PM: Israel Ready to React 'Fiercely' if Syria Attacks

New Western Wall Plaza: 3 minute tour by Naftali Bennett

Here They Come -- By: Yori Yanover

Photo Credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Colby K. Neal The U.S. Navy guided missile cruiser USS Cape St. George (CG 71); the aircraft carrier USS Harry S. Truman (CVN 75); fleet replenishment oiler USNS Big Horn (T-AO 198); the guided missile destroyer USS Ross (DDG 71); the aircraft carrier USS Abraham Lincoln (CVN 72); and the guided missile cruiser USS Normandy (CG 60) cruise in formation under way in the Gulf of Oman. That’s a lot of firepower against one confused and already bloodied Syria. Wouldn’t want to be facing a group like this one. Imagine President Assad waking up Thursday morning with this bunch, possibly more of the same (there’s a whole lot where these came from) laid out off his favorite beach. These days you need nerves of steel to be a ruthless despot, I’m telling you.

Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/news/photos/here-they-come/2013/08/28/

Come Together and Rock Hashanana!

Crisis of Conscience: Anti-Semite Learns He's a Jew; What do you do when you learn you're the very thing you hated? CBN News reports from Budapest on one man's crisis and amazing transformation.

Iran Equips Army Units with a New Type of Advanced Suicide Drones...

This is Israel - Parliament Member, Pnina Tamano-Shata; Ethiopian Israeli Parliament Pnina Tamano-Shata tells of her family's incredible journey to Israel

Threats Facing Israel, Explained In One (sort Of Terrifying) Map

Threats and turmoil in the Middle East have collectively reached one of the highest peaks in recent history with no stopping or slowing in sight.

Chemical weapon use was confirmed by the Assad regime in the bloody civil war in Syria. In neighboring Lebanon, four rockets were launched by terrorists towards Israel. Hezbollah is dirtying its hands in both countries, aggressively participating in the Syrian civil war with troops and arms, and holding more than 70,000 rockets in Lebanon, all of which are hidden within civilian infrastructure and aimed at Israel.
On Israel’s southern border, Iranian-proxy Hamas holds more than 10,000 rockets. Hamas’ charter rejects a two-state solution and the legitimacy of a Jewish state and calls for Israel’s complete annihilation.
In the West Bank, radical forces opposing the Palestinian Authority and a culture of conflict generate strong anti-Israel incitement and hatred.
While we are conducting serious, intensive peace negotiations with the Palestinians, we continue to experience and witness a culture of conflict in the West Bank.
Throughout the region, including within Lebanon, Syria and Sinai, the growing presence and threat of global jihad elements is of deep concern.
And, as attention in the Middle East jumps from one hotspot to another, the public is losing sight of the greatest threat to international peace and security: Iran’s military nuclear program. Iran is developing its breakout capacity by stockpiling large quantities of low enriched uranium, expanding its ability to swiftly enrich uranium, and advancing a parallel plutonium track.
Some may say the map is alarmist. Undeniably, the map is our geopolitical reality, and we will be vigilant in protecting our people and our borders.
It’s because of these threats Israel is ever more committed to maintaining our existing peace agreements with Jordan and Egypt, and reaching an historic peace agreement based on the principle of two states for two peoples – Israel the nation-state and homeland for the Jewish people and an Arab Palestinian state as the homeland for the Palestinian people.
Israel and Israelis yearn for a peace that allows Israel to be able to invest in ourselves, building a better society for our children, and creating a prosperous future.

Jewish Lady Gaga Parody - Chagaga!! - Jewish (& Frum) Lady Gaga

Adon Olam - Cups (When I'm Gone) Pitch Perfect - Listen Up! Jew

NYT: From Italy, a Vintage Redolent of Horrors

COLLOREDO DI PRATO, Italy — Vini Lunardelli is no stranger to controversy. Every year, it seems, usually during the summer, a tourist will happen upon its wines with their outrageous labels and make a fuss that is then picked up by the local — and sometimes national and international — media.

This year, the fuss picked up some extra heft when it was raised by the Simon Wiesenthal Center. Infuriated by wine labels that portray Hitler and sundry members of the Nazi hierarchy, the Los Angeles-based Jewish human rights group called on distributors this month to stop handling Lunardelli wines.

Though Lunardelli has been selling Nazi-themed wines for 20 years, the once-idiosyncratic marketing device is even more intolerable these days, center officials said, with the rising incidence of anti-Semitism in Europe.

“What is the condition of Jewish life in Europe: is it getting better or worse? It’s getting much worse,” said Rabbi Marvin Hier, dean and founder of the Wiesenthal center, citing recent disturbing episodes in France, Greece, Hungary, Eastern Europe and Spain, where earlier this week a banner appeared at a bullfight with the slogan: “Adolf Hitler was right.”

“This is not a time where we can say we defeated anti-Semitism, we are being marginalized,” said Rabbi Hier. “This is not the time to drink wine with Hitler’s image. It’s an insult and the desecration of the memory of the Holocaust.”

But the winemakers believe they are doing nothing wrong.

“It’s history, not propaganda,” Andrea Lunardelli insisted during an interview on a warm August morning in his family’s modest wine cellar where a lone employee was busy attaching labels — Hitler giving the Nazi salute; a portrait of Hitler with his autograph; another portrait with the motto “Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer” (one people, one nation, one leader) — on bottles waiting to be boxed and shipped.

It is not just Hitler. The company offers about 30 Nazi-themed labels, including glorifying images of Himmler, Göring, Eva Braun and others.

Bottles with labels from what Mr. Lunardelli, the son of the company owner, Alessandro Lunardelli, describes as the “historical line of products” occupied a shelf on a wall. The discriminating buyer could choose among Mussolini, Lenin and Stalin, indicating that when it comes to despots, Lunardelli wines are equal-opportunity merchandizers.

“It’s pretty absurd because Hitler was a teetotaler,” said Mr. Lunardelli, who seems genuinely aggrieved that people might be upset about his wines, but is nonetheless unrepentant.

These products “are a way of not forgetting history and the monsters it produced, ensuring that they never return,” he said. At least the past had identifiable tyrants, he added. “Today’s monsters are faceless multinationals.”

Besides, Mr. Lunardelli said, “most people buy the bottles as a joke.”

