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‘We salute our beloved heroes of Israel’

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=8625

Israelis stand in silence to remember and mourn the 23,085 soldiers who have fallen in the nation’s defense • Netanyahu: The IDF is stronger than ever. We will continue to strive for peace with our neighbors • Ya’alon: The battle, unfortunately, is far from over.
Shlomo Cesana, Lilach Shoval and Israel Hayom staff
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Yad Lebanim memorial service for fallen soldiers, in Jerusalem, Sunday.
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Photo credit: GPO
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A two-minute siren sounded throughout Israel at 11 a.m. on Monday morning as Israelis stood in silence to remember and mourn the 23,085 soldiers who have fallen in the nation’s defense since 1860. Israel’s Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism Remembrance Day began with a one-minute siren at 8 p.m. on Sunday night, followed by an official state memorial ceremony at the Western Wall in Jerusalem.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke at the state service held Monday at Mount Herzl in Jerusalem.

“Last week I met with a group of young children and teens who lost their fathers in battle. To me, these wonderful children represent our family — the family of grief — a tribe made up of Israelis from all walks of Israeli life, Jews and non-Jews, whose lives have been touched by grief. I looked at these children and I thought — they are so young. So young, and already they have to carry the burden of grief.”

He spoke of his brother, Lt. Col. Yonatan Netanyahu, a commander in the Israel Defense Forces’ elite commando unit Sayeret Matkal, who was killed in 1976 during Operation Entebbe in Uganda. “One of the boys asked me, ‘how do you deal with the loss of your brother?’ I told him that with all honesty, I don’t know how to give anyone advice on how to deal with such a loss. ‘Mom says that we have to move on,’ another child said to me. It reminded me of my mother’s heroism, having to cope with the loss of her eldest son, and I said to him: ‘Your mother is a hero.'”

“Another child asked me, ‘Did it make you stronger?’ I stopped for a moment and then I said, ‘In a way — yes. Because nothing can compare to this kind of pain.’ Some of the children did not want to speak at all. I told them that I understood them, because talking about the loss can sometimes be too emotional and too difficult.”

“We know this pain will never go away, that this wound can never heal. Maybe, the answer to death is life itself,” Netanyahu said. “Our lives, each and every one of us, and the life of this people and this nation. Facing the threats we do now, the IDF is stronger than ever. We will continue to strive for peace with our neighbors and we will continue to protect our country. But we must always remember that we would not be here without the men and women who gave their lives to protect us.”

“We must always remember that Independence Day, the very independence that we celebrate, was achieved by our fighters — those who survived the battles and those who gave their lives. With hearts bursting with pride and with tears in our eyes, we salute our fallen soldiers. Our beloved heroes of Israel.”

The service was followed by a ceremony honoring the 2,493 civilians, including 120 foreign nationals, who were killed in terror attacks since Israel’s inception.

Speaking at the service, Netanyahu said: “The Zionist endeavor is soaked with the blood of terror victims. The names of these terror operations change but their aim remains clear — to kill us, to rattle our safety and security and to drive us from this land, our land. The terrorists believe that the end justified the means, but we will not give in and we will not give up.”

“We will always strive for peace with our neighbors but we will seek retribution for our victims. We will find [the terrorists], wherever they are, and we will defeat them. This terror is man-made and we will defeat it. We will continue to build in our land, to prosper, and our national strength will get us through every fight.”

On Sunday morning, Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon’s told bereaved families: “With great pain and relentless longing we see the lives of those who paid the ultimate price — family, friends, brothers in arms — flash before our eyes.”

“With their deaths they did more than bequeath us life — they gave us the right to fight for our existence here; the right to have independence in this land; to reach milestones only a few nations do; the right to be a part of this wonder called the State of Israel, which after 65 years of independence and hundreds of years of persecution against Jews, for nothing more than being Jews, has turned into a role model for the entire world.”

Ya’alon stressed that “the battle, unfortunately, is far from over. It takes on new shapes and places, making us fight over and over again and sacrifice our finest sons and daughters. We are a peace-loving nation. We have been and we will be, but we will not compromise our safety and security and we will cut off the hand that tries to harm us.”

