U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer at the scene declined comment....

Luckily for us, law enforcement has a different agenda than Dhimmedia and are better at their jobs. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents caught up with the four men within hours and determined they posed no threat.

In a more perfect world, the media would be fighting the good fight instead of playing with fire smoke and mirrors.

{Sigh.}

Thought for the Day

March 2006 Kedumim Mayor Daniella Weiss said that Israel treats the terrorists too lightly:

"We have to hit them in a way that will not let them lift their heads."

At the time, I responded:

For what it's worth, I agree with her. It's either "hit them in a way that will not let them lift their heads" or risk their blowing up more tenth-graders. I don't see what the conundrum is.

In case it's not apparent, intervening events have not caused me to change my mind.

Mearsheimer Revealed

It was only this past Tuesday that I was reading David Remnick in The New Yorker, describing John Mearsheimer as a "distinguished" political scientist, a serious scholar, and certainly not an anti-Semite nor a racist.

While it's true that Mearsheimer may have been a distinguished political scientist and serious scholar at one time (he certainly has a long and impressive vitae), I have thought him to be racist, specifically antisemitic, since I first read his now infamous work [with Stephen Walt] called "The Israel Lobby" back in March of last year.

I am very happy to now make a claim counter to that of Remnick: Mearsheimer is toast.

The cat's out of the bag -- or rather, The Dish. Read this:

Ali, Chomsky, Judt and Mearsheimer will be convening a teach-in at DePaul in October to protest on behalf of Norman Finkelstein.

Now rub your eyes a bit and re-read.

Ali, Chomsky, Judt and Mearsheimer will be convening a teach-in at DePaul in October to protest on behalf of Finkelstein.

Are you still with me? Jamie explains at The Daily Dish:

.... These academic heroes have joined an outfit called the "DePaul Academic Freedom Committee," the mission of which is to "preserve academic freedom for our faculty on campus." Ali, Chomsky, Judt and Mearsheimer will be convening a teach-in at DePaul in October to protest on behalf of Finkelstein.

Though now lacking an academic perch (DePaul is the third university from which he has been fired) Finkelstein won't be out of a job for long; I imagine the Iranian mullahs, Hizbollah or Hamas would love nothing more than to have an energetic, American Jewish spokesperson to make their respective cases (though perhaps he's more effective advocating for them in an unofficial, unpaid capacity). If they don't come through, Finkelstein can always go climb back under his rock.

One expects these sorts of theatrics from Ali and Chomsky. But Judt and Mearsheimer have revealed much about themselves -- and their intellectual motivations -- by choosing to advocate for a Hezbollah propagandist and hero of neo-Nazis.

Now if you want to, you can go back and read the whole thing. And if you want more background, just search for "Mearsheimer" at the tool/box in the left column.

A big "todah rabah" to the person who sent me this. You know who you are.

High Alert at Rafah crossing

DEBKAfile

Hamas plans to use 100,000 protesters against the hardships in Gaza, which are blamed on Egypt’s closure of the Rafah outlet, as a battering ram to break through the crossing Saturday and link up with fellow Palestinians in Egyptian N. Sinai. Cairo has cautioned Gaza’s Hamas rulers that beefed-up Egyptian units are under orders to shoot the first Palestinian trespasser crossing through.

The US National Guard unit manning the Multinational Force Organization’s Al Gorah has been told of a plan to attack them under cover of the Gaza demonstration....

Historical reality

Did you hear today about some school or school district that won't allow the children to play tag? It's thought to encourage "harassment" so while they may still play "running games," they may not play "chasing games."

I hear something like that and I feel like I should register as a dinosaur. Life was really and truly better in the old days; kids could chase each other if they wanted to and harassment was part of the fun. There is no more fun, just like there's no more historical reality.

I came across this old post from November 2003 today, and it made me feel almost nostalgic... for 2003. You see, it was all still fresh then, kids still played tag and lots of their parents could tell truth from untruth.

Let's pick up the post where I'm discussing Dershowitz's book, The Case for Israel.

Dershowitz quotes Martin Buber (1939), a strong supporter of Palestinian rights:

"Our settlers do not come here as do the colonists from the Occident, to have natives do their work for them; they themselves set their shoulders to the plow and they spend their strength and their blood to make the land fruitful."

