RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://jewishlink.news/features/45306-denying-the-centrality-of-jerusalem-to-the-jewish-people

Attempts to deny the Jewish connection to Jerusalem is part of this unrelenting war against Israel. The Palestinian Authority (PA) accuses the Jewish state of fashioning a false Jewish history, while appropriating Palestinian history, culture and heritage. The Palestinians Arabs refer to these actions as “Judaization.” As Palestinian Media Watch founder Itamar Marcus explains, the main target is supposedly the Al-Aqsa Mosque, which Israel allegedly schemes to demolish to build the Jewish Temple. PA political and religious leaders, officials and academics refer to the Temple as Al-Haikal Al-Maz’oom, the “alleged Temple.”

A Palestinian Arab “specialist” on Jerusalem declared that the well-known verse from the Book of Psalms 137, “If I forget thee, Oh Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill,” is not of Jewish origin, but was originally spoken by a Christian Crusader and “borrowed” by Jews and “falsified in the name of Zionism.”

Irrefutable Evidence

The question of the centrality of Jerusalem to the Jewish people is irrefutable from many sources. Historian Rivkah Duker Fishman examined the works of Greek and Roman authors of classical antiquity from nearly 20 diverse sources dating from the third century BCE to the third century CE, roughly six centuries. Fishman found that the authors of these historic works unanimously agreed that Jerusalem was Jewish since it was “founded by Jews, its inhabitants were Jews and that the Temple, located in Jerusalem, was the center of the Jewish religion.” Even though some of these authors like Manetho, Apion, Tacitus and Juvenal held clearly negative views about Jews and Judaism, they were completely in accord about the Jewish identity of Jerusalem.

Descriptions of the Temple are a part of the reports on Jerusalem and on Judaism, ranging from fact “to the libelous and bizarre. For the Greeks and Romans, Jerusalem was famous for its Temple, which served as the focal point of the xenophobic, strange, and possibly menacing rites of the Jews whose contributions brought much gold into the city…. After its destruction in 70 CE, the memory of the Temple persisted in the retrospective histories by Tacitus and by Cassius Dio.” These ancient texts, therefore, refute current efforts by Muslims and others to deny the historic connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem and the site of the Temple.

https://jstribune.com/yaakov-amidror-israels-place-in-new-world-order/

The world Israel lives in is dramatically different from the one in which our elders grew up, amid Cold War tensions and with large Arab armies at Israel’s borders. Within the last decade we witnessed the rise of China, America’s announced intention to reduce its presence in the Middle East, the aggressiveness of a weakened but assertive Russia, and the consequences of turmoil in the Middle East. We are faced with multiple threats, including a shifting balance of power in Asia and an increasingly lawless global system—scarred by the failure of globalization during the COVID-19 crisis. Amid all this, it is imperative that Israel sustain its own strength, while working hard to restore bipartisan support in the United States and making good use of the new alignments in the Eastern Mediterranean and with like-minded Sunni Arab nations.

A World of Difference

How different is the world we live in from that which we have been raised to expect? To answer this question we need to define the relevant timeframe discussed in this essay. Clearly this is a world radically different from the one in which I came of age and learned my trade as an intelligence officer—the post-1945 world in which two overly armed nuclear powers, the US and the Soviet Union, faced each other in deadly competition across the globe (with a block of the “non-aligned” trying, not always successfully, to stay on the sidelines); and the post-1948 world in which Israel faced the threat of enemy Arab states surrounding it with a million armed men, thousands of tanks, and hundreds of fighter aircraft.

Since then, the Soviet Union has fallen apart and in our region, no Arab army (other than the Egyptian military) is large or significant enough to constitute a threat. But to better understand the world in which Israel must function, the changes—globally as well as regionally—within the last decade provide the relevant frame of analysis. This has been a decade in which the global distribution of power became much more evident, in light of several developments:

Eight years of rule—now set to be extended indefinitely—by Xi Jinping in China, under whose leadership the People’s Republic of China pursues a strategy of aggressive growth. It is already America’s peer rival, as it seeks a revision of the global order; this, in turn, has set in motion drastic changes in the global alignments and alliances.

The return of the Democrats to power in both branches of government in the US and the ensuing debate (and internal fissures) on aspects of policy—including the “special relationship” with Israel—amid signs of radical polarization, leading the US away from the traditional role it is expected to play in the region and beyond.

