RUTHFULLY YOURS

The Rafah border crossing is the Gaza Strip’s single opening to Egypt and the rest of the Arab world. That border crossing is where the real suffering of the Palestinians has been taking place.

The Gaza Strip could be a livable environment if the Egyptians opened the Rafah terminal to allow the world to come and help the Palestinians living there.

As Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh and other organizers of the campaign have clearly stated in recent weeks, the Palestinian protests are aimed at thwarting US President Donald Trump’s yet-to-be-announced plan for peace in the Middle East.

The weekly demonstrations along the border between the Gaza Strip and Israel, which are scheduled to enter their sixth week this Friday, will undoubtedly continue to attract the attention of the international community and media.

Meanwhile, no one will pay attention to what is happening on the Gaza Strip’s other border with Egypt, which has been closed for most of the past 10 years.

The demonstrations near the border with Israel are being organized by Hamas and other Palestinian factions in the Gaza Strip as part of the “March of Return” — a six-week campaign of protests that is expected to reach its peak on “Nakba Day” (“The Day of Catastrophe”), the term used by Palestinians to describe the creation of the State of Israel in 1948.

The Arab countries at the time opposed the creation of a homeland for the Jewish people and sent their armies to attack Israel, but lost — a result that should probably be taken into consideration before one attacks. Since then, the Palestinians and Arabs have been commemorating their loss by holding anti-Israel protests and voicing their refusal to recognize Israel’s right to exist.

There are, of course, no demonstrations planned along Gaza’s border with Egypt to protest the continued closure of Gaza’s better-known border crossing, Rafah — its crossing to Egypt.

Lag Ba’Omer (ל”ג בעומר) is celebrated on the 33rd day following the first day of Passover (in Jewish numerology: ל=30, ג=3). It commemorates the victory of Shimon Bar-Kokhbah over the occupying military force of the Roman Empire; the death of Rabbi Shimon Bar-Yochai (a key supporter of the Bar Kokhbah revolt), who commanded his disciples to rejoice on his memorial days; and the end of the plague, which took the lives of 24,000 of Rabbi Akiva’s disciples (who were, allegedly, engaged in bad-mouthing each other, which is one of the worst offenses according to Judaism). Lag Ba’Omer is the only day of happiness during the 50 days of soul-cleansing between Passover (commemorating the liberation from the Egyptian Bondage) and Shavou’ot/Pentecost (receiving the Torah and the Ten Commandments on Mount Sinai).
Lag Ba’Omer is celebrated in the same week when the reading of the Torah (the Five Books of Moses) highlights the Jubilee – the Biblical core of liberty – which is celebrated every 50 years and inspired the Early American Pilgrims and the Founding Fathers of the 50 States in the US. Hence, the inscription on the Liberty Bell: “Proclaim liberty throughout all the land and unto all the inhabitants thereof” (Leviticus 25:10).
The Hebrew meaning of Bar-Kokhbah (בר כוכבא) is the son (בר) of star(כוכב), reflecting his leadership and heroism, which produced – ostensibly – a short-term military victory, but it highlights (like a shining star) the long-term victory of the ancient Jewish people and values over the vanished Roman Empire.
The 132-135 AD Shimon Bar-Kokhbah revolt, against the Roman Emperor, Hadrian, is known as the Third Jewish-Roman War. It followed the First Jewish-Roman War (the Great Revolt), which took place from 66-73 AD, involved the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 AD and ended with the fall of Masada. The Second Jewish-Roman War (the Kitos War) lasted from 115-117 AD, when Jewish warriors rebelled against the Roman Empire in Cyrenaica, Cyprus, Mesopotamia and Egypt.
The Bar-Kokhbah revolt erupted in response to the desecration of Jerusalem by Hadrian, who was determined to erase Judaism from human memory. Therefore, he erected a new city, Aelia Capitolina, on the ruins of Jerusalem, naming it after himself (Aelius Hadrian) and the chief Roman god, Jupiter (Jupiter Capitolinus). He erected a pagan Temple to Jupiter on the site of the Jerusalem Jewish Temple and outlawed Jewish prayers, the celebration of Jewish holidays and the performance of Jewish rituals, such as the B’rith (circumcision of eight-day-old male babies) that dates back to Abraham, the Patriarch.

“We will build sheepfolds here for our cattle and cities for our little ones. But we ourselves will go ready armed before the children of Israel until we have brought them unto their place: and our little ones shall dwell in fenced cities because of the inhabitants of the land. We will not return unto our houses until the children of Israel have inherited every man his inheritance.” (Numbers 32: 16-18)

The story of reconstituted Israel and its people is mirrored in the biblical story of those ancient ancestors. The young men and women of modern Israel have gone again and again from their homes; be they villages, towns or cities, to the borders and established communities there in times of danger and peril, just like those young men did from the biblical tribes of Gad and Reuben.

The Jewish pioneers of today in Judea and Samaria – the biblical heartland known today falsely as the “West Bank” – are no different. But the world has chosen to demonize them as “obstacles to peace” and an impediment to the creation of a fraudulent Arab state to be called Palestine; a state that has never existed in all of recorded history; certainly not as a sovereign independent Arab state.

The pioneers are now pejoratively called “settlers” and their homes and farms derisively called “settlements.” It matters not to the infernal chorus that sings the international siren song of hate and ignorance that these pioneers are returned to their ancestral homesteads and seek to take up their ploughshares to sow, to plant and re-possess their ancient heartland.

Since Iran and six world powers reached an agreement to pause Iran’s enrichment of uranium and allow weapons inspectors into declared facilities, Israel’s prime minister has argued the deal would give Iran a glide path to a nuclear weapon. On Monday he announced that he had proof.

