Communicated: TefillaChillul Tefila Bifarhesia, as well as halachicly challenged verbiage and dress, are external manifestations of a critical lack of personal yiras shomayim which has lethal consequences.
Each day we read and hear about new atrocities carried out by Arab terrorists and we find that our reactions have become numbed. Our own Israeli government is so filled with a spirit of self-delusion that we wonder why every leader who reaches the Prime Minister’s chair suddenly develops an unshakable faith in Arab promises.
What would happen, I wonder, if Southern white supremacists would blow up a busload of black children and adults? The government would go bananas to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators. They would not negotiate a “Black free” zone and offer the white supremacists time to regroup and rearm and live quietly in their own enclaves. Above all, the Southern blacks would not agree to a policy of appeasement and concessions. Yet, President Bush and world politicians demand that Israel negotiate and leave the poor “freedom fighters” alone. Isn’t American policy a two-faced policy to demand that Israel negotiate with and grant concessions to those who deliberately murder Jewish children?
It is also strange that the normally super-critical news media allows the Arabs to turn fiction into truth and to blame the victims for their own murders. Isn’t it strange that the normally aggressive news media calls “murder” killing? They write, “Twenty three killed by suicide bomber” instead of “Twenty three murdered by a terrorist murderer!” They make it sound so parve.
Everyone is affected and everyone is hurting, but Arik Sharon, in his old age, turns a deaf ear and a blind eye to what is happening and he continues to offer concessions and to capitulate to American pressure. I recently attended a Bris in an ultra-religious community in Jerusalem. The Chareidi rabbis are very careful not to deviate from the accepted text, and I was very surprised when the Mohel expanded the traditional blessing for a quick healing of the newly circumcised child by adding a phrase asking Hashem to also heal the recently wounded victims of Arab terrorism.
I wonder what our government expects to happen and what exactly is the plan. Do Sharon or Peres actually believe that Abu Mazen will actively prevent Arab terror? Does anyone really believe that the Arabs will be satisfied with the small subsection of the entire Palestine that Israel is offering to give them? Will they be happy with any partial division? Do our leaders really believe that the Arabs will stop trying to wipe out every trace of history that shows that Jews ever lived in Israel, as they are doing on the Temple Mount?
Does anyone actually believe that the Arabs want to co-exist with Jews in a Jewish state? Has any Arab stood up and said, “Let’s share our homeland with the Jews”? Does any Israeli really believe that the world will think any better of us if we make “painful” concessions and if we continue to quietly bury those murdered by Arab terrorists and not react with the full power of our armed forces? Are our leaders really so religious that they have implicit faith that their prayers for “reasonable” Arab leaders to arise from among the terrorist murderers will be
answered?
It is that time of year when all of us should examine our motivations and plans. It is time that
Jewish and Israeli leaders begin to seriously examine their dreams and motivations. It is time for American and world leaders to be honest with themselves. It is time to stop the murders of innocent Jews. It is time to realize that the fiction that “there is no military solution” is a ridiculous fiction. It is time to realize that no matter what we Jews do, the world will criticize us, so let’s do what needs to be done to make terrorism against Jews too costly for the Arabs.
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France 2 and Enderlin must have their press accreditation revoked and be thrown out of Israel.

Slaughter is a routine, widespread practice among many Moslem families.

parently an affront to J Street’s worldview, the focus of which appears to be the creation of a Palestinian State, whether or not that will bring peace.