The willingness and ability of Russia, despite demographic decline and severe economic limitations, to play an outsized role due to its readiness to use force, led by an assertive president and backed by an impressive and intimidating nuclear arsenal.

The dramatic and confusing events of the so-called Arab Spring, which brought about the disintegration of several states. It is now evident that the non-Arab powers—Iran, Turkey, and Israel—are the tone-setters in a region once viewed as the heartland of Arab nationalism.

Looking toward the future, five key cycles of dynamic changes seem to have a transformative role and need to be addressed by policy makers.

The Chinese Challenge

China is fast becoming the dynamic revisionist power in the global order—deliberately and rather aggressively expanding its circle of influence. It does not fear competing with the US; rather, it seeks to pose the Chinese model as an alternative to Western democracy and pushes for structural change in any international organization and forum it is part of, or uses existing organizations to implement its own interests. It has become more centralized and utilizes modern technology to tighten its grip on its citizens; hence, its overt self-confidence is evident as Xi rewrites the rules that have held for the last 30 years.

Additionally, the People’s Republic of China did not recoil from the use of force to impose its will on Hong Kong and integrate it within the Chinese system, in breach of the understanding reached with the United Kingdom as to the rights of the former colony. Nor did it hesitate to threaten Australia, to take over atolls and uninhabited islands within the so-called Nine-Dash Map, build military bases, and revive nationalist claims from the 1930s, and to do so in dangerous proximity to other nations in the South China Sea, which have competing claims over the same locations.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/moral-anorexia-cognitive-war-against-israel-richard-l-cravatts/

The cognitive war against Israel, which has continued almost unabated since the Jewish state’s founding, intensifies after specific events on the ground, as happened in May during Israel’s latest incursion into Gaza to suppress homicidal rocket fire from Hamas terrorists. When more than 3000 rockets were fired indiscriminately into southern Israeli towns by Hamas with the express purpose of murdering Jewish civilians there was, of course, an almost universal silence; only when Israel, in its necessary self-defense, finally moved to neutralize terrorist enclaves and stop the deadly rocket fire did academics, NGOs, unions, and the other reliably anti-Israel entities rise up in a collective denunciation of the Jewish state, howling about Israel’s malign behavior.

Perennially unhappy with the very existence of Israel, anti-Israel activists and scolds use any escalation in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict to renew their incessant, obsessive criticism of Israel, ignoring the existential threat Israel faces from homicidal psychopaths dedicated to the murder of its citizens and focusing instead of mendacious claims of colonialism, genocide, ethnic cleansing, asymmetrical warfare, disproportionate force, land theft, illegality, apartheid and unredeemable and intolerable racism on the part of Jewish extremist settlers occupying an indigenous people’s land.

Even corporations got into the act, the latest being the shameful boycott launched in the so-called “occupied territories,” Judea and Samaria, by Ben & Jerry’s, the eponymous ice cream company created by two Vermont leftists.

Trumpeting the virtue-signaling rationale for their corporate decision to defame the Jewish state in a New York Times op-ed, “Men of Ice Cream, Men of Principle,” the two founders, Bennett Cohen and Jerry Greenfield, claimed they “took the step to align its business and operations with its progressive values” and that they “believe this act can and should be seen as advancing the concepts of justice and human rights . . ,” although like their fellow travelers in the social justice left, it is never clear how, in this case, anyone’s human rights or equality will be enhanced or protected by being deprived of eating ice cream.

In fact, like all social justice warriors, Ben and Jerry make the same hypocritical error that all progressives do when they purported seek justice and equality for the oppressed; namely, they care nothing for any other parties involved—in this case, Israelis who live in the biblical areas of Judea and Samaria, carelessly referred to as the West Bank.

In the Manichean view of the world embraced by leftists, oppressors deserve no protection and will not be insulated from harm when social justice for the oppressed is achieved—even if that involves resistance, violence, insurrection, military conflict, revolution, and the overthrow of the prevailing order. Social justice does not imply or necessitate justice for all parties, only the oppressed victims. In the case of the Palestinians and Israelis, groups such as Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) seek justice in the Holy Land, but only for the so-called Palestinians, not for Israelis. If the creation of a new Palestinian state entails the extirpation of the Jewish one, so be it.

The rectitude of academics or corporate heads pushing for condemnations of Israel manifests itself as what has been termed “moral narcissism,” the tendency of members of the well-meaning, intellectual elite to align with causes and ideological positions which are based, not on the actual viability or justice of a cause, but on how the moral narcissist feels about him- or herself by committing to a particular cause or movement.