But the labels are no laughing matter as far as Rabbi Hier is concerned. “Who does he think his customers are, people having fun?” he asked in a telephone interview from his office in Los Angeles. “People enjoy drinking the wine because it is in sync with their feelings about Jews.”

Anti-Semitism is growing, Rabbi Hier said, and “everywhere you find people inching up to tear down barriers against Nazism.” The wines are yet another example of this. “To me, it’s amazing that he can get away with it.”

To assuage criticisms of promoting fascism or Nazism, over the years, Lunardelli developed a historical and artistic range of products that produced some hits — Sissi, the Empress Elizabeth of Austria, the Mona Lisa — and many misses — Churchill, Napoleon, and even Dracula’s Blood, which all “sold very few bottles,” Mr. Lunardelli said.

Only Che Guevara popped corks when it came to leftist figures. But Mr. Lunardelli was forced to pull the plug after the widow of Alberto Korda, the photographer who took the well-known image of Che wearing a black beret, asked for 20,000 euros (about $27,000) and 15 percent on every bottle sold. “So we sent her all the unused labels,” Mr. Lunardelli said, a little wistfully.

Nazi bottles, he acknowledged, are among the company’s best sellers. “Eighty percent of the sales are Hitler,” he said, or around 20,000 bottles a year, about a quarter of Lunardelli’s total production, which consists mostly of table wines using local variety grapes.

For Fabio Bogo, who started a similar line of historical wines out of his home near Belluno in the Veneto region 13 years ago, the percentages are even higher. “Ninety-five out of every 100 bottles sold are Adolf,” he said, though a line featuring Dolomite peaks is also popular.

He says his business has been booming in recent years. “Perhaps the crisis makes people think that things were better when they were worse,” Mr. Bogo said, “but I suspect they didn’t live through, or remember, the past.”

Despite years of complaints about his labels, Mr. Lunardelli pointed out that the law was on his side. Several lawsuits and investigations by public prosecutors have failed to prove in court that the wines are an apologia for fascism or Nazism, which is against the law in Italy.

National legislation also bars Lunardelli from selling the Nazi-labeled wines in Austria and Germany, he said, though he believes that most people who buy these wines are from those countries, as well as from Eastern Europe.

He suspects that there is a brisk black market, with truckers moving boxes of wine over northern Italian borders, “but no one admits it,” he said.

Are the wines any good? At about $10 or $11 plus shipping and handling, they are not bargain basement bottles, and Mr. Lunardelli is proud of the historical wines he makes from a variety of local grapes.

Mr. Lunardelli, who claims to be apolitical, said he doesn’t mean to offend anyone, and tries to respond to every e-mail of complaint he receives. But for every critical message, he said, “I get 100 inquiring where to buy them,” even from the United States. “These wines sell.”

In downtown Udine, a pastry shop and knickknack shop displays the bottles — Hitler, but also Popes John XXIII and John Paul II — in the storefront window. “We see that most people buy them as a joke,” said the owner, Giuseppe Folegatto. “No one wants to exalt these figures. It’s just business.”

ELDER OF ZIYON: France: "The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the main issue" in the region

From WAFA:

President Mahmoud Abbas and his guest, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, agreed Saturday that regardless of the developments in the region, the Palestinian question remains the main issue and resolving it would contribute to peace and stability.

Abbas said after meeting Fabius that when he saw an opportunity to resume negotiations with Israel, he grabbed it without paying too much attention to what is going on in the region.

“When there was an opportunity to resume negotiations, we took it without looking at what was going on around us,” he said.

Fabius agreed that the opportunity of reaching a final peaceful settlement between the Palestinians and Israel is going to contribute positively to stability in the region.

“It is very important to move forward with negotiations because this will be great for peace and stability in the region,” he said.

‘The Israeli-Palestinian conflict remains the main issue and therefore it should be resolved peacefully,” he added.

He warned however that unless the negotiations move forward, the developments in the Arab countries could become an obstacle in their way.

He also described the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem as “illegal under international law.”

Which means that Fabius' understanding of international law is as tenuous as his grasp of the Middle East.

(Even if you believe that the WB is occupied, and even if you twist Geneva to be understood as if Jews building communities there were violating Geneva, it doesn't make the communities themselves illegal. Calling them illegal means that under international law, they must be dismantled and hundreds of thousands of Jews, including a significant number who were born in the area, must be ethnically cleansed. And no one, even the most anti-Israel legal scholar, seriously interprets international law that way. See this video starting at about 39:00.)

Here is a recent cartoon I saw on Twitter that shows the same mentality as Mr. Fabius:

David, MBD, Mendy, and Yisroel Werdyger at RCCS Dinner 2012

Yisroel Werdyger With Shira Choir - Moidim

Get Clarity: Aish.com's Rosh Hashanah Music Video

Comments of Dr. Holli Levitsky Director, Jewish Studies Program Associate Professor of English Loyola Marymount University of the Bernd Wollschlaeger, M.D. event Aug. 21, 2013 sponsored by Western Region of the American Committee for Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem in conjunction with the Men’s Club of the Sephardic Temple in Los Angeles

I am deeply honored to be here tonite to introduce this truly remarkable man.

Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger will tell you, in his own words, the story of his birth, his family, his determination to know his history, however painful, and to confront that history in the most personal and deliberate way.

