British Chief Rabbi warns of anti-Semitic 'tsunami'

Telegraph:

Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, fears that a "tsunami of anti-Semitism" is threatening to engulf parts of the world.

In an interview with BBC Radio 4's Sunday programme, to be broadcast today, Dr Sacks admitted he was "very scared" by the rise in anti-Jewish feeling, which had led to Holocaust denial, attacks on synagogues and a boycott of Jewish groups on university campuses.

He said: "I am very scared by [it] and I'm very scared that more protests have not been delivered against it, but this [anti-Semitism] is part of the vocabulary of politics in certain parts of the world."

Figures produced by the London-based Community Security Trust and the Israeli government show that anti-Semitism is on the rise in Britain. The trust recorded 532 anti-Semitic incidents in 2004, including 83 physical assaults
.
Meanwhile, some groups opposed to Israeli government policy have organised boycotts of Jewish academics and student groups. Since 2002, Jewish student groups on 17 British campuses have faced the threat of expulsion from fellow students opposed to Israeli action.

In April, the Association of University Teachers became the latest in a line of academic bodies to announce action against Israel. It declared a boycott of two Israeli universities at the request of Palestinian leaders, but later changed its mind after widespread condemnation.

Dr Sacks said attempts to "silence and even ban" Jewish student groups were "quite extraordinary" because most of Britain's 350,000 Jews regarded themselves primarily as "British citizens".

He continued: "If, God forbid, one could imagine a world in which the state of Israel did not exist and, I repeat, God forbid, then not one of the world's conflicts would be changed by one millimetre - there would still be conflict in Chechnya, in Ossetia, in Indonesia, in the Philippines. So to make this [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict - where the two sides have worked now for 12 years in a process of peace - the epicentre of global politics is not merely wrong … but it is also quite troubling."

He said that while the Jewish experience in Britain was in general a "real cause for celebration", British Jews were experiencing a globalised anti-Semitism through satellite television, the internet and e-mail. He was also worried by the strength of anti-Jewish feeling in some European states including France.

"A number of my rabbinical colleagues throughout Europe have been assaulted and attacked on the streets. We've had synagogues desecrated. We've had Jewish schools burnt to the ground - not here but in France … So it's the kind of feeling that you don't know what's going to happen next, and that is making some European Jewish communities feel uncomfortable."

Dr Sacks, who was being interviewed to mark the 350th anniversary of the re-entry of Jews to England, said he hoped that the Jewish voice would become more "articulate" over the coming year.

Palestinian militants say truce ends at midnight

Haartez:

Militant Palestiniain factions said on Saturday that as of New Year's Day they would no longer be bound by a truce that has brought the most peaceful spell since the start of the five-year-old uprising.

Meanwhile, Israel Air Force fire killed two Palestinians in the no-go area of the northern Gaza Strip on Saturday night, according to Palestinian security sources.

Dr. Moaiya Hassanain said two were killed and three wounded when the IAF carried out a strike in the area where Palestinians have banned from approaching the border since Sunday, to keep militants from firing rockets at Israel. The IDF began enforcing the ban on Wednesday.

IDF sources said the strike targeted Palestinians preparing to fire a rocket from the evacuated settlement of Elei Sinai. The air force fired at the Palestinians and identified a hit, the military said. Relatives identified the dead as Motaz Hamdouna, 26, and Hamza Hamdouna, 22.

Hamas, Islamic Jihad, Al-Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades, the Popular Resistance Committees (PRC) and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) said they would no longer be committed to following "a period of calm" despite the efforts of Palestinian Authority Mahmoud Abbas to preserve a ceasefire he sighed with Israel last February during a summit in Sharm el-Sheikh in Egypt.

An increase in violence since Israel withdrew from the Gaza Strip in September has kept peacemaking on hold, but the lull has brought relief on both sides of the front line.

However, it is unclear how different conditions will actually be on Sunday morning. According to IDF sources, Islamic Jihad hadn't abided by the agreement even when it was in effect - this year, 24 Israelis were killed in terrorist attacks by the Jihad network in the West Bank, including one in a suicide bombing on Thursday described as revenge for IDF attacks.

A big resurgence of violence could be an added threat to a January 25 election, already endangered by growing disorder.

The armed groups say the truce cost them more than they gained because Israel continued raids and did not free all Palestinian prisoners, as they had demanded. Israel said its raids were to stop militants who were planning attacks.

Israel: Waterworks for the world?

Full article on BusinessWeek:

With decades of experience managing this precious natural commodity, it hopes to become the Silicon Valley of water-management tech.

For decades, water has been an extremely precious commodity in Israel. And over the years, the Jewish state has developed numerous technologies to deal with severe water shortages. Already, 60% of the country's sewage water is recycled, and in September, the world's largest desalination plant was opened along Israel's southern Mediterranean coast. Now, new ventures are sprouting up to develop technologies for a global market where demand is growing rapidly. Israel is looking to exploit its expertise and become a major player in the global market for water technology.

"The water industry is where the telecommunications industry was 20 years ago, highly regulated and on the verge of a major change," says Ori Yogev, chairman of Waterfront, a newly formed industry lobby made up of academic institutions, the state-owned water utility, and private companies. His goal is to turn Israel into water technology's equivalent of Silicon Valley, with $5 billion in water-related exports by the end of the decade.

Last year, the global water industry chalked up sales of $400 billion and is growing annually at a healthy 7% clip. But the industry's technology segment is growing at double that pace and already accounts for a quarter of all revenues. Israeli companies that focus on desalination, drip irrigation, and water purification witnessed a 30% jump in export sales in 2005, to $810 million. Other global players in the water business include French giants Veolia Environnement and Suez...

To C or not to C? That is the question.

NY Daily News:

Chanukah. . . Hannuka. . . Hahfuhgedit!

Hanukkah or Chanuka? Two Ns? Two Ks? An H at the end or not?

There are more than 20 different spellings of the name of the Jewish winter Festival of Lights and, apparently, no one ever sat down and decided on a single way to spell it.

There's Channuka, Channukah, Chanuka, Chanukah, Chanuko, Hannuka, Hannukah, Hanuka, Hanika, Hanukah, Hanukka, Hanukkah, Kanukkah, Khannuka, Khannukah, Khanuka, Khanukah, Khanukkah and Khanike. Sometimes even Xanuka.

Oy. It's enough to make you look forward to Purim.

The problem is that it's transliterated to English from a five-letter Hebrew word meaning "consecration," which lacks the gutteral, rolling-in-the-throat opening sound.

Tom Pitoniak, an associate editor of the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, said they have "Hanukkah" as the main entry, with "Chanukah" as a rarer variant.

"We go by the evidence of what's most common. But that can change over time," he said. "I personally suspect that the single-K spelling is becoming more common."

The Associated Press Stylebook, considered the spelling bible by most newspapers, also goes with "Hanukkah." The Daily News uses "Chanukah," although other versions slip in now and then.

Pitoniak said the oldest known American usage of the word was 141 years ago in a Dec. 28, 1864, letter from an Edwin Kursheedt to someone named Sarah, in which he laments: "I have not been able to see the Chanucka lights this year."

Great. Yet another spelling.

On the plus side, it's a word you really can't misspell.

"You can just say, 'I was consulting the Hebrew and I believe it would be more faithful this way.' I mean, who's going to know?" cracked Pitoniak.

Hugo Chavez makes anti-semitic slur

From JTA:

Venezuela’s president said in his Christmas speech that “the descendants of those who crucified Christ” own the riches of the world.

“The world offers riches to all. However, minorities such as the descendants of those who crucified Christ” have become “the owners of the riches of the world,” Chavez said Dec. 24 on a visit to a rehabilitation center in the Venezuelan countryside.

Channuka in Iran

Iranian Jews pray during Hanukkah celebrations at the Yousefabad Synagogue in Tehran, Iran, Thursday, Dec. 29, 2005.

A Jewish renaissance takes root in Germany

Boston Globe:

In Germany, new generation reclaims its heritage

Shelly Kupferberg, 31, is the granddaughter of Jews who fled the Nazi terror in the 1930s for the land that would become Israel. Her parents returned to Berlin in the early 1970s, weary of Israel's wars and yearning for their German heritage. She was raised both as a Jew and a German, and takes quiet pride in both identities.

''It's great to be a Jew in Germany," said Kupferberg, a journalist and adviser to Berlin's Jewish Festival. ''There's this feeling of a unique culture being reborn -- with more people in the synagogues, more Jewish artists, a sense, at last, that it's completely normal for Jewish people to be living and working here. That's something you couldn't say until recently."

The dark mid-20th century history of Germany is seared into every Jewish soul. But in a turnaround few would have imagined, Germany today boasts the fastest-growing Jewish population in the world.