During eight baleful years, President Barack Hussein Obama made Israel’s life utterly miserable as he pursued relentlessly his warped vision of a ‘Two State Solution’ to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. But that vision, being imagined yet again, would remain national suicide for Israel.

Still pushed by too many in the international corridors of power, it is in reality an appalling euphemism not unlike the German Nazi’s ‘Final Solution’ which ushered in the Holocaust. And now, lo and behold, the Biden/Harris administration — which many see as Obama’s third term — is currently pushing yet again for the disinterment of that rotting corpse known as the ‘Two-State Solution.’

It will spell the destruction of the reconstituted Jewish state and the extermination of its people by a Muslim world that will never accept a non-Muslim nation and will wage eternal war against it — the Dar al-Harb — until it is utterly destroyed. The existing and proposed “Two-State-Solution” ushers in an eventual and guaranteed destruction of the Jewish state.

Of course, if Israel declared its justified rejection of the ‘Two-State-Solution’, such a statement of the truth would be considered inflammatory and assured to provoke another Palestinian Arab outburst of violence and barbarism (dignified by the Arabic term intifada).

But isn’t that what is happening throughout Judea and Samaria (the so-called West Bank) with almost daily atrocities committed by Arab thugs against Jewish civilians?

The over 3,500-year-old Hebrew and Biblical names, Yehuda and Shomron, (Judea and Samaria), refer to the heartland of both the ancient and modern Jewish homeland. But a malevolent world prefers to call the territory the West Bank; what was the mere 19-year-old Jordanian name applied to the land after it and much of Jerusalem was illegally invaded and occupied by Jordan from 1948 until 1967.

The Jordanian Arab Legion, after invading and occupying the territory, immediately began desecrating Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives, using the headstones to build latrines for their troops, destroying 57 ancient synagogues and holy sites, and forcibly expelling Jewish residents from their villages and ancient homes in Jerusalem’s Old City.

https://www.jns.org/opinion/ american-immigrants-who-leave- israel-dont-deserve-disdain/

On the occasion of the 40th anniversary of his parents’ aliyah from the United States, Haaretz political correspondent Chaim Levinson paid homage to his mother and father, who “left behind family, jobs that would have earned them much more money than they were paid [in Israel], more impressive careers and a house in the suburbs a few times the size of the stone building in Jerusalem where [they] settled.”

In an op-ed on Sunday, he pointed out that while their immigration was “traumatic,” it was also a privilege for them to have relocated to Israel.

“We were fortunate to come,” he wrote. “There’s no place more natural for a Jew to live. Israel is home. Israel is the place and the destination. … Israel is, first and foremost, a sense of belonging, of taking part in creating something. There’s no dual loyalty, no alienation. You don’t have to apologize for being Jewish. It’s the fulfillment of the vision of generation upon generation that my ancestors, unlike my parents, didn’t have the privilege to fulfill.”

He continued, “Israel is family. You feel a sense of closeness even with complete strangers. It’s oppressive, but also loving. … It stirs emotions. It causes joy in times of beauty and pain in times of darkness.”

As a former New Yorker who just celebrated 44 years in Israel, I couldn’t agree more with his description and sentiment. Sadly, the point of his piece—titled “Israelis Who Move Back to America Gain in Money and Lose in Soul”—was to criticize those who tried to make a go of it in the Holy Land, yet ended up returning from whence they came.

Rather than view them with empathy—or at least acknowledge their right as individuals to exercise personal choice—he adopts a disdainful attitude.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/17608/violations-un-security-council

Such Security Council sessions have become routine and almost always end up with statements denouncing Israel after hearing complaints from PA officials about Israel’s alleged “violations” and “aggressions.”

Yet the Security Council meeting, which was held last week, did not hear a word about human rights violations and aggressions committed by the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

[Nizar] Banat, the anti-corruption activist and vocal critic of the PA leadership, was allegedly bludgeoned to death on June 24 by more than 20 Palestinian security officers.

More than a month has passed since his brutal murder but the Security Council has not found the time to address this grave incident.

The Security Council has undoubtedly not heard of the case of Emad Al-Tawil, a 27-year-old Palestinian who died on June 25 after being beaten by Hamas security officers. Tawil was a resident of Nuseirat refugee camp in the Gaza Strip.

