As Jerusalem Day approaches, redoubled efforts are underway to increase Jewish awareness of the Temple Mount and to have the site included on the National Heritage Sites list. 

Highlights of the campaign include a visit by 43 rabbis to Judaism’s holiest site on Monday and a petition to Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to include the location on his recently-formulated list of National Heritage sites.
(…)“The Temple Mount is the holiest site in the world for the Jewish people,” the petition states, “yet the Muslim authorities, aided by Israel Police, systematically deny the right of religious expression on the Mount to all non-Muslims. On numerous occasions the High Court of Justice has upheld the Jewish people’s right to pray at the site, yet the police continue to prevent this. Furthermore, Jewish visitors are harassed and degraded… Israeli law is not recognized by the Wakf authorities; illegal digging has destroyed priceless historical remnants of Jerusalem’s Jewish history. Please, end this travesty and… include the Temple Mount in your ‘Heritage Plan’of sites significant to the Jewish people.”

The Temple Institute in Jerusalem notes that though the Temple Mount is the holiest place in the world, “Jews and all non-Moslems are denied the right to pray in groups, and even as individuals; this refusal is accompanied by their constant degradation, and they are granted no opportunity for any religious expression whatsoever on the Temple Mount.”
The Temple Institute further states: “Only Jews are forced to wait an extended period of time before being allowed through security. Only Jews are forced to present their ID’s to the police. Only Jews are followed and harassed by Israeli police and Muslim Wakf guards throughout the entire visit on the Mount. Only Jews are arrested for crimes such as prayer, closing eyes, bowing down or singing.”

What a better way to celebrate the unification of the eternal capital of the Jewish people than signing the petition? I signed – how about you?

President Barack Obama on Monday renewed his commitment to a “new beginning” with the Muslim world, vowing no let-up in US efforts to promote Middle East peace, curb militant violence and boost economic development. Seeking to build on his outreach to Muslims in a speech in Cairo last June, Obama used a US-hosted Muslim business conference to underscore what his administration has done so far and to pledge further work to overcome mistrust. While Obama has made progress toward mending America’s image in the Islamic world, he still faces stiff challenges in his handling of the stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process, the nuclear standoff with Iran and wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“I knew that this vision would not be fulfilled in a single year, or even several. But I knew we had to begin and that all of us have responsibilities to fulfill,” Obama told the Presidential Summit on Entrepreneurship…..”There’s so much more we can do together, in partnership, to foster opportunity and prosperity in all our countries,” Obama said as he sought to focus more on talking about doing business together.

Like tell anti-Jew jokes. Ynet News:

VIDEO – National Security Adviser James Jones opened his remarks at the 25-year anniversary gala of the Washington Institute For Near East Policy last weekend with a joke in which a Jewish merchant fleeces a thirsty Taliban fighter. CBS reported that the joke, which many claimed was in bad taste, was conspicuously absent from the version of the remarks distributed to the media.

Here is how it went: “A Taliban militant gets lost and is wandering around the desert looking for water. He finally arrives at a store run by a Jew and asks for water. The Jewish vendor tells him he doesn’t have any water but can gladly sell him a tie. The Taliban begins to curse and yell at the Jewish storeowner. The Jew, unmoved, offers the rude militant an idea: Beyond the hill, there is a restaurant; they can sell you water. The Taliban keeps cursing and finally leaves toward the hill. An hour later he’s back at the tie store. He walks in and tells the merchant: “Your brother tells me I need a tie to get into the restaurant.”
Foreign Policy reported that the participants, many of whom were Jewish, laughed heartily, but conservative blogs and some Jewish community leaders pounced on the remark.

How Foreign Policy knew the ‘Jewish’ participants laughed is beyond me but maybe they polled the room after and as far as ‘conservative blogs and ’some’ Jewish community leaders pouncing on the remark replace ‘Jew’ with ‘Muslim’ and see if you understand the offence and perhaps spark a riot and a near-death experience for ’some’.Foreign Policy reported that the participants, many of whom were Jewish, laughed heartily, but conservative blogs and some Jewish community leaders pounced on the remark. Ethnic jokes are always a massive fail in the public political arena unless your poking yourself.