While Germany's Jewish community is full of hope for the future, its rapid expansion has brought new tensions -- with animosity festering between longtime German-speaking Jews and recent immigrants from the eastern fringes of Europe, many of whom lost their Jewish traditions, if not their identity, under decades of communism.

''This is a time of difficult transition for a community that was once tiny and insular, but has suddenly grown large," said Stephan J. Kramer, secretary general of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, the nation's umbrella organization for Jewish groups. ''There is friction, there is anger, there is distrust, there is fear. We have started to lay the foundation for a dynamic Jewish culture in Germany. But we are far from completing the house."

Most newcomers are from Russia, Jews seeking a better life in a more prosperous place, but also escaping the anti-Semitism that seethes in many parts of the former Soviet Union. The ''Russian Jews" -- the term embraces the thousands arriving from Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic states -- are joined by a small but significant wave of young Jews from Israel, the United States, Canada, and Australia. The Westerners flock mainly to Berlin, attracted by the capital's easy-going style and vibrant cultural scene...

Hamas hints at possible negotiations with Israel

Full article on Jpost:

Hamas officials in the Gaza Strip on Thursday dismissed as "unacceptable" a call by the Quartet to exclude from any future Palestinian Authority cabinet members any group that is not committed to Israel's right to exist.

However, some Hamas leaders hinted that the movement would endorse a "pragmatic and realistic" strategy once its representatives join the PA establishment. They argued that the international community's fears of Hamas's rising power were "unjustified and exaggerated."

Hamas leader Mahmoud a-Zahar said he did not rule out the possibility that his movement would even negotiate with Israel in the future. His remarks, like those of other top Hamas leaders, are seen as an attempt to send a message to the international community that would soften its position after next month's parliamentary elections.

Sources close to Hamas told The Jerusalem Post that some of the movement's leaders, who met recently in the Gaza Strip with EU representatives, stressed that Hamas was in the process of transforming into a political party.

"Hamas's decision to participate in the parliamentary elections indicates that it wants to focus on political activity," the Hamas representatives were quoted as saying. "Hamas believes that it can reform the Palestinian Authority and establish a better government that would invest money for the welfare of the people..."

Hamas as a political party? How well did that work out for the PLO, now the PA/Fatah?

Poll: Shinui headed for zero mandates

One can only hope...

Jpost:


The Shinui Party, which only two elections ago enjoyed a meteoric rise into Israeli politics, may fade away as quickly as it appeared in the upcoming elections scheduled for March.

According to Army Radio, a poll taken by the Geocartographic Institute, headed by Professor Avi Degani, shows that Shinui won't pass the minimum percentage of votes needed to enter the Knesset.

Shinui MK Avraham Poraz said that party chairman Yosef (Tommy) Lapid was not responsible for the drop in the polls. "This is a public psychosis that occurs in times of crisis, therefore the voters are turning to Prime Minister Sharon," said Poraz, who noted "all of our voters moved to Kadima.

-There may be other reasons involved as well. Namely the fact that Shinui is a one agenda party - anti-Orthodox. That can get old quickly, I imagine.

"On the one hand they are excited about Sharon, but on the other hand they really don't want Shas. I say in the clearest possible terms to whoever voted for us in the past, that if you do not vote for us now Shas will come back - in a big way."

A Shinui source remarked, however, "Other polls showed that Shinui would easily reach five mandates."

The Geocartographic poll also pointed to a drastic drop in Labor support, with only 17 mandates, while Kadima, projected to receive 42 mandates, has maintained its high level of support. The Likud showed slight signs of a comeback, scoring 16 mandates in the poll.

Stabbing near Jerusalem

Ynet:

Initial investigation reveals man was stabbed by Palestinian while waiting at bus stop; stabber flees scene; large police forces launch search

A Palestinian stabbed an Israeli at the Atarot industrial zone, near Jerusalem.

The Israeli sustained moderate injuries to the neck in the stabbing, which police believe was a terror attack.

According to the initial investigation, the Palestinian lunged at the Israeli as he was waiting at a bus stop. Security forces are conducted a large-scale search for the assailant, who fled the scene.

Magen David Adom paramedics treated the injured Israeli and later evacuated him to a Jerusalem hospital.

On Thursday morning, First lieutenant Uri Binmo, 21, was killed and three other soldiers were wounded after a suicide bomber struck at an army roadblock near a West Bank village in the Tul Karem region.

Four Palestinians were also killed in the incident, including the bomber. Security authorities estimate the explosive device, which was particularly powerful, was designed to be used for an attack in Israel during Chanukah.

Fire in Passaic displaces family of 13

From Here:

A couple known for reaching out to others were in need of help themselves Wednesday after a fierce blaze gutted the Passaic Park home where they lived with their 11 children.

More than 50 firefighters battled the flames, which started on the first floor of the Harding Court house and eventually destroyed much of its interior and roof. Officials called it one of the biggest fires in the city this year.

When it started sometime after 6 p.m. Tuesday on the third night of Hanukkah, Elli and Lara Schulman and their children were visiting nearby at her parents' home. Neighbors said the family, known in the city's Orthodox Jewish community for their humility and generosity, had plans to stay there for the immediate future.

Throughout the day Wednesday, people drove or walked slowly by the charred home perched atop a gentle rise. Several spoke warmly of Lara Schulman and her husband, who practiced dentistry in the home before opening an office on Main Avenue in Clifton.

"She helped everyone, especially people who were new to the community," said a woman who asked that her name not be used. "She gave you a lift if you needed it. She took me to my child's music class when I didn't have a car."

Elli Schulman declined to comment through a secretary at his dentistry office.

Deputy Chief Patrick Trentacost said the fire, which was reported at 6:45 p.m. and took 2½ hours to bring under control, appeared to have been accidental. He said it remains under investigation.

It apparently started in a front room and traveled upward through an open stairway, he said. A small team of firefighters remained at the scene until 9 a.m. Wednesday searching for hot spots.

"Because of its intensity, we were concerned about flare-ups through the night," Trentacost said.

Trentacost said the home - which records show the family bought in 1992 - had 11 bedrooms, nine bathrooms and an enclosed elevator.

"For a single-family house it's rather unique to us," he said.

City fire officials said it would be up to the family and their architect whether to raze the house and rebuild, or to try to make repairs.

A house next door on Temple Place sustained some broken windows but firefighters were able to avert fire damage.

In all, firefighters from all six city companies, Clifton, and Carlstadt fought the blaze while departments from five other towns remained on standby at city station houses, Trentacost said.

Suicide Bombing at West Bank checkpoint

Haaretz:

At least one suicide bomber blew himself up at an IDF checkpoint near the northern West Bank town of Tul Karm on Thursday morning, killing an Israeli and wounding a number of people, both Israelis and Palestinians, witnesses said.

Israel Radio reported IDF had received an early warning of the attack and placed several impromptu checkpoints across the West Bank.

The Zaka rescue service confirmed that at least Israeli had been killed.

I was standing by the checkpoint south of Tulkarm when I heard an explosion and there was another explosion near an Israeli jeep at the checkpoint," said a Palestinian witness, who himself was hit by shrapnel.

Cinnamon Stillwell on Iran and the Left

I think this editorial is right on, but I'm sure many disagree. Bit of a long read, but worth it IMHO

From here:

Calling the Left’s Bluff on Iran

Against the steady drumbeat of anti-Iraq war sentiment, leftists have suddenly turned hawkish when it comes to Iran. The fact that Iran is on the verge of becoming a nuclear power has them all atwitter and as always, the Bush administration is the target of their criticism. But perhaps it’s time to call their bluff.

For one thing, leftists don’t really care about national security. They seem to suffer under the delusion that their way of life is inviolate, except perhaps for the encroachments of the “Christian right.” This would explain why they eschew every military effort on the part of the U.S. The only time they reference matters of national security is when it provides fodder for yet another anti-Bush talking point.

Secondly, since when did the left take any raving dictator seriously? Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is a potential Hitler with nukes, but as in WWII, the anti-war isolationists don’t want to hear about it. The fact that the elimination of Jews from the planet is the shared cornerstone of their expansive ambitions rarely factors into the equation. Whereas Hitler wanted to rid Europe of Jews, Ahmadinejad wants to rid Israel of Jews. But that’s just a minor point.

Were the U.S. to actually propose taking military action against Iran, the left would be up in arms, and not in its defense. Similarly, were Israel to prove its mettle by once again saving the world from Muslim dictators with nuclear ambitions (as they did in 1981 with Iraq), leftists would only step up their calls for that country’s destruction. Come to think of it, they have a lot in common with Ahmadinejad in that regard.

Lastly and most importantly, there’s no acknowledgement by the left that the very methods they espouse for solving such problems are currently being employed. And they’re failing miserably.