I am here to provide you with some understanding of what those words mean. I would like to focus in particular on 3 issues of great concern historically, and personally for Bernd: 1) the postwar culture of silence about the atrocities committed during World War II that predominated in Germany and the rest of Europe, and in the United States as well, although I will only discuss Germany 2) the transmission of  trauma to the future generations, or what some scholars have called, the inheritance of a “haunting legacy”; and 3) the idea of healing, or redemption after the Shoah.
The reconstruction of Germany was a long process. It seemed there was no interest in talking about the devistating loss of a war and the atrocities committed under its government when the country needed to focus on housing,food, employment and other resources for its citizens..As soon as 1945, the Allied forces worked heavily on removing Nazi symbolism from Germany in a process dubbed as "Denazification.” Both the German Democratic Republic and Western Germany had their own agendas, and the military occupation of West Germany didn’t end until 1955, the same year it was allowed to join NATO. It wasn’t until 1973 that West Germany joined the United Nations, and finally in 1991, a unified Germany was allowed by the Allies of World War II to become fully sovereign, after signing the Treaty on the Final Settlement with Respect to Germany.
To be sure, the Germany of 2013 is vastly different than its postwar counterpart. The massive Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe in the center of Berlin was publically  discussed and planned for ten years before it could be built and given that lengthy name. Rabbinical and cantorial colleges have opened at Potsdam University, the first such academic seminary for rabbis and cantors in Continental Europe after the Shoah, and stands in the tradition of the Institute for the Scientific Study of Judaism which was closed down by the Nazis in 1942. Other German centers of higher education have re-embraced Judaism; the Abraham Geiger college is now a member of the World Union for Progressive Judaism and accredited by the Central Conference of American Rabbis. Jewish Studies programs have developed, or, in some cases, returned to major universities. Many cities and even small towns in Germany have built public memorials to their displaced and murdered Jewish citizens. Sadly, anti-Semitism has not disappeared, nor has the Jewish population increased significantly. But German citizens and communities are now free to deeply confront and process publically the extent of the atrocities without fear, and begin to understand how much was lost.
Historians have long understood that the pervasive silence that weighed on Germany after the war was born of many things. Germany was a war-torn nation struggling to rebuild itself on the embers of a shame-filled loss which no one wanted very much to talk about. Raised on that landscape of silence, it was impossible for the postwar generation to know very much—or even anything at all--about the facts of the Shoah, let alone to deeply confront and process the  extent of the terrible deeds perpetrated by their own families, neighbors, friends, and fellow German citizens.We know from history that collective shame and guilt cannot, finally, be escaped. Even if it’s not addressed in the lifetime of the perpetrators, it will be transmitted to the children and to future generations. The more the acknowledgement of shame and guilt in Germany was silenced in public debates, the more they migrated into the psyche and the cultural unconscious. For the generation of perpetrators, the knowledge of the Holocaust was relegated to a “tacit knowledge” that became taboo in public debates in any but the most superficial ways. For the postwar generation, it became something like a national secret, only to be revealed as brute fact, in the cold abstraction of history lessons. For many decades, there was virtually no public forum for anything like a discussion of this national history.
There is a wide range of defensive reactions against the knowledge of belonging to a family—and nation—of perpetrators. One of them is to remain frozen in guilt and shame; another is to remain lost in denial.

Indeed, it was the German war generation that after the war coined the term, “inner exile,” to signify an illusory escape from their complicity with, if not excuse for, the Nazi atrocities, whether as active participants or as bystanders. Most Germans simply went on with their lives. But what about their children? What happened to them once the culture of silence was breached? DId they inherit the “inner exile” of their parents’ generation? For many Germans of the second-generation, the “inner exile” of their parents became for them a condition of impossible national belonging, that is, being German but not wanting to be German and thus associated with the crimes of the past.
Yet, given that background, Bernd’s story is not what you might expect--that of a second-generation German who runs from his own culture, internalizing the guilt of the perpetration through shame and self-hatred, or even denial, at the same time feeling as if he will never belong to another culture.What makes Bernd’s story so unique is the way he made this history, this legacy personal. He didn’t abandon his culture so much as seek out a righteous space within it.
One might say that Bernd will share with you a haunting legacy. Why is it a “haunting legacy?” It is haunting because he was born in the shadow of all that we know about the violent history of World War II and the Shoah, the murderous campaign and attempted genocide against the Jews of Europe as perpetrated by the German National Socialist government under Adolf Hitler.

It is also haunting because it is Bernd Wollschlaeger’s personal history, an experience of transgenerational trauma shared with many others of that post-war generation, children of Jews and children of Germans.  The bigger question raised by Bernd’s life trajectory is how he became the person he is today: from German to Israeli and American citizen, teacher, healer, repairer of the world. Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger is the kind of man who defines history rather than letting history define him.

Shimon Craimer "Mi Adir & Mi Bon Siach"

JEWISH PRESS: Weeping for Jerusalem; The story was about a mother who lost her husband and eleven of her children in Auschwitz. By: Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/judaism/rebbetzins-viewpointrebbetzin-jungreis/weeping-for-jerusalem/2013/08/22/

