Crisis

Since the beginning of December, I've been living through a personal crisis, the details of which I cannot go into. It has affected every aspect of my life from taking photos to blogging. This past Sunday, I felt the old stirrings of the black wall of depression. The emptiness I felt was like looking into a bottomless abyss, with no light.

I forced myself to go take photos. The day matched my mood. It was raining. grey, and cold. The dark pit lifted and is almost all gone today.

I haven't had the opportunity to post about the crisis Israel is going through. When I come into work, I begin checking all those I read who are in Israel to make sure they are okay. I read in the news about the synagogues in Europe and in the United States being attacked with Molotov cocktails and those that have been vandalized.

If protests against Israel are merely to show disagreement, why are synagogues being attacked?

Ninja Cat!

200!

Haveil Havalim 200: The Harvey Edition

All Are Targets

Hamas, Hezbollah, and other terrorist groups just want to murder. They do not care nor have any moral compunctions if Israeli schools are hit. In fact, they rejoice! Today, some terrorist group in Lebanon launched Katyusha toward Israel. It hit a senior citizens home. Jameel has photos of the damage. I'm sure Jimmy Carter will call the terrorist action "defensive", much like he called the tunnels Hamas dug to smuggle in weapons "defensive".

The world has gone insane. From the UN to European leaders, all expect Israel to ask her people to just take rocket fire from whatever terrorist group decides to fire.

Old people should be able to live out their years in peace. School kids shouldn't have to learn the nearest routes to bomb shelters. Moms and Dads shouldn't have to read bed-time stories to their children in bomb shelters.

I care about the Palestinian children who go through this as well. I'm outraged that these precious children are being used as human shields by Hamas. I'm outraged that civilians are routinely used as human shields by terrorist groups like Hamas, Hezbollah, and let's not kid ourselves, Fatah. I'm outraged that the UN has not sought to end the plight of Palestinian "refugees" by not dismantling UNRWA.

I'm outraged that some church groups would prefer to talk to "charities" such as Hamas and Hezbollah and make the decision to divest from Israel. I want peace in Israel. I want the Palestinians to live better lives(Gazans have better living conditions than many Egyptians). Peace will not be achieved by criticizing Israel as the sole problem. If people really wanted peace, they would condemn the terrorists instead of trying to justify them.

Thank You US Navy!

They made the correct decision. Messianic "Jews" are Christian and those wanting to serve as chaplains should not wear the Jewish insignia. Thank you US Navy!!!

I'm hoping the US Army, Marines, and Coast Guard will follow suit if they do not already have this policy in place. Next up: phone books which place messianic churches under the synagogue heading.

It Is Time

From news reports about Israel's defensive Operation Cast Lead, the same ole scenario is being played out. The terrorists hide behind the civilian population and use schools and even hospitals to fire rockets. They used the UNRWA schools and the UN defends them!! It is long past time for UNRWA to be disbanded. It's goal is supposed to be helping Palestinian refugees resettle. It is also deceptive for the UN changed the definition of refugee for Palestinians alone. UNRWA is perpetuating the problem and Palestinian refugees since 1948 have been cynically used by Arab governments and is now being used by Hamas and the Palestinian Authority.

Yet Hamas is not the only Palestinian group at fault. In 2005, shortly after the Israeli withdrawal from the Gaza Strip, I met with the chief of staff to the chairman of the Palestinian Authority, Mahmoud Abbas. My question to him: Now that we have uprooted thousands of Jews and empowered Gazans to be masters of their own fate, can we hope that within a year's time there will be fewer refugees in the camps? "Absolutely not," he said. "The refugees will be relocated only in the context of the final status [agreement]. How can we move them if we do not know where they will live? Maybe they will live in Israel."

In withdrawing from Gaza, Israel made painful concessions for peace by forcibly removing Jews from their homes. And yet even the Palestinian Authority, the most moderate among Palestinian political groups, would not consider easing their own people's plight in the wake of Israel's compromise. This is because the suffering of the refugees is essential to their broader political struggle.