The UN, mankind’s savior according to the internationalists, is taking a time-honored approach to Iran – dithering diplomacy, meaningless treaties, and pretending that dictators and terrorist states can be trusted. Despite the left’s caterwauling, the Bush administration is actually on board for the charade. Far from employing the dreaded “unilateralism” of Iraq (if only 30 allies counts), the president has been tirelessly multilateral in his approach to Iran. The results or lack thereof are painfully obvious.

So how does the left justify its unceasing devotion to the UN and to defunct means of solving international aggression? They don’t. That would require logic and the left inhabits a logic-free zone these days.

Before Iran became the left’s crisis du jour, North Korea was the favored talking point. Again, they decried Bush’s unilateralism and longed for the terms of Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton when ignored treaties and U.S.-provided uranium were the order of the day. Come to think of it, that’s exactly how we arrived at the conundrum we face today.

Once the Bush administration changed course and went multilateral with North Korea, the left simply stopped talking about it. That the tactics they favored still aren’t working is a moot point. While China has paid some lip service to keeping its communist cousin under control, it is hardly a trusted ally. North Korea has toned down its bellicose press releases for the moment but like all problems put off until a later date, Kim Jong-Il is sure to rear his ugly head again in the future.

Of course, to the left both Iran and North Korea are simply means of detracting from the war in Iraq by saying, “Look--something bad is happening somewhere else in the world!” Those who engage with reality know that bad things will always be happening somewhere in the world, but for the utopian thinkers that is a crime in and of itself. Meanwhile, the rest of us have to live in the real world.

Leftists will continue their handwringing over Iran as long as they think they can use it to battle Bush. Meanwhile, the mainstream media will continue to act as if all the indignation means something. But it’s just an outgrowth of the steady diet of ant-Americanism both have been weaned on.

So the next time you hear a lefty lamenting Iran, pay no attention. They certainly aren’t.

Demjanjuk to be deported

From Haartez:

Judge orders accused Nazi camp guard Demjanjuk deported

A United States immigration judge Wednesday ordered John Demjanjuk, a retired autoworker accused of being a Nazi concentration camp guard, deported to his native Ukraine.

Demjanjuk, 85, has been fighting for nearly 30 years to stay in the U.S. During the long legal battle, he was suspected for a time of being the notoriously brutal guard known as Ivan the Terrible and was nearly executed in Israel.

Chief U.S. Immigration Judge Michael Creppy ruled that there was no evidence to substantiate Demjanjuk's claim that he would be tortured if deported to his homeland.

Demjanjuk can appeal the ruling to the Board of Immigration Appeals within 30 days."

After 30 years, it appears that some measure of justice has finally been achieved," said Elan Steinberg, executive director emeritus of the New York-based World Jewish Congress.

"And I say 'some measure of justice' because, after all, we're talking about somebody who was found to have been a Nazi persecutor," Steinberg said in a telephone interview.

"All that is happening to him, really, is that he's been stripped of his citizenship and is being deported to Ukraine.

Demjanjuk lost his U.S. citizenship after a judge ruled in 2002 that documents from World War II prove he was a Nazi guard at various death or forced labor camps...

Well, this is shocking. (No, not really)

Arutz Sheva:

65% of Palestinians Applaud Terror Attacks on US and Europe

A poll carried out in the Palestinian Authority shows 65% support for Al Qaeda terror attacks on the United States and European countries - the biggest donors to the PA.

The poll comes at a time when US and European funding of the Palestinian Authority is at an all-time high.

With elections due to be held next month and the Hamas terror group gaining significantly in municipal elections and polls, the survey further illustrates the desire of a majority of PA Arabs to establish an Islamic state, similar to Iran. A whopping 79.9% of Palestinians would like the PA to follow Shari'a - Islamic religious law. Included in the figure are 11.3% of the respondents, who would like to see Shari'a supplemented by the laws of a PA Legislature.

"What is striking is the willingness of Palestinians to turn against even the Western countries upon whom they are so totally dependent in order to progress," said Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) Director Itamar Marcus. "The poll underscores what PMW has been documenting for years - the profoundly negative impact hate education has had on PA society…Palestinians are not in direct conflict with the US, and certainly have counted on the Europeans as active allies. And yet an overwhelming majority desire to see Europeans and Americans killed by a religion-based terror organization."

The poll was conducted by FAFO - a Norwegian-based NGO not known for sympathy toward Israel or antipathy toward the PA. FAFO says it conducted the polling among the Palestinian population "in order to assess political feelings after Israel's voluntary withdrawal from Gaza in late-summer 2005." The poll results were reported in the PA newspaper Al-Hayat Al-Jadida last Friday.

Last month (November 18th), in a sermon broadcast on PA-controlled television, Islamic leader Suleiman Satari offered the following prayer: "Destroy the Infidels and the Polytheists! Your [i.e. Allah's] enemies are the enemies of the religion…! Count them and kill them to the last one, and don't leave even one."

Operation 'Blue Skies' underway, IDF pounds Gaza

Pictured: Leaflet distributed by the IDF showing the area marked "off limits".

Ynet:

At 6 p.m. Wednesday, as planned, IDF forces launched a large-scale operation, firing artillery rounds against targets in the northern Gaza Strip and at the areas in close proximity to the newly established ‘security strip,’ which is aimed at distancing Qassam launchers from the border with Israel.

The Israel Air Force is also due to join the operation to clear north Gaza of those not engaged in terror activity.

An hour before the operation commenced a Qassam rocket landed just south of Sderot in an open field. No injuries or damage were reported. The city’s “Red Dawn” alert system warned residents of the incoming rocket.

Earlier the army distributed leaflets to northern Gaza residents featuring a map indicating the limits of the buffer zone, which includes areas evacuated by Israel in the summer – the former settlements of Elei Sinai, Nissanit, and Dugit.

"Whoever ignores this warning is putting his life in genuine danger," the leaflet said. "Know that terror elements have turned you into hostages and a human shield and are undermining your interests."

Operation "Blue Skies" marks an IDF attempt to move into high gear when it comes to Qassam rocket attacks but to do so by offering a measured response and avoiding an escalation in the area. Army officials admitted the operation may reduce the number of rocket attacks on Israel but would not curb them completely.

Playing to the Crowd

Capital Time Editorial:

First it was the new president of Iran. Now it's the leader of the main opposition party in Egypt. Both are claiming that the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of 6 million Jews, is nothing more than a myth.

This is very dangerous talk. It deserves the strongest rebuttals possible not only by Western governments, but by Arab governments as well. It also deserves notice from people in this country who think those who deny the reality of the Holocaust are just some kind of fringe element.

Talk to the people who have survived the Nazi concentration camps and it is hard to image anyone reducing the horror they experienced to some kind of a made-up story. Talk to the American soldiers who were the first ones into the concentration camps at the end of the war and it is inconceivable that anyone could say this never happened. These are firsthand witnesses to the atrocities of the Nazi regime.

Yet even the accounts of firsthand witnesses, the collections of artifacts, the files of Nazi documentation, the public trials of the architects of this horrendous policy seem not to make a dent in the propaganda being spewed by the leader of Iran and the rising power in Egypt.
They are playing to the crowd, trying to undermine the main rationale for the creation of the state of Israel. If there was no Holocaust, then finding a safe haven for the world's Jews was not a humanitarian act but simply a land grab of territory occupied by Palestinians.

There can be reasonable debates over the way Israel came into existence and over its current policies. But to dismiss a people's suffering as fiction, to pretend a piece of history does not exist is a recipe for disaster. It means official policies and public perceptions are based on a false view of the world.

Strong rebuttals are needed, but so are ongoing efforts to help people in Arab nations indeed, in all nations understand the reality of what European Jews experienced under Hitler. It is not fiction. It is part of what shapes the world even to this day.

Katrina victim makes Aliyah

In this photo provided by the Jewish Agency for Israel, Daniel Rebuck, left, is welcomed by Michael Landsberg, Executive Director of the Jewish Agency's Aliyah Department

Newsday:

When Danny Rebuck heard that Hurricane Katrina had become a Category 5 storm, he got on his bicycle, pedaled 25 miles to the New Orleans airport and took one of the last flights out before the city was hit.

On Tuesday, Rebuck, 36, was boarding a plane in very different circumstances, joining about 250 others on a special flight from John F. Kennedy International Airport for Jews moving to Israel, or making aliyah.

Rebuck, a Londoner who had been living in New Orleans for about eight years, returned to the swamped city about 10 days after the storm. The soccer fields where he had worked as a coach were devastated, and many of the children he had taught had not returned to the city. A tree had fallen on his home, he said, and he spent about two weeks without electricity or sanitation.

He said he had thought about moving to Israel for some time but the hurricane gave him the "nudge" he needed to go through with it.

"It makes you open your eyes," Rebuck said by telephone from the airport Tuesday evening.

Rebuck, who left New Orleans with just his sneakers, a pair of shorts and some T-shirts in a backpack, said he also was traveling light to Israel and planned to begin his life there in Raanana.