I’m in Jerusalem, the city every Jew should be in love with. The world has become a very small place; in the blink of an eye we can cross continents. We belong to the generation that can visit so many cities, so many villages, so many vacation sites. After a while we become immune to them all. But Jerusalem is different. If you are a Jew, Jerusalem is in your blood. It’s a city engraved upon your heart. Centuries ago Yehuda HaLevi wrote, “My heart is in the East while I am in the West.” No matter where life has taken us, our hearts have forever remained in the East, in Jerusalem. When I was a little girl in Hungary I may not have known where Paris or Rome was but I did know the location of Jerusalem. My parents of blessed memory, HaRav HaGoan Avraham HaLevi Jungreis, zt”l, and Rebbetzin Miriam Jungreis, a”h, nurtured us with the milk and honey of Yerushalayim. Nowadays, few still thirst for that sweetness. And yet, with all the distractions of modern life, Yerushalayim tugs at our hearts. I just saw with my own eyes and heard with my own ears the veracity of this connection between the Jew and this Holy City. I was speaking at the Great Synagogue. There was no spare seat to be had and despite the lateness of the night people kept coming. Many lingered after I finished my speech. Some sought advice and guidance. Others just wanted to talk. Above all they asked for berachos – for shidduchim, for health, for sustenance. And then a tall, lovely, blond-haired girl stood before me. She was crying. Something prompted me to ask, “Are you Jewish?” Her voice cracking with tears, she whispered, “I’m a convert. I came to Yerushalayim to become part of the Jewish people.” She explained that she came from a country where Jews had been beaten and tortured and maimed and killed during the Holocaust. But her soul whispered the message, “Go, join the people who stood at Sinai; go to Jerusalem!” I naturally assumed she sought a blessing for a good shidduch. “No, no,” she protested, “that’s not why I’m here. You just related a story that entered my soul. Please bless me with the ability of not forgetting.” And then she repeated one of the stories I had told in my address. The story was about a mother who lost her husband and eleven of her children in Auschwitz. She made aliyah but still had no peace. She couldn’t sleep. She couldn’t work. She couldn’t come to terms with her fate. She sought out a rebbe – perhaps he would offer her some consolation. She spilled out her heart and described each and every one of her children. The rebbe listened and wept with her. And then he said something amazing. “I think I saw someone among the newly arrived children now settled in a kibbutz who fits the description of your Dovidl.” The rebbe told her he would try to trace the lineage of that child. A few days later the rebbe called. “I may have some good news for you,” he said. Heart pounding, she returned to the rebbe’s home – and there was her little boy. “Dovidl, Dovidl,” she shouted. “Mama, mama,” he sobbed as he ran into her arms. When the little boy caught his breath he asked a painful question. “Where is my father? Where are Moishele and Rochele?” As Dovidl enumerated the names of all his brothers and sisters, he and his mother cried uncontrollably. They continued to weep long into the night. As I told that story, I remarked to the audience that it occurred to me that Dovidl’s children and grandchildren have no memory of those who preceded them. Similarly, we come to Israel, rush off the plane, pick up our luggage and make our way to Jerusalem. And what do we think about? We’re busy asking ourselves and each other, “Where is a good place to eat?” “Any new restaurants around?” “Did you try out that new hotel?” “Is it worth it the price?” But do any of us ask, “Where is the Beis HaMikdash?” Does anyone really miss the Beis HaMikdash? Does anyone search for it? Does anyone even think about it? Does anyone even want to remember? The girl who stood before me begged with tears, “Please, Rebbetzin, give me a berachah that I should never forget to cry for the Beis HaMikdash. I’m so afraid I will forget and become oblivious to its loss. I do not want to be like Dovidl’s children.” I could only look at her. She had taken my breath away. I couldn’t recall anyone ever asking me for such a berachah – to be able to remain constantly aware of the Beis HaMikdash and, yes, to weep for it. For thousands of years we prayed, wept and hoped for Yerushalayim. To see Yerushalayim again, to behold the rebuilt Beis HaMikdash, has always been the center of all our prayers. At our weddings, in the midst of our joy, we break a glass to remember our Temple that is no more. When painting our homes we would leave a small spot empty to remind us that no home can be complete if the Beis HaMikdash has not been rebuilt. We have a thousand and one reminders in our prayers, in our traditions, in our observance, that constantly recall to us Jerusalem and the Holy Temple. And yet, now that we have Jerusalem again we have somehow forgotten our dream – our Beis HaMikdash that we prayed for and continue to pray for. Sadly, our prayers for the Temple have become just words recited by rote. And here comes a young woman new to our faith and she seeks a blessing not for shidduch, not for parnassah, not for good health, nor for personal happiness – but for the ability to shed tears and yearn to see the Beis HaMikdash rebuilt. Should that not give us all pause? Should that not make us think and consider? Should we not ask again and again and still again, “Where is the Beis HaMikdash?” I miss it so. I’m in Jerusalem but the shinning crown of the Holy City is absent and my joy cannot be complete until I see its glory restored.

Read more at: http://www.jewishpress.com/judaism/rebbetzins-viewpointrebbetzin-jungreis/weeping-for-jerusalem/2013/08/22/

Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger

Dr. Bernd Wollschlaeger is the son of a Nazi tank commander in Hitler's army. Upon finding out about his father's past he moved to Israel, joined the IDF, marrried a Jewish woman and converted, himself. This program was put on at Congregation Beth Tefillah in Atlanta, GA January 13, 2013

Cantor Ushi Blumenberg & Yedidim Choir Sing "U'vashofar"

Chazan Ushi Blumenberg Sings "U'vashofar" A Yossi Green Composition Recorded By Dudu Fisher On His "Letav Ulechayin Velishlam" Album Released In 1997, Accompanied By Yedidm Choir Conducted By Dudi Kalish, At The Cruise for Cause Fundraising for Yeshiva Talpios in Monsey NY On August 5 2013. A Gershy Moskowitz Production

Conan's band leaves for Seder

YWN: Sanz Klausenberg Rebbi Shlita at Maran Ovadia Yosef

The Sanz-Klausenberg Rebbe USA Shlita is visiting in Eretz Yisrael. The rebbe on Monday evening 13 Elul 5773 visited Har Nof to pay a visit to Maran HaGaon HaRav Ovadia Yosef Shlita.

The rebbe was greeted with warmth by the Gadol Hador. The two spent a few minutes exchanging divrei Torah. The rebbe told R’ Ovadia that his father the Bal HaShefa Chaim ZT”L gave a shiur in which he expressed his profound pain on the machlokes that exists between Ashkenazim and Sephardim, adding the late rebbe said “Avraham Avinu was from Aram Naharayim – he was Sephardi”.

Rav Ovadia gave the rebbe a copy of his soon-to-be-released new sefer Chazon Ovadia on Halachos pertaining to trumos and maasros. The rebbe added that he feels himself a talmid of the rav, learning from his seforim daily.

ANNE SAMSON, a”h

It is with the utmost sorrow that we mourn the loss of an exemplary woman who was a true role model of kindness and chesed to her friends, her family and her community.   Known for the bright smile that constantly radiated from her face, Anne epitomized the mitzvah of hachnasat orchim. Together with her husband Lee, she was deeply committed to countless charities, both in the United States and Israel.  As Platinum Founders of Shaare Zedek Medical Center in Jerusalem, the Samsons have made a tremendous difference for patients struggling with digestive diseases.  We extend our heartfelt condolences to her husband Lee, their children, Dani, Aliza and Tali, their grandchildren and the entire extended family. May the entire family and the entire community be comforted amongst the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Murray Laulicht, President

Menno Ratzker, Chair

Prof. Jonathan Halevy, Director-General, SZMC

Paul Jeser, West Coast Regional Director

Anne Samson, philanthropist, 66

http://www.jewishjournal.com/obituaries/article/anne_samson_philanthropist_66

Anne Samson (née Katz) was born in 1947 in a displaced persons camp in Salzburg, Austria. Her parents, Emil and Eva Katz, were Holocaust survivors from Hungary who lost most of their family members in Auschwitz, where Eva was a slave laborer. In 1949, Anne and her parents immigrated to Los Angeles, where her brothers Ernest and Sammy were born. Anne grew up in the Bnei Akiva youth movement and attended Camp Moshava every summer, where she met the love of her life, Lee Samson. The couple married in 1966 and spent the months following the Six-Day War volunteering in Israel.

After completing college and working as a legal secretary, supporting Lee in his communal responsibilities as he developed the West Coast Region of NCSY, Anne dedicated herself to raising her children: Dani, Aliza and Tali. Anne was always a devoted mother, daughter and sister, putting family responsibilities above all else.

