30,000 boy and girls from schools around the country participated in the Jerusalem Day Dance and Flag Parade on Sunday, May 20, 2012.

The parade began with dancing in front of the Great Synagogue, followed by a march to the Old City, walking through the gates of Jerusalem, and finally, culminating at the Kotel.

The parade celebrates the reunification of Jerusalem in 1967.

Photo Credits: Stephen Leavitt, Flash90: Noam Moskowitz,  Miriam Alster

News item:

One of the Six-Day War’s most famous landmarks, Ammunition Hill, was vandalized early Monday morning. This is the fourth related incident in less than a week, just days before Israel marks its Memorial Day for Fallen Soldiers and Victims of Terrorism.

 

 

According to Army Radio, the vandals spray-painted anti-Israel slogans, including “Günter Grass was right,” [referring to the German Nobel laureate's recently published poem in which the former SS officer said Israel was a danger to world peace] and “Zionism — the root of all evil” as well as “lame Zionists.”

Here is an excerpt from a description of the battle of Ammunition Hill by Yaakov Lozowick:

Between 1949 and 1967, while Jerusalem was divided between Israel and Jordan, there was an Israeli enclave about a mile to the east of the border, in the Jordanian part of town. This was Mount Scopus, with the campus of the Hebrew university and Hadassah hospital. There was an agreement whereby every two weeks 200 Israelis would cross Jordanian territory to the enclave, and sit there until the next group replaced them two weeks later.

Throughout the whole period everyone knew that sooner or later the war would resume, and that when that happened Israel would try to reconnect the mountain with the city. To prevent this the Jordanians built a series of fortifications in that mile, and its centerpiece was Ammunition Hill, an apt name borrowed from the days after the British conquered the city in 1917 and General Allenby stored his army’s ammunition there…

On the night between June 5th and 6th 1967 the paratroopers, backed by a few tanks, made their attack, directly on the Jordanian fortifications. The section of the battle on Ammunition Hill raged from about 2am to 5:30, early next morning. It was face to face combat, between the best forces each side had. 71 Jordanians were killed, and 35 Israelis: most of the defenders died, as did a quarter of the attackers.

A story I heard not long afterward told that in the early morning the IDF troops gathered the fallen Jordanians into a pit and covered it, with a makeshift sign that read “Here lie 71 brave Jordanian soldiers”.

A few hours later the paratroopers were at the Kotel.

The perpetrators of the vandalism could have been anti-Zionist Haredim, Arabs, or left-wing extremists. Judging by the content of the literate Hebrew graffiti, my guess is that in this case they are the former.

For example, the message in the photo above reads: “Wretched Zionists, whom do you dominate? The miserable Arabs? Zionism — mother of sin!”

It is simply impossible for me to imagine what would motivate Israeli Jews to desecrate a monument to men who died defending the Jewish state that protects and, in many cases, feeds them.

I would like to see the vandals, who spit on Jewish sovereignty, banished to a place where it doesn’t exist. They have made their statement, let them live by it.

http://fresnozionism.org/2012/04/vandals-spit-on-jewish-sovereignty/

Dreading Purim (I)

I applaud your giving front-page prominence to Rabbi Tzvi Hersh Weinreb’s article about substance abuse among Jewish youngsters (“Why I Dread Purim,” front page essay, March 2).

The problem has assumed ominous proportions and has and will damage if not destroy the futures of many of our young people. It is only through thoroughly ventilating the problem with thoughtful discussions that we may be able to move it toward a solution. I hope parents will read, absorb, and take Rabbi Weinreb’s message to their children.

Edward Wishner (Via E-Mail)

Dreading Purim (II)

I enjoyed Rabbi Weinreb’s article. Unfortunately, the fact is that today’s children come by their addictions “honestly.” That is, they are reared by adults who can’t seem to cope with or work through their problems without drugs or alcohol. Children are far from stupid and are much more perceptive and honest with themselves than prior generations at the same age. Parents teach by example and the sad lesson from all too many can be encapsulated into “There is a pill for that.”