The 8:30 p.m. flight to Israel was sponsored by Nefesh B'Nefesh, an organization that gives North American Jews moving there financial assistance and help getting homes and jobs.

The 4-year-old group has organized 15 flights to Israel, including seven this year, spokesman Charley Levine said. More than 7,000 people have moved to Israel with help from the organization, he said, and 99 percent have remained there.

Police find quarter-ton bomb in Hadera

Ynet:

Is the Air Force missing a bomb weighing a quarter of a ton? A bomb of this weight was found on Tuesday afternoon in east Hadera.

The bomb was discovered 100 meters (about 330 feet) away from residential homes, but police did not evacuate residents from their homes.

Police sappers who checked the bomb said it belonged to the IDF, and called in army officials to neutralize or take away the bomb.

The bomb was discovered in the early afternoon, when Hadera police on patrol were mobilized to the site after receiving information on metal thieves.

The thieves were not found, but police scanned the neighborhood and found the thieves' booty – a bomb resting in open territory.

IDF to enforce Gaza buffer zone within hours

Full article on Haartez:

In the first stage of its plans to create a northern Gaza buffer zone to keep Palestinians from firing Qassam rockets against Israel, IAF aircraft Wednesday dropped leaflets urging Gazans to clear the area by 6 P.M.

The leaflets called on residents to leave the area where the former settlements of Nissanit, Elei Sinai and Dugit today lie in ruins. Gunners of the Islamic Jihad and other groups have used the sites to launch rockets against southern Israel.

The pamphlets warn that anyone spotted in the area after 6 P.M. Wednesday will be fired upon.

At the same time, IDF commanders handed Palestinian Authority security officials maps delineating the zones prohibited for Palestinian entry. This zone will be marked out by a fence, which runs one kilometer south to the evacuated settlements,

The new restrictions will remain in force until further notice, the IDF said.

The buffer zone is one of a series of measures adopted by the government to prevent Qassam fire to the area south of the city of Ashkelon.

Three British citizens kidnapped in the southern Gaza Strip

Haaretz:

Three British citizens were kidnapped as they entered the Gaza Strip from Egypt through the Rafah crossing Wednesday, Palestinian witnesses and security officials said.

The Palestinian police said the kidnappers' car was spotted heading north, and that a pursuit was underway.

A representative of a European Union force monitoring the Rafah border crossing said he was unaware of the incident.

A Palestinian police source said those abducted in Rafah were believed to include a woman who worked with a local human-rights group. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.

The incident was the latest in a series of abductions in Gaza that has undermined Palestinian Authority Chairman Mahmoud Abbas' attempts to establish order in the coastal strip following Israel's summer withdrawal.

Last week, the militant Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) organization briefly kidnapped two foreign teachers as they made their way to work at a private American school in the Gaza Strip.

The group said the abduction was to pressure the PA to release leaders jailed in the West Bank town of Jericho for killing Israeli cabinet minister Rehavam Ze'evi in 2001.

Likud MK: Possible Egyptian Move Towards War

Arutz Sheva:

Dr. Yuval Shteinitz, chairman of the Knesset Foreign Affairs & Defense Committee, warns that the ongoing Egyptian arms buildup may be nothing less than preparations for a future war with Israel.

Shteinitz, a professor of political science, explained that over recent years, we have been witness to a significant Egyptian arms buildup, one that has him most concerned.

Shteinitz continues to point out that Egyptian leaders say all the right things, but at the same time, continue to permit the Rafiah border to serve as a conduit for terrorists and weapons being smuggled into Palestinian Authority (PA) controlled Gaza.

Fat chance

Abbas urges militants to follow truce

Full article on Reuters:

President Mahmoud Abbas urged Palestinian factions to halt rocket fire and renew a truce that expires at year's end, as Israel struck targets in the Gaza Strip and Lebanon on Wednesday to try to stop the rockets.

Militant leaders who met Abbas in Gaza blamed Israel for the violence and said there was little chance that they would continue their commitment to the informal ceasefire into the new year.

"We are calling on all sides to be committed to calm," top Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat told reporters after the late night meetings. "We regard calm as in the higher interest."

Violence has been growing since Israel completed its evacuation of troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip in September after 38 years of occupation. The bloodshed has soured hopes the pullout could revive peacemaking.

A major surge of fighting could also disrupt, or even delay, Palestinian parliamentary elections due to be held on January 25.

After meeting Abbas, a leader of Islamic Jihad, which has carried out suicide bombings despite the truce, said he did not believe there would be an extension to the "period of calm" that militants agreed to follow at a Cairo summit.

"When the time is up there will be a general position, but calm will most likely not be extended," said Khaled al-Batsh.

Yeshiva bus slams into SUV, kids unhurt

NY Daily News:

More than a dozen Brooklyn children escaped serious injury yesterday when their yellow school bus rear-ended an SUV - which then hit another car, authorities said.

Seventeen boys, ages 4 and 5, from the Educational Institute Oholei Torah were on the way to a nearby yeshiva when the 40-foot-long bus hit the back of a Ford SUV in Flatbush, cops and witnesses said.

The smaller vehicle lurched forward and struck a Honda on Remsen Ave. near 53rd St., leaving one man pinned inside the car but not seriously hurt.

None of the kids was injured but the 9:30 a.m. crash left them a little stunned and shaken up.
"The kids are like, 'What's happened?' They were wondering why the police were here," said bus driver Yaakov Plotkin, 23.

Plotkin said he saw the SUV hit the brakes in front of him but he couldn't swerve out of the way because of the rain-slick road.

The students were taken to Kings County Hospital to be examined as a precaution, officials said.
None of the adults involved suffered life-threatening injuries.

The Honda driver was charged with driving with a suspended license, cops said.

IAF Hits Lebanon

Amazing how things start getting serious as elections near.

Haartez:

The Israel Air Forces attacked before dawn on Wednesday a Palestinian militant training base south of Beirut, in retaliation for the barrage of rockets fired from Lebanon at Israel late Tuesday night.

The attack targeted a training base operated by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command, a small, Syrian-backed group that has been waging a decades long fight against the Jewish state.

There was no immediate information on casualties or damage.

"This is in response to the firing of projectile rockets last night toward Israeli communities," an Israel Defense Forces spokesperson said. It said it views such attacks with "extreme severity" and holds Lebanon responsible.

At least four Katyusha rockets were fired from Lebanon at Israeli communities on the northern border, causing a direct hit on a house in Kiryat Shmona and damaging two others in the town.

Three Katyushas landed in Kiryat Shmona, and three residents were treated for shock. The rockets also wounded a dog in one of three homes hit in the attack.
-Maybe the PETA head honcho can address this in her upcoming speech in Bethlehem.

The rocket fire caused a power outage in the area. Power was restored after half an hour.

Municipal officials used megaphones to call on the residents to get into bomb shelters or sealed rooms. Residents were told they could leave the shelters some two hours after the attack.

The fourth rocket apparently landed in the western Galilee town of Shlomi, where a blast was reported.

There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack.

The Israel Defense Forces believe Hezbollah to be responsible for the rocket fire, however, do not know whether it carried out the attack directly or issued instructions to a Palestinian terror organization.

The IDF said any attack on the northern border emanating from Lebanon is carried out on the initiative of Hezbollah, which has sole control in southern Lebanon.

Hezbollah and Fatah spokesmen in Lebanon have denied any connection to the Katyusha attacks.

Canadian political leaders light Menorahs

Canada's conservative leader Stephen Harper lights a Menorah at the home of Rabbi Menachem Matusof in Calgary, Monday, Dec. 26, 2005.



Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin (R) takes part in a Menorah lighting ceremony with Rabbi Simcha Zirkind at a local rabbinical college in Montreal December 27, 2005. Canadians go to the polls in a federal election on January 23, 2006.

Menorah may have started two-alarm blaze

From here:

Investigators said a two-alarm fire at an Oakland apartment building may have started when a menorah was lit overnight.

Firefighters were called to the building on Juliet Street at about 3 a.m. Tuesday. They battled the fire for about 45 minutes.

The flames started on the second floor and spread to the third floor, firefighters said.
"In a few minutes, something gets burning. In a few minutes, the whole apartment is on fire," said Battilion Chief Doug Praskovich.

A man celebrating Chanukah had lit his menorah, and firefighters said somehow it started the fire.

Nobody was injured in the fire, which caused $25,000 in damage.

Although the fire started on the second floor, water and soot damaged the ground floor, as well.
Firefighters said a man who was staying on the second floor may have lit the menorah and then fallen asleep.

PETA President to speak in Bethlehem

From PETA's website:

PETA President Ingrid E. Newkirk, founder of the world’s largest animal rights organization and author of seven books on the treatment of animals, will make a landmark appearance on Thursday morning, December 29, at the International Nonviolence Conference in Bethlehem.

