Below is an article in the Jerusalem Post which you may have missed. It is of great interest – to read the whole article the JP demands money. I would rather burn my money than give it to the JP:
Rabbi orders a new Commandment: The Jerusalem Post
Embrace commandment of war, Hesder students told. Precedent-setting ceremony hails young national-religious men soon to be in uniform * ‘We long for peace, but until then we cannot lay down our sword,’ says TA chief rabbi
“King David taught the people of [Judah Maccabee] how to use the bow and arrow… Jacob our patriarch blessed his son Judah and told him to fight Israel’s enemies, to attack them and not fight defensively… The descendants of the tribe of Judah will do the same,” [Yisrael Meir Lau] said.
Rabbi Haim Druckman, who heads Bnei Akiva, said that “fighting our enemies is a commandment. To serve in the IDF is a commandment. We must remember that we could not carry out this commandment for 2,000 years. How happy we must be that we live in this great and special time, a time in which we have returned to our land, seen the founding of our state, the ingathering of exiles.”
Citing the Torah, [Dov Lior] noted that “200,000 Israelites and 10,000 Judahites fought Amalek. Why are the Judahites counted separately from the others? Because the Israelite army pitied Amalek. Today this is called being humanitarian.”
Two Israeli policemen shot dead: BBC
Two Israeli police officers have been shot dead near the West Bank town of Nablus, Israeli officials say.
The officers were in a car that came under fire from assailants in the Massua district of the Jordan Valley.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying that the “main suspicion points to a nationalistic motive”.
Rescue workers say they found the car upside down with one officer dead. Efforts to revive the other failed.
Massua is located in the Jordan Valley, just south-east of Nablus and near the major West Bank settlement of Ariel.
The Haaretz newspaper says that a driver from the West Bank settlement of Kochav Hashahar was seriously wounded when a gunman opened fire on his car on the highway near the settlement in January.
The lessons of Freeman’s fall: BBC
The undoing of Charles Freeman, who had been nominated as the next chairman of the US National Intelligence Council, is continuing to draw a barrage of reactions from a surprisingly diverse range of corners.
Chinese dissidents, former American ambassadors and intelligence officials have all weighed in, as the debate continues over whether Mr Freeman was brought down by his views on Israel.
An outspoken former ambassador to Riyadh, Mr Freeman found himself at the centre of a growing controversy about his views on Israel, China and Tibet while the campaign against him, first online and then on Capitol Hill kept growing.
On Tuesday, 10 March, his soon-to-be boss, Dennis Blair, defended his choice in Congress. Later that afternoon, Mr Blair’s office sent out a note announcing that Mr Freeman was withdrawing his nomination.
Mr Freeman sent out an acerbic letter, accusing the “Israel Lobby” of “plumbing the depths of dishonour and indecency”, using “character assassination” and controlling policy by vetoing people who disagreed with them.
There is only one lesson to learn, and it is on the right here! Shut up about Israeli brutalities and everything will be hanky-dory!
Murakami slams Israel for treatment of Palestinians: YNet
Distinguished Japanese author, who visited Israel last month to receive important literary prize, publishes critical article against Israel’s policy in occupied territories
About a month ago, renowned Japanese author Haruki Murakami arrived in Israel to receive the prestigious Jerusalem Prize at the International Book Fair in the capital. In a speech he gave during the event Murakami subtly criticized Israel for its policy in the occupied territories. However, in an article recently published by the author in the Shunjuu Bungei literary journal, Murakami takes off the gloves and strongly condemns Israel’s “unjust” treatment of the Palestinians. “Israel has adopted a policy that seals off the Palestinians inside the West Bank and the Gaza Strip, a policy that denies the refugees’ right to return to their land in order to protect the interests of the Jewish people; this is unjust,” Murakami writes. He explains that he decided to accept the Israeli prize believing this would allow him to speak freely in front of an Israeli audience.