I was disappointed that Rabbi Weinreb did not delve into what is meant by the admonition to drink until we cannot discriminate between “Cursed is Haman” and “Blessed is Mordechai.” It certainly is not self-evident that reliance on a mind-altering substance was being urged. Rabbi Weinreb quoted sources who ruled that drunkenness was not what was contemplated. But what still remains a mystery, at least to me, is how those words are otherwise to be interpreted.

Gary Kleinman New York, NY

Playing The Race Card

Re “African-Americans for Obama” (editorial, March 2):

President Obama is only partially to blame for calling on African Americans to support him in November “because I look like you.” Campaigning is the art of getting elected and Obama learned from the 2008 presidential campaign that when it comes to the race card, the media will always give him a pass. Sure enough, his shameless appeal to African-Americans to vote for him has caused barely a ripple in the media.

I wonder, though, what the reaction would have been to a call by Mitt Romney or Rick Santorum for Caucasians to join a project called “Whites for Mitt” or “Whites for Rick.” Actually, I know the answer. The media would have screamed “racism” non-stop.

Reuven Michaels (Via E-Mail)

Opposition To Obama Not Racial

Reader Howard Feinberg’s sweeping denunciation of frum Jews who oppose President Obama is misguided and wrong (Letters, March 2).

One need not read between the lines to discern that Mr. Feinberg is of the opinion that this opposition is grounded upon race. As an observant Jew, I can state with conviction that my opposition to Obama has nothing to do with his race. It has everything to do with the president’s ruinous economic policies that have resulted in the worst American unemployment figures since the Depression.

To add insult to injury, the president appears to be more concerned with moving his radical social agenda forward than with putting Americans back to work. And with gasoline prices approaching five dollars per gallon, the president opposes real alternatives that would alleviate the economic plight of most Americans and kowtows to environmentalists and other special interests.

On Israel, Mr. Feinberg claims the president is simply following his predecessors concerning settlements and the 1967 borders. While that statement is arguable, what is inarguable is that President Obama is the first American president to publicly advocate for borders between Israel and the Palestinians based on the 1967 lines with some undefined swaps of land.

Anyone with an elementary knowledge of Israel’s security and the current state of world affairs knows a return by Israel to its 1967 borders in any form would be suicide and a non-starter.

When an American president repeatedly states that “America does not accept the legitimacy of continued Israeli settlements,” refers to Israeli “occupation” and cannot differentiate between rocket attacks on Israeli civilians and Israel’s response, Jews, observant or not, take notice. That is why I will join with many of my fellow Jews and millions of other Americans this November in voting against President Obama.

Gerald M. Jacobs Staten Island, NY

Disagrees With Reviewer

This is in response to the Feb. 17 review of the book Girl for Sale by Faigie Heiman. While I respect everyone’s right to voice an opinion and I certainly do not question the credentials and expertise of reviewer Yocheved Golani, I emphatically disagree with several aspects of her conclusions.

First of all, just to set the record straight, the maiden name of the heroine of the story, Miriam Mendlowitz, is undisputedly Miriam Gross, not Miriam Azidowicz, as the reviewer erroneously reported. Nor does she have a middle name, as a reference to Miriam A. Mendlowitz would lead us to believe. Other statements are more subjective in nature and consequently less blatantly incorrect, though I personally disagree with the majority of the criticisms the reviewer cites.

Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas’s statement last Saturday that “Israeli intransigence” was behind the collapse of the recently convened Israel-Palestinian talks in Jordan may provide a moment of truth for President Obama.

According to The New York Times’s Ethan Bronner, citing senior officials from both sides, Israeli negotiators told their Palestinian counterparts that their guiding principle for future borders in a two state solution would include existing settlement blocs as part of Israel. The Palestinians summarily rejected this. Significantly, a Palestinian spokesman said that “Our starting point is the 1967 borders with minor swaps and theirs is the wall and settlements.” (The wall refers to the separation barrier Israel has been building for a number of years.)

President Obama famously said last spring that he favored final borders based on the 1967 lines with mutual swaps – by which he said he meant to include the major Jewish population centers in the West Bank. Mr. Obama’s formulation, which he claims to have been initially misunderstood, caused a very public confrontation with Prime Minister Netanyahu.