Newkirk’s address to the assembly marks the first time that animal issues rather than animals themselves have been placed on the table and positions animal rights as a social issue consistent with the principles of nonviolence.

Sponsored by the Holy Land Trust and Nonviolence International, the conference will bring together members of the global nonviolence community to discuss past, present, and future strategies, with an emphasis on the current conflict in Palestine. Also speaking at the conference will be Palestinian National Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, United Nations Under Secretary-General Anwarul Karim Chowdhury, civil rights activist Bernard LaFayette Jr., peace and justice activist Father Roy Bourgeois, and Cindy Corrie, the mother of peace activist Rachel Corrie, who was killed while trying to prevent Israeli soldiers from bulldozing a home in a Palestinian refugee camp.

While in the Holy Land, Newkirk will tour Yad Vashem, meet with old friends at the Tel Aviv Humane Society (where she spoke when it opened more than a decade ago), and visit the Safe Haven for Donkeys in the Holy Land sanctuary, which PETA supports.

Whew, I thought she may actually go to Israel and miss the donkey haven! Don't forget she's the same woman who complained to Arafat about the Donkey bombs. People bombs apparently didn't bother her.

Click here for the text of her letter to Arafat.

Rockets hit Kiryat Shmona

Reuters:

Three rockets were fired into a northern Israeli town from southern Lebanon on Tuesday, slamming into residential areas but causing no casualties, the army said.

An Israeli security source said Hizbollah guerrillas were suspected of firing the rockets at the Israeli city of Kiryat Shemona, but a Hizbollah spokesman denied any knowledge of the incident.

In the past, little-known Palestinian groups have also fired Katyusha rockets at northern Israel. There was no immediate claim of responsibility.The army said it could not confirm who had fired the rockets or exactly where they had come from. It had earlier said there were casualties but later said no Israelis were hurt.

Israeli troops killed four pro-Syrian Hizbollah guerrillas one month ago when they raided north Israel in a botched attempt to capture Israeli troops. It was the worst round of fighting since Israel pulled out of south Lebanon five years ago.

Jewish Cemetaries abandoned and desecrated in... NEWARK, NJ?!

This is what you'd expect in some European and Middle-Eastern countries, not from New jersey! It's New Jersey for heavens sake!

Complete article on Jpost:

Across Newark there are scattered signs that Jews once flourished here: churches that still bear Stars of David, a YMHA building now a school, shuttered businesses. But the most enduring and heartbreaking reminders that this city's Jews left behind are the cemeteries they built and then, for the most part, abandoned as they left for better lives in the suburbs.

Now the graveyards that chart the rise and subsequent diaspora of what was once one of America's largest Jewish communities are gaining new attention from their descendants, aggrieved at the destruction wrought by decades of neglect.

"I was pretty horrified," recalled Marsha Dubrow when seeing her grandparents' graves six years ago on a visit to the Talmud Torah cemetery with her mother.

Like others who have come looking for the final resting place of immigrant forebears, she was shocked to see hundreds of headstones lying on the ground, victims of both vandalism and the elements.

"I understand that there was vandalism in the 60's and all that," Ms. Dubrow said. "The fact is the community itself had not been caring for it."

U.S. Defends Israeli Firing on Gaza

From the AP:

Defending Israel, the Bush administration on Tuesday said a rocket attack in Gaza was a response to rocket attacks on Israel.

The Israeli barrage hit two offices of the Al Aqsa Martyrs' Brigades and a bridge the army said was used by militants to reach areas where they fire rockets.

Hours later, about 40 gunmen took over an election office in the neighborhood of A-Ram just outside of Jerusalem, demanding that the ruling Fatah Party include more representatives of the neighborhood in its list for parliamentary elections on Jan. 25, said Ziyad Al-Bakri, the coordinator of the office.

At the State Department, spokesman Adam Ereli said Israel had responded to attacks on its own territory.

"What we would like to see is effective measures against such acts so that the measures Israel is taking are not necessary," Ereli said.

In that vein, the spokesman said that Maj. Gen. Keith Dayton, the new U.S. security specialist for the region, had arrived in the area for talks with Israeli and Palestinian Authority officials.
Ereli said of Israel's barrage: "We see it in the context of failure to address the security situation."

Munich terrorist has issues with Speilberg

Israel accuses him of drawing a moral equivalency, and the terrorist accuses him of pandering to Israel. Hmmmm.

Complete story on Reuters:

The Palestinian mastermind of the Munich Olympics attack in which 11 Israeli athletes died said on Tuesday he had no regrets and that Steven Spielberg's new film about the incident would not deliver reconciliation.

The Hollywood director has called "Munich," which dramatises the 1972 raid and Israel's reprisals against members of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), his "prayer for peace."

Mohammed Daoud planned the Munich attack on behalf of PLO splinter group Black September, but did not take part and does not feature in the film.

He voiced outrage at not being consulted for the thriller and accused Spielberg of pandering to the Jewish state.

"If he really wanted to make it a prayer for peace he should have listened to both sides of the story and reflected reality, rather than serving the Zionist side alone," Daoud told Reuters by telephone from the Syrian capital, Damascus.

Daoud said he had not seen the film, which will only reach most screens outside the United States next month.

But he noted that Spielberg arranged previews in Israel, where some have accused "Munich" of lacking historical accuracy.

Several Israeli historians have also complained about what they see as a moral symmetry in the film between slain Olympians and the Palestinians assassinated by the Mossad spy service.
"Spielberg showed the movie to widows of the Israeli victims, but he neglected the families of Palestinian victims," said Daoud. "How many Palestinian civilians were killed before and after Munich?"

The Munich attack was "one of the pivotal moments of modern terrorism," the Los Angeles Times said last week.

Daoud used different terms.

"We did not target Israeli civilians," he said.

"Some of them (the athletes) had taken part in wars and killed many Palestinians. Whether a pianist or an athlete, any Israeli is a soldier."

Israeli settlers start wave of West Bank outposts

Is there a point to this? They agreed to leave volountarily (according to the article), so what statement are they making?

From Reuters:

Jewish settlers set up 13 makeshift outposts in the occupied West Bank on Tuesday in a show of strength ahead of Israeli elections that could swing on the growing debate over the territory.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon has vowed to keep major West Bank settlements but has said that some isolated communities may one day have to be dismantled as a way of ending decades of conflict with the Palestinians.

Jewish ultranationalists, furious at Sharon for pulling troops and settlers from the Gaza Strip this year, stake a biblical claim to the land Israel captured in the 1967 war. Palestinians want all of the West Bank and Gaza for a state.

On a hilltop south of Jerusalem, young settlers in knitted skullcaps hammered up wooden frames for buildings.

"The land of Israel belongs to the people of Israel and we are not going to give it up," said Yehuda Matar, 17, from the Efrat settlement, its red roofs visible in the distance.

An Israeli military source said the army was treating the action as a protest of tent encampments and that the settlers had said they would eventually leave, but would be evacuated if they did not.

Nabil Abu Rdainah, a spokesman for Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, urged Israel "to cease these activities and uproot the outposts".

Israel is meant to remove dozens of West Bank outposts not authorised by its government under the U.S.-led "road map" for Palestinian statehood, but almost all remain.

Israel has also failed to stop building inside established settlements, all branded illegal by the World Court. Israel disputes this. New building tenders were announced on Monday for 228 West Bank settlement homes.

Palestinians have failed to meet their own road map pledge to start disarming militants.

Good thing we got that final sentence in. Barely.

Immigration to Israel Breaks Records in 2005

Israel Hasbara Committee:

The Jewish Agency reported that immigration to Israel broke some records in 2005, as more than 23,000 people decided to move to the Jewish state this past year. Officials said that Jews from western nations that made “Aliyah”, the Hebrew term for becoming an Israeli citizen, rose significantly due to organizations that give grants, helping to make the process of absorption into Israeli society easier.

Meanwhile, the overall increase is said to either be a result of a drop in Palestinian terror attacks or an improved economic situation that is expected extend into the coming year.

Some of the latest numbers are as follows:

• 2,980 immigrated to Israel from France, a 34-year record.
• 3,052 arrived from North America, the highest in twenty two years.
• 9,124 came to Israel from the former Soviet Union.
• 3,700 immigrated from Ethiopia, the same as in 2004
• 1,850 arrived from South America, up 37.2 percent.
• 453 arriving from the United Kingdom, a small increase from last year.

In addition an estimated 5,700 Israelis moved back to Israel in 2005 and the year saw 29,712 students taking part in short and long-term programs in Israel, with that number expected to increase in 2006.

Google Earth shows too much detail in Israel

From Here:

Google has agreed to make changes to the resolution of images of sites in Israel, after concerns about security against terrorism surfaced.

Photos of sensitive sites in Israel, like military and nuclear facilities, created enough concern that Google has limited resolution of those photos. A report at Israel National News said images of Israel will be reduced to two-meter resolution.

