Despite the attacks from Gaza, these French Jews arrived in Israel today on Aliyah!

Welcome home!

When the kidnapping of our sons – Gilad, Naftali, and Eyal – became public, Israelis held their breaths with prayer, anticipation and great unity. With sorrowful hearts and tearful eyes, we were informed 18 days later that the worst had happened.

Once again the bitter enemy has sunk its claws into our children, and the three boys stormily ascended to heaven.

In this difficult time, our hearts are with the dear families left behind, the yeshivas where they learned and the communities where they grew up.

This is a moment of truth, a fateful moment, a time when we must examine ourselves, explore our next steps and determine what we must do now.

For the past 20 years, we have been deceiving ourselves. We have aggrandized the most despicable of our children’s murderers, transforming them from what they really are – loathsome terror organizations – into a legitimate and accepted nation. Worst of all, we have clearly declared that the Land of Israel and Jerusalem, our Holy Land, is theirs.

With the despicable handshake with the lead murderer, we transformed ourselves into occupiers in our own land, to foreigners in our birthplace. And we deposited the most important weapon – justice – into the hands of the most reprehensible of our enemies.

We had mercy on the cruel. Until today, we provide them with free electricity and truckloads of cash. They have cost us a trillion shekels since the infamous handshake. And they continue to cost us.

What could Israel do with those resources?

One trillion shekels could be spent on an apartment for every family in Israel.

One trillion shekels translate into development and a respectable income for all.

One trillion shekels could be spent on improving society’s health and education needs and provide true internal security.

Instead we invested all the abundance given to us by our Father in Heaven on separation fences and on sophisticated missiles to eliminate flies – missiles that, in the moment of truth, will never suffice.

We have directly bribed our enemies with money and valuables so they would allow us to continue to deceive ourselves.

We had mercy on the cruelest of our enemies. We convinced ourselves – and the world – that justice is on their side and that bribing them is the key to our wellbeing. We had mercy on the cruel, but we were cruel to the merciful.

Meanwhile – without mercy – we expelled our brothers, the pioneering lovers of the land, from their homes. The good and noble faces that searched for our kidnapped sons.

We lost our sense of justice and our self-confidence. The cabinet ends its sessions without making decisions.

We bomb empty fields. We lick our wounds, which become more and more infected. And eventually, we return to our daily routines.

The moment of truth has arrived.

We must return to ourselves. We must return to our identity and to our God. We must return to the meaning of our lives in this land, restoring our sense of justice.

The first thing that must be done – immediately – is to end the occupation and declare Israeli sovereignty over our entire land.

The IDF must immediately expel any Arab resident who was involved in the slightest way with terror, or who supported terror. Residents uninvolved with terror must sign a declaration of loyalty to the state of Israel, the state of the Jewish nation. They must continue to live their lives in quiet and serenity.

Since the state’s birth (and even before then), we have witnessed waves of aliyah approximately every 20 years. These waves of immigration always surprise us anew, and propel Zionism to new horizons.

Ben-Gurion Airport – Despite the deteriorating security situation, 64 new immigrants from the United States made aliyah to Israel today. The new Israelis hail from Connecticut, Florida, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, New Jersey, New York, Ohio and Virginia, and range in age from eight months to 92 years.

Lottie Herman, the oldest member of the group, fled Germany to America in 1939. She will be settling in Jerusalem.

Another olah chadasha (new immigrant), 26-year-old Becky Kupchan, said she was moving from her native Chicago to Beer Sheva, the capital city of the Negev.

“Although the security situation in Israel is very tense right now, and in Beer Sheva where I’m about to move rockets are falling, I am not afraid. I trust the Israeli government and the IDF,” said Kupchan, after she arrived at Ben-Gurion Airport. “I’m a Jew and I’ve always dreamed about making Aliyah to Israel, my home — and at home you always feel safe.”

“The Olim who’ve chosen to make Aliya to Israel during these challenging days are real heroes, and each one of them fills our heart with pride and great inspiration,” said Rabbi Yehoshua Fass, Co-Founder and Executive Director of Nefesh B’Nefesh. “Becky from Chicago, who has chosen to live in the city of Beer Sheva in the South, is one of them and we will do whatever we can to assist her in her new home in the State of Israel.”

Tuesday’s group aliyah was made in partnership with the Ministry of Aliyah and Immigrant Absorption, the Jewish Agency for Israel, KKL and JNF-USA, and Nefesh B’Nefesh.

According to Nefesh B’Nefesh 97% of its olim have remained in Israel thanks to its support programs and comprehensive social services to more than 38,000 newcomers.

The new Israeli citizens will be moving to Beit Shemesh, Givat Shmuel, Hadera, Jerusalem, Karmiel, Modiin, Nes Tziona, Ra’anana, Ramat Beit Shemesh, Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv and Beer Sheva.

The Knesset passed the first reading of a bill that will formally allow Israel to recognize foreign certifications of physical and speech & language therapists.

Introduced by Likud Beytenu Knesset member Shimon Ohayon, the law is intended to smooth the way for professionals in the field who come to Israel as new immigrants making aliyah with years of experience, but difficulty finding jobs.