If the Democratic plan is to diverst themselves from Jewish Americans and their contribution to the political process on side of the Democrats; I’d say the plan was one of the few policies of the Obama Administration which is performing well.

J-Street, the Obama Administration’s pet nominal ‘Jewish’ advocacy group has decided to go on the attack and publish ads in various “Jewish” journals criticizing Elie Wiesel for speaking out against the Obama Administration’s tempter tantrum against Jerusalem. Again, I have to issue a massive F for the public relations failure on three levels.

J-Street published ads in ‘Jewish’ journals while Wiesel made his case in the Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, the International Herald Tribune and he pitched his plea not just to a Jewish audience but the wider public. Secondly, publicly criticizing Wiesel for exercising his free speech rights and opinion on the significance of Jerusalem for Jews is the equivalent of beating up a holocaust survivor in a elevator for being a Jew. Thirdly, using hard leftist Yossi Sarid, the disposed head of Meretz (who doesn’t even live in Jerusalem) as your counterweight to the credibility of Elie Wiesel is like using the Pope as your posterboy for the anti-MAMBLA campaign.

You can do it but its just really bad form.

In the meantime, I really don’t care what Ann Coutler has to say or not as I am not yet a perfected Jew but can we all agree that University of Ottawa students get a fail for tolerance and/or supporting free speech rights?

Speaking of intolerance and free speech, the Saudis are busy condemning Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recent speech at the AIPAC convention. There is something about the Saud’s whiny about Israelis which always reminds me of the smell of rotting socks…

Apparently, Bib Netanyahu had an hour and a half face-to-face meeting with the US President Obama. I suspect Obama was busy trying to convince Bibi to change the text of the Haggadah at the end of the Passover seder to say - ‘Next year in the Settlement’ rather than the politically ‘arrogant’ but traditional ‘Next year in Jerusalem”.

In the meantime, if you are really looking for something to read and want to sink your teeth into something a little more substantial than norm; may I suggest this US Army War College paper published circa 2005 and entitled Getting ready for a Nuclear –Ready Iran. I suspect the Obama administration has read it and is following the woefully inadequate script.

The Hurva was built between 1857-1864 on the ruins of an earlier structure constructed by Rabbi Judah the Pious in the late 17th century (over a synagogue site dating to the second century). There wasn’t a wee murmur of protest about this wanton arson nor about the devastation of 57 other Old City synagogues by conquistador Arabs. Likewise, not a whisper of displeasure about Arabs ripping out Mount of Olives tombstones to construct public latrines. The international community was decidedly unbothered when for 19 years Jews were prohibited from praying at their holiest sites.

But the Jewish return was deemed a reprehensible violation of good conduct codes by which, we know, all other nations faithfully abide. Ravaging the Hurva was acceptable, but rebuilding it is a sin against pie-in-the-sky peace. It was pardonable to cast Jews out of the Old City, but their homecoming deserves unreserved condemnation.

Jerusalem was always one united city save for a 19-year illegality arising from an Arab invasion in violent breach of the UN partition resolution. While the world convivially tolerated Arab occupation of half of Jerusalem, it never recognized the residual Jewish hold even on the other half, west Jerusalem. In the spirit of skewed evenhandedness, the global consensus now is that the result of 1948’s illegal Arab invasion must be upheld and that Jews must be barred from anywhere that the invaders once occupied.

That’s why planning permits for 1,600 additional apartments in Ramat Shlomo irk the world. Ramat Shlomo isn’t in east Jerusalem but to its north, doesn’t encroach on Arab neighborhoods and its birth 12 years ago triggered no squawk. It’s situated on what were barren slopes that overlook the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway. Ramat Shlomo’s already existing 2,300 housing units were erected on vacant wasteland, dispossessing nobody. Currently 17,500 Jews reside there. They marry, give birth and their families grow. Is their neighborhood to be made judenrein because for 19 years Jews were barred from it?