The Palestinian position now pushes things beyond the debate over what President Obama really meant. In the here and now, the Palestinian focus on the 1967 lines with “minor changes” is plainly inconsistent with the notion that “swaps” would include tradeoffs for large population centers.

The question is thus whether President Obama is prepared to take the next step and tell the Palestinians that America stands for Israel’s retaining the major settlement blocs. At the very least, he should declare who he thinks is at fault for the breakdown in the talks.

There appears to be a newly energized effort underway to delegitimize any identification of the modern state of Israel with biblical Israel. This sort of thing has been around for a while but it was usually engaged in by Arab nations and hardcore  critics of Israel.

Thus it was disappointing, but not surprising, that in his September speech to the UN General Assembly, PA President Mahmoud Abbas referred to the Holy Land as the “land of Palestine, the land of the Prophet and the birthplace of Jesus.”

And UNESCO’s granting of full membership to the Palestinians is certain to stimulate ever-greater efforts by that body to undermine Israel’s cultural and historical connection to the Holy Land. A little over a year ago, UNESCO classified Kever Rachel as a mosque and “an integral part of the occupied Palestinian territories.” And the Palestinians, separate and apart from the negotiating process, are asking UNESCO to recognizing 20 sites – including Hebron, Jericho and Bethlehem – as “Palestinian World Heritage Sites.”

Particularly dismaying is the broad traction achieved by a new book, The Unmaking of Israel, from Israeli journalist and longtime settlement critic Gershom Gorenberg. Mr. Gorenberg’s thesis is that by keeping and settling territory it conquered in 1967, Israel has undermined both its status as a democracy and the rule of law. He says it has led to corrosive ties between state and synagogue, promoted religious extremism and distorted Judaism.

Absent from his analysis is any notion that Israel has biblical/historical ties to the lands it won in 1967. And the fact that Israel has been given no real opportunity over the years to accommodate the Arabs (other than by marching into the Mediterranean) seems to play no role in Mr. Gorenberg’s thinking.

Not surprisingly, the Gorenberg book has been well received in academic and intellectual circles. Also hardly a surprise, The New York Times this past Sunday saw fit to publish an op-ed piece by Mr. Gorenberg (titled “Israel’s Other Occupation”) which was basically a screed against Israeli policies within the so-called “green line,” accusing Israel of doing to its Arab citizens what it is allegedly doing to the Palestinians of the West Bank.

Another article meriting mention is political scientist Ronald R. Krebs’s “Israel’s Bunker Mentality: How the Occupation Is Destroying the Nation,” which appears in Foreign Affairs, the influential journal published by the Council on Foreign Relations. Mr. Krebs argues that Israel’s continuing presence in the territories has played a central role in transforming a country once brimming with optimism into an increasingly despondent and illiberal place.

Like Mr. Gorenberg, Mr. Krebs not only provides a distorted narrative about the facts on the ground, he seems quite oblivious to the realities foisted on Israel by the Arab world and totally unconcerned with Israel’s biblical/historical ties to the land.

We hope to see informed rejoinders to the likes of Messrs Gorenberg and Krebs, in both popular and intellectual media outlets, in the coming weeks.

Can we be a free people in our land without the first Jewish city in Israel?

Several years ago, on the anniversary of the liberation of Hebron in 1967, I was interviewed by a journalist who queried me about various problems facing Hebron’s Jewish community. His concluding question/statement was, “Well, I guess you’re not celebrating today?”

“Why not?” I replied.

“Well, you have all these problems and issues, how can you celebrate?”

“You just don’t understand,” I answered. “Look at where were we 70 years ago, or 60 years ago. Were we in Hebron? Today I’m here, in the first Jewish city in Israel. I live here, I work here, I’m bringing up my children here. This is my home. True, we have problems. There are ups and downs. Issues must be dealt with. And they will be overcome. But I’m here. And as long as I’m here, I have what to celebrate, and that’s exactly what I’m doing today!”

One of our most special celebrations will occur this weekend. The Torah portion of Hayei Sarah, otherwise known as “Shabbat Hebron,” is an extraordinary event. It is not an ordinary shabbat (which in Hebron is also unique). Rather, it is an event.