If those images were not at two-meter resolution already, Google may have been in violation of federal law. The Kyl-Bingaman amendment to the National Defense Authorization Act of 1997 requires commercial satellite companies to degrade images of Israel to two-meter resolution.

The article noted eight sites in Israel appear in Google Earth. Along with Jerusalem and Tel Aviv, images of the nuclear weapons base at Sdot Micha and of the Dimona Nuclear Research Center can be found in the utility.

Countries like India and Korea have registered similar complaints about Google Earth. However, the imagery used by Google has been available from other sources, including Keyhole, which Google purchased and incorporated into its Google Earth offerings.

Iran two years away at latest from bomb

Full article on Jpost:

"Iran is one to two years away, at the latest, from having enriched uranium," said Mossad Chief Meir Dagan during his annual report to the Knesset's Foreign Affairs and Defense Committee late Tuesday morning.

"From that point, the completion of their nuclear weapon is simply a technical matter. If Iran goes undisturbed, they will reach technical nuclear development independence in the coming months," said Dagan.

The comments echoed those of IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Dan Halutz, who earlier this month said it is possible that Iran would be able to complete building a bomb as early as 2008 or as far as 2015.

Just last week it was reported in the Jerusalem Post that Iran recently acquired 12 cruise missiles with a range of up to 3,000 kilometers. OC Intelligence Maj.-Gen. Aharon Ze'evi (Farkash) noted the missiles had the ability to carry a nuclear warhead.

Also on Tuesday, Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Iran was undermining Russia's attempts to engage in dialogue regarding its nuclear program.

Iran had denied on Sunday that it had received from Russia a proposal for moving its uranium enrichment facilities to Russian territory, a compromise Europe is seeking to resolve controversy over Iran's nuclear program.

Anti-Semitic Vandals Deface Edmonton Synagogue

Anti-Semitic vandalism seems like a trend this holiday season.

Full Story Here:

A swastika and another anti-Semitic message spray-painted on the side of Edmonton's largest synagogue on Christmas Eve offends not only Jews but all Edmontonians, religious leaders said Monday.

The police department's hate crimes unit is investigating the act of vandalism, the latest of several attacks at Beth Shalom Synagogue in the past five years.

Officials from four Christian denominations and Muslim, Sikh and Unitarian faiths rallied around Rabbi David Kunin to denounce the graffiti.

The timing, on Christmas and as the eight-day Hanukkah festival began, made it even more sickening to them.

"We're standing together, saying that we need to move forward to create a season of light, not a season of darkness as these things represent," Kunin said.

The others spoke out in solidarity with the rabbi.

"It is the kind of act I think that all of us understand is not a part of what Canada is," said Larry Shaben, Alberta's first Muslim cabinet minister and a member of the Edmonton Interfaith Centre.

Suzanne Cowles, a former Lutheran pastor, urged Edmontonians to be vigilant against racism because "it can happen here and obviously it has."

Beth Shalom officials were alerted to the crude symbols Sunday morning. A metre-wide black swastika and the letters 'ZOG' appeared with a circle and line through it appeared on the Jasper Avenue synagogue's southwest corner.

ZOG stands for Zionist Occupation Government. This is a body imagined in anti-Semitic conspiracy theories, common in white supremacist literature, that suggest Jews control the U.S. government and other global seats of power.

Kunin said the slogan, coupled with the fact the swastika was diagonal in the Nazi fashion, suggests the perpetrator was no petty vandal, but more likely someone more versed in anti-Semitism.

A security camera rests almost directly above the graffiti. Police are reviewing the surveillance footage in their attempts to find the culprit, who likely acted late on Christmas Eve, Kunin said.

Shin Bet agents to testify at US trial

From Reuters:

Israel will send two Shin Bet security agents to testify at the U.S. trial of a Palestinian immigrant who says he was forced to confess to terrorism charges while in Israeli custody, Israeli security sources said on Wednesday.

Their testimony would be the first public discussion in a foreign forum by serving members of the Israeli agency, whose covert tactics have drawn censure from civil liberties groups.

Officially known as the Israeli Security Agency, the Shin Bet carries out counter-terrorism and counter-espionage missions within the Jewish state and Israeli-occupied territory.

The agents are to appear in connection with a case against Mohammed Salah, who was charged last year in a U.S. court with two other Palestinian immigrants with a racketeering conspiracy to funnel money to the Islamic militant group Hamas.

Salah, an Illinois resident of West Bank descent, served a five-year prison sentence in Israel during the 1990s on charges of funding Hamas, which is sworn to the Jewish state's destruction and has carried out scores of suicide bombings.

Salah's lawyer, Michael Deutsch, said in Chicago that the Israeli agents would likely testify during a two-week pretrial hearing scheduled to begin there March 6. At issue in the hearing is whether a confession Salah gave to Israeli interrogators was coerced, and thus should not be used against him by U.S. prosecutors.

"The burden is on the U.S. government to show that his statements were given freely and voluntarily. We've alleged that they were given under coercion," he said.

Deutsch also said Israeli officials asked for "special procedures to protect the agents" when they testify but it was not specified what they were seeking and the judge overseeing the case will determine the guidelines.

He said they should be treated no differently than any witness in a U.S. court. The trial itself is not scheduled to begin until late next year.

The Shin Bet agreed for its agents to testify in the Salah case after being promised that their identities would not be published, Israeli security sources said.

Survivors recount plot to kill Nazis

Full article on Jpost:

A group of elderly Holocaust survivors came forward Friday with accounts of a death squad they formed after World War II to take revenge on their Nazi persecutors, recounting a brazen operation in which they poisoned hundreds of SS officers.

In a broadcast on Channel Two TV, the survivors - some of whom fought in the Warsaw Ghetto uprising - recalled hunting down SS officers in the dead of night. Disguised as British or American officers, they would drag the SS men out of their homes and execute them, they said.
In their largest operation, the group, code-named "the Avengers," received a large amount of arsenic from Paris and laced loaves of bread fed to hundreds of SS officers imprisoned in an American camp after the war.

They said they were also planning a broad operation in Dachau and Nuremberg, but the Jewish leadership in what would soon become Israel forced them to abandon the plan.
"I didn't see myself as a murderer, not then and not today," group member Simcha Rotem told Channel Two.

The broadcast focused on a rare reunion of the group that took place earlier this month in a Tel Aviv suburb. Sixty years after the end of World War II, with most of several dozen "Avengers" either dead or in their late 70s and 80s, Rotem told The Associated Press they gave into family pressure to recount their experiences to their children, grandchildren and other relatives.

Over the years, reports of such Jewish death squads have surfaced and several books have been written. The Israeli government has often turned a blind eye to the reports. Earlier this year, it refused a request from Poland to extradite a suspected death squad member.

Aaron Breitbart, senior researcher at the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, said the tale of the bread-poisoning plot is plausible.

"This is not a story that somebody is telling out of a hat. There was such a plan. We just don't know how close they got" to carrying it out, Breitbart said.

False siren rattles Jerusalem Residents

Shabbos on Monday?

From Ynet:

Jerusalem mystery: A one-minute siren blared across several Jerusalem neighborhoods around 2:50 p.m. Monday, prompting rattled residents to contact Ynet and report the unusual incident.

In emails to Ynet, Jerusalemites said they do not know why the siren went off, but some admitted they were panicked by the sound.

"Did a war break out or something we don't know about?" one reader wrote.

Notably, Israel has a system of air raid sirens across the country but they are also used for other purposes, such as the traditional Holocaust Day siren.

(Don't forget the Shabbos siren!)

Israeli Government gives Channuka Gelt to Yeshiva Students

From Haaretz:

Knesset Finance Committee Chair Yaakov Litzman (Agudath Israel) obtained an expensive Hanukkah gift for yeshiva students yesterday - but the state will pick up the NIS 44 million tab.

The gift consists of a one-time state grant of NIS 330 for every unmarried yeshiva student and NIS 600 for every married yeshiva student, to be distributed over the next few days. The money will be on top of the normal monthly stipend received by yeshiva students - NIS 720 for married men and NIS 400 for single men.

The NIS 44 million in grants is on top of the extra NIS 290 million for ultra-Orthodox (Haredi) educational institutions that Litzman's party was promised in exchange for joining the coalition at the start of the year.

Litzman vigorously defended the Hanukkah grant yesterday. "I worked to increase support for yeshiva students in light of budget cuts of the last few years, including cuts in child allowances," he said. "I'm happy that the Finance Ministry met me halfway and understood the distress of the Haredi public. I hope that this sum will make things a little easier for families. The money will be distributed according to the Education Ministry's criteria."

Haredi MK Moshe Gafni (Degel Hatorah) also defended the grants. "These are surplus funds from the yeshiva budget that were unutilized," he said. "When there's a surplus in the yeshiva budget, they increase the per-student allocation to institutions."