The importance of the caucus on organ harvesting in China, sponsored recently by the Liberal Lobby in the Knesset, cannot be exaggerated.
My mother, the eldest daughter of Reb Yaakov Kamenetsky, zt”l, was niftar last month at the age of 92. She took her last breath in her home in Efrat, Israel, next door to the shul that was my father’s for 24 years before his passing in 2007.
It comes down to his being famous.
Following the Boston Marathon bombing, one crucial point will likely remain overlooked. The most loathsome aspect of this or any other terror bombing attack on civilians will always lie in the inexpressibility of physical pain. While all decent people will abhor the idea of bombs expressly directed at the innocent, whether here or in other countries, none will ever be able to process the very deepest horrors of what has been inflicted.
It’s only natural to see increasing evidence of Jerusalem’s glorious Jewish past being unearthed, quite literally, under modern Israeli sovereignty. The new archaeological finds are also very timely – as the Arab onslaught attempting to detach Jerusalem from its Jewish roots gains steam, the facts on the ground, or “under” the ground, show quite otherwise.
The Talmud (Berachot 26b) says, “tefillot avot tiknum” – “prayer was established by the avot.” The Talmud then uses the following verse (Bereshit 19:27) to prove how Avraham established prayer: “Vayaskem Avraham baboker el hamakom asher amad sham et pnei Hashem” – “And Avraham got up early in the morning to the place where he had stood before God.”
Nearly 13 years ago, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak journeyed to Camp David to end the conflict with the Palestinians. With the approval of President Clinton, he offered Yasir Arafat an independent Palestinian state in almost all of the West Bank, Gaza and in part of Jerusalem. Arafat said no.
The news that the Internal Revenue Service unfairly targeted conservative groups has brought renewed spotlight on a 2010 lawsuit filed by the pro-Israel group Z Street, which alleges it was also singled out by the IRS when applying for tax-exempt status.
In an editorial last week (“Circling the Wagons”) we noted the efforts by the administration and its supporters to dismiss allegations that the government’s spin on the Benghazi attack was designed to shield the president and that the IRS was improperly used to stifle opposition to Mr. Obama’s reelection.
As the controversies besetting the Obama administration continue to grow in number and intensity, the prospect that President Obama would seriously consider military action against Iran, should that country continue its drive to become a nuclear power, becomes more and more remote. So we welcome the current enhancement of sanctions against Iran on the federal and New York State levels.
To his parents’ friends, he was “Mrs. Greenberg’s disgrace,” but to sports fans he is one of the greatest – if not the greatest – Jewish baseball players of all time. Long before Sandy Koufax, Hank Greenberg excited Jewish sports fans with his prowess on the baseball diamond.

The title above is a lovely thought. Unfortunately, there are too many times when Israeli Orthodox Jews behave in very divisive ways. I have mentioned, on occasion, that it would most probably bring the Mashiach if Orthodox Jews in Israel were ever to unite. We are so divided politically that Sephardi Jews will not support Ashkenazi Jews and Ultra-Orthodox Jews will not work with the Modern Orthodox or with the Zionist Orthodox.

Israel recently commemorated Memorial Day in memory of its fallen heroes. Sadness permeates the day as we remember the sons, daughters and parents who have sacrificed their lives so that the Jewish Nation can continue to exist.
The title of this article is the supposed motto of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley of Chicago, but for Americans living in Israel it means, literally, vote twice. Both Israel and America are holding important elections and, hopefully, most Orthodox Jews will be voting. The United States will be holding its regular four-year elections for president and many other offices, and Israel will be voting for an entire “new” Parliament (Knesset).
We left Reno, Nevada, early Sunday morning and decided to take the scenic route to Salt Lake City, rather than travel by super highway, but Route 50 turned out to be not very scenic as we crossed Nevada and Utah. We stopped at a roadside table at noon, where the men heated and ate LaBriute meals while the women enjoyed their cottage cheese, peanut butter sandwiches, fruit and vegetables. We have followed this pattern of meals ever since the women decided not to eat the packaged meals.
San Francisco is a lovely city and we enjoyed its many tourist venues. The famous Lombard Street, known as “The Crookedest Street in the World,” was beautiful, with its floral decorations. We shopped at Pier 39, and we bought matching San Francisco jackets. We really needed them since it was cold in San Francisco. Barbara added to her magnet collection, which contains magnets from dozens of countries around the world that we have toured. She’d never been in a store that sold thousands of magnets and she just loved looking at all the magnets on the walls.
On Sunday morning, after breakfast at the Elite Café, we loaded the van, filled the gas tank and travelled the famous Route #1 from Los Angeles toward San Francisco, along the Pacific Ocean coast. It was the 4th of July weekend and the narrow route was crowded with miles of RV’s, campers and fellow travelers. Traffic was a bit slow along the way.
While in Las Vegas, my wife, Barbara, fed several quarters into a machine that really cleaned us out. She then fed more quarters into another machine that dried all of our clothes.
We left Santa Fe on our way to visit the Painted Forest and the Petrified Forest in Arizona. Part of our day was spent traveling on the historic Route 66 and we stopped at the state visitor’s center as we entered Arizona. At each state visitor’s center, we stopped to gather information about interesting sites and to request coupon booklets with reduced entry coupons.
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