The world is agitated. War ships and troops are being moved around the globe. Are nations gearing up for major war?
Guest: Prof. Francisco Gil-White from ‘Historical and Investigative Research’ was created to make important documentation available to the general public, because the academic system is rife with politically biased censorship when it comes to examining the foreign policy of the United States and what is driving world politics, movements and agendas. You can check out his website at: www.hirhome.com

Tamar Yonah Show 06Sept2016 – PODCAST

The Saudi Grand Mufti Abdul Aziz Al Sheikh has fanned the flames of a 1300-year dispute between Shiites and Sunnis when he announced on Tuesday that the Iranians are the descendants of the Zoroastrians and of fire worshippers. He spoke ahead of the annual hajj, which this year starts on Saturday.

The Grand Mufti used the term “Majuws” to describe the Iranians, a term that literally means “magians,” which he cited from the Quran, Chapter 22, sūrat l-ḥajj (The Pilgrimage): “Indeed, those who have believed and those who were Jews and the Sabeans and the Christians and the Magians and those who associated with Allah – Allah will judge between them on the Day of Resurrection. Indeed Allah is, over all things, Witness.”

“We must understand they are not Muslims, for they are the descendants of Majuws, and their enmity toward Muslims, especially the Sunnis, is very old,” the Saudi Grand Mufti said, and every learned Muslim understood the reference to the pilgrimage, which has been an area of contention between Shiites and Sunnis, and now between Iranians and Saudis, for almost as long as there has been an Islam.

The Grand Mufti responded an Irate speech by Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, who called on all Muslims to “fundamentally reconsider the management of the two holy places and the issue of hajj.” In other words, an open call to millions of pilgrims arriving in Mecca for the mid-month festival, to rebel against the Saudi royal family that owns and manages the cities of Mecca and Madīnah.

The Ayatollah attacked the Saudi regime for its failure to prevent last year’s stampede which killed more than 2,400 people, including 464 Iranians, the highest count for any single national group. The Saudis have stated that those figures are inflated and that the real death toll was “only” 769.

The Ayatollah called the Saudi royal family “disgraced and misguided people who think their survival on the throne of oppression is dependent on defending the arrogant powers of the world, on alliances with Zionism and the US, and on fulfilling their demands. And on this path, they do not shy away from any treason.”

He also said that “those who have reduced hajj to a religious-tourist trip and have hidden their enmity and malevolence towards the faithful and revolutionary people of Iran under the name of ‘politicizing hajj,’ are themselves puny Satans who tremble for fear of jeopardizing the interests of the Great Satan, the US.”

So, just for the record, Iran believes there are three Satans: the Great Satan (US), Little Satan (Israel), and Puny Satan (Saudi Arabia).

So far, the Grand Mufti’s enraged response to the Iranian leader has not gone down well even in largely Sunni countries. The Nation, a leading Pakistani newspaper, said in an editorial Wednesday that “for the Grand Mufti Abdulaziz al-Sheikh, to say that Iranians are not Muslims and use offensive words against them, is truly shocking and will haunt many Muslims, especially Shia communities living across the region, for years to come. Saudi Arabia as the custodian of the Ka’aba cannot and must not make such offensive remarks.”

According to AFP, reporting from Riyadh, Iranians will not participate in this year’s pilgrimage to Mecca for the first time in almost 30 years, after talks between Iran and Saudi Arabia on logistics and security had fallen apart. The Saudis claim the Iranians insisted on their right to stage protest demonstrations in the holy city of Mecca. Saudi crown prince Mohammed bin Nayef accused Iran of making “efforts to politicize the hajj and convert it into an occasion to violate the teachings of Islam, through shouting slogans and disturbing the security of pilgrims.”

The normal start-of-the-week traffic jams have been more severe than usual Sunday morning, as a result of the limits on train service across the country. Police report severe traffic delays on route 1, connecting Tel Aviv and Jerusalem and both cities to Ben Gurion International Airport. Traffic on the coastal highway, Route 2, is unusually heavy from Caesarea to Tel Aviv. The inner highway, Route 4, is likewise jammed all the way from Holon to Bar Ilan University in Ramat Gan, to Ra’ana in both directions. Route 5 connecting the coastal highway with Ariel in Samaria is also jammed. Route 20, which cuts through downtown Tel Aviv is jammed, too. Route 65, connecting Hadera with Afula through Umm al-Fahm in the Arab Triangle is also at a standstill.

