Columns

Even if Iran and the Arab enemies of Israel were not in a declared condition of belligerence with the Jewish state, Israel's preemptive action could still be entirely law-enforcing.

Good news in Yerushalayim: The government is expected to grant final approval next month to the first new neighborhood in the capital's liberated areas in 14 years.

Is Israel preparing to attack Iran? According to media reports, Prime Minister Netanyahu is trying to convince his ministers to go on the offensive. If that is true, Netanyahu will go down in history as the prime minister who saved the State of Israel from destruction – not necessarily nuclear.

At the conclusion of the recent [Editor’s Note: the first] Gulf War [Operation Desert Storm], the Bush administration announced plans to sell Saudi Arabia, a country of six million inhabitants, an arms package including over 500 tanks, 48 F-15 fighter planes, Apache helicopter gunships, more than 30 Patriot batteries, tens of thousands of armored vehicles, multiple rocket-launchers and command/control systems.

For a brief moment last week, the world got to peek behind the diplomatic curtains and catch a glimpse of what the American and French presidents really think of Israel’s prime minister.

We have now lived in Israel for more years than we lived in the USA, and our joy in living in Israel knows no bounds. We are living in our homeland with our people. We loved America and are proud to be American citizens, but Israel is our home. We strive each day to keep our focus on the wonderful things that life in Israel offers. We are happy that Israel and the USA are allies and help each other. Unfortunately, we are often upset and concerned by the political situation and by the attitude of the world to the Jews.

When Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak attempted to break the link between the Har Bracha Hesder Yeshiva and the IDF (Israel Defense Forces), few of us were surprised. Ehud Barak is the head of the Labor Party who seems to be using this anti-religious "weapon" in order to make a political comeback for his failing leftist party. His anti-religious position is well known, and his attempt to discredit Rabbi Eliezer Melamed and the Hesder Yeshiva movement is not unexpected. In the past, other politicians have used their opposition to religion to improve their political status, and Barak knows that he and his party are falling apart.

As the continuing flow of new missiles to Iran reveals, the Bush administration [Editors Note: This refers to first President Bush] remains committed to misconceived policies in the Middle East. Even if Israel were to yield West Bank and Gaza to create a new state of Palestine, with East Jerusalem as its capital, the government in Tehran would persist in its planned aggressions against the Jewish state. Altogether unconcerned with the fate of the Palestinians, this government can be satisfied only by Israel's disappearance.

Last Rosh Hashanah 5771, I walked with a heavy heart to the small synagogue in the hospital at Tel Hashomer. Two and a half months had passed since my son David’s terrible accident, and he was still unconscious. The doctors remained split. Some tried to explain that this type of injury did not leave room for optimism. The days, weeks and months that passed seemed to wither our hope.

Polls taken just prior to Gilad Shalit’s release show that the main opposition to the deal was in the national religious sector. How can we explain this? Are national religious people heartless?

Reach out and touch the kingdom of King David; transcend time and jump headlong into the biblical accounts of King Solomon and those who succeeded him as Kings of Judea.

At a moment when Israel is under new daily assaults from the international community, especially from the Palestinian Authority and its oddly eager mentors at the United Nations, it is worth noting that there is a discernible and continuous pattern here of legal double-standards.

Honorable representatives of the nations, I chose to come here today to tell you the truth. Since the miraculous war in which the God of Israel led us to redeem Jerusalem, the Temple Mount and Israeli territory until the Jordan River, a strange costume ball has been taking place in this building.

Israel, in the fashion of every nation, positively shrinks from annihilation. How could it be otherwise?

As the Palestinians press forward in international forums with their plans for statehood, a growing chorus of countries has expressed support for the move.

As the Palestinians press forward in international forums with their plans for statehood, a growing chorus of countries has expressed support for the move.

Generally, the Israeli is despised in the Islamic world because he or she is a Jew, a condition of presumed infirmity that can never be "remedied." Consider the following facts:

Editor's Note: This installment of Keeping Jerusalem was written by Hillel Fendel, who interviewed Chaim Silberstein, the usual co-author of the column.

Oddly enough, even Shimon Peres, the unrelenting Israeli champion of a "two state solution" in the Middle East, initially identified Palestinian statehood as an existential threat to Israel. In his book, Tomorrow is Now (1978), Peres had warned: "The establishment of such a state means the inflow of combat-ready Palestinian forces into Judea and Samaria (West Bank); this force, together with the local youth, will double itself in a short time. It will not be short of weapons or other military equipment, and in a short space of time, an infrastructure for waging war will be set up in Judea, Samaria and the Gaza Strip . In time of war, the frontiers of the Palestinian state will constitute an excellent staging point for mobile forces to mount attacks on infrastructure installations vital for Israel's existence ."