If anyone owes an apology for rank insults, Obama, Biden and Clinton do for assuming they can dismiss 3,000 years of Jewish history in the city which Jews put on humanity’s map. This trio disrespects us and our sensibilities and in so doing raises Arab expectations and deepens Arab intransigence. With the world’s one superpower espousing the Fatah/Hamas line, why should Arabs evince the slightest flexibility? Obama has placed all the bargaining chips in Arab hands.

On May 29, 1995, post-Oslo and five months before his assassination, Yitzhak Rabin told the Knesset: “There is one issue on which there is no debate among us – the integrity of Jerusalem and the continuation of its cultivation and consolidation as Israel’s capital. I said so yesterday and will repeat it today: There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one. Jerusalem is not subject to compromise. It was ours, will be ours, is ours and so it will remain for ever and always.”

Amen.

Let us start with the good news. Settlement growth in Samaria and Judea continued to grow, abet more slowly than last year but still at a respectable 4.9%.

Friends of the IDF held a fund raising dinner in New York and managed to raise $20 million at a period of time when virtually everyone with an equity portfolio saw the value of their portfolio cut in half or more. Face it, New York City and suburbs are an expensive place to live.

Tourism in Israel saw a 46% increase over last February.

The Israeli GNP rose higher than predicted, the job market continued to be strong and consumer confidence is at a 10 year high.

The international clothing retailer H&M opened their first store in Israel despite the firestorm of international progressive rage which attempted to sideline the company’s executive business development plan. I doubt H&M will see much of a backlash considering the progressive element are hardly H&M regular clientele. The store opened with much fanfare and 15,000 visitors in its first day of operation. Although, on a personal note, there is an H&M near me and I cannot for the life of me understand why anyone shops there but the Last Amazon loves it.

The historical reconstruction of the 18th century Churva Synagogue in Jerusalem was finally complete and official ceremonies commence on March the 15th. The Jordanian deliberately destroyed it in the Independence war of 1948 not because the shul was used as an ammo dump or staging ground for Israeli forces but to show their utter contempt for anything Jewish.

Ehud Barak, Minister of Defense saw his budget request for increase funding of the IDF’s civil administration branch which is charged with settlement freeze enforcement operations denied, denied, denied.

A record number of Hesder students enlisted in the IDF.

The so-called settlement population grew by 4.9% over last year. Jerusalem Post:

The West Bank settler population grew almost three times faster than that of the country as a whole in the first nine months of 2009. However, the 4.9-percent increase, when compared with the same time last year, shows that for the second year in a row, population growth has slowed down slightly, according to data posted recently on the Central Bureau of Statistics Web site.

Joe Biden and the Obama administration’s faux outrage. Oh, I suspect his ‘outrage’ is real enough but I take a rather contrary view of the whole scenario. Oh, I realize pissing off the Obama Administration and allegedly embarrassing Joe Biden can be considered a ‘bad thing’ in some circles – especially if you are the Obama Administration or part of the Arab world, but in my world its all good.

There never was a building freeze in Jerusalem so crying ‘foul’ now is a little bit too crying about the barn door after all them animals have fled the building. The time for outrage was when the Obama Administration was busy bullying Netanyahu to agree to a ’settlement freeze’ in the first place – although Netanyahu drew the line at Jerusalem and the Obama Administration knew it then and called it all good. So boohoo, and go cry someone else a river.

Secondly, the incidence proves something to the Americans – there are definite limits to their ability to influence in Israeli politics and it illustrates to the Arab world that American influence does have its limits in terms of the Israeli body politic.

Thirdly, building of 1,600 housing units shows the Israelis are resolute about keeping Jerusalem their undivided capital. So all in all, a good week, unless you are the Obama Administration, Joe Biden or a Gush Katif refugee.

The Jerusalem Municipality on Wednesday evening announced that Mayor Nir Barkat had agreed to carry out a court order to evacuate and seal Beit Yehonatan, a seven-story Jewish-owned structure built without the proper permits in the east Jerusalem neighborhood of Silwan.