On Saturday, the Israel Railways Corporation announced that essential infrastructure works that were not carried out on Shabbat by decree of Prime Minister Netanyahu would be done Sunday, thus paralyzing most of the train service until 7 PM. The stoppage came against the background of Haredi party resistance to carrying out work on Shabbat, and the apparent capitulation of the prime minister, but judging by what the Haredi press had to say Sunday morning, this was more a provocation by Transport Minister Yisrael Katz (Likud) than an actual crisis.

The daily Yated Ne’eman cited MK Moshe Gafni (UTJ) who accused Katz of acting out of revenge rather than caring for the services of his ministry. “The abominable conduct of Yisrael Katz proves that he does not care about danger to life, and not about the train, only about politics and his need to take revenge against the prime minister,” Gafni said.

Train service has been greatly curtailed Sunday morning. The IDF has added buses to transport soldiers returning to base from their Shabbat break. IDF representatives will guide confused soldier to the right buses. Israel’s inter-city bus companies have increased their active fleets Sunday to help passengers, which, of course, contributes to the traffic jams on the highways.

Leftwing parties Meretz and Labor called for protest rallies at the dark train stations Saturday night, but only a few hundred protesters showed up at the Tel Aviv rally, and only a few dozens at the Haifa event. The real fight over the train works and train service is being waged inside the Likud Party, between Prime Minister Netanyahu and his rebellious Transport Minister and Likud Secretariat Chairman Yisral Katz. (See: Coalition Chair: No Coming back from Netanyahu Vs. Transport Minister Crisis)

With the increase of hostilities on the Russian-Ukrainian border in recent weeks, 211 new immigrants from Ukraine landed Tuesday at Ben Gurion Airport.

Most came from the embattled regions in the eastern part of Ukraine, arriving on the 19th flight sponsored by the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews (IFCJ) since hostilities broke out between the two countries.

“There has been a significant increase in calls from potential Olim to the IFCJ representatives in Ukraine and we are doing everything to give them the best possible service so that they can begin new and secure lives in Israel, which was and still is the home for any person who is part of the Jewish people,” noted Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, IFCJ president.

Approximately 4,000 immigrants have fled to Israel from Ukraine on flights sponsored by the organization since December 2014. Among those who arrived Tuesday were 37 children who are to begin their studies in Israeli schools in two days, including nine in the first grade.

Natalia S. arrived in Israel with her mother and son, and said that she was forced to leave the city of Marinka in the Donetsk region in Eastern Ukraine after the extensive bombing in the city that began in April 2014. The building where her family lived was bombed and some of their neighbors were killed.

Natalia explained that her family’s Jewishness was kept secret by her grandmother who had survived the Holocaust, while her husband, Natalia’s grandfather, was in a concentration camp. As a result, she says, “we knew we had Jewish roots but did not have the documents to prove it.”

According to Natalia, during one of the family’s visits to the Holocaust Museum an employee at the site advised her about which archive to search in order to find documents that would prove their Jewish roots.

“Because of the advice we were given, we went later to the archive and found my grandmother’s documents. In the documents, we read that she had changed her name and her father’s name, from “Alia” and “Avraham” to “Lisa” and “Peter,” she said. Natalia, her mother, and her son are planning to settle in Akko. Among Tuesday’s group of new olim there were seven babies, including two who were only six months old. The oldest person on the flight was age 82, and the average age of the group was 34. The preferred destination for the immigrants was Haifa, where 42 of the new arrivals elected to settle.

Most of the olim came from the Dniepropetrovsk region, which has become one of the preferred destinations for refugees escaping the embattled areas in Eastern Ukraine because of its proximity and the fact that it is still in Ukrainian hands.

The IFCJ assists the Olim to Israel with special grants of $1,000 for each adult oleh and $500 for each child, in addition to financing the flight to Israel. This support is provided by the organization in addition to the standard basket of benefits each immigrant receives from the Israel Ministry of Aliyah and Absorption. The organization also arranges the absorption of the new immigrant families with the various local authorities prior to their arrival in Israel, recruiting locals to accompany the new olim as they seek housing and employment and settle in to their new surroundings.

Ask most Jews in Israel: “What was the moral, spiritual reason that the Second Jewish Temple in Jerusalem was destroyed by the Romans in the year 70?” and they will answer the reason given by the Sages, almost 2,000 years ago: “Because of what is called in Hebrew “sinat chinam”.