Anne had a beautiful voice and loved harmonizing with her husband and children around the Shabbat table. She enjoyed the arts, and worked with Lee in designing and building a beautiful home that was always open to guests and philanthropic organizations, including the Simon Wiesenthal Center, the Kiryat Shmona Hesder Yeshiva, Young Israel of North Beverly Hills and countless others.

A very modest and selfless individual, Anne never sought the limelight, but together with Lee she worked quietly behind the scenes in supporting the many synagogues, communal organizations and politicians that reflected their love of Israel and the Jewish people. With Lee’s parents and siblings moving to Israel, as well as two of their children and 10 grandchildren, Anne and Lee were regular visitors and established a beautiful home in Jerusalem. They nurtured friendships with President Shimon Peres, Mayor Nir Barkat and members of the Knesset.

Adherence to Jewish tradition and observance was something that was very dear to Anne and Lee, with all of their children and 17 grandchildren continuing in their traditional ways. Anne loved the Jewish holidays and her holiday gatherings of friends and family included her superb cooking and hospitality.

Anne was devoted to her husband, children, grandchildren, extended family and friends. She never said a harsh word about anyone, and was always there to help everyone in need. After a day spent playing with her visiting grandchildren on the beach, and a romantic dinner with her husband, Anne and Lee were involved in a catastrophic car accident that ultimately claimed her life. May her memory be a blessing for her family and all who knew and loved her.

Israel’s Heroic Restraint; They routinely put their own security at risk to protect innocents — and prospects of peace. By Deroy Murdock

Tel Aviv — Israel routinely gets crucified by its enemies, not least for the behavior of the Israeli military. The Jewish state’s reckless soldiers eagerly spill Arab blood, as if for sport. Or so the story goes.

Kuwaiti officials accuse the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) of “intentional killing, intentional destruction of civilian objects, intentional scorched-earth policy.” Pakistani authorities complain that the “horrors of Israeli occupation continue to haunt the international community’s conscience.”

“The IDF faces a challenge,” according to Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British forces in Afghanistan and an outside expert on the IDF’s strategy and tactics. “It is the automatic, Pavlovian presumption by many in the international media, and international human rights groups, that the IDF are in the wrong, that they are abusing human rights.”

If Israel’s critics would calm down and face facts, they would be astonished by the IDF’s efforts to reduce or eliminate civilian casualties through its policy of military restraint.

Captain O (as I was asked to call him) is stationed at the Dov Air Base just north of Tel Aviv, in the shadows of a huge power plant. The serviceman recently discussed this topic with a delegation of U.S. journalists who visited here on a fact-finding mission sponsored by theAmerica-Israel Friendship League. Captain O is a charming Israeli with British-born parents, medium-brown hair, and blue eyes. The surprising result looks and sounds like a twentysomething, Jewish Jude Law in a pilot’s uniform.

A flying camel is the logo of the 100 Squadron of the Israeli Air Force, headquartered on this base. “In 1947, the Arabs said Israel will have an air force the day camels grow wings,” Captain O smiles. The warplanes that fill the sun-drenched tarmac nearby more than answer those Arab skeptics.

Dov specializes in aerial surveillance and real-time visual intelligence to support other operational assets. The 100th flies U.S.-made Bonanza A-36 aircraft retrofitted for military use.

“We will do almost anything to prevent killing or hurting civilians,” Captain O says inside a small, spartan briefing room. “We try to pinpoint our targets. We destroy the rocket launchers, but avoid the kindergarten. We spend time and money to do this.”

Last November’s Operation Pillar Defense involved some 1,500 targets. Independent of Israel’s Iron Dome anti-missile shield, the goal of Pillar Defense was to foil the Palestinian rockets that rained down from the Gaza Strip onto southern Israel and, eventually, the outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. Gaza is controlled by Hamas, a radical Islamofascist terrorist group that enforces sharia law.

The preamble of the Covenant of the Islamic Resistance Movement (Hamas’s official name) states: “Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it.” According to Article 7 of the covenant, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Muslims fight Jews and kill them.” Article 13 also is instructive: “There is no solution for the Palestinian problem except by jihad. Initiatives, proposals, and international conferences are but a waste of time, an exercise in futility.”

Before the IDF hit Hamas-operated targets, it scrutinized them to protect the safety of non-combatants.

“Our goal,” Captain O says, is to assure that “no innocent civilians are hurt.”

This objective is complicated severely by the fact that Hamas routinely locates its weapons among civilians, for reasons discussed below. It does so in total violation of the Geneva Convention and some 700 years of the just-war tradition.

Amid these difficulties during Pillar Defense, the IDF aimed to blast a residential building in Gaza that it believed contained ammunition. While the IDF simply could have bombed the joint, it took multiple steps to protect Palestinian civilians.

 First, IDF aircraft released leaflets in the area to tell people that the building would be smashed from above, and that they should evacuate. This tactic also was employed in 2009’s Operation Cast Lead, a similar campaign to stop Hamas’s missiles.

“The Israelis dropped a million leaflets warning the population of impending attacks and phoned tens of thousands of Palestinian households in Gaza urging them in Arabic to leave homes where Hamas might have stashed weapons or be preparing to fight,” Great Britain’s Colonel Kemp said of that operation. “Similar messages were passed on in Arabic on Israeli radio broadcasts.” He added: “When possible, they left at least four hours’ notice to civilians to leave areas designated for attack, an action that handed a distinct advantage to Hamas.”

 Second, in case anyone thought the Israelis were bluffing, the IDF signaled that they were serious. Their method is called “Knock on the Door.” It involves dropping a small, low-impact bomb on the roof of the targeted building. This tells people the IDF is not kidding and will return soon to take care of business.

 Third, once it was empty, the IDF bombed the building, and Hamas’s weapons were rendered harmless.

Hamas, Captain O says, gives Gazans a totally different message: Rather than encourage these civilians to flee, Hamas tells them that it is their Islamic duty to remain in their apartments and become martyrs. Thus, Hamas tries to use innocent men, women, and children as human shields. If this successfully prevents Israel from neutralizing ammunition dumps, bomb factories, and rocket launchers, all the better for Hamas. And if Israel bombs such facilities and wounds or kills civilians, Hamas can wheel in the compliant and sympathetic global media to document the latest example of “Israeli atrocities.”

