Ynet reports:
Two Israelis reach tallest point in the world as part of ‘Everest Climb for Peace’ expedition; one of them plants Israeli and Palestinian flags on summit as gesture to fellow Palestinian mountain climber who collapsed on way to top
Full story here
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Efrat Weiss reports over at ynet news:
Right-wing extremists hold mythical Kabbalistic ‘death curse’ against prime minister, exactly one year after identical ritual against then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
[...]
Exactly one year after carrying out a “Pulsa Denura,†an ancient Kabbalistic death curse, against former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Right-wing extremists held a similar ritual targeting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Channel 10 reported Tuesday.
[...]
On Sunday a group of Right-wing extremists arrived at the Har Herzl cemetery, and there by the grave of murdered Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, carried out a Pulsa Denura ceremony against Olmert.
These guys have remarkable timing don’t they?
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Jpost reports:
Eight species of invertebrate animals dating back millions of years that have been previously unknown to science have been discovered in Israel, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem announced Wednesday.The species, which have a “a new and unique ecosystem,” were discovered in a cave that was uncovered as a result of excavations in a quarry in the vicinity of the central Israeli city of Ramle.
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Breaking News:
WASHINGTON – The Senate voted to build 370 miles of triple-layered fencing along the Mexican border Wednesday
As Derrick Jackson wrote in The Boston Globe:
Bush is sending the Iraq-weary Guard to the border to mollify hardline conservatives who are building their careers around – whether they say this explicitly or not — a brown invasion from the south.
This brings up some questions – Why no fence on the Northern border – the one that has so many white people? Couldn’t Al Qaeda just as easily come from Canada if they wanted to? What about the East and Western coasts? Shouldn’t all the beaches have triple-layered fences too?
[Editor's Note] Ugh. I don’t support the title of this post. John knows it, and I’ve asked him previously to tone it down. I don’t think it’s fair to draw a comparison between Israel’s wall and the US’s proposed wall, and I don’t think it’s fair to call the separation barrier an “apartheid wall.” At least not yet… Let’s see how “convergance” pans out, and whether the Palestinians wind up with a state or a bantustan before we throw terms like that around. In the meantime, he was trying to crack an unfunny joke. He failed. That the same three right-wing commenters found themselves in the same tizzy they always find themselves in with regards to everything we write, is neither surprising nor alarming to me. If you’d prefer to look at half-naked Jewish women and read about why Palestinians are stupid, by all means, go spend your time elsewhere.
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Arutz Sheva reports:
Almost two-thirds of Israelis want the government to encourage Arabs to leave the country, according to a study by the Israel Democracy Institute.According to the preliminary summary of the 2006 Democracy Index, 62% of Israelis would like to see the government actively encourage Arabs to leave Israel. Last year, only 50% supported such a policy.
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Speaking with Arutz-7′s Hebrew newsmagazine, Professor Asher Arian, who conducted the survey, said he was not surprised by the support expressed for transfer. “This has been a stable sentiment in the Israeli Jewish public for many years,” he said. “The public is both cynical and very Zionist.”
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UPI/Washington Times editor Arnaud de Borchgrave, in The Middle East Times writes:
At Israel’s national day reception in Washington last week, an Israeli official, speaking privately and not for attribution said that he believed that Israel would strike first in the next “month or two or three” and that fighter bombers would not be involved as they were to take out Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor before it went critical in 1981.For Osirak, Israel used 14 F-15s and F-16s. This time, the Israeli said, it will be missiles.
And as long as we’re on the topic of WMD possessing states which make psychopathic allusions to wiping other states from the map – the Jerusalem Post reports:
Vice Premier Shimon Peres said Monday that “the president of Iran should remember that Iran can also be wiped off the map.”
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The mission of Brit Tzedek v’Shalom, the Jewish Alliance for Justice and Peace is to educate and mobilize American Jews in support of a negotiated two-state resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
The House of Representatives is scheduled to vote TUESDAY on HR 4681, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006, introduced by Reps. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) and Tom Lantos (D-CA). Though improvements have been made since its introduction, HR 4681 forfeits the U.S. role in bringing Israelis and Palestinians back to the negotiating table and directing them to a two-state resolution of the conflict. Its sanctions and restrictions weaken moderate pro-peace Palestinians and embolden extremists, tie the President’s hands in dealing with emergency security crises, and drastically cut critical US assistance to the Palestinian people. Call your Representative now!