Barkat made clear his intention to do this in a letter sent on Wednesday to State Attorney Moshe Lador, who last week sent a letter to Barkat, demanding that he uphold the court order to evacuate and seal the building. Barkat had initially refused to do so.

So more Jews will now be evicted in East Jerusalem from premises which are legally owned by Jews. Now let us all join hands and sing a chorus of ‘we shall overcome’ and hurray for the rule of law…except lawfare is not a one way street in East Jerusalem:

The move will also nullify a recent plan suggested by the municipality, which would have changed the status quo in the neighborhood with regards to building permits, and would have made both Beit Yehonatan and most of the illegally-built Arab homes in the area legal.

In his letter to Lador, Barkat reiterated that the municipality’s plan would have made it possible to reduce the disagreement and friction surrounding illegal construction in Silwan by nearly 90 percent, and that carrying out hundreds of demolition orders in the area would create a “high potential for conflict” instead.

Barkat also made it clear that the municipality would implement the rule of law without discriminating between Arabs and Jews.

And the price tag for forcing the hand of Jerusalem municipality to adhere to the letter of the law rather than implement a municipal plan which had been worked out with the local neighbourhoods to legalized the structures which had been built ‘without permits’ in East Jerusalem? Ynet News:

However, Barkat added that he would also implement orders against 200 illegal structures built by Arabs in the area, so as not to act in a discriminatory manner.

Mazel Tov! What ever would we do without Israeli lefties and their progressive supporters? And I am sure the 200 homeless Arab families will be forever grateful for your continued support.

The Knesset took a step closer toward requiring a referendum that could make territorial concessions in the capital and the Golan Heights more difficult, when it voted Wednesday to waive an initial reading of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem Referendum Bill.

The bill now goes for further processing in committee, after which it would need to pass second and third readings in the plenum, a procedure that could take several months. Polls have shown that, were such a referendum mandatory, there would be strong opposition to concessions in Jerusalem and the Golan.

The bill would require that any return of land under the administration and judicial authority of the State of Israel pass a national referendum, as well as a government decision and Knesset approval. The bill does, however, offer the government a way out – in the event that the concession passes the Knesset by a two-thirds majority, or if within 180 days after the Knesset okays the government decision, a general election is held.

Netanyahu and the Likud Coalition’s continued support of the Golan Heights and Jerusalem Bill will continue to allow – not only Bibi’s government but any future government of Israel to be able to resist any pressure brought to bear against any unilateral withdraws from either the Golan or Jerusalem by any outside party.

(IsraelNN.com) The Ministerial Committee for Legislation decided Tuesday to give the government’s backing to a bill proposed by MK Yariv Levin (Likud) requiring that a national referendum be held if the government ever intends to cede land under Israeli sovereignty.The law is seen as being primarily relevant with regard to the eastern neighborhoods of Jerusalem and the Golan Heights, which are under full Israeli sovereignty. The Knesset passed laws annexing eastern Jerusalem and the Golan in 1980 and 1981, respectively.

If the government wishes to make a deal to surrender these areas, according to the proposed law, a referendum must be called within 180 days of the initial agreement – and any deal would be contingent on its passing the referendum. In order to avoid the referendum, 80 MKs would have to approve the deal.

Initially, this bill was introduced and sponsored by two Kadima MK’s from the last Knesset session who were worried former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert was ready to give away everything under the sun but a few acres of Tel Aviv beachfront.

Joe’s not happy and refers to the bill as ’sick’. Under normal circumstances I would agree with Joe but given the realities of Israel’s current political leadership; I think this bill is the best which can be hoped for under the circumstances. May a referendum never be held or the 80 MK vote ceiling never be reached.