But MK Ronnie Brizon (Shinui) was outraged. "With regard to Litzman, the Haredim and the cooperation they receive from the treasury, things have gone beyond shame and beyond swinishness. It seems that all the dams have been burst, and the Haredim only have to demand something in order for [the government] to bow to their whims and disburse public funds like hot potato pancakes on Hanukkah. This is merely a frightening omen of what is liable to happen in the 17th [i.e. next] Knesset: The public will be exposed to the unbridled money lust of those people, who contribute almost nothing to society, but receive almost everything from it."

Although the grants are an achievement that could theoretically help Litzman's chances of obtaining a top slot on his party's next Knesset slate, he currently is not planning to run for reelection, and thus far has steadily refused appeals including one from Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, to change his mind. However, many MKs believe that his rabbinic patron, the Gur Rebbe, Rabbi Yakov Alter, ultimately will order Litzman to run for reelection and serve in the next Knesset.

Israeli Helicopters fire on Gaza City

I guess shelling open fields wasn't having the desired result. Shocking.

From Reuters:

GAZA (Reuters) - Israeli helicopter gunships fired three missiles at targets in Gaza City and in the northern Gaza Strip early on Tuesday as Israel began enforcing a buffer zone to prevent rocket fire into its territory, witnesses said.

Palestinian witnesses said one missile hit an unknown target in Gaza City and another slammed into an office belonging to Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas's Fatah faction in northern Gaza. The third hit an empty field, they said.

There were no reports of casualties.

The Israeli army said it fired two missiles at buildings used by the al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, an armed militia within Abbas's Fatah faction, which were used to recruit members and to host meetings by leaders of the armed group.

Israel has said it would intensify air strikes in the Gaza Strip to enforce a buffer zone meant to stop Palestinian militants from firing rockets into Israel.

The decision was taken several days ago but bad weather in recent days had limited activity by the Israeli air force.

Palestinians reported that warplanes and helicopter gunships took to the skies over Gaza early on Tuesday and were breaking the sound barrier.

Hours earlier, militants fired two rockets into the Jewish state. Both hitting near Israeli farming communities with one landing adjacent to a kindergarten. Nobody was hurt in the strikes.
The makeshift missiles rarely cause casualties, but could have big political fallout as Prime Minister Ariel Sharon campaigns for re-election on the strength of a Gaza pullout this year that he said would boost Israel's security.

Rocket fire has not stopped despite Israel's withdrawal from Gaza in September after a 38-year occupation. Militants say the rocket fire avenges Israeli raids in the occupied West Bank as well as its strikes into the Gaza Strip.

Likud cleaning house

From Arutz Sheva:

The Likud Central Committee focused on unity, image and cleaning out corruption on Monday evening in Tel Aviv at its first meeting since Binyamin Netanyahu was elected party leader.

The theme of the gathering, reflected in a huge banner, was the party’s new “path of renewal.”In his address to the Committee, the Likud Chairman called for the approval of Silvan Shalom as Number Two candidate in the Likud’s Knesset list, as an expression of unity. “We must close ranks,” he said. “There are no camps and no factions. We are one camp.”

Shalom echoed Netanyahu’s words with his own call to “back the elected head and march to victory. There are no more camps,” he reiterated. Shalom was approved for the second spot on the list.

Netanyahu’s next proposal underscored the party’s need to clean up its image. “Criminal elements have entered our movement,” he charged. “Their place is not among us. They can go elsewhere, to another party.”

In a move that recalled better times while presenting a new face to the Israeli public, Netanyahu said he will make a formal motion to disallow any candidate who has been convicted of a crime. “We want a clean movement,” he emphasized, “like we learned from Menachem Begin.”

The Kadima Party was Netanyahu’s next target. "The real election is between our policies and policies ... that encourage terror," he said.

Trying to pull support from the south and voters wearing the IDF uniform, Netanyahu promised to give “spacious apartments” to discharged soldiers, to be located in southern Israel. Netanyahu also reviewed his past performance as Finance Minister, insisting that his “proper economic policies” had lowered unemployment, added 200,000 new workers to the economy and added “billions of shekels” to the nation’s coffers. He promised to “help the weak more,” and said “That’s the first thing I’ll be doing as a prime minister.”

The Committee also approved a proposal to postpone the party primaries to January 12th, a week later than originally planned.

Satmar's Very Public Chilul Hashem Continues...

From NY Post:

Worshippers warring for control of New York's largest Hasidic congregation say a scheming cabal has cloistered the senile rabbi and is using his signature to loot the place — and they say they have medical records to prove it.

Prescription records filed in a lawsuit show that Grand Rebbe Moses Teitelbaum of Brooklyn's Satmar congregation has been taking Alzheimer's medication since 1998, a year before he decided the succession question that has embroiled his flock in bitter fistfights and legal battles.
Followers of Rabbi Aron Teitelbaum — the older brother passed over for control of the 40,000-member congregation — say the records prove that followers of younger brother Zalman have been manipulating mentally incapacitated Moses like a puppet.

"Anything they're proclaiming in the name of the rebbe, either he didn't do it or, if he did it, he wasn't able to do it," said Joel Weiss, editor of a Hasidic newspaper and follower of Aron.
Weiss said Zalman's allies manipulated the rabbi into choosing Zalman as head of the congregation, embroiling the congregation in shady financial deals.

Weiss pointed to an ongoing federal court case in which a school-supply company accuses Zalman allies of looting the company to enrich synagogue officials to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars.

Weiss said that nearly a decade ago, the rebbe began repeating himself in public and forgetting key portions of rituals. "The embarrassment was bigger and bigger," Weiss said.

Nonsense, said Zalman allies.

Until he had a stroke in August, the rebbe was "fully functional, attending meetings, leading services, performing circumcisions and weddings," said Mark Friedman.

A judge in a recent family court dispute over care of the rebbe visited the Bedford Avenue home where he is cared for by a personal secretary, paramedic, 24-hour butler, chauffeur, cook and attendant.

The judge "observed the rabbi studying and walking," according to court papers. The judge also asked the rebbe if he was satisfied with his care. "The rabbi responded in the affirmative."
Not all judges, however, get an audience. In another court dispute, an upstate judge demanded that the rebbe come out from his house and testify.

So far, he has refused.

"It's an embarrassment and disrespectful" for a rabbi to appear in court, explained Friedman. "So the rebbe would only talk to the judge if the judge came down to him."

Xmas and Channukah = Oil and water

Very well written.

From here:

Hanukkah: It's truly a miracle

Jordana Horn Marinoff

When I was a child, growing up in suburban New Jersey, I always looked forward to this time of year. I loved watching the neighbors put up their Christmas lights, which would sparkle in the night as I peeked out my window after bedtime. One day, I told my parents how pretty the lights were. That night, we got in the car after dark and drove around the neighborhood, admiring the multicolored displays of blinking lights.

"Why can't we have lights in front of our house?" I asked as we drove up our driveway into the garage. Compared to everyone else's, our house looked like the Death Star.

"Because those are Christmas lights, and we're Jewish," my mom answered.

Well, I was 8 or so, but I wasn't stupid. "I know," I said, "but isn't Hanukkah the festival of lights?" Got her there, I thought.

She smiled. "Yes, but those lights are Christmas lights. We have our candle lights in the menorah for Hanukkah. Hanukkah and Christmas are very different."

They sure are.

The attempt to equate the two holidays drives me insane every year. "Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah." Other than falling at approximately the same time of year, the two holidays are nothing alike. Christmas is a beautiful, sacred and special holiday. For Christians. Not me.
Why should I have to protest this point? Because if you don't celebrate Christmas, or "get in the Christmas spirit," you're labeled a Grinch. Because, thanks to going to an American public high school, having a television set, and just generally living in everyday American society, I know every word of every Christmas carol.

And I suppose that's why bits of Christmas trickle into Hanukkah. Families give in to the spirit of the day, the retail season, the pressures of assimilation. They put a tree in their living room, calling it a "Hanukkah bush"; they have a big family meal on Christmas and exchange gifts, because "it's so much fun!"

"We'll let our kids choose which religion they want to practice," I hear so many parents of mixed Jewish-Christian households assert confidently.

Hmm, let's see - as a kid, would I go with the religion with the colored lights, the fun fat guy who gives presents and the bunny with the eggs, or the one with the weird eating restrictions and the history of persecution?

Contrary to what most people may think, giving gifts isn't a cornerstone of Hanukkah. Dreidels, gelt, sure, but it's not the focal point of the holiday. Hannukah is actually all about being Jewish - and not giving into pressure to be anything else.

The holiday commemorates the story of a rebellion against the Greek king of Syria, who tried to crush the Jews into submission by not allowing them to practice their faith way back in 165 B.C. Led by a rebel, Judah Maccabee, and his family, the Jews rose up against the king and defeated him. The Temple in Jerusalem, however, had been desecrated by the king, and there was only enough oil to light the menorah for one day. By way of a miracle, the oil lasted for eight and the Jews could rebuild.

