Stand for Israel

Sometimes a headline says it all

Ha'aretz: "Hamas: War will settle Jerusalem dispute, not talks"

Temple Mount heating up again

Heavy rioting despoiled the Temple Mount and areas around it over the weekend.

On Thursday, just prior to the latest outbreak of violence, Rabbi Eckstein wrote about how the Mount, "Described by Jewish tradition as God's dwelling place on earth...has today become a pawn used by cynical Palestinian leaders—used not to draw us closer to the Divine, but to inflame passions and foment troubles."

Read the whole piece here.

Major dig planned for Western Wall

Arutz Sheva:

Israel is planning a major archaeological dig under the Western Wall (Kotel) plaza, opposite the Temple Mount, officials announced Thursday. The excavations will create an archaeological park directly underneath the area where worshippers currently stand while praying at the Kotel.

The current prayer area will remain open, supported by pillars, while a new area will be added underneath, at the level at which worshippers at the ancient Temple stood in the past.

The dig may be met with harsh reactions from Muslim and Arab leaders in Israel and the Palestinian Authority, many of whom have accused Israel of attempting to damage the Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount. Jerusalem-area Muslims recently rioted for several days after it was rumored that “Jewish settlers” had planned to pray on the Temple Mount

"Human rights" group's founder zings it for unfair, inaccurate attacks on Israel

Robert Bernstein, the founder of Human Rights Watch, sadly writes in the New York Times that he has to distance himself from the group: HRW used to recognize the differences between open, democratic societies and closed, authoritarian ones, and knew that you cannot compare "abuses" in the two. Now, he says, HRW has cast aside the distinctions it used to make and is making a moral muddle:

Nowhere is this more evident than in its work in the Middle East. The region is populated by authoritarian regimes with appalling human rights records. Yet in recent years Human Rights Watch has written far more condemnations of Israel for violations of international law than of any other country in the region.

Israel, with a population of 7.4 million, is home to at least 80 human rights organizations, a vibrant free press, a democratically elected government, a judiciary that frequently rules against the government, a politically active academia, multiple political parties and, judging by the amount of news coverage, probably more journalists per capita than any other country in the world — many of whom are there expressly to cover the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

Meanwhile, the Arab and Iranian regimes rule over some 350 million people, and most remain brutal, closed and autocratic, permitting little or no internal dissent. The plight of their citizens who would most benefit from the kind of attention a large and well-financed international human rights organization can provide is being ignored as Human Rights Watch’s Middle East division prepares report after report on Israel.

Human Rights Watch has lost critical perspective on a conflict in which Israel has been repeatedly attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah, organizations that go after Israeli citizens and use their own people as human shields. These groups are supported by the government of Iran, which has openly declared its intention not just to destroy Israel but to murder Jews everywhere. This incitement to genocide is a violation of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.

Read it in its entirety here.

What part of "the only democratic state in the region" was unclear?

The BBC is marveling that there are Israeli Arabs in the Israeli army:

The traditional view of the Arab-Israeli conflict is of Jews fighting Muslims. But that image does not always reflect the truth.

In fact, there are thousands of Muslim Bedouin who serve in the Israeli army, or IDF, and even bear arms against their fellow Muslims in the occupied West Bank and Gaza.

Well, yeah. Israelis are always mentioning that their country is a democracy, and how all of its citizens enjoy equal rights... let's hope BBC news presenters will remember to point this out this next time some charlatan defames Israel as an "apartheid state."

(By the by, Israeli Arabs in the IDF include not just Bedouins, but also Druze and other Muslim and Christian Arabs.)

Bibi looking to tackle Israel's "brain drain"

A few years ago, economist Omer Moav published a study documenting Israel's "brain drain": the troublingly high rate of Israeli academics--PhDs and other highly educated types--leaving Israel for more lucrative positions abroad.

Now, Prime Minister Netanyahu has announced that he's trying to find ways to draw them back. (He charmingly stated that he plans to "vacuum-suck" them back.)

The problem may not seem severe but Moav showed that the problem is more than a statistical blip: Israel produces top-notch scholars, but loses them to other countries because Israeli universities cannot pay enough to keep them (they also may not offer enough time and resources to compete with conditions abroad).

