Students at the Makor Chaim yeshiva, also known as the “Steinsaltz” yeshiva in Gush Etzion south of Jerusalem, turn into a “flash mob” every year before Purim to get everyone in the right mood for the holiday.

This year, they took over the upscale Mamilla Mall, opposite the Old City in Jerusalem, to stage their Purim dance.

Enjoy.

One hundred Jews from Kiev want to make Aliyah as a “gar’in” (a unified fledgling community), according to a report in Makor Rishon. They come from all over Kiev. All of them are young professionals, including doctors, lawyers, accountants and advertising executives.

Michael Rosenfeld, an emissary for “Hamidrasha Hatziyonut” (Zionist School) told Makor Rishon that he had been approached by a hundred Ukrainian Jews from Kiev who want to immigrate to Israel. There are 20 families on the list so far, as well as a number of singles. They want to make Aliyah together, and live together in Israel in the same community.

They already decided they want to move to a town in either Judea or Samaria.

Rosenfeld said that these are people who always spoke about Aliyah, but now the situation in Kiev is giving them that extra push.

Rosenfeld’s Midrasha is now opening an Ulpan course, to prepare the group with the language skills they’ll need when they arrive in Israel.

Rosenfeld is calling on the Israeli government, and Moetzet Yesha (The Council of Judea and Samaria) to assist them in the Aliyah process.

Simultaneously, others in the Kiev community are trying to raise money for security for the Jews of Ukraine, in response to the anarchy in the streets. According to a JTA report Thursday, the Jewish Federations of North America has launched a Ukraine Assistance Fund.

“As the situation escalates, needs in the Ukrainian Jewish community become even more acute,” said Michael Siegal, chair of the Jewish Federations’ board of trustees.

Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, one of the two chief Rabbis of Ukraine, told John Kerry in a meeting this week that it costs $1000 a day to ensure the security of his Yeshiva, and that to provide protection for all the Jewish organizations would cost $4000 a day.

An estimated 70,000 Jews live in the Ukraine.

Now, imagine if they all moved to Judea and Samaria.

All it takes is a single “gar’in”.

The IDF certainly is the most exceptional army in the world, but sometimes it really goes overboard.

The army has distributed a video, seen below, that explains how soldiers handle demonstrations every Friday, the Muslim Sabbath, when apparently it is a big mitzvah to throw rocks at the heads of Israeli soldiers.

Rock throwing is common in Judea and Samaria, and along with Molotov cocktails and booby-trapped tire throwing, is a terror act that comes under the definition of “popular terror,” military spokesmen explain.

The attacks are too undramatic for the media establishment to report them, let alone describe them as terror – unless they kill someone. That happens once in a while.

The rock-throwers are not just trying to break a window. They want to cause the driver to lose control and crash, hopefully – in their eyes – a fatal crash.

That is what happened in September 2011 when a rock smashed into the car of Asher Palmer, hitting him and causing him to spin out of control and into a guardrail near Kiryat Arba. He and his two-year-old son were killed.

Last March, Adva Biton was driving with her three daughters on her way home near Ariel in Samaria when an Arab youth – a minor – threw rocks at the truck in front of her car. The truck stopped suddenly and Adva did not have time to react. She collided directly with the truck. Adva’s five- and four-year-old daughters were slightly injured, but her three-year-old remains in the hospital until today, and requires the constant presence of Adva or her husband.

Besides the more than 2,400 rock-throwing attacks last year, there are the protests every Friday, gleefully filmed by leftists who edit out that rock-throwing and only show those mean IDF soldiers firing tear gas to disperse the mob instead of turning the other cheek, where a rock more than once has broken a few jaws.

Of course, the soldiers simply could leave and go home and allow the Arabs to find other targets, like the hundreds of thousands of Jews living in Judea and Samaria. As long as the government doesn’t decide to expel any more Jews, the IDF is staying put.

