InDepth

Each morning they line up, rain or shine, several rows deep, just before the start of class. After the principal says a few words and wishes them a good day, the hundreds of students at an elementary school in central Israel burst into "Hatikva," the national anthem, in a reaffirmation of their loyalty to the state.

Representatives of the religion of peace had their hands full earlier this month organizing demonstrations, burning the pontiff in effigy, promising to assassinate him, instigating church bombings, killing at least one nun, and generally threatening the annihilation of Christian civilization because of the pope's remarks about Islam nurturing "evil and inhuman" acts. A Turkish cleric declared that the pope's statement reflected a terrible ignorance of Islam.

Oriana Fallaci, the Italian journalist who late in life did a profound about-face – going from leftist supporter of revolutionary movements to resolute defender of the West and vocal opponent of Islamic fundamentalism – died last week in Florence.

The tzaddikim, unsayed by desire to indulge in the pleasures the "island" proffers, stay on board.

The rights of both Jews and Christians were openly trampled on by the Muslim conquerors of Jerusalem. Churches were made into mosques. Slaughterhouses were deliberately established near Jewish places of worship. Mosques were built next to churches and synagogues so that their minarets could literally "over-tower" them.

Last week, President Lech Kaczynski of Poland visited Israel, where he participated in many events in support of Israel and the Jewish community in Poland.

New Year Greeting    I am a Muslim living in the Detroit area who faithfully visits your Jewish Press website. I enjoy the political commentary,...

There is some confusion these days over who is really in favor of peace, who is still clueless, who is a defeatist, and who has failed to learn anything at all about the Middle East conflict over the past 20 years.

Many in the chattering classes in the United States recently devoted their energy to the controversy about ABC's television film "The Path to 9/11." Partisanship seems to dominate virtually every discussion these days. So it was no surprise that, just as Republicans have sought to minimize the lack of attention paid to the terror threat by the Bush administration, so, too, have Democrats resisted the notion that the failures of the Clinton administration be highlighted, as the film did with some respects.

Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair is Israel's best friend in Europe. And he's not a very good friend. Immediately after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the U.S., Blair was instrumental in convincing President Bush to view the Palestinian jihad against Israel as a conflict completely separate from the global jihad. His success in convincing Bush of this distinction turned the anti-Semitic - not to mention strategically disastrous - view that terrorists who kill Israelis should be treated differently from terrorists who kill anyone else into one of the cognitive foundations of the U.S. war on Islamic terror.

One of my readers recently asked me a probing and rather disturbing question: "Do you think we are still the people of the book?" Like a good Jew, I need to answer a question with a question - more than one, actually. First, what is meant by "we"? Readers of The Jewish Press? The young people I saw in Tel Aviv last week with tattoos - girls with bare midriffs and silver studs in navels, noses, tongues, even eyebrows?

Political hypocrisy was raised to a new standard in recent weeks by Democrats who successfully pushed ABC to purge a docudrama of certain scenes and dialogue that reflected poorly on the anti-terror efforts, such as they were, of the Clinton administration.

Free Yom Tov Seating    Once again Kehilas Mevakshai Hashem of Midwood, Brooklyn, is proud to offer free seats for the Yomim Noraim as a...

The unchanging struggle to evict the Jews from "all of Palestine" (that is, from Israel as well as Judea/Samaria/Gaza) is driven by the homicidal idea of jihad or holy war. According to Islamic orthodoxy, their "prophet" is said to have predicted a final war to annihilate the Jews.

For the last two weeks I have written about cemetery restoration in Poland. This week I present a report from the Foundation for the Preservation of the Jewish Heritage in Poland, which has done tremendous work in the field. The first half of 2006 has been a busy time for the Foundation for the Preservation of the Jewish Heritage in Poland. The Foundation has cleared up ten Jewish cemeteries and fenced four of them, erected monuments or memorial plaques commemorating pre-war Jewish communities in five towns and is currently restoring four synagogues.

Jewish religious observance suffered a propitious decline in early- and mid-20th century America.

Fifteen-year old Tirtza Sariel from the Jewish community of Elon Moreh has been held in the Russian Compound, a maximum security prison, for almost two months. The charge: throwing olives at Arabs. In order to protest her arrest and imprisonment she refused to sign court documents; Judge Uri Ben Dor held her in contempt and ruled to keep her in prison until the end of proceedings, which may take many months.

In an August 21 Jerusalem Post column, Elliot Jager, that paper's deputy editorial page editor, asked whether "maybe we Jews shouldn't put all our eggs in one basket. Maybe - for lots of reasons - Theodor Herzl was wrong in advocating the negation of the Diaspora."

For years I have been urging the greater Torah-observant community to discard the sort of questions that are typically asked of singles in the shidduch scene. (By now it is probably unnecessary to elaborate and provide copious examples of these questions; we all know what I'm talking about.) Indeed, it has been gratifying to see it become more mainstream for people to speak out about "crazy questions" and for popular opinion to begin to shift accordingly. But I made a mistake.

The singer and political activist Bono recently caused a stir when word got out that his California-based venture capital firm, Elevation Partners, invested around $300 million in Forbes magazine, and, more significantly, that his band's company, U2 Unlimited, which holds the rights to U2's master tapes, moved to the Netherlands to pay a lower corporate tax rate.

For years, Nasrallah mocked Israeli society as a "spider's web," intricate, elaborate, but weak and easily swept away. Now it was Nasrallah's turn to be swept away.

Dangerous Times   Are we blind to what's happening? Are we so preoccupied that we don't realize the seriousness of how Iran's quest for a...

The poet Auden understood many things. He understood truly important things as only the poets can. He understood that humankind can always be found in pretty much the same imperiled condition.

I recently interviewed a Holocaust survivor who was present as the Russian army entered the town of Czetachowa.

Israeli public opinion polls taken in the aftermath of the war in Lebanon reveal a dramatic erosion of popular support for the Olmert government and its policies.

A few weeks ago, Jimmy Carter gave an interview to the German newspaper Der Spiegel, mostly on the recent Lebanon conflict. It was classic Jimmy Carter - at once moralizing and morally confused, ill-informed and preachy - illustrating why the American people voted him out of office after just one term and the politically partisan Swedish Academy awarded him the Nobel Peace Prize.

A drama is slowly but steadily unfolding in Israel that is rare for that nation or any other civilized country. Fresh from the Lebanon battlefield, Israel's citizen-soldiers, joined by families of the fallen as well as ordinary citizens, are mobilizing again - this time for a campaign of marches, letters, petitions and other public activities in regard to the recent unpleasantness up yonder.

Why do so many Americans refuse to face the fact that our country is at war with international terrorism?

Many readers no doubt took issue with the relatively optimistic tone of my recent op-ed column ("Things Worth Remembering," Aug. 18) on the war between Israel and Hizbullah. Make no mistake: The outcome of the fighting upset me as it did all of us who love our State of Israel and our Jewish People.

Like a pig returning to his vomit, Mike Wallace came out of retirement last month to genuflect in the presence of Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadine-jad and then to spread the word that the man who’s denied the Holocaust and called for wiping Israel off the map is not really such a bad guy after all.