When the "best and brightest" leave, Israel pays on a number of levels: economically, educationally, and in diminished morale. 

In a 2005 article from Yediot Aharonot on the topic, Prof. Eyal Winter of the Hebrew University described a recent visit to Cornell University in upstate New York: After Winter's lecture, a former student now studying at Cornell invited him to join her for a Rosh Hashana dinner with other Israelis. Winter recalled: 

I thought I was going to meet five or six Israelis, but I was amazed to find about 50 young Israelis in their thirties at the dinner. All of them were staff members at the university, or in the final stages of completing their dissertation, and all of them already had good job offers from leading universities in the U.S.

Netanyahu is proposing the creation of a special fund designed to lure back the top 300 Israeli scientists now doing research abroad.

UK to UN: Feh on Goldstone report

World Jewish Daily reports:

Britain on Thursday became the first Western country on the U.N. Human Rights Council to categorically reject the Goldstone report and any subsequent draft resolution, the Jerusalem Post reports.

"We can not endorse the report and can not vote for the resolution as tabled," diplomats stated while decrying the council's decision to hold a special session on the matter.

Earlier, the Palestinians submitted a five-page draft resolution aimed at condemning Israel for alleged human rights violations during recent clashes, including last winter's Gaza war.

Despite fierce criticism of the largely biased report from both U.S. and Israeli officials, the council is expected to eventually endorse the new resolution.

Read more in the Jerusalem Post.

Only in Israel: With a little help from Israel electric, a bride's wedding day is saved

The charming "Only in Israel" site tells the story of Ruchama Jaffe's imperiled wedding day a few years ago -- when the electric company scheduled a power outage to do some maintenance, which would make it impossible for the family to get ready for the nuptials at home.

Her mother, Bracha, called the power company and explained. Did they laugh? Nope. The manager, called Zion, sent workers out to see if they could keep supplying power to the Jaffe's building while cutting power to all the others in the area. It didn't seem possible.

"Not to worry," he told the mother-of-the-bride the next day. If they couldn't get them power, the electric company would provide them with a room in their building! Mrs. Jaffe asked if he'd ever seen a bride go to her wedding from the Electric Company.

“Actually, it’s happened before," he told her. (Only in Israel.)

In the end, Zion called and said he'd resolved the problem.

Jaffe explains: "So we get up bright and early on Sunday, and lo and behold, there is a generator parked right outside of our building. That’s right – our building  was hooked up to electricity all day from our own private generator while the rest of the neighborhood had a blackout!"

The family sent a hearty thank-you, along with photos of the bride.

Indeed, only in Israel does even the electric company have the opportunity to fulfill the prophetic vision that "there will be heard once more the sounds of joy and gladness, the voices of bride and bridegroom." (Jeremiah 33:10-11)

To Ruchama, her now-husband, Moshe, their families -- and the electric company, we wish Mazal tov!

 

(Ruchama Jaffe in her wedding dress with the electric company workers)

Israel's foreign ministry supplies flood aid to West Africa

In addition to its normal obligations, Israel's Foreign Ministry has a special department devoted to international aid. (Don't all governments routinely attacked by the United Nations devote serious resources to providing humanitarian aid and expertise to other countries, regardless of the state of their political relations with them?)

The department, known in Hebrew as "MASHAV"--working together with IFCJ partner organization, the JDC--just sent humanitarian aid to Burkina Faso, the West African state now facing a massive humanitarian crisis following heavy flooding that left hundreds of thousands of people homeless. Israel sent tents, blankets, medicine, and other supplies, including baby food.

PA: Obama squishy on promises to pressure Israel; Tobin: Nobel committee not.

The Associated Press is reporting that an internal Palestinian Authority document laments that Palestinian hopes in President Obama have "evaporated" following what Palestinians say is the administration's back-tracking on promises to pressure Israel.

Of course, the article noted, that it was "not immediately clear whether the October 12 document reflected Abbas's own views or was intended to be leaked as Fatah's attempt to pressure US President Barack Obama to bear down harder on Israel." Hmm.

Meanwhile, Commentary's Jonathan Tobin wonders whether the President's recently announced Nobel Peace Prize isn't a "down payment" to put more pressure on the Jewish state.