[Update and background: Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006]
While there is no doubt that Hamas must renounce terrorism, recognize Israel, and abide by all previous agreements, this bill prevents the US government from dealing effectively with the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority and risks plunging Palestinian society into an even deeper humanitarian crisis.
For the past three months, Brit Tzedek supporters from across the country have been telling Members of Congress not to support this punitive legislation. The final vote is this week! Call your Representative today!
L’Shalom,
Steve Masters
Chair of Advocacy and Public Policy
Rob Levy
Washington Representative
Hi, this is [YOUR NAME] from [YOUR HOME TOWN]. As a constituent and an American Jew who supports Israel, I urge [YOUR REPRESENTATIVE] to VOTE NO on HR 4681, the Palestinian Anti-Terrorism Act of 2006.
This bill ties the President’s hands in dealing with Hamas, weakens moderate pro-peace Palestinians, and risks creating a humanitarian crisis in the Palestinian territories. This is not in the interests of the United States or Israel.
If possible, I’d like a written response regarding the Representative’s position. Thank you.
After you have called, please let us know at info@btvshalom.org
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“If there be time to expose through discussion the falsehood and fallacies, to avert the evil by the process of education, the remedy to be applied is more speech, not enforced silence..” — Justice Louis D. Brandeis
The Boston Herald reports:
Brandeis University [Named for the late Justice Louis D. Brandeis of the U.S. Supreme Court] officials removed from an exhibit in the school’s library images that depict Palestinian children bloodied and injured. The paintings by Palestinian teenagers were requested by Lior Halperin, an Israeli Jewish student at Brandeis who wanted to bring the Palestinian viewpoint to campus. But school officials say the paintings were too one-sided and they were removed four days into a two-week exhibit. Halperin calls the school’s action “outrageous.â€
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Writing in the Washington Post, Avner Cohen and William Burr present an article entitled “The Untold Story of Israel’s Bomb”. Cohen is a senior research fellow at the Center for International and Security Studies at the University of Maryland and author of “Israel and the Bomb“. William Burr is a senior analyst at the National Security Archive at George Washington University.
In the article, Cohen and Burr write:
[Y]et against contemporary values of transparency and accountability, the Nixon-Meir deal of 1969 now stands as a striking and burdensome anomaly. Israel’s nuclear posture is inconsistent with the tenets of a modern liberal democracy. The deal is also burdensome for the United States, provoking claims about double standards in U.S. nuclear nonproliferation policy.
Full Story at the Washington Post. (There is a longer version of the article at the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists)
Previous stories:
Nuclear News Round-up
Bombs Away
Americans want Israel held accountable for WMDs & Human Rights
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Ha’aretz reports:
Roger Waters, cofounder of Pink Floyd, has decided to relocate his Tel Aviv performance this summer in an expression of support for coexistence in Israel.The concert was set to take place at Hayarkon Park in Tel Aviv on June 22, and has been moved to Neveh Shalom*, a Jewish-Arab town next to Latrun.
Waters has expressed his opposition to the separation fence, but was subject to heavy criticism by Palestinians after he announced he was to perform in Israel.
Following conversations with spiritual leaders and Palestinian and Israel activists, Waters announced that the show would be moved to show solidarity with Israeli and Palestinian ‘voices of reason’ that are pursuing a nonviolent path to peace.
* (ne-vé shal-om / waah-at i-sal-aam: Hebrew and Arabic for Oasis of Peace [Isaiah 32:18]): A village in Israel established jointly by Jews and Palestinian Arabs of Israeli citizenship and engaged in educational work for peace, equality and understanding between the two peoples.
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Israel has proposed freeing a leader of the Palestinian uprising if the United States releases Jonathan Pollard, the former Pentagon analyst convicted of spying for the Jewish state, Army Radio reported Sunday.