Over the past decade, some 20,000 people have capitalized on this special Sabbath to crowd into Hebron and nearby Kiryat Arba to rejoice. Starting on Friday morning, Israelis young and old will begin flocking to the city. Jews from the United States and other countries fly to Israel to be in Hebron for this exceptional occasion.

Well over six months prior to this Sabbath we begin receiving phone calls and emails requesting places to sleep and eat on this auspicious day. Dozens of tents are pitched outside Me’arat Hamachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs, and Matriarchs. Public buildings are transformed into dormitories, with separate facilities for men and women. It’s the only time of the year when my living room is wall-to-wall people sleeping on the floor.

One year, on Saturday night, a young woman walked into our kitchen to thank my wife. She asked what for. The woman said she had slept in one of our rooms. We had no idea she was there, or where she slept, because the room was already packed.

A huge tent is constructed outside the Avraham Avinu neighborhood, providing meals thousands of guests. Literally every nook and cranny in Hebron is utilized, with people sleeping and eating wherever they can find a few free meters.

All hours of the day and night the streets are full of people walking to and from the various neighborhoods in Hebron. Saturday afternoon, multitudes tour the city, visiting the Hebron Heritage Museum at Beit Hadassah, the tomb of Jesse and Ruth in Tel Rumeida, and the Avraham Avinu synagogue in the Avraham Avinu neighborhood. Special Casba tours are also included in the day’s agenda.

The heart of the day’s events takes place at Me’arat Hamachpela. On Friday night, literally thousands of people gather at this holy site, inside and out, to offer joyous Sabbath prayers. Singing and dancing during a huge “Carlebach minyan,” conducted in the Machpela courtyard, is unbelievably uplifting.

But the pinnacle and actual raison d’être for the ingathering begins early Saturday morning.

By 5:15 a.m., thousands make their way to early morning prayers at the Machpela. The entire building is open to Jewish worshipers, including “Ohel Yitzhak,” the Isaac Hall, available to Jews only ten days during the year. The first vatikin service, with the sunrise, is a spiritually inspirational way to start the day.

However, the peak takes place about an hour into the service. A Torah scroll is removed from the Holy Ark and opened. The first person, usually a cohen, or priest, is called up to the Torah. Following recitation of a blessing, the reader begins:

An Associated Press report on Sunday that Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu had agreed to negotiate the borders of a Palestinian state based on the 1948 Armistice lines understandably created quite a stir. Mr. Netanyahu’s public confrontation with President Obama over this very issue remains vivid in everyone’s memory, as does the enthusiastic and virtually unanimous bipartisan support for Mr. Netanyahu’s position expressed by Congress.

That this “red line” would be so abruptly and unceremoniously abandoned can hardly be deemed a simple matter. Did the AP somehow get the story wrong? Mr. Netanyahu’s supporters certainly hoped so, but then on Monday more news outlets, in Israel and abroad, confirmed that the prime minister had in essence accepted President Obama’s proposal that Israel affect a near total withdrawal from the West Bank.

To be sure, by Tuesday the AP was reporting that the Israeli government was “distancing” itself from the initial report, and that government sources insisted Mr. Netanyahu was merely willing to “show some flexibility” on the border issue.

When all the platitudes are put on the shelf, the gulf between President Obama and the Netanyahu government has been about whether Israel will be required to concede pre-1967 land as part of any peace agreement with the Palestinians. United Nations Security Council Resolution 242, formalizing an end to the 1967 Six-Day War, spoke of Israel’s entitlement to defensible borders with no mention of accompanying land swaps. The notion of land swaps arose only as a way to account for changes on the ground subsequent to the 1967 war involving the growth of Israeli population centers in the West Bank.

Thus, when President Obama spoke of “land swaps” with the pre-1967 lines as the starting point, he was extending the notion of an exchange of land to Israel’s minimal entitlement to defensible borders rather than only post-1967 changes in reality on the ground. And this was a monumental shift.

In the weeks since the Netanyahu-Obama brouhaha, the administration has, for whatever reasons, been eager to downplay the implications of the president’s initial statement. At the same time, it’s clear from statements made by Mr. Netanyahu that there is a dynamic in play, driven no doubt by the Palestinian Authority’s determination to win UN recognition of a Palestinian state.