Also on Sunday, IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz issued a special Memorial Day order to the IDF: “For 65 years the State of Israel has been made to fight and win. Each generation has carried the mission of Israel’s defense on its shoulders and each generation, unfortunately, has known the pain of fallen soldiers.”

“Faced with an enemy who targets our nation and its civilians, an enemy who does not accept our existence in this land, we have only one option — to fight and win. Faced with the threats evolving around us, the IDF is ready. We will continue to hunt down those who seek to harm us and we will defend the State of Israel with resolve,” the order said.

“Our hope is that the family of grief will grow no more, and as we usher in Israel’s 65th Independence Day, we all pray for peace and security. We, the soldiers and commanders of the Israel Defense Forces will continue to stand guard of this nation and its people until the days of peace arrive.”

Gantz also spoke at Sunday’s state service at the Western Wall: “If it seems that the enemy is no longer knocking on our doors — don’t let the quiet fool you. A storm of threats is brewing beneath the surface and a courageous and insistent battle is being waged, constantly, on our borders and far from them, for the security of Israel.”

Fallen Israeli soldiers “have achieved eternity. They are forever embedded in the character of this country,” the chief of staff said.

Addressing bereaved families at the ceremony, President Shimon Peres said: “Here, before you, words are lost. Your routine lives will never be like ours. There are no words that can heal the pain. You the parents, the fiancés, the children, the brothers and the sisters — you are the real heroes of life.”

“The Israel Defense Forces is ready and prepared for any threat, against any danger,” Peres said. “Our enemies have tested this. They should not err again.”

“It is our duty to spare no effort or cost to eliminate war from the land and to bring security and peace … Israel is as dear to us as the bravery of her fighters, and as dear as the depth of the sorrow for each fallen soldier. Here, next to the sacred stones of the Western Wall, I say on behalf of all of Israel, that you, the fallen of Israel’s wars deserve eternal glory and our ultimate gratitude.”

http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=3993

A matter of life and death

Every year at this time, there is renewed discussion in Israel about the abrupt shift from mourning to celebration that takes place at the end of Memorial Day for fallen soldiers and victims of terrorism — on the eve of Independence Day.

As soon as the 24-hour period during which the country focuses on lost loved ones comes to a close, there is an almost immediate eruption of jubilation. Fireworks appear in the sky; people of all ages rush home from memorial services to get dressed up for parties; plastic hammers and cans of string spray appear; and smells of beer and barbecued meat begin to waft through the air.

The coupling of these seemingly clashing events and the emotions surrounding them was not accidental. The idea behind it was that to engage in festivities marking the birth of the Jewish nation-state, Israelis must first pay tribute and give thanks to all those citizens who tragically paid with their lives for it — and for us.

This assertion that the State of Israel is a gift that must not be taken for granted, particularly while wars against its establishment continue to be waged, is as pure as it is patriotic.

Still, some of the bereaved families consider the leap from tears to laughter insensitive, in bad taste or simply too hard to bear. Others say that the pain of their personal loss accompanies them all year round, and that it would not be minimized by having the calendar date for its public expression moved.

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/paul-schnee/ben-shapiro-exposes-leftist-bullies-at-horowitzs-wednesday-morning-club/print/ To order Bullies, How the Left’s Culture of Fear and Intimidation Silences America, click here. When fighting a bully you must punch twice as hard. It’s war. Conservatives must define who the bullies are: Democrats. This was Ben Shapiro’s message during his talk about his new book, “Bullies, How the Left’s Culture of Fear and […]

http://frontpagemag.com/2013/arnold-ahlert/hollywoods-undying-love-for-communist-angela-davis/print/