They are very nice about it. They do not want to incite Arabs, but their polite behavior is most certainly seen by protesters as a sign of weakness and the ultimate incitement.

As Captain Naveh Pepper explained, “Our mission is not to educate or to stir up tensions, but to protect the civilians who are present. If we were to act violently, it would only make the situation even tenser, which is the opposite of what we want.”

“Good morning, the people of Kadum,” says the officer. “We ask you today not to choose violence.”

While the “people of Kadum” burn  tires and arm themselves rock rocks and boulders, the office continues, “It is ok to demonstrate,, but it is not ok to use violence.”

Sure. Arab protesters definitely would take that to heart and conduct themselves in a civil manner, looking to Martin Luther King as a role model, but for some strange reason, they don’t.

“We ask you to stop throwing stones,” pleads the officer.

After a barrage  of rock-throwing, IDF vehicles enter the village, and the officer resumes his role of a diplomat that would put John Kerry to shame. “We came in because you threw stones,” he explains. You injured one of our officers.”

The IDF then shot rubber bullets, and the rioters threw more rocks.

“We ask you to stop,” the officer pleaded again.

Only in Israel.

Richard Falk, whose official title is “U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories,” is furious that Gaza fisherman are being shot at, angry about the “blockade” on Gaza, and is upset beyond imagination at those who violate Palestinian Authority Arabs freedom of expression and assembly and who use “excessive use of force.”

Last week, the Bethlehem-based Ma’an News Agency reported, “An Egyptian naval ship opened fire at a Palestinian fishing boat off the coast of the southern Gaza Strip early Saturday, a Palestinian union official said.”

The following day, the Chinese Xinhua news agency wrote, “Islamic Hamas authorities in the Gaza Strip organized Sunday a sit-in at the Rafah border crossing with Egypt, urging the Egyptian government to reopen the terminal which was closed after the ouster of Egypt’s Islamist president Mohammed Morsi last year….

“Since toppling Morsi, the new army-backed Egyptian government has been partly opening the Rafah crossing, allowing the entry of only patients, students in foreign countries and holders of foreign visas and passports.”

Today, the Egyptian Ahram reported, “The Egyptian army has destroyed eight more tunnels used for smuggling along the border with the Palestinian Gaza Strip, an army spokesman said on Sunday.”

Earlier this month, the French AFP news agency told readers around the world, “Palestinian authorities on Thursday imposed a blanket ban on all rallies in support of Egypt and Tunisia after the security forces were accused of harsh conduct towards demonstrators.

“The move came just hours after Human Rights Watch issued a statement condemning the Palestinian security forces and police for forcibly breaking up a pro-Egypt gathering in the West Bank city of Ramallah a day earlier….

“Police punched, kicked and detained participants in the demonstration, as well as at least two journalists and a HRW research assistant,” Human Rights Watch said in a statement, adding that the police “began beating demonstrators without warning.”

“The PA’s suppression is but a continuation of its crackdown on activists and anyone expressing dissent,” he said, speaking on condition of anonymity. “It is a clear violation of our basic rights.”

Palestinian Authority Security chief Adnan al-Damiri said in a statement, “The Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) and the Palestinian Authority forbid any interference in the internal affairs of another country, be it Arab or other, and respect the will of the people to decide their destiny.”

Now, take all of those points, connect the dots and come up with this conclusion: Israeli policies in Judea, Gaza and Samaria amount to apartheid.

That is what Falk concluded Monday in order to show everyone that he failed Logic 101, otherwise known as his final report to the U.N. Human Rights Council.

Falk lies in answers to “who shoots at Gaza fishermen and who prevents Palestinian Authority Arabs from protesting?”

“The humanitarian situation in the Hamas-ruled enclave is dire amid fuel shortages,” he added, according to Reuters. Falk insists that Gaza still is “occupied” by Israel because it allegedly controls border, air space and coastal waters. That is two-thirds correct. Israel does control the air space and the coastal waters, in what the United Nations has said is a legal blockade. Falk ignores that any sane nation controls waters and air space used by terrorists trying to destroy it.