Having taken the thirty pieces of silver, Mr. Murakami tries to have it all… now he has some small, insignificant scruples, obviously not serious enough to have refused to get the prize from the murderous regime. This need for celebrity status at any price, even if granted by a brutal regime of military occupation, is shameful and disappointing in an author of this standing. Despite the calls by many intellectuals (see below letter by PACBI) Murakami has cosen to support the Zionist crimes. Read below:
PACBI Salutes the Palestine Forum in Japan: PCBI
The Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI) would like to extend its appreciation and support to the Palestine Forum in Japan for its admirable efforts to stop the world renowned novelist, Haruki Murakami, from attending the Jerusalem International Book Fair and accepting the ‘Jerusalem Prize for the Freedom of the Individual in Society’ on February 15th, 2009.
At the best of times, Mr. Murakami’s visit to Israel would be morally reprehensible and tantamount to supporting its colonial regime, but now, in the aftermath of the heinous war crimes Israel has committed in Gaza, it is utterly unimaginable. Mr. Murakami’s proposed visit comes against the background of Israel’s brutal assault against occupied Gaza, which killed over 1300 Palestinians, injured thousands, and which systematically destroyed civilian infrastructure, targeting and bombing UN schools, a university, mosques and reducing entire neighbourhoods and villages to rubble. Princeton academic Richard Falk described the siege Israel has imposed on Gaza as a “preclude to genocide”, even before Israel unleashed this latest military violence against the imprisoned and defenceless civilian population in Gaza. What we are witnessing in Gaza is the dangerous escalation of the deliberate processes of ethnic cleansing through which Zionist forces dispossessed the native Palestinians and established an exclusivist Jewish state in 1948. The slow genocide in Gaza, implemented through the siege, the massacres and the terrorising of the civilian lives there, is an acceleration of the same ethnic cleansing. This continues systematically today as Israel brutalises, displaces, and dispossesses the indigenous Palestinian population in order to colonise more and more land for exclusive Jewish use, and to maintain its racist apartheid system.
In the past few weeks, throughout the world, groups of novelists, artists, students, academics and associations, including, the Palestine Forum in Japan, have consolidated their efforts to show solidarity with the occupied Palestinians, to condemn Israel’s war crimes and its apartheid system regime, and to call for effective political action such as boycotts, divestment drives, and sanctions (BDS). They have been joined by jurists, human rights organisations, and the UN to hold Israel responsible for its violations of human rights and international law.
Israel envoys seek Shalit release: BBC
The head of Israel’s security services is in Cairo for talks aimed at securing the release of a captured Israeli soldier, Gilad Shalit.
Sgt Shalit has been held in Gaza since being kidnapped by Palestinian Hamas militants in 2006.
Hundreds of Israelis gathered in Jerusalem on Friday calling on the government to agree a prisoner swap deal with Sgt Shalit’s captors.
The Israeli government is expected to discuss a deal on Monday.
Egypt has been mediating the discussions between Israel and Hamas.
Israel’s outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Shin Bet chief Yuval Diskin and veteran negotiator Ofer Dekel would return from Cairo on Sunday and report to the cabinet the next day.
“The government will receive the update and in accordance with the circumstances and the information, we will decide which decision should be made,” Mr Olmert said in a statement.
Interior Minister Meir Sheetrit said the talks in Cairo would decide the issue “for better or worse”.
Israeli forces critically wound American activist in West Bank: The Electronic Intifada
Press release, International Solidarity Movement, 14 March 2009
The following press release was issued by the International Solidarity Movement on 13 March 2009:
An American citizen has been critically injured in the village of Nilin after Israeli forces shot him in the head with a tear gas canister.
Tristan Anderson from California, 37 years old, has been taken to Israeli Tel Hashomer hospital, near Tel Aviv. Anderson is unconscious and has been bleeding heavily from the nose and mouth. He sustained a large hole in his forehead where he was struck by the canister. He is currently being operated on.
The Israeli army began using to use a high velocity tear gas canister in December 2008. The black canister, labeled in Hebrew as “40mm bullet special/long range,” can shoot over 400 meters. The gas canister does not make a noise when fired or emit a smoke tail. A combination of the canister’s high velocity and silence is extremely dangerous and has caused numerous injuries, including a Palestinian male whose leg was broken in January 2009.