Recently, The Daily Beast disgraced itself by providing a platform for communist Bill Ayers to spread unchallenged lies about his background in the Weather Underground terrorist organization, which is presently the subject of an exonerating new film by leftist actor Robert Redford. The film, The Company You Keep, is not unlike the prior whitewash of communism Redford presented in the 1973 film The Way We Were, co-starring fellow left-winger Barbra Streisand. Following in Redford’s footsteps, some of the biggest names in Hollywood have just released an equally mendacious portrait of radical Angela Davis in the documentary Free Angela & All Political Prisoners, a work that further popularizes Davis’s fictional persona as a “social justice” advocate and racial equality icon of the Sixties. What audiences will be robbed of in this historical distortion, however, is a truthful look at Davis’s “political” career — filled as it is with violent militarism, racial hatred and complicity in murder. The documentary will also not reveal the destructive work Davis continues today by promoting the release of black criminals back into black communities to further terrorize their populations (90% of the victims of black criminals are black).

Thus, while Davis’s celebrity followers set out to whitewash a brutal totalitarian’s legacy, it would seem to be an appropriate occasion to take a look back at the true historical record of Angela Davis’s life.

Davis grew up in a middle class family from Birmingham, Alabama, and later attended New York’s communist Little Red Schoolhouse (LRS). Later at Brandeis University, she spent her junior year in France, meeting Algerian revolutionaries during the visit. After graduating, she spent two years as a member of the faculty at Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. She came back to America for a teaching position at UCLA, where she worked for Herbert Marcuse, a fellow Marxist.

Remembrance Day: Israel’s fallen number 25,578

Year 2012 sees 92 names added to list of fallen Israelis including 37 soldiers, 12 members of security forces

The number of Israelis who fell while in the line of duty stands at 23,085 on the eve of Israel’s Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism Remembrance Day.
The passing year has seen 92 names added to the list, including 37 Israel Defense Forces soldiers, 12 members of the security forces and 43 disabled IDF veterans. The number of fallen soldiers whose place of burial remains unknown stands at 555.

The number of those killed in terrorist attacks stands at 2,493 including 120 foreign citizens. The past year has seen 10 civilians killed in terror attacks. Terror attacks have left 2,848 people orphans, 976 bereaved parents and 799 widows and widowers.

More than a million and a half people are slated to visit the graves of their loved ones on Remembrance Day.

הר הרצל בשבוע שעבר. כאב המשפחות (צילום: EPA)

Mount Herzl last week (Photo: EPA)

(צילום: רויטרס)

Photo: Reuters

On Saturday evening, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his wife Sara visited the grave of his brother Yoni Netanyahu who was killed in Operation Entebbe in Mount Herzl.

Remembrance Day events will be launched on Sunday at 4 pm with a state ceremony at Jerusalem’s Yad Lebanim Center. A one-minute siren will sound at 8 pm and will be followed by ceremonies across Israel.

President Shimon Peres and IDF Chief of Staff Benny Gantz will attend a ceremony at the Western Wall.

ראש הממשלה ורעייתו במוצאי שבת ליד קברו של יוני נתניהו (צילום: קובי גדעון, לע”מ)

Benjamin and Sara Netanyahu at Yoni Netanyahu’s grave (Photo: Kobi Gideon, GPO)

Another two-minute siren will sound on Monday at 11 am and will be followed by a state memorial ceremony at Mount Herzl in memory of the 1,396 fallen police officers.

בהר הרצל (צילום: רויטרס)

Mount Herzl (Photo: Reuters)

(צילום: EPA)

Photo: EPA

http://sultanknish.blogspot.com/

“Who can count the dust of Jacob or number the seed of Israel.” Numbers 23:10

The sun sets above the hills. The siren cries out and on the busy highways that wend among the hills, the traffic stops, the people stop, and a moment of silence comes to a noisy country. Flags fly at half mast, the torch of remembrance is lit, memorial candles are held in shaking hands and the country’s own version of the Flanders Field poppy, the Red Everlasting daisy, dubbed Blood of the Maccabees, adorns lapels. And so begins the Yom Hazikaron, Heroes Remembrance Day, the day of remembrance for fallen soldiers and victims of terror– Israel’s Memorial Day.