The main item on State Radio Channel 2's agenda recently was Channel 10's apology to Sheldon Adelson. Some background: A few months ago, Channel 2 News broadcasted a lengthy report accusing the billionaire founder of the pro-Netanyahu newspaper Yisrael Hayom, Sheldon Adelson, of illegally gaining rights to build a casino. The report turned out to be false and the station was forced to broadcast an apology. The media claimed that the Channel 10 stockholders, who feared financial repercussions by Adelson, coerced the staff to apologize. Karen Noibach also devoted precious airtime to performer Yehudah Pollicker. Israel Army Radio featured the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Afterwards, the two stations switched stories.

The main item on State Radio Channel 2's agenda recently was Channel 10's apology to Sheldon Adelson. Some background: A few months ago, Channel 2 News broadcasted a lengthy report accusing the billionaire founder of the pro-Netanyahu newspaper Yisrael Hayom, Sheldon Adelson, of illegally gaining rights to build a casino. The report turned out to be false and the station was forced to broadcast an apology. The media claimed that the Channel 10 stockholders, who feared financial repercussions by Adelson, coerced the staff to apologize. Karen Noibach also devoted precious airtime to performer Yehudah Pollicker. Israel Army Radio featured the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Afterwards, the two stations switched stories.

The main item on State Radio Channel 2's agenda recently was Channel 10's apology to Sheldon Adelson. Some background: A few months ago, Channel 2 News broadcasted a lengthy report accusing the billionaire founder of the pro-Netanyahu newspaper Yisrael Hayom, Sheldon Adelson, of illegally gaining rights to build a casino. The report turned out to be false and the station was forced to broadcast an apology. The media claimed that the Channel 10 stockholders, who feared financial repercussions by Adelson, coerced the staff to apologize. Karen Noibach also devoted precious airtime to performer Yehudah Pollicker. Israel Army Radio featured the 10th anniversary of 9/11. Afterwards, the two stations switched stories.

Bettelheim, like the Greek poet Homer, understands that the force that does not kill, that does not kill just yet, can turn a human being into stone, into a thing, even while it is still alive. Merely hanging ominously over the head of the vulnerable creature it can choose to kill at any moment, poised lasciviously to destroy breath in what it has somehow "graciously" allowed, if only for a few more moments, to breathe; this force indelicately mocks the fragile life it intends to consume.

With the world's eyes directed toward the United Nations, the most salient issues in the Israeli-Arab dispute in the Holy Land have been sharpened:

Jorge Luis Borges, the very special Argentine writer and philosopher, sometimes quite happily identified himself as a sort of Jew. Although lacking any apparent basis in halacha, he nonetheless felt himself to be a deeply kindred spirit: "Many a time I think of myself as a Jew," he is quoted in Willis Barnstone's Borges at Eighty: Conversations (1982), "but I wonder whether I have the right to think so. It may be wishful thinking."

Sometimes, as I have asserted from time to time in this column, seeing requires distance. Now, suffocating daily in political and economic rants from both the Right and the Left, we Americans must promptly confront a critical need to look beyond the historical moment, to seek both meaning and truth behind the news. There, suitably distant from the endlessly adrenalized jumble of current fears and concerns, we could finally understand the timeless struggle of individual against mass, of the singular person against the "crowd."

An international non-Jewish pro-Israel organization has declared: The UN must "reject any resolutions and actions that would violate Israel's legitimate sovereignty over all of Jerusalem."

The onslaught against the Jewish state has begun.In just the past few weeks, Turkey expelled Israel's ambassador, an Egyptian mob stormed the Israeli embassy in Cairo and ransacked the premises, and the Palestinians reaffirmed their insistence on seeking UN approval for a unilateral declaration of statehood.

Declaring Palestine. It is a core issue for Israel that has come up in my columns before. But now, the enemy's operational tactics have been changed and fine-tuned. This month, Palestinian Authority leaders will seek formal creation of their independent state via the "good offices" of the United Nations.

For Israel, the prime inheritor of Genesis, an expanding global chaos portends a very unusual, and also ironic, kind of fragility. A relentlessly beleaguered microstate, and always the individual Jew writ large, Israel could become the principal victim of international disorder. In view of the exceptionally far-reaching interrelatedness of all world politics, this could be true even if the actual precipitating events of war and terror would occur elsewhere.