The employment situation in Israel is complicated by a language barrier for professionals from abroad.

The issue is further exacerbated by the difficulties encountered in transferring one’s credentials; and the problem sometimes proves insurmountable, depending on the nation of origin, the school, level of education and year of graduation.

On Monday, June 23, 2014, a law written by MK Dr. Shimon Ohayon (Yisrael Beytenu) was passed which will for the first time designate November 30th as a national day of commemoration for the Jewish refugees from Arab lands.

“Today, we have finally corrected an historic injustice and placed the issue of Jews who were expelled or pushed out of the Arab world in the last century on the national and international agenda,” MK Ohayon said. “In Israel, the history of the Jews who originally came from the Middle East or North Africa, who make up around half of the population, was ignored for too long.”

“Form this year, every child in Israel will learn about the history of the Jews of the region, who arrived long before the Islamic conquest and Arab occupation of the region. This is a vital part of our fight against those internally and externally who delegitimize our presence here in the region and claim we are somehow foreign to the region.”

The law states that the Ministry of Pensioners Affairs will be in charge of organizing the official commemorations, the Ministry of Education will be responsible for including the issue in the educational curriculum and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs will be responsible for ensuring that the issue is raised in all appropriate diplomatic channels.

“Finally, our stories and our history will be heard. Too few people know about this issue in Israel which is a national disgrace, and even fewer people around the world are even aware that Jews were ethnically cleansed from what is now known as the Arab world, who were there before the Arabs even arrived,” MK Ohayon said. “I hope that the return of this issue to the national agenda will ensure that eventually there is redress for the hundreds of thousands of Jews and their descendants who were expelled from their homes and communities.

“I know Foreign Minister Avigdor Liberman has for a long time brought this issue onto the international agenda and the Foreign Ministry organizes an annual event at the United Nations devoted to this issue. We will continue to work with many organizations and communities around the world who have expressed interest in ensuring that this day is recognized and commemorated globally.”

Ben Gurion Airport, Israel, June 19 – Forty-three members of the Lost Tribe of Bnei Menashe arrived yesterday in Israel. The new Olim (immigrants to Israel) hail from the northeastern Indian state of Manipur, and they bring the total number of Bnei Menashe who have made Aliya this month to 250. Thus far, since the start of the year, 410 Bnei Menashe have come here, the largest number that has ever been recorded. The immigrants were brought to the Jewish state by the Jerusalem-based Shavei Israel organization, which received permission from the Israeli government last October to bring 900 Bnei Menashe to Israel by 2015. The remaining 490 Bnei Menashe (out of the total of 900) will be brought to Israel by Shavei Israel by year’s end. “It is so moving to see the Lost Tribe of Bnei Menashe returning to Zion and rejoining the people of Israel,” said Shavei Israel Founder and Chairman Michael Freund.

“After 2,700 years, the Bnei Menashe are returning to our people and our land, and we won’t stop until all the remaining 7,000 community members still in India will be able to come here,” Freund added.

“This is a great day for me and my family, and for all of the Bnei Menashe,” said Bnei Menashe community chairman Yochanan Phaltual, who made Aliya this morning from India and was reunited with his father and siblings in Israel. “It is a dream come true, the dream of our forefathers, and we thank G-d that we have come home,” he added.

The Bnei Menashe are descendants of the tribe of Menashe (or Manasseh), one of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel who were exiled by the Assyrian Empire after King Solomon’s death more than 2,700 years ago. In recent years, Shavei Israel has brought some 2,400 Bnei Menashe back home to Zion. Another 7,000 still remain in northeastern India, waiting for the day when they too will be able to return to Israel and the Jewish people.

The computer industry has Moore’s Law, which is an observation that the number of transistors in a dense integrated circuit doubles approximately every two years.

Israel now has Feiglin’s Law, which is an observation that Israel receives an increasing and massive influx of new Olim (immigrants) whenever major global geopolitical shifts occur, especially when those shifts synchronize with increased antisemitism and economic problems.

Feiglin told the Minister of Aliya and Absorption in the Knesset that that he expects a million and a half Jews to make Aliyah within the decade, as all the conditions are right for it.

Feiglin points out that throughout Zionism’s history, the demographers have been naysayers, proclaiming how few Jews will be in Israel, and even questioning if the Jews will be the majority in our own land.

In 1898 Shimon Dubnov estimated no more that 500,000 Jews will be in Israel by the year 2000. In the 1940′s Israel’s Bureau of Statistics estimated that in 2001 there would be no more than 2.3 million Jews in Israel.

In 1967, demographers actually claimed that Jews would be the minority in Israel by 1987.

Yet after the War of Independence, a million Jews arrived. In the 1970′s 300,000 Jews arrived, and after the USSR fell, another million Jews arrived.

And of course, as Feiglin points out, Jewish families still maintain very high birth rates, and not only among the religious.

As history showed, by the year 2000 Israel had over 5 million Jews, and are clearly the majority west of the Jordan river.

If Feiglin’s Law is right then we’re going to need a lot more housing in Judea and Samaria.

I just hope a good percentage of those Olim will be Americans.