What is a memorial day in a country that has always known war and where remembrance means adding the toll of one year’s dead and wounded to the scales of history. A country where war never ends, where the sirens may pause but never stop, where each generation grows up knowing that they will have to fight or flee. To stand watch or run away. It is not so much the past that is remembered on this day, but the present and the future. The stillness, a breath in the warm air, before setting out to climb the slopes of tomorrow.

Who can count the dust of Jacob. And yet each memorial day we count the dust. The dust that is a fraction of those who have fallen defending the land for thousands of years. Flesh wears out, blood falls to the earth where the red daisies grow, and bone turns to dust. The dust blows across the graves of soldiers and prophets, the tombs of priests hidden behind brush, the caverns where forefathers rest in sacred silence, laid to rest by their sons, who were laid to rest by their own sons, generations burying the past, standing guard over it, being driven away and returning each time.

On Memorial Day, the hands of memory are dipped in the dust raising it to the blue sky. A prayer, a whisper, a dream of peace. And the wind blows the candles out. War follows. And once again blood flows into the dust. A young lieutenant shading his eyes against the sun. An old man resting with his family on the beach. Children climbing into bed in a village beneath the hills. And more bodies are laid to rest in the dust. Until dust they become.

In this land, the Maker of Stars and Dust vowed to Abraham that his children would be as many as the dust of the earth and the stars of heaven. In their darkest days, they would be as the dust. But there is mercy in the numberless count of the dust. Mercy in not being able to make a full count of the fallen. In remaining ignorant of that full measure of woe. Modern technologies permit us terrible estimates. Databanks store the names of millions, village by village and city by city. Terrible digital cemeteries of ghosts. But there is no counting the dust. And when we walk the length and breadth of the land, as the Maker told Abraham to do, it the dust that supports our feet, we stand upon the shoulders of giants. We walk in the dust of our ancestors.

Some new countries are built to escape from the past, but there is no escaping it in these ancient hills. IDF soldiers patrol over ground once contested by empires, tread over spearheads and the wheels of chariots buried deep in the earth. The Assyrians and the Babylonians came through here in all their glory. Greek and Roman soldiers and mercenaries pitted themselves against the handful of Judeans who came out of the Babylonian exile. The Ottoman and the Arab raged here, and Crusader battering rams and British Enfield rifles still echo in the quiet hills.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/media-working-hand-in-glove-with-democrats-on-gun-legislation?f=puball Why do the media consider the filibuster a strong, principled stance under Democrat leadership, but an obstructionist tool when used by Republicans? This media double standard has been used consistently during the current and past administration, and is currently being used to shame Republicans on the gun control debate. “For a party who is […]

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/mohammed-now-one-of-the-most-popular-baby-names-in-minnesota?f=puball

Mohamed has made the list of most popular baby boy names in Minnesota, according to the Social Security Administration (SSA).

Mohamed was the 98th most popular boy’s name in 2011 in the state. The SSA says Minnesota parents named 73 boys after the founder of Islam in that year.

This is the first time the name has appeared on the list the SSA releases each year.

Are you surprised Mohamed is now one of the 100 most popular boys names? Are you surprised it wasn’t on the top 100 list prior to 2011?

Mohamed’s place on the list is not surprising considering some recent statistics.

“The name, in its several variations, is one of the most popular worldwide for Muslim parents,” according to the Star Tribune. “It has risen on Minnesota’s list as the state’s population has rapidly changed. From 2000 to 2010, the number of residents of color grew 55 percent, and Minnesota’s fast-growing Somali population is the largest in the United States.”

There are 317 people who practice Islam per 100,000 in Minnesota, according to a 2010 study by the Association of Statisticians of American Religious Bodies (ASARB). That means the state has the 18th largest Muslim population in the United States and the District of Columbia, behind nearby Illinois (first) and Michigan (sixth).

The population of Minnesota is approximately 5.38 million, according to the latest census estimate. The Muslim population in the state could range from “20,000 to 130,000,” according to a story by the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis.