The Security Council and international human rights organizations and journalists most likely did not hear about the case of Hassan Abu Zayed, a 27-year-old Palestinian from the Gaza Strip, who was shot dead by Hamas “border guards” on July 23.

The Palestinian human rights abuses and the crackdown on political activists and journalists are ignored not only by the UN, but also by the Biden administration.

Instead of pressuring Palestinian leaders to cease imprisoning, torturing and killing their people, the Biden administration is, absurdly, searching for ways to strengthen the PA leadership.

Apparently, in the eyes of the Biden administration, strengthening PA leaders means allowing Palestinian security officers to beat political activists to death, drag women by their hair on the streets of Ramallah, and imprison and intimidate journalists. The Security Council members, meanwhile, take their unjustified obsession with Israel to new heights as Palestinians are taken to prison or the graveyard at the hands of the PA and Hamas.

At the request of the Palestinian Authority (PA), the United Nations Security Council was again called to hold a session to discuss Israeli “violations” and “aggressions” against the Palestinians. The PA also demanded that the Security Council discuss the professed ongoing Israeli “siege” of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip.

Such Security Council sessions have become routine and almost always end up with statements denouncing Israel after hearing complaints from PA officials about Israel’s alleged “violations” and “aggressions.”

Yet the Security Council meeting, which was held last week, did not hear a word about human rights violations and aggressions committed by the PA in the West Bank and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.

The Security Council did not hear about more than 75 Palestinian social media users, political activists and journalists who were arrested by the PA security forces in the West Bank just in the past few weeks.

The arrests came in response to widespread protests over the death of anti-corruption activist Nizar Banat, who was reportedly beaten to death by Palestinian security officers who raided his home in the city of Hebron.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/311044

British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Monday that Iran must face up to the consequences of the attack on an Israeli-managed tanker off the coast of Oman in which two people were killed.

“Iran should face up to the consequences of what they’ve done. This was clearly an unacceptable and outrageous attack on commercial shipping,” the British Prime Minister told reporters, according to the Reuters news agency.

“A UK national died. It is absolutely vital that Iran and every other country, respects the freedoms of navigation around the world and the UK will continue to insist on that,” he added.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/fpm/2021/08/sober-review-some-viable-options-state-israel-dr-shmuel-katz/

The state of Israel is facing major challenges these days from multiple sources.

We have a building pressure from the outside and from the inside.

Unfortunately, too many people in the international community are being steadily brainwashed against preserving the interest and the integrity of the state of Israel and that of the Jewish people, by well-funded anti-Israeli operatives like the BDS movement, the Radical pro-Palestinian organizations and by state sponsors of terrorism like Iran. At the same time, there are also some oblivious good-willed people and states, who think that there are easy solutions to the complicated problems in the Middle East.

Within the state of Israel, where the decisions and the directives of the ministry of education are so important, we see inadequate attention to the education of students from all walks of life about the historic and current just cause of the state of Israel and the Jewish people.

If we look at what the Arab sector students are learning from their teachers and from their self-serving clergy, we will realize that the problem is even more challenging. In recent times it would have been unimaginable to have Arab youth riot in pogroms against their own Jewish neighbors within the state of Israel. Surprisingly, this happened very recently, for example, in Jerusalem, in Haifa, in Lod and in Akko.

In addition, when we look at the out of control building constructions and agricultural expansions in the territories of Judea and Samaria, the Negev and elsewhere, some of it sponsored by the EU, some by Muslim countries and by others, one can see a strategic plan to weaken the state of Israel and eventually to remove it from the Middle East all together.

On top of that, we have just seen an Arab member of the Knesset, who joined the newly created Israeli government, who served as the substitute chairperson of the Knesset, challenging a speaking member of the Knesset and ordering him to be removed by security, due to the fact that he did not address him specifically, in a way of his choice.

This Arab member of the Knesset and the newly formed Israeli government, stated recently that the Jews should not have the right to visit the Temple Mount, despite the fact that he is well aware of the fact that it is the holiest site for the Jewish people, even from before the times of the establishment of Islam as a religion.

One of the biggest challenges that. most probably, the state of Israel will have to face, is the pressure to relinquish a part of its ancestral homeland to the Palestinian Authority, despite the fact that the PA is not recognizing the right of the Jewish people to any part of the state of Israel, and is actively engaged in the attempt to liquidate the state of Israel in stages.