Tristan Anderson was shot as Israeli forces attacked a demonstration against the construction of the annexation wall through the village of Nilin’s land. Another resident from Nilin was shot in the leg with live ammunition.
Four Nilin residents have been killed during demonstrations against the confiscation of their land.
Olmert: My government went farther in peace talks than anyone before: Ha’aretz
Mere days before the end of his term, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert used the platform of the weekly cabinet meeting Sunday morning to present an overview of his administration’s achievements. Addressing the peace process with the Palestinians, Olmert said that his government had “gone farther in the peace negotiations than any previous government.” The prime minister added that it was the Palestinian leadership that didn’t have enough courage to made the necessary decisions on the path to peace. He voiced hope that the decades long conflict between Israel and the Palestinians would be resolved in the near future, saying “I have no doubt that the negotiations I’ve held with the Palestinian Authority will result in a peace accord.”
“But we’ll have to make dramatic concessions in order to reach a point of signing an agreement,” he remarked.
The prime minister criticized the Palestinian leadership, saying “we have yet to reach an agreement due only to their weakness, lack of courage and lack of desire to resolve the conflict. Everything else is just excuses and efforts to derail the talks.”
Does he mean Operation Cast Lead?
Below you can see what Israeli media channels are doing in order to derail and distort liberal and humanist messages by intellectuals. Gideo Levy, the one of two Haaretz correspondents (the other is Amira Hass) has written a piece which in Hebrew is called – מחאה בכיף – this could, or should be translated as ‘deluxe protest’, but below you can see that the editor or translator, or both, decided to derail the message and title it somewhat differently…
Don’t protest for Shalit, protest for release of terrorists: Ha’aretz
By Gideon Levy
Who says the general public isn’t involved? Who dares claim it lacks a worthy civil protest movement? Just look at how the nation is shouting, nay, screaming for the release of abducted Israel Defense Forces soldier Gilad Shalit. Kindergartens and universities, cars and balconies are awash with a sea of banners calling for his release; television franchisee Reshet has launched a campaign, presenter Oded Ben-Ami has started a day count and journalist Gadi Sukenik has had a clock ticking on his show since the abduction in 2006, asking viewers to send text messages to show support. How moving. Even the ticket machine in the parking lot is adorned with Shalit’s photo – for 16 shekels you can buy a parking ticket and take part in a protest.
Everywhere we see protest tents and marches, drivers honking and demonstrators shouting in unison: “We want him home and we want him now.” And who doesn’t want Shalit to come home? What can we agree more about than that? The prime minister’s wife, the infrastructure minister, the president – they all support the protest but act like observers who bear no responsibility; they jump on the bandwagon going nowhere.
This protest is for spoiled people seeking deluxe activism. It’s a Purim protest, a demonstration in costume, just like the national campaign against traffic accidents or the light aircraft aerial display organized by supporters of the release of airman Ron Arad, missing since falling captive in Lebanon in the 1980s. Only one banner needs to be raised reading “release 1,000 terrorists.” That banner shouldn’t be put up outside the Prime Minister’s Residence but outside the Hadarim Prison where Palestinian prisoners are held. How many of the thousands of activists who support Shalit’s release are willing to do that?
Just like other crucial matters like, say, peace, we are all in favor – but at what price? That’s another matter. Let’s not get into it. It’s enough to say we favor a two-state solution. When exactly? Why not now? What about the Jewish settlements in the West Bank? Let’s not quarrel over trifles and spoil everything.
As is their wont, Israelis demand to fly business class but pay with bonus points. Peace for peace, Shalit for Shalit. They want to have their cake and eat it too; for Shalit to be released without releasing Palestinians. The media fan the flames, crying that the prisoners have “blood on their hands;” politicians preach that we should stay quiet “lest the price rises.” But the price has not risen or fallen, nor will it fall in the future. But how many of Shalit’s supporters even debate that issue?