The most popular names for boys in 2011 in Minnesota were Mason, William and Jacob. The most popular girls names in that year were Olivia, Sophia and Emma.

http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/detail/james-madison-vs-frank-nitti

Daniel Greenfield, in his Sultan Knish column, “The Chicagoization of America” (April 11th), remarked about the workings of urban machine politics:

In 2012, tribal politics became national politics. The country was divided and conquered. A campaign run on convincing a dozen separate groups to be afraid of each other and of the majority made all the difference, not in some urban slum, but from sea to shining sea. The country had at last become the city. And considering the state of the city… the state of the union does not look good.

His column featured a photograph of Saul Alinsky, author of Rules for Radicals and other Democracy for Dummies and Democrats tracts that serve as hands-on instruction manuals for liberals, leftists, and out-and-out communists and socialists in how to acquire power and disenfranchise everyone but their patrons. In other words, elective gangsters. Such as Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton, who admired Alinsky and his “community organizing” philosophy so much she wrote her Wellesley senior thesis on them and even interviewed Alinsky.

Greenfield does not mention Alinsky in the column, which is about how “democracy” has become a game and tactic of criminal politicians who manipulate contentious voting blocs and vested interests. He did not need to. Alinsky’s face and that photograph in particular are too familiar. Alinsky boasted that he befriended and fraternized with Chicago gangsters. That is entirely appropriate, given the state of Chicago and American politics as described by Greenfield.

Here is an anecdote in Alinsky’s own words about how cozy he was with Frank Nitti, Al Capone’s “enforcer.” Nitti liked Alinsky and allowed him to look over the criminal’s books:

Once, when I was looking over their records, I noticed an item listing a $7500 payment for an out-of-town killer. I called Nitti over and I said, “Look, Mr. Nitti, I don’t understand this. You’ve got at least 20 killers on your payroll. Why waste that much money to bring somebody in from St. Louis?” Frank was really shocked at my ignorance.

“Look, kid,” he said patiently, “sometimes our guys might know the guy they’re hitting, they may have been to his house for dinner, taken his kids to the ball game, been the best man at his wedding, gotten drunk together. But you call in a guy from out of town, all you’ve got to do is tell him, ‘Look, there’s this guy in a dark coat on State and Randolph; our boy in the car will point him out; just go up and give him three in the belly and fade into the crowd.’ So that’s a job and he’s a professional, he does it. But one of our boys goes up, the guy turns to face him and it’s a friend, right away he knows that when he pulls that trigger there’s gonna be a widow, kids without a father, funerals, weeping — Christ, it’d be murder.”

Such was the wisdom imbibed by Saul Alinsky, amoral and pragmatist tactician and organizer of other criminal mobs, otherwise known as the Left. For what is the Left but a loose alliance of ideological gangsters who rationalize and sanction force, but who pose as “humanitarians” sensitive to the feelings of others? Gangster government, indeed.

But, in this column we will not be “going there.” I don’t think it’s necessary to compare Alinsky’s foul character with that of James Madison. That would be an insult to Madison. This column will dwell on a species of wisdom not possible to Alinsky, Frank Nitti, or even to any contemporary politician. Here, in speeches, separate correspondence and in his Federalist Papers, are some excerpted thoughts and cogitations of Madison, one of our Founders, defending and explaining the workings of the federal Constitution after it had been framed in 1787 Philadelphia. The document had been sent out to all the states for debate and ratification. A multitude of objections to it, some valid, some specious, were cropping up and distracting everyone’s attention. Madison felt obliged to defend the document and to refute all the criticisms of it that came his way. Originally, he questioned the wisdom of including a “bill of rights” that would specifically obstruct federal incursions on specific realms of individual liberty.

But in June of 1789, he submitted a bill of rights to a Congress embroiled in other issues. He became known as the “father” of the Bill of Rights -rights which Congress today is contemplating their suspension or nullification.

http://pjmedia.com/victordavishanson/north-korean-mythologies/?print=1 Much of what is written about the North Korean crisis seems to me little more than fantasy. Let us examine the mythologies. 1)      China is a responsible partner in checking North Korea and, of course, does not want war. It may well be true that China’s communist apparat wishes to avoid a war, or […]