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Army Radio quoted Israeli security officials as saying that the release of [Marwan] Barghouti, a leading figure in Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ Fatah Party, could help Fatah wrest power back from the Islamic militant group Hamas and restore stability on the Palestinian street.
If this is true, I am baffled – what exactly is supposed to be the motivation for the US ?
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ynet reports,
A group of ultra-orthodox hackers, shocked by the obscenity of some porn sites, has launched an internet campaign in a bid to cause such sites to crash. The hackers, already named at some internet forums the “ultra-orthodox sex commando,” or the “ultra-orthodox electronic underground,” focus their efforts at this point on Hebrew sites.The first target was the Hebrew porn site www.sexhack.tk – a mid-sized, not very popular site that features sex videos.
Those who tried logging in to the site found instead a photo of the Lubavitch Rabbi with the text: “We, the religious-net group, hacked into this site and erased all obscenities. The other sites we plan on bringing down are listed below.”
The hackers erased the explicit content and wrote that “the holy kabbalah warns that the sin of spilling sperm in vain is the cause for most diseases and misfortune!”
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ynet reports,
The bird flu outbreak in southern Israel is God’s punishment for the Gaza Strip and northern West Bank disengagement, National Jewish Front Chairman Baruch Marzel says.“You were punished by God and now you’ll have to ask for the forgiveness of Gush Katif residents,” Marzel wrote in a letter to southern residents whose communities were affected by bird flu.
[...]
“The kibbutz was used to house the expulsion headquarters because of greed, and therefore the bird flu outbreak happened there of all places,” the far right leader wrote in his letter to Ein HaShlosha kibbutz.
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“I should much rather see reasonable agreement with the Arabs on the basis of living together in peace than the creation of a Jewish State. Apart from practical considerations, my awareness of the essential nature of Judaism resists the idea of a Jewish State, with borders, an army, and a measure of temporal power, no matter how modest. I am afraid of the inner damage Judaism will sustain”
–Albert Einstein, in his 1938 talk to the National Labor Committee for Palestine [source]
Previous ‘Jewish thought of the day’ entries:
Steven Weinberg Nobel Prize-winning physicist
Erich Fromm psychologist and humanistic philosopher
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The Guardian reports:
The government is considering weakening laws designed to capture alleged war criminals and torturers who enter Britain, after pressure from the Israeli government, the Guardian has learned.The changes would bar individuals from seeking international warrants for the arrest of people suspected of serious human rights abuses. The government has confirmed that Israeli officials have lobbied for changes in the law, which has kept some of their military officials away from Britain in case there should be an attempt to arrest them.
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New York 1 News reports:
The fate of a 150-year-old Lower East Side synagogue hangs in the balance this morning after its roof collapsed yesterday afternoon.It’s not yet known if the First Roumanian-American Congregation [Congregation Shaarai Shomoyim], once called the Cantors’ Carnegie Hall, can be salvaged. No one was in the Synagogue at the time of the collapse.
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Satellite radio shock jock Howard Stern, whose long face, big nose, pointy chin and tangled curls gave him the perfect face for radio, admitted yesterday that he’s had not one, but two plastic-surgery procedures. [...] Stern weighed in yesterday with the confession that he had a nose job nine years ago — right after the filming of his movie, “Private Parts” — and liposuction not long after to suck out the waddle of fat under his chin.
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Marc Perelman reports in The Forward:
The Venezuelan Jewish community leadership and several major American Jewish groups are accusing the Simon Wiesenthal Center of rushing to judgment by charging Venezuela’s leftist president, Hugo Chávez, with making antisemitic remarks.Officials of the leading organization of Venezuelan Jewry were preparing a letter this week to the center, complaining that it had misinterpreted Chávez’s words [see page 18] and had failed to consult with them before attacking the Venezuelan president.
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Both the AJCommittee and the American Jewish Congress seconded the Venezuelan community’s view that Chávez’s comments were not aimed at Jews. All three groups said he was aiming his barbs at the white oligarchy that has dominated the region since the colonial era, pointing to his reference to Bolivar as the clearest evidence of his intent.
One official noted that Latin America’s so-called Liberation Theology has long depicted Jesus as a socialist and consequently speaks of gentile business elites as “Christ-killers.”
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