The usual translation goes as follows: “sinah” means hatred, “chinam” means free or baseless, therefore: baseless hatred. However that’s only partially correct. What it really means is this: in Jewish thought there are clear definitions of good and evil, true and false, moral and immoral, definitions that aren’t subject to changes according to the fashionable fad of the day. The Bible calls on those that seek God to hate and resist evil, to pursue justice and true peace – but without hating those that hold ideas that are considered evil. Baseless hatred is when instead of hating and resisting an evil doctrine – I hate the persons and attack them personally, to the extreme point that I erroneously think that the world would be a better place not just if their ideas didn’t exist – but if they themselves also didn’t exist in the world. In contrast the Psalm says: “Sins will cease from the land, and there will be no more evil people”; our Sages emphasize that if the sins disappear, not the sinners, rather when the sinful doctrines disappear – then there won’t be any sinners, because they will have changed for the better.

In spite of this well known accepted tradition as to the moral lesson to be learned from the destruction of the Second Temple – there are those who claim that religious extremism caused the destruction and is indeed the root of most evil, most wars and the most vicious wars.

Is that true?

Were the ancient empires, Assyria, Babylonia, Persia, Greece-Macedonia, Rome or Parthia, motivated by religious reasons? No.

How about medieval wars? Where the Chinese, Mongols, or Vikings, to name just a few, motivated by religion? No. Was Christian on Christian or Muslim on Muslim dynastic war religiously motivated? Obviously not.

In the modern world most wars were not religiously motivated at all. The most destructive wars – WWI and WWII – had nothing to do with religion at all.

So from where does the fear of religious war come from? Two possible trains of thought:

1] ‘The best defense is a good offense’: before someone points out to the anti-religion humanist that the “secular religions” – in the sense of blind faith in a man-made doctrine, such as Communism, Nationalism and Fascism – caused two world wars, countless persecutions and executions, resulting in well over 160 million dead, the anti-religionist falsely attacks religion as being responsible for all the hate, wars and suffering in the world. Apparently that attack seems to be based either on the assumption of ignorance of history on the part of the listeners, or perhaps the ignorance of the speaker attacking religion!

2] Those who claim to be pluralists and reject religion, regard all religions as equally guilty of preaching war. But are they?

Christianity claims to be a universal religion, but even President Obama had to go back to the 11th century crusades to find an example of a Christian war against another religion. Inter-Christian war is closer to our times: the Catholic-Protestant wars of the 17th century. Those started as religious wars but ended with mixed Catholic-Protestant coalitions based on the regular dynastic grabs for power that had little to do with any religion.

Judaism doesn’t claim to be a universal religion, doesn’t wish to conquer the world or convert humanity to Judaism. The Jewish nation wishes only to conquer its own tiny land, and that happened back in biblical times. Today the Jewish State only tries to defend itself and certainly has no plans of conquest.

Islam is indeed different: it claims to be a universal religion that all humanity must accept, whether willingly or by the sword, thereby motivating some of its believers to wage imperialist since its inception to this day. But political correctness has called any criticism of Islam “Islamophobia” thereby closing free speech on the matter. What’s left is the false mantra that all religions cause war.

As one of my teachers used to say in high school: do not be confused!

Five unexploded mortar shells left over from a past war were found Monday on a beach along Lake Kinneret, also known as the Sea of Galilee, near Kibbutz Ma’agen.

Police officers and sappers from the Israel Police bomb squad were dispatched to the site.

Searching along the beaches of Lake Kinneret for unexploded ordnance.

Security personnel immediately closed off the area and began a search to determine whether any other unexploded ordnance remained in the area.

At least four other shells were found.

Israel Police and IDF military personnel worked together to defuse the unexploded shells.

Hundreds of Ukraine Jews are reportedly planning to flee the country due to the increasingly unstable living conditions.

Ukraine is still in a conflict with Russia over Crimea and the eastern Donbass province. Some 40,000 Russian troops massed along the Crimea-Ukraine border last week, prompting Ukraine to place its own troops on high alert ahead of the 25th Ukraine Independence Day.

Separatist forces helped Russia annex Crimea in 2014 in a vicious conflict that left thousands dead.

The International Fellowship of Christians and Jews reports its Kiev office has received more than 1,700 inquiries from Ukraine Jews over the past month about aliyah to Israel, which the organization helps facilitate.

An estimated 260,000 Jews are allegedly still living in the war-torn country. According to the NGO, there are about 5,000 Jews in the disputed Donbass region who are eligible to immigrate to Israel.

Many Jews in the cities of Donetsk and Luhansk, both in Donbass, are unable to reach the area of Ukraine where they can collect their basic state pensions of some $40 per month, due to attacks and military checkpoints.

Local authorities in Donbass recently jailed a Jewish community official who helped the Fellowship administer local humanitarian aid, and then exiled him west to the Ukraine capital, Kiev.

As often happens in times of war, the Jewish community has been caught in the crossfire between Ukraine forces and pro-Russian separatists in eastern Ukraine and Crimea.