The land they settled was fairly worthless, i.e. without natural resources or strategic position, and the Jews neither stole nor confiscated land, but purchased it from absentee landlords and real estate speculators, at fair to exhorbitant prices.

Even years later, when Jewish land purchases were increasing, it was found that "the quantity of Arab land offered for sale was far in excess of the Jewish ability to purchase." Dershowitz challenges anyone to produce objective data that contradicts this historical reality. "No one will be able to do so."

Jewish cultivation of the land then attracted (an unknown number of) Muslims to the jobs it made available:

A study of the Jewish settlement of Rishon L'Tzion, first established in 1882, showed that the 40 Jewish families who settled there had attracted "more than 400 Arab families," many of whom were Bedouin and Egyptian.

A British official reported in 1937 that "the growth in [the numbers of Arab fellahin] had been largely due to the health services combating malaria, reducing infant death rates, improving water supply and sanitation."

These improvements, Dershowitz points out, were introduced into Palestine by the Jewish refugees from Europe.

Historical reality. Forty Jewish families attracted more than 400 Arab families. They came for what the Jews created -- jobs, health services, good water supply and sanitation. And now they say it's all theirs.

They're lying, the poor stupid bastards. And almost everyone believes them.*

In the good ol' days, lying was not acceptable. But then, neither was blowing yourself up. I guess, as much as you don't want them to, things change. It's left to us old folks to wonder if our grandchildren will ever know what it's like to "tag" someone, scream "You're It!" and run away. It was the best of fun.

Now it's just another "narrative."
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(*) You just wouldn't believe what's out there. For example, this blog from the Netherlands called tadaamun [tadaamun dot web-log dot nl]:

tadaamun is arabic for solidarity. solidarity with the oppressed peoples in this world, in particular the palestinians, who for more than half a century now have been oppressed, harrassed, murdered, mutilated, their land stolen from them by jews....

A recent post is called "Death Squads in Gaza: Licence to Kill"

.... The Israeli army has turned Palestinian territories into a shooting range for the special units of the navy and the air force corps, a place where they hone their skills of target killing. And yet the West Bank and Gaza are far from their usual turf. Take for example Force 13 of the Israeli navy commandos. This unit is supposed to operate only at sea, but it has participated in dozens of assassinations and abductions in the West Bank and Gaza....

Although service in the Israeli army is mandatory, service in the death squads is voluntary. According to Israeli television Channel 2, most those who volunteer for service in the elite units are followers of the religious Zionist current, who combine military and religious zeal with racism toward the Palestinians and Arabs....

UN being evacuated: NERVE GAS found in "offices"

I was minding my own business, counting my investment chickens to see if they hatched, and I noticed that the financial sphere is all in a twist over ... nerve gas being found at the UN!

LGF has the story, which so far is not making a lot of sense. You might want to stay tuned there, as I'm not going to be able to follow it this afternoon.

It's a bad day when stock brokers know more about what's going on in the world than a blogger does... Sorry to let you down, folks.

Meanwhile, I notice at LGF that some sketches in Sweden have offended Muslims. You know what that means... if you live in Sweden or Pakistan (or France), you might want to hose your car down.

Oh, and no biggie (since we're so used to these events now), but an American Airlines flight from San Diego to Chicago was grounded last night after some kind of "dispute involving Arabic-speaking men."

The jet left the gate at 11:14 p.m. but did not take off and instead returned at 11:26 p.m. after a traveler with a child elected to get off the plane.

I didn't think passengers had the option of choosing to getting off the plane after it leaves the gate. She must have been one insistent mama.

All the other passengers may be pissed off at her for the multitude of inconveniences this must have caused them, but you can't blame her for being frightened at the sound of men speaking Arabic on an airplane or for wanting to save herself and her child from any possible terrorist bombing or hijacking (such things have been known to occur).

It's the bloody terrorists' fault that this sort of thing happens, but you'd think from reading the comments in San Diego that George Bush caused all this fear (by talking about and acting upon the threat). The comments haven't yet gone to blaming Israel. Check back later.