How does the West respond to the obvious exploitation of Palestinian refugees? Soon after my meeting with Mr. Abbas's chief of staff, I met with the ambassador of one of the West's most enlightened countries. I asked: Why are the Palestinians not willing to help their own refugees? "I can understand them," he answered. "After all, they don't want the refugee problem to be taken off the agenda."

This reflexive "understanding" for the Palestinian leaders' abuse of their own people is the heart of the problem. For decades, the international community has actively assisted in building the terrorists' unique system of control -- over where Palestinians live and in what conditions, and over what they think -- by allowing terrorists to turn the refugee camps into the center of the Palestinian war machine. Instead of working to relieve the refugees' misery, the United Nations has dedicated an entire agency, UNRWA, to perpetuating it. For the rest of the world's refugees, the U.N. works tirelessly to improve their conditions, to relocate them, and to help them rebuild their lives as quickly as possible. With the Palestinians, the U.N. does exactly the opposite, granting refugee status to the great-grandchildren of people displaced in 1948, doing nothing to dismantle the camps, and acting as facilitators for the terrorists' goal of grinding an entire civilian population under their thumb. Nowhere on earth do terrorists get so much help from the Free World.

It is long past time for UNRWA to be disbanded. It is long past time for European and other countries to blindly stop the billions in aid money to the Palestinian Authority until all terror activity has stopped.

Not Turning the Other Cheek

I finished reading Jewish Literacy by Rabbi Joseph Telushkin this past Shabbat. It gives a brief outline of topics ranging from the Torah to the prayers we say during services. The section on antisemitism had a quote by Sigmund Freud. In it, he surmised that antisemitism exists because Jews are the moral conscience of the world. It is for this reason many hate us.

It caught my attention because I had been thinking about antisemitism for months and had come to the conclusion it was because we do serve as a moral compass. From the way we eat to the way we bury our dead and everything in between helps us to remember to love our neighbors. If we are to show compassion to the animals that are slaughtered for our food, how much more compassion should be shown to our selves and others?

Acts of loving-kindness are supposed to be at the center of our lives. We see this in action even as Israel once again finds it necessary to defend itself. While seeking out targets of the Hamas military infrastructure, leaflets are dropped to the civilian population letting them know to get out of the way. While tanks were being lined up before the start of the ground-offensive, trucks at other parts were loaded up with food, water, and medicine to be dispersed to the civilians in Gaza.

While Israel tries to warn the civilians in Gaza, the murdering terrorists in Gaza aim their Qassams, GRADs, and other missiles at Israeli schools, businesses, hospitals, and shopping malls. The terrorists don't care who they hit.

While we are commanded to acts of loving-kindness, we are also commanded to not stand by while another's blood is being spilled, to kill those who would kill you, and to seek justice.

Lebanon killed far more Palestinians couple of years ago and was very brutal in its actions against the Palestinian terrorists in refugee camps. They cut off water and electricity to the refugee camps, and yet there was no wide-spread condemnation of Lebanon.

And yet, Israel after finally doing something about the rockets aimed at its citizens for over ten years, is condemned by the UN and so many others. Israel is a sovereign nation and has the right to protect its citizens from cut-throat murderers. Hamas is a murderous band who takes joy in the slaughter of children. To try to defend them, as some newspaper columnists have done, because they may provide some social services should be morally repugnant to any decent mensch.

The only reason I can come up with the vitriolic hate against Israel is antisemitism. Hitler called Jews a cancer and now many say Israel is a cancer, some even stoop so low as to say Israel is as atrocious as Hitler. Iran has openly stated it will wipe Israel off the face of the earth. The Palestinian Authority says it wants peace with Israel and yet its maps do not show Israel, only Palestine from the River to the Sea. The United Nations uses the same flag when it holds its Palestinian Solidarity day, the same day when Israel accepted the UN terms and the Arab world swore to drive all the Jews into the sea.

Israel has made mistakes. Most Palestinians, like Israelis, want to live in peace. Peace will never be achieved as long as there are those who defend or try to justify the tactics of terrorists like Hamas. It is surprising and a hopeful sign that many countries such as Egypt place the blame on Hamas for the fighting now going on. This needs to be done on a consistent basis and then peace can be reached.

Let's Pretend

Shabbat Shalom!

Shomer