Journalists should tell the world about cases of Israeli mercy, such as its plan to take out a Hamas transmissions tower in Gaza. As a black-and-white airborne surveillance video played by Captain O clearly shows, the antenna was near a field where young Palestinian men were playing soccer. So the Israeli pilots waited until the soccer field was empty. Once the risk of injuring or killing these Palestinians had passed, the Israeli aircraft demolished the Hamas transmitter.

“As far as the IDF is concerned,” Captain O says, when it comes to acceptable civilian casualties, “it’s no women, no children.”

According to Chicago-born IDF captain Eytan Buchman, the IDF’s tear-gas guns feature crosshairs in their scopes. This allows Israeli soldiers to aim at the legs of protesters, rather than at their heads or anywhere else where the IDF might inflict debilitating, permanent, or fatal injuries. It also uses “skunk water” to disperse crowds. While this reeks, it is not lethal.

Meanwhile, Captain O shows another video. It captures two young Gazan men strolling along a rural path. They turn left and enter what appears to be an olive grove. Perhaps 50 yards from the road, they step right up to a rocket launcher, hidden among the trees. They lift a tarp, examine the weapon it covers, re-conceal it, and then walk away.

At this point, one expects the video to show an air-to-ground missile blow to smithereens both the deadly projectile and the two men who seemed to know exactly where it was, despite its hidden location.

Instead, the IDF’s aircraft wait until the men have returned to the road and drifted away. Once they reach a safe distance, the IDF annihilates the target.

Why not pull the trigger sooner and eliminate both the murderous missile and what appear to be two terrorists who dutifully checked in on it?

“There is a chance they were innocent,” Captain O says.

Such institutionalized caution led Colonel Kemp to tell the U.N. Human Rights Council the following in October 2009: “Based on my knowledge and experience, I can say this: During Operation Cast Lead, the Israeli Defense Forces did more to safeguard the rights of civilians in a combat zone than any other army in the history of warfare.”

While admirable on many levels, such trigger shyness also seems borderline suicidal. Not only is Israel not as reckless as her enemies claim; the IDF likely lets some terrorists live to kill another day.

Israel’s attempts to limit civilian bloodshed also contrast severely with Hamas, which heaves missiles onto playgrounds full of Jewish schoolchildren. In the town of Sderot, Israeli kids hear alarms when rockets are en route. At one such facility, they have just 15 seconds to dash into a giant concrete caterpillar. It looks festive — but actually is a cheerfully painted bomb shelter. 

In all, Hamas’s rockets can slam any of 994,000 Israelis within 60 seconds of their launch in Gaza.

Given Hamas’s disdain for human life, why doesn’t the IDF scrap the warning flyers and “knocks on the door” and just let its bombs rip?

“We won’t be able to live with these people if we just butcher them,” Captain O says. He makes a fascinating point. Putting aside for a moment America’s benevolent occupation of Japan after World War II, the U.S. did detonate atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It then shipped the vast majority of its soldiers back home, all the way across the Pacific. Most Americans gave Japan little thought until Datsuns, Mazdas, and Toyotas arrived in the mid 1970s.

Israelis lack that luxury. They must stay put, with the Palestinians right next door and their Arab and Muslim cousins inside Israel, as citizens of the Jewish state. As such, the IDF’s military moderation is as much about co-existing with its neighbors tomorrow as it is about enduring them today.

As Captain O states: “We’re striving for peace.”

— Deroy Murdock is a Manhattan-based Fox News Contributor, a nationally syndicated columnist with the Scripps Howard News Service, and a media fellow with the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and Peace at Stanford University. Murdock visited Israel on a media tour sponsored by the America-Israel Friendship League.

"Tears in Heaven" from Jerusalem (uncut)

The Breslev Brothers (Arye & Gil) touch the neshama with musical interpretations at Zion Square, Jerusalem. Subscribe free for updates at http://www.YouTube.com/ClipsNBlips or @ClipsNBlips Twitter

Appreciation: Arye & Gil, reachable at BreslevBrothers@gmail.com
Eric Clapton, for a heartfelt song following the death of his 4-year old son in 1991.

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong
And carry on
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

Would you hold my hand
If I saw you in heaven?
Would you help me stand
If I saw you in heaven?

I'll find my way
Through night and day
'Cause I know I just can't stay
Here in heaven

Time can bring you down
Time can bend your knees
Time can break your heart
Have you begging please
Begging please

Beyond the door
There's peace, I'm sure
And I know there'll be no more
Tears in heaven

Would you know my name
If I saw you in heaven?
Would it be the same
If I saw you in heaven?

I must be strong
And carry on
'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

'Cause I know I don't belong
Here in heaven

Read more: Eric Clapton - Tears In Heaven Lyrics | MetroLyrics 

Whispers of 9-11 by Steve Lipman Inside the World Trade Center on that fateful day, Ari Schonbrun saw miracles

On the morning of September 11, 2001, Ari Schonbrun, who was headed to his office at Cantor Fitzgerald in the World Trade Center where he is in charge of global accounts receivable, considered a last-minute assignment from his wife to be an annoyance.

It turned out to be a miracle.

At the door of his home in suburban Long Island, Schonbrun heard his wife, Joyce, yell from upstairs, "Did you do Baruch's school order?"

Baruch is the couple's then-8-year-old son. His order form for school books and games was due that morning. Schonbrun had meant to help Baruch with it the previous night – but, working late that Monday night to make up for time he would miss during the upcoming High Holidays, he'd arrived home by the time Baruch had fallen asleep.

"You're not leaving the house until you do it," Schonbrun's wife declared.

He sat down with Baruch.

He missed his commuter train.

He got to work later than usual.

His office was located on the 101st floor of the north tower, better known as Tower One. When American Airlines flight 11, a Boeing 767 crashed into Tower One, he was on the 78th floor, changing elevators in the "sky lobby."

Schonbrun says his late arrival at the Twin Towers was the first of several serendipitous twists of fate, coincidences that he has come to see as miracles which saved his life. All 685 Cantor Fitzgerald employees on the 101st floor that day lost their lives.

Had he arrived on time, as usual, had he been in his office, as usual, he would have been the 686th casualty of Cantor Fitzgerald, the major global financial services firm that lost more employees on 9-11 than any other single business.

Schonbrun, now 56, thinks often about that day – more now, with the anniversary of 9-11 approaching.

"I was plucked out of a burning building and given a second chance," he says, sitting in a café on Manhattan's Upper East Side, near Cantor Fitzgerald's new corporate offices.