If the West can verify the new Israeli intelligence that Iran had preserved its design and research work into a nuclear weapon, that’s a big deal — particularly now in light of the May 12 deadline that President Donald Trump has imposed on U.S. negotiations with Europe to come up with fixes to strengthen the nuclear bargain. The trove of data would be a blow not only to Iran’s credibility but also to the reputation of American intelligence gathering.

As negotiations with Iran came to a close in summer 2015, John Kerry, then secretary of state, assured reporters that American intelligence agencies had “absolute knowledge” about Iran’s past efforts to build a nuclear weapon.

It was a strange remark. As the intelligence assessments before the 2003 Iraq War showed, intelligence is never absolute. What’s more, the International Atomic Energy Agency, or IAEA, still had its own outstanding questions for Iran. Indeed, that agency could not give Iran a clean bill of health on the possible military dimensions of its nuclear program nearly six months later.

Israel now has proof of what many suspected all along about the disastrous nuclear deal that former President Barack Obama reached with the Iranian regime. “Iran did not come clean on its nuclear program,” Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu charged, claiming that more than 100,000 Iranian documents Israel’s intelligence agents obtained from a secret “atomic archive” in Tehran prove the nuclear deal is “based on lies.” This latest development should make President Trump’s decision to withdraw from the nuclear deal a no-brainer.

Prime Minister Netanyahu announced in a press conference that the trove of secret nuclear weapons files came from a hidden Iranian site where they were moved in 2017. He said the files contain materials, which Israel has shared with the United States, that include “incriminating documents, incriminating charts, incriminating presentations, incriminating blueprints, incriminating photos, incriminating videos and more.” The prime minister added that the United States has confirmed its authenticity, a claim supported by Trump administration officials who have reviewed the secret documents.

“Prime Minister Netanyahu gave a powerful presentation today of compelling new evidence documenting Iran’s determined pursuit of a nuclear weapon,” a senior Trump administration official said, as quoted by the Free Beacon. “It certainly would have been helpful to have this information when the JCPOA [Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action] was negotiated but the Iranians decided to lock it away in a secret vault for future reference. Only the regime knows what else they’re hiding, but the revelations today don’t give us much confidence in their protestations that they have never had interest in militarizing their nuclear program.”

The shadow war between Israel and Iran in Syria is heating up, and on Monday Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised the stakes by revealing that Tehran is secretly maintaining its nuclear-weapons program.

In a presentation on national TV, Mr. Netanyahu revealed the country’s spooks had obtained “half a ton” of documents and CDs from a secret facility in the Shorabad District in southern Tehran. The Israeli leader claims the files “conclusively prove” that Iran lied about its nuclear-weapons program before signing Barack Obama’s 2015 nuclear pact, and that it has since worked to preserve its nuclear-weapons related capabilities.

Mr. Netanyahu offered photographs, videos, charts and blueprints from the intelligence haul relating to Tehran’s Project Amad, which the Israeli leader called “a comprehensive program to design, build and test nuclear weapons.” The Iranians have always denied the existence of such a program, and the United Nations downplayed Tehran’s nuclear ambitions in 2015.

It’s no coincidence that Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif mentioned that 2015 U.N. assessment in a tweet Monday as evidence that Tehran should be trusted. Perhaps the U.N.’s International Atomic Energy Agency inspectors would like to revisit those findings in light of this new evidence?

Mr. Netanyahu also claimed that the underground Fordow uranium enrichment facility was designed “from the get-go for nuclear weapons as part of Project Amad,” and misled the U.N. about its activities. The Iranians preserved Project Amad’s documentation and have kept its research team, headed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, largely in place in a new organization housed within the Defense Ministry.

“You’re an incredibly important partner [and] occupy a special place in my heart too,” Pompeo told Netanyahu in Tel Aviv.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo met with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu Sunday at the Defense Ministry in Tel Aviv.

With the risk of sounding like Fiddler On The Roof’s Tevya…where did the time go?

Paraphrasing my late father, of blessed memory, whom I visited decades ago at Deborah Heart and Lung Hospital, “I was just a young man…how did this happen and how did I get here so fast?”

Edward Honigman, of blessed memory, returned home after spending four years as a gunner in the high casualty U.S. Navy Armed Guard in World War II, met my amazing mother, Sylvia Serota—or whom we are about to celebrate, thank G_d, her 90th birthday–and sired one of those baby boomers…me. While their timing wasn’t perfect, it was close enough.

I guess you could say that modern Israel and I have grown up together.

I made my debut on May 8, 1948, Harry Truman’s birthday. He was the President who fought his own Arabist-dominated, ARAMCO Big Oil-greased State Department, by recognizing the rebirth of Israel on May 14th on the Western calendar. Thirteen years later, I would become a Bar Mitzvah on that same date. And now, thanks to President Trump, Israel and I will both receive quite a 70th birthday present this coming May 14th…the recognition and opening of the American embassy in at least part of the city that put Zion in Zionism, Jerusalem. I’m still a bit nervous about what will become of the other part.

Seventy years ago, Israel arose from the ashes of the Holocaust and the subjugated, frightened Jewish quarters of the so-called “Arab” world (where one half of Israeli Jews originated from)–the risen phoenix of a millennially persecuted people.

My e-pal Michael Ordman sends a weekly compilation of good news from Israel. The accomplishments and the incredible contribution to the welfare of the entire world is dazzling. What can account for the proliferation of groups in the arts and academies that libel, defame and seek to boycott Israel, but benefit from all of Israel’s incredible technology and science? No answer, but in spite of it all Israel survives and thrives.

Here is what may be an apocryphal tale with the ring of truth:

In the late 19th century. Queen Victoria asked Prime Minister Disraeli the following question:

“Mr. Prime Minister, what evidence can you give me of the existence of God?”

Disraeli thought for a moment and then replied, “The Jew, your majesty.”