JERUSALEM — Jewish nationalists and Palestinians clashed in an East Jerusalem neighborhood on Tuesday after the Israelis took over a house by court order in a predominantly Arab area. The house at the center of Tuesday’s flare-up is in Sheik Jarrah, a district just north of the Old City, where three Palestinian families have been evicted from other houses in the last year after losing a lengthy legal battle in the High Court and lower district and magistrates courts. A Jewish association won its claim to historical ownership of the land in question, and has plans to build a large Jewish housing complex there.

There are a number of reports from this ‘clash’ in Sheik Jarrah I could have chosen but I picked this one because its the most blatantly representative on how a complex issue is slanted under the guise of even-handedness. Now on to the heart of matter -

The latest Jewish residents to move into the area were escorted by the police and private security guards and immediately removed furniture from the property, which was built by a Palestinian family headed by Refka al-Kurd, 87. The small, one-story structure was built about 10 years ago as an extension of the Kurds’ original home, but it was unoccupied, having been sealed by the authorities after it was determined to have been constructed without the proper permits. “The authorities took our keys to the property because we built it without permits,” said Nabil al-Kurd, 66, who lives in the original house. “But it seems the settlers can live here without permits because they are the sons of God,” he said bitterly, referring to the Jewish newcomers. Shmulik Ben-Ruby, the spokesman for the Jerusalem police, said his force acted in line with the court decision that determined that the property “is owned by Jews.” Blood spattered the forecourt on Tuesday after a Jewish man was hit on the head by Palestinians who attacked the new residents with clubs and stones. Later, after a day of scuffles, a Palestinian woman, Nadia al-Kurd, was taken to the hospital with what was thought to be a heart attack.

Now what the NY Times glosses over is the actual court ruling wherein the land was found to be owned by Jews who were ethnically cleansed from their land during the illegal occupation by the Jordanian government and instead focuses on the ‘pitiful plight’ of the Palestinians being evicted.

In fact, the Palestinian family never did receive title by the Jordanian government for the land during their occupation and the Israeli court ruled this family could have kept occupation of this property providing they paid rent to the legal owners of the land which the family refused to do. The Jewish owners then moved to have the court evict the squatters from their property in order to move in paying tenants. The evictions have nothing to do with ‘illegal’ building permits but by interjecting it into the article it gives a nice aura of grievance and a sense of institutional discrimination to the Palestinian narrative under the Israeli court system.

And I would be remiss if I did not point your attention to the fact the NY Times piece only mentions the names of the Palestinians victims of the ‘clash’. How do I know all this? It’s easily cross referenced this with the Arutz Sheva report.

(IsraelNN.com) A “welcoming” committee of Arabs and foreign anti-Israel activists, including those from the United States and Sweden, attacked Jews with clubs and stones Tuesday as a new family moved into a home in eastern Jerusalem. Police stopped the attack but not before blood was streaming down the face of a Jewish guard at the site.

The Palestinian demand for East Jerusalem conveniently ignores that there is a long documented history of Jewish ownership of land in East Jerusalem. An ownership which was only terminated by the illegal occupation by the Jordanian government which cleaned the land of Jews from their ancient community in 1948-49. In order for the Palestinians to make East Jerusalem for the ‘capital’ again requires a significant second expulsion of Jewish property owners and their Jewish tenants.

I am in a bad mood for a variety of reasons and apparently it has been a life long affliction which strikes every now and then. Let’s just call this my one minute of hate. It’s probably just me and the mood I am in but there is something about a German telling a Jew where he can live or not live which makes me go from zero to psychotic in seconds…. Jerusalem Post.

Ulrich Wilhelm, a spokesman for German Chancellor Angela Merkel, criticized Israel’s intention to build new housing units in Gilo during a press conference on Monday, saying that his government “greatly regrets the recent decision to allow the construction of new homes in east Jerusalem.”

 
Dude needs to get a clue and then look at a map. Gilo is in south-western Jerusalem and not in ‘East Jerusalem’. Its great to have regrets, and I personally deeply regret – the fact your people built death camps, ovens and gas chambers. Don’t kid yourself Ulrich; the Germans are not quid pro quid with the Jews or the Roma – not by a long shot.