              In the run up to the final Palestinian push for that recognition come September, one can only hope that principle will prevail.

As reported last week in the Jerusalem Post, “Prime Minister [Benjamin] Netanyahu said on Monday that Israel and the U.S. were working on a document saying the parameters for returning to negotiations with the Palestinians would be based on the speech U.S. President Barack Obama gave at AIPAC in May, and spelling out in greater detail what Obama meant by a return to the 1967 lines, with mutual agreed swaps.”

In Netanyahu’s words, “we are interacting with the U.S. to put together a document [for an agreement with the Palestinians] using language from Obama’s [AIPAC] speech.”

Paradoxically, Netanyahu then proceeded to say, “The Israeli goal is direct negotiations with the Palestinians, without preconditions.”

Go figure.

That Netanyahu is considering conceding to Obama’s demand that Israel retreat to the “1967 borders” as a basis for future negotiations with the Palestinians, irrespective of “conditions” or “guarantees” (which, by all accounts, would uniquely comprise the intangible and non-binding Palestinian recognition of Israel as a Jewish state), represents the prospective coming of full circle of a man who has historically been labeled “hawkish.”

If the reports are true, however, Netanyahu has effectively metamorphosed into Tzipi Livni.

This transformation – which began in 2009 at Bar Ilan university, when Netanyahu formally endorsed for the first time the creation of “Palestine” – has culminated in the crossing of a “red line” (also known as the 1949 Armistice lines).

To date, Israel’s repeated concessions to the Palestinians, though unconscionable, have for the most part been containable. Gaza, for example, following Israel’s 2005 unilateral withdrawal, has essentially become an Iranian-sponsored jihadist war zone dedicated to Israel’s destruction, but nonetheless one that Israel can subdue militarily.

Furthermore, the effects of Israel’s incessant pandering to world pressure – at the expense of its unequivocal legal and historical rights, as well as its moral authority – which contribute to (some might even say justify) the wretched global campaign to delegitimize the Jewish state, have thus far been manageable, primarily offset by a booming economy driven by Israel’s collective creative power.

Yet Israel’s retreat to the 1967 lines, despite “promises” of “land swaps,” is universally considered as a suicidal prospect. (Though what’s bound to happen is that once “1967 borders” becomes accepted “peace process” terminology, the Palestinians will make certain no agreement is reached until such time, perhaps years from now, that the world again reneges on its “commitments” vis-à-vis the Jewish state by forgoing the term “land swaps” altogether).

As such, if Netanyahu accepts the “Obama principles,” Israel essentially will be agreeing to ingest a fatal poison (1967 borders) whose lone antidote (land swaps) will be in the hands of the Palestinians. And the sole “voice” encouraging the Palestinians to administer said medicine will be Obama.

Moreover, should Netanyahu comply with Obama, he also would effectively be acceding to dividing Jerusalem (the Western Wall, for example, the Jewish people’s holiest site, resides outside of the 1967 boundaries), notwithstanding repeated glorious assertions to the contrary.

Despite all this, there is still hope.

This past May, Netanyahu gave Israel – along with all those in the Diaspora who passionately advocate for the platform of Israel’s Likud prime minister and his party – the first real glimmer of hope for reconciliation with the Palestinians since the Oslo process collapsed under the weight of the first Intifada.

What Netanyahu provided was unbridled leadership; that is, he did not bend or break to popular demand, but rather stared down the most powerful man in the world and rebuked Obama’s May 19 “Arab Spring” speech – the prelude to his watered-down (damage control) speech to AIPAC three days later – as detrimental to Israel’s wellbeing.

Netanyahu affirmed: “For there to be peace, the Palestinians will have to accept some basic realities. The first is that while Israel is prepared to make generous compromises for peace, it cannot go back to the 1967 lines – because these lines are indefensible. Remember that, before 1967, Israel was all of nine miles wide. It was half the width of the Washington Beltway. And these were not the boundaries of peace; they were the boundaries of repeated wars, because the attack on Israel was so attractive.”

The continued infusion of truth into the public discourse by strong, principled Jewish leaders, who place Israel’s ongoing security above all else, is the only chance Israel has to ever forge lasting agreements with its neighbors.