The borders on land controlled by Israel and Egypt. Israel allows hundreds of tons of goods, including building materials that can be used to build rocket weapons factories and missiles, to flow into Gaza. Egypt does not.

As for excessive force, Falk gave no examples, but the above quote from the Palestinian Authority’s own unofficial media says it all. Hundreds of reports have shown week in and week out that the Palestinian Authority regime is not less repressive than that of Egypt.

The Israel Security Agency (Shin Bet), soldiers and police have arrested 15 Hamas members in the past several weeks on suspicion of carrying out rock-throwing and Molotov cocktail attacks on Highway 443, which connects Samaria, Jerusalem, the city of Modi’in and Ben Gurion Airport.

Several of those arrested are returnees to terror, having previously been jailed for attacks against Jews. Military official said there is not only a growing trend of the “revolving door terrorists” phenomena, but that the terrorist also are improving their methods and involvement.

Israel previously has received hundreds of terrorists who signed a piece of paper promising they would behave nicely and would not return to terror.

Since then, the released prisoners who returned to their favorite occupation of terror have killed more than 120 Jews the past several years.

The IDF officer who was brought to a disciplinary trial 10 years ago for allowing his soldiers to shoot live fire at violent leftist rioters has been promoted to commander of the Shomron Brigade.

Col. Shai Kalfer, who studied at Yeshiva Shavei Hevron before enlisting in the Golani unit, will take over the brigade in the same area where his soldiers shot at rioters in December 2003 and injured lightly two protesters, one of them an American leftist.

When “demonstrators” are throwing rocks – not stones, but rocks and boulders – and metal objects at you, a normal soldier would shoot back. That is why he has a rifle.

But that is only true in the United States, Britain, France and other normal countries, without even questioning the behavior of the goon squads in Arab countries where shooting rioters is not good enough when they can be raped and tortured.

But Israel is the land of lots of Jews with the Christian view that turning the other cheek will show the enemy. Things work differently here, where the anti-Zionists must be right if they say Jews are wrong.

Partly due to the massive foreign media barrage every time a soldier raises his weapon at someone trying to injure him, he has to consult his lawyer because he is almost certain to be investigated as if he were a traitor, especially if he actually pulls the trigger.

Flashback to 2003: Kalper was a company commander in the Golani Battalion while on patrol at the anti-suicide bombing fence, AKA Apartheid Wall because it denies the rights of suicide bombers to express their frustrations at being alive and at Jews being alive.

Dozens of leftists and anarchists, who know as much about the Arab-Israel struggle as most of y’all know about the aborigine culture in Australia, pummeled Kalper and his soldiers with their favorite peaceful weapons, rocks and anything else that that is not nailed to the ground and can be thrown.

The soldiers took refuge behind their jeep and received permission to shoot at the leftists.

Kalper was hauled into a military court for violating the bleeding hearts’ laws, but the judges concluded that no criminal action was justified since the soldiers arrived at the scene without proper riot-dispersal equipment.

The file was closed, and Kalper was able to continue his military career.

The Maariv Hebrew-language newspaper wrote in 2007 wrote that he was one of the 10 most promising religious soldiers who might take the helm of the IDF as Chief of Staff in the future.

His promotion to command the Shomron Brigade is a step in that direction. The last religious officer who was brigade commander and considered to be a future candidate as the Chief of Staff was Col. Dror Weinberg, who was commander of the Hebron Brigade. He was one of 10 soldiers and officers gunned down in a Friday night ambush by Arab terrorists near the Patriarchs’ Cave in Hebron in 2002.

Maariv reported Monday that when the IDF was asked to respond to the apparently shocking promotion of a man who allowed his soldiers to defend themselves, the military replied, “This is an old incident that was concluded in a disciplinary court. The officer involved [Kalper} has fulfilled subsequent positions excellently and in our eyes could be advanced to bridge commander.”