He has a new title, director of debt capital markets & asset management at Cantor Fitzgerald, where he has worked for two decades.

On the outside, he looks like he did before 9-11: tall, clean-shaven, casually but neatly dressed, pausing to choose the words before telling the story he has told countless times in the dozen years since the Twin Towers fell. Just one visible difference: his sideburns have turned white. "That happened immediately," he says. Overnight – from the shock of what happened that Tuesday morning.

Inside, Schonbrun is a different man. "I don't see my life the same way, and can no longer live it the same way I once did."

Schonbrun speaks often about what happened on 9-11 and how it changed his life. As an outgrowth of his speeches, he wrote a 9-11 autobiography, Miracles & Fate on 78, which he self-published two years ago.

Down the Stairwell

8:46 a.m. Ari Schonbrun was on the 78th floor when he heard the boom and smelled the smoke. He thought it was a bomb.

In the hall, dark and filled with smoke, he saw a coworker, Virginia DiChiara, an internal auditor, who was badly burned. "Please help me!” she screamed. “I am in so much pain. Please help me and whatever you do, please don't leave me."

"Virginia," Schonbrun said, "I promise I will help you, and I promise I won't leave you. We will get out of here.”

A fire warden directed them to the "stairwell on the left." Schonbrun slowly led DiChiara, who could not be touched because her burns were so painful, down the only staircase that led directly down to the ground floor exit. The other staircases ended earlier, on floors crowded with hundreds of people also looking to escape the flames and smoke.

"You're going to make it," he reassured his colleague. "If you feel faint, Virginia, fall forward, fall on me."

DiChiara kept on walking.

At the 75th floor, Schonbrun heard his cell phone ring. It was his wife. She started crying when her husband answered. Joyce knew that a plane had hit her husband's building. "She did not know if I was still alive," he says.

"I never got reception in my office, even on a regular day," he says. On the morning of 9-11, the call went through from the stairwell. "That was one of the biggest miracles of that day. I turned to shamayim [heaven], and said 'Thank you.'"

A moment later a man in the stairwell asked to borrow the cell phone. "Of course," Schonbrun said.

"Nothing. The signal was now dead."

"At least my wife knew that I was alive," Schonbrun says, "and as strange as it may seem, given what was going on, that gave me great comfort.”

At the 50th floor, DiChiara began to tire. "Virginia, you can do this," he told her. He poured some bottled water into her mouth and over her arms, to give her some relief from the pain.

To boost her spirits, he began counting down the floors they passed. He lied to her: "You look great."

It kept her going.

Finally, they reached the first floor.

A fire warden there told them they would have to walk down a few more flights and exit through the building's garage. Down two flights, out of the darkness, a voice shouted, "You can't get out through the garage." Schonbrun and DiChiara and the others with them trudged back to the first floor and walked out. Anyone in the garage when the building collapsed several minutes later would have died.

Across the street, in front of the Millennium Hotel, Schonbrun helped his colleague into an ambulance. headed for St. Vincent's Hospital. Schonbrun, knowing that DiChiara was in good hands, started to walk away.

"Ari, you're coming with us!" DiChiara insisted.

Thinking that it would probably be a good thing for her psychologically, Schonbrun acquiesced.

"This," he says, "was how I was driven away from my own, otherwise certain, death."

The Towers collapsed minutes later; few at the site survived.

Virginia, who has since recovered, "thanks me every day for saving her life," Schonbrun says. "But I always tell her, 'Virginia, you got it all wrong. Who saved whose life? If you hadn't insisted that I get in that ambulance, I'd be dead.'"

"Against all odds," he says, "I somehow managed to escape without a single scratch. Somebody, obviously, was watching out for me that day."

Mission to Survive

Eventually, he left the hospital, walking north.

On a borrowed phone, he called DiChiara's parents, telling them that their daughter was badly burned but still alive.

Then he reached his wife, who was crying. "Tower One collapsed and I thought you were dead," she said.

The last time they had spoken, Schonbrun was on the 75th floor of his burning building. "When it collapsed and she hadn't heard from me again, she was convinced that I was now dead. She had been trying to figure out how she was going to tell our children that Daddy was killed."

Because of the goodness of strangers and friends, Schonbrun made his way home, by subway and taxi, by early evening. He was greeted at home by 20 people, friends concerned about his fate; on his answering machine, at least 100 messages.

"That day I learned something very important," he says. "You have no idea how many friends you really have until they all think you are dead."

He washed up, went to afternoon Mincha services at his synagogue, and recited the HaGomel prayer of thanks that is usually reserved for Torah-reading days.

Early that next morning, a radio reporter called from Israel for an interview.

Within a week, Schonbrun found himself speaking to individuals and audiences about his 9-11 experience. "I didn't think my story was anything special," he says. But everyone else did. You survived for a reason, everyone told him, “You have a mission. What is it?"

He realized his mission: to tell about how he survived, “to describe what God did for me," and how it changed him.

Permanent Change

A native of New York City who moved in his teens with his family to Israel. Schonbrun has always been an observant Jew.

"But despite my daily rituals built around my devotion to God, there were times when I lost sight of what was really important," he writes in his book. "Was I truly aware of what I was doing through of all these practices, or was I just going through the motions most of the time? Did I just do the minimum that was required and find convenient excuses not to attend one more study session or concentrate more on the words of my prayers?"

Everything changed, Schonbrun says, after 9-11.

Just as he can list the miracles that happened to him on 9-11, he can list the changes he has made in his life:

No more cursing. Co-workers who use foul language "don't use foul language around Ari's desk."

No more talking in shul during davening time. Previously, "I talked in shul like everyone else."

No excuses when his kids ask him to come to their school events. Earlier, he'd answer, "Daddy's got to work." Today, he'll take time off for a school play, a school trip – anything involving his children. "Now family is the most important thing in my life."

Less temper. "I don't get upset over small things."

More time for Jewish learning.

And he doesn't miss daily prayers, three times a day, with a minyan.

Formerly, when he prayed, it was to make a living. Now, he prays for his children, "that my children should be good children."

Is he a happier now? "100 percent," he says.

The changes he made more than a decade ago are still part of his life, he says, because they "happened gradually, over time." He didn't try to incorporate any sudden changes overnight.