The rebellion started in the town of 'Modi'in in modern-day Israel, where a Greek officer commanded the townspeople to bow before an idol and eat pork - both forbidden by Jewish law. The resident elder (and Judah Maccabee's father), Mattathias, refused to do it. Another villager stepped forward and said he would do it instead. In anger, Mattathias killed the villager and then the officer, starting the war which would lead to the defeat of the much more powerful king. The uprising began with one man's assertion of identity: his recognition that he would not be, and could not be, anything other than what he was. His pride in his Judaism ensured his survival - and, ultimately, the religion's as well.

I've always taken being Jewish seriously, in no small part because I believe it is incumbent upon me to do so. After all, I am heir to an amazing intellectual, religious, ethical and historical legacy, thousands of years old. I have the good fortune of having had great-grandparents who took the long boat ride from Eastern Europe to the United States - sparing themselves the carnage of the Cossacks, and their children and grandchildren from certain death at the hands of the Nazis 60 years later. All of the historical cards have fallen into place to deal me a winning hand: a country in which I can practice and learn about my religion freely.

In light of all this (yes, pun intended), every year, I can't help but think that Hanukkah truly is a miracle. And so, every year, surrounded by twinkling reindeer, pine wreaths and colored lights, we put the menorah in our window, light the candles and celebrate our heritage, watching the candles flicker against the darkness.

An Ice Menorah in Siberia

From Here:

In the Jewish community of Krasnoyarsk, the first candle of Chanuka was lit during a festive ceremony. This is the sixth year in a row that the local Jewish community, a member of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Russia, has held candle-lighting ceremonies during the Holiday of Light.

And yet another year, local celebrations are distinct in that, unlike a traditional Jerusalem Chanukiah, they feature a Menorah made of ice. For members of the Jewish community of Krasnoyarsk, this has already become a celebrated tradition. As in past years, the donor whose contribution made the construction of this costly Menorah possible has requested that he remain anonymous. The sculpture reveals detailed images of columns, scrolls, a Magen David, as well as eight candle-holders, each of which are skillfully illuminated by electric lights.

The Synagogue was filled with Jews of all ages, from newborn babies to elders ninety years in age. Following the recital of the Maariv prayer and the lighting of the candles, participants in the festivity went outside and gathered around the ice Menorah, which illuminated the crisp darkness. Fireworks then lit up the sky and Jews began to dance and congratulate each other. Everyone ate latkes and doughnuts and soft drinks for kids, while many adults enjoyed a shot of Siberian vodka.

For each of the remaining days of Chanukah, Jews of Krasnoyarsk will gather for festivities, including a concert in the city's Cultural Historical Center.

Israel, Arab World Engage in Hidden Trade

I really hope this isn't true, but if it is I really should not be as suprised as I am. Shekel over all.

From ABC:

Staff members at a Riyadh hospital got a surprise when they looked at the fine print on the paper cups they were using. Workers in a storeroom at a Dubai hospital were similarly shocked when they took a close look at the tags on a large shipment of uniforms, towels and sheets.

The labels said "Made in Israel," according to recent newspaper reports from Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, both of which have laws that ban imports from the Jewish state.

Experts say the camouflaged trade, with just a small portion receiving publicity, has been going on for years between Israel and its officially hostile Arab neighbors.

The hidden trade is worth about $400 million a year about two and a half times what Israel sold to its official Arab trading partners, Egypt and Jordan, in 2004 said Gil Feiler, the director of Info-Prod Research, a Tel Aviv consultancy specializing in Arab markets, and an economic professor at Bar Ilan University.

Others say such estimates are significantly inflated.

"All the figures are very sexy for the press, but the reality is much less than what is written," said Dan Catarivas, foreign trade director at the Israeli Manufacturers' Association.

The true amount of Arab imports from Israel is impossible to establish because neither side makes it public, with Israeli-made goods moving to Arab customers through third countries Cyprus or the Netherlands, for example, which list the shipments as local exports.

An Arab lawyer who specializes in trade, Omar Obeidat of Al-Tamimi & Co. in Dubai, said the Arab League boycott of Israel is well enforced, despite the hidden trade through third countries.

"The only person who can confirm is the Israeli party to this covert operation," Obeidat said, when asked to estimate the worth of goods flowing to Arab nations.

Feiler, who has written a business guide to Israel in Arabic, refused to give more than rough outlines of the trade, which he supports.

Israeli exports to Arab countries, he said, are mostly from three categories: agricultural equipment, such as for irrigation a field in which Israel leads the world; animal vaccines and "technological knowledge and components." He refused to elaborate on the latter.

Marrano Synagogue revealed in Portugal

From NY Times:

A chance discovery in recent months during renovations of a building in this Atlantic port city has revealed a dark secret from Portugal's past: a 16th-century synagogue.

Built when Portugal's Jews had been forced to convert to Catholicism or risk being burned at the stake, the house of worship was hidden behind a false wall in a four-story house that the Rev. Agostinho Jardim Moreira, a Roman Catholic priest, was converting into a home for some older parishioners.

Father Moreira, a scholar of Porto's Jewish history, said that as soon as the workers told him of the wall, "I knew there had to be some kind of Jewish symbol behind it."

His hunch was confirmed when the wall came down to reveal a carved granite repository, about five feet tall, arched at the top and facing east toward Jerusalem. It was the ark where the medieval Jews kept their Torahs. The ark contained pieces of decorative green tile that further confirmed its age. Specialists determined that the tiles had been glazed by a method used in the 16th century.

"It's quite exciting," said the Israeli ambassador to Portugal, Aaron Ram, who has been involved in efforts to preserve the ark. "You feel part of history when you see it."

"It's a very important site," he added. "We all have to remember our history so we can be prepared for the future."

Only two other arks from the period have been found in Portugal, and last month the Portuguese Institute of Architectural Heritage authenticated this one as the third.

Father Moreira, 64, said he knew that his parish had been an officially designated the Jewish quarter in the 15th and 16th centuries. He also knew that after the Jews here were forced to convert to Catholicism in 1496, many Jews privately kept their faith and worshiped secretly, while publicly following Catholic rituals.

"I suspected that false wall was hiding something," he said.

The workers solved an enigma that had baffled historians, said Elvira Mea, a University of Porto lecturer who specializes in Jewish history.

Immanuel Aboab, a Jewish scholar born in Porto in the mid-16th century, wrote that as a child he had visited a synagogue in the third house on the street counting from the 14th-century Our Lady of Victory church.

But he did not specify which side of the street, and archaeological digs turned up nothing.
"Everyone assumed Aboab had got his dates mixed up," said Ms. Mea. "But it had been preying on my mind, and as soon as I saw the ark, all the pieces fell into place. I was so happy I could hardly believe it."

The secret synagogue dates from a convulsive period in the Jewish history of the Iberian Peninsula.

In 1492, neighboring Spain expelled all Jews who would not convert to Catholicism, and 60,000 of them poured across the border into Portugal. They prospered, but were kept at arm's length, forced to live in a Jewish quarter subject to a curfew.

Then came harsher action. Portugal's King Manuel I, hoping to seal a royal alliance with Spain's powerful rulers, Ferdinand and Isabella, by marrying their daughter, forced the Jews to convert.
Some fled, but those who stayed were subjected to humiliating public baptisms. They were designated "New Christians" or "Marranos," Iberian slang for pigs. Even then, they remained at risk of religious persecution. In 1506, about 3,000 Jews were massacred in Lisbon.

Father Moreira said he intended to place a protective glass screen over the ark while authorities decided how it to exhibit it.

Rocket lands near kindergarten Channukah party

From Ynet:

Chanuka miracle? A Chanukah party attended by kindergarten children and their parents in kibbutz Sa'ad was disrupted Monday after the activation of the "Red Dawn" alert system was followed by an exploding Qassam rocket nearby.

No injuries were reported in the latest rocket attack. Another Qassam landed Monday afternoon south of Ashkelon.

"This was a big miracle, because the Qassam rocket landed at a very small distance from the kindergarten during the Chanukah party," community director Sarah Evron said. "We must recall that kindergartens and all other educational facilities at Sa'ad are not fortified. Obviously, after (the attack) the party ended."

This was not the first time a Qassam rocket lands at the southern kibbutz, but up to now residents asked that the community's name not be published by the media. However, the residents are apparently sick and tired of the long wait for fortification, anger that only intensified Monday after fortification work began at a nearby IDF base.

"We've been waiting long months for a solution in terms of fortification. It feels as though soldiers who are not protected immediately prompt fortification work, but we must remember we have children growing up here on the border," Evron said. "In our view, we must first protect children and only then soldiers."