After his yeshiva studies, Kalper enlisted at the age of 20 instead of 18, making him older than his sergeant,  and he was called “the old man” by his soldiers, who also  have called him the “greatest and most responsible fighter.” In the newspaper survey of religious officers in 2007, Kalper’s soldiers had nothing but praise for him.

The supposed Presbyterian Church support of the Boycott Israel movement is suffering a wicked backlash from the little guys in the pews who are horrified at some of their elitist leaders who have taken upon themselves to speak in the name of the entire church.

The “Israel/Palestine Mission Network (IPMN) of the Presbyterian Church” in the United States has issued a study guide that that describes Zionism as inherently discriminatory.

The IPMN is an independent entity, noted the Christian newswire.com, although it was created by the Presbyterian Church’s assembly in 2004. The group has targeted Caterpillar, Hewlett Packard and Motorola, all of which do business with the Israeli military and therefore are considered non-kosher participants in the alleged “Occupation.”

The Israel-based SodaStream company has become the latest favorite victim of the Boycott movement, also known as BDS, for Boycott, Disinvestment and Sanctions.

The “church” is far from monolithic. Its anti-Israel activists failed to win approval for disinvestment when the issue came up for a vote in 2012 at the United Methodist General Conference and Presbyterian Church, but it will come up again for discussion at the General Assembly in June in Detroit.

The Institute on Religion and Democracy (IRD), a conservative group that  challenges church that focuses much of its criticism on the policies of the Methodist, Episcopal and the Presbyterian churches in the United States, is outraged at church leaders; support of BDS.

“Jewish groups rightfully are upset,” said IRD President Mark Tooley, “but Christian groups and all persons of good will interested in basic fairness should also be upset that once again a venerable church tradition is squandering its moral capital on a malevolent cause.

“The new semi-official Presbyterian anti-Israel resource illustrates the focused animus of many old-line church elites and activists against Jewish Israel.

“While Presbyterian and other church bodies remain almost completely silent about global persecution of Christians, anti-Semitism, and widespread human rights abuses especially against free speech and religious liberty, they oddly obsess over Israel’s transgressions, real and imagined.”

The Rev. Katharine Rhodes Henderson, the president of New York’s Auburn Theological Seminary, a Presbyterian-affiliated institution, wrote in an statement issued to JTA that the guide “Zionism Unsettled  “purports to be about love but it actually expresses demonization, distortion and imbalance.”

Some Presbyterians involved in Jewish-Christian dialogue say they are pressing the leadership of their church to renounce the study guide and plan to raise the issue at their mainline Protestant denomination’s General Assembly this summer. They have declared that the IPMN guide does not reflect the beliefs of the church’s members.

“My first response to my friends in the Jewish community with whom I associate on a monthly basis in a Jewish-Presbyterian dialogue group is to assure them that this does not represent even close to a majority opinion,” said the Rev. Mike Cole, a Houston-area Presbyterian leader.

The Presbyterian church officials have tried to do limited damage control by sitting that the guide “was neither paid for nor published by the Presbyterian Church,” but the officials have not repudiated it.

Jan Armstrong, a Presbyterian church leader in Santa Barbara, Calif., told the JTA that the study guide “is so unrepresentative of the Membership of the PCUSA as to be considered purely propaganda.”

The Rev. Chris Leighton, a Presbyterian minister and the executive director of the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies in Baltimore, published a lengthy open letter to the Presbyterian church on the Institute for Christian and Jewish Studies website in which he wrote that the guide “betrays the Church, the truth, and the spirit of reconciliation to which we are called.”

The “big issue” raised by the study guide, said John Wimberly, a co-convenor of Presbyterians for Middle East Peace, “is the desire to eliminate Israel as a Jewish state.”