In his book and speeches, Schonbrun offers some advice. Recognize the "hand of God" in your lives. Give to charity. Do volunteer work. Seek out role models. Be kinder. Don't speak poorly of others. "Take one thing that you are not doing today, that you could do to make yourself better, no matter how basic, and make the conscious decision to do better."

Small Whispers

Schonbrun likes to tell the story of a "young and successful executive" who, speeding down an urban street in his new Jaguar, feels a brick smash into the side of his prized automobile. Angered, he backs up, gets out of the car, and grabs the kid who threw the brick.

"What the heck are you doing?" the driver screams.

The kid, crying, answers, "I'm sorry. I didn't know what else to do. I threw the brick because no one else would stop." His brother's wheelchair had rolled off the curb and his brother had fallen out.

"I can't lift him up!" the stone-thrower cries. "Would you please help me get him back into his wheelchair?"

The driver helps lift the fallen boy and keeps the dent in the Jaguar's side as a reminder of the incident's message: "Don't go through life so fast that someone has to throw a brick at you to get your attention."

Everyone has a choice, Schonbrun says. You can listen to the whispers of life, its subtle messages. "Or you can wait for the brick."

Now, he passes out a business card that identifies him as a "Motivational Speaker." On a background of a cloud-filled sky are the words: "Listen to the Whispers."

What about the victims, the nearly 3,000 people who lost their lives on 9-11? How does he explain his survival while others perished? In other words, wasn't God looking out for them, too?

His answer: “God has a plan, and I can't explain.”

Imagine a small piece of black canvas, Schonbrun says. Beautiful?

No.

Then, he says, imagine it's part of a bigger canvas, a Picasso painting. The small black patch makes sense.

"We only see part of the picture," he says.

When bad things – or things that seem bad – happen to Schonbrun, he says he understands that they're part of a grand design.

Hurricane Sandy damaged his home last year. If it had happened before 9-11, he says, "I would have asked, 'Why me?'" As he surveyed the damage, he said to himself, "God has a reason. I don't know why. We'll figure it out.”

The 12th anniversary of 9-11 is coming up. On the anniversary, many survivors and their relatives attend commemoration and memorial services.

Schonbrun goes golfing. Alone.

On that day, he doesn't want to talk about his experiences. He doesn't want to think about it nor read the newspaper on that day.

"I don't need reminders," Schonbrun says. "9-11 is with me every single day."

The only physical memento he carries with him, on his keychain, is the key to his office in Tower One.

Hatikvah / America The Beautiful – the Mash Up By: Yori Yanover

Cantors Angela Buchdahl and Julia Katz sing an American-Israeli anthem during Shabbat worship services at the Central Synagogue, June 14, 2013. I chose to post it because I was curious to hear Buchdahl’s voice, after the brouhaha of the last few days regarding her illusive Orthodox conversion. She’s probably the new face of the reform movement: racially diverse, utilizing Jewish and Zionist themes in a Hebrew/English service, and singing beautifully. But, seriously, is that what you do in shul on Shabbes?

MORDECHAI BEN DAVID SINGS IN BROOKLYN COLLEGE

Vintage footage of Mordechai Ben David performing in Brooklyn College part 3, circa 1986. Music conducted by Moshe Laufer. A Sheya Mendlowitz production. 

Click Here for Part 1
Click Here for Part 2

Brace yourself.. this is probably the best in Jewish music you will ever see. 

Rare footage of Reb Meir Adler playing the Slonimer Ki Hirbaisa for Maran Harav Michel Yehudah Lefkowitz Zt''l, in his Sukkah on Sukkos 2010. This very popular melody is said to be the favorite song of Rav Michel Yehuda ZT"L at that time.

ISRAEL MATZAV: Pollard blasts Israeli government over terrorist release

Jonathan Pollard, who has been imprisoned in the United States for the last 28 years for spying for Israel, has spoken out for the first time since his imprisonment. In a JPost op-ed, he blasts the Israeli government for releasing terrorists.

Over the last six decades, Israel’s leaders and its judiciary have practiced the art of political expedience to such a degree that Israel is now the first and only country in the world to hold the following dubious “honors”:

• Israel is the only country in the world ever to voluntarily expel its own citizens from chunks of its homeland in order to hand over the land to its enemies.

• It is the only country in the world ever to voluntarily destroy the homes and businesses of its own citizens, leaving them with shattered lives and broken promises.

• Israel is the only country in the world ever to voluntarily dig up and transport the graves of its dead so that the land could be turned over to its enemies.

The State of Israel also holds unenviable world records for betraying those who serve the state, including the following:

• Israel is the only country in the world to restrain its military from rescuing a wounded soldier, for fear of provoking the enemy and risking its approval ratings with the world. The soldier, injured by enemy gunfire at a Jewish holy site, slowly bled to death needlessly while the IDF stood by and watched.

• Israel also remains the only country in the world ever to voluntarily cooperate in the prosecution of its own intelligence agent, refusing him sanctuary, turning over the documents to incriminate him, denying that the state knew him, and then allowing him to rot in a foreign prison for decades on end, cravenly forgoing its right to simple justice for the nation and for the agent.

• Additionally, Israel is still the only country in the world ever to violate its own system of justice by repeatedly releasing dangerous, unrepentant murderers and terrorists back into the civilian population with impunity. No other country in the world has ever done this! In summary, Israel has the dubious distinction of being the only country in the world so befuddled by moral ambiguity that it is willing to dishonor its dead, betray its bereaved, and disgrace its citizens for the sake of political expediency.

...

All the polls indicate that the overwhelming majority of Israeli citizens are opposed to the release of the murderers. It is a strange kind of democracy that pays no heed whatsoever to the will of the people.

No Israeli official has advanced a single compelling reason in support of the wholesale release of these murderers and terrorists. The claim that it “serves national interests” is spurious. There is no national interest that supersedes morality.

The second-most touted excuse is that the government of Israel was given three existentially threatening choices by its best ally, and the least damaging choice of the three was the release of murderers and terrorists.

Did anyone at the helm ever consider that given three life-threatening choices, the only response is: “No, no and no!”?

Someone needs to wave this in the face of the craven members of the so-called 'Jewish Home' party who believe that the only problem with releasing terrorists is that we didn't get Jonathan Pollard in exchange for them.  After 28 years in American prisons, Jonathan Pollard has more morality and common sense in his little finger than these vapid politicians have in their entire party. 

Read the whole thing.