A Los Angeles litigator courageously stands in solidarity with Israel: channeling his aggressive zealous advocacy on behalf of Israel. Defending the State of Israel's: right to exist, right to protect her citizens from terrorism, right to defend her borders from hostile enemies. Prosecuting and impeaching Israel's defamers.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced at Sunday’s weekly cabinet meeting that Israel would not accept any ultimatum from Hamas. “We are after a weekend of air strikes in Gaza,” the prime minister noted in his remarks. “Yesterday we heard about an ‘ultimatum’ from Hamas to Israel. “At no stage will Israel accept any ultimatum from Hamas. Israel will continue to act in accordance with Israeli interests and for Israel’s security alone.” The so-called“ultimatum” was issued by the Hamas leadership on Saturday, an order to transfer $15 million in cash every month to Gaza in order to prevent further escalation, according to a report broadcast by Israel’sChannel 2 NewsSaturday night. Hamas insisted the first payment must be transferred by Thursday, or Hamas threatened to intensify the Friday riots at the Gaza border fence, and force the IDF to kill even more Arab youths. The money in question is that which is being provided by Qatar to the Palestinian Authority, for payment of salaries of its employees in Gaza. Palestinian Authority leader Mahmoud Abbas has been holding up that process in recent months as a means of dominating the Hamas government, thus often preventing workers from receiving salaries.
The Council of Sages and Preachers in Al-Quds (the Arab name of Jerusalem -ed.) made clear on Tuesday that the transfer of real estate in Jerusalem to non-Muslims is considered one of the gravest crimes in terms of religion and nationality.
In a statement, the Council said it is forbidden to remain silent in light of certain people's attempts to justify the transfer of the assets of the Jodeh family to Jewish ownership.
The senior Muslim clerics stressed that a 1935 fatwa issued by the clerics of Palestine and which prohibits the sale of land to Jews remains in effect.
They also called upon the Palestinian Arab public to take all possible measures to prevent the sale of real estate assets in Jerusalem, even to local Muslims or ones from abroad, for fear that the sale would be used to transfer ownership to Jews.
Under PA law, selling of land to Jews is illegal and punishable by death. However, such sentences must be approved by the PA chairman, and current chairman Mahmoud Abbas has preferred to authorize life sentences for such offenses, possibly due to fear of an international backlash.
In 2014, Abbas toughened the PA law against selling property to Israeli Jews, so that any Palestinian Arabs involved in renting, selling or facilitating real estate transactions with citizens of "hostile countries" in any way would receive life imprisonment and hard-labor.
The “National Popular Council of Al-Quds” recently condemned the sale of residential buildings in the Old City of Jerusalem to "Jewish settlers and their settlement associations." It also described the sale of real estate to "Jews" as "a despicable crime against Al-Quds, Palestine and the homeland."
Q: Rabbi Kahane, you have had an extraordinary life, during which you have become beloved and hated to a degree that few have seen. You are among the most controversial and well known Jews in the world and the pressures on you must be enormous. How do you continue and what do you see as your future?
A New York Daily News story on the shocking assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, ztk’l, hy’d, that appeared in the November 6, 1990 issue.
A: I have done and will, please G-d, continue to do the things I do because the things that I say are true, are parts of the authentic Jewish Idea. The fact that so many cannot see and understand, or attack and defame and worse, is not relevant to truth or to my obligation to that truth. The rabbis tell us that the ALL Mighty appointed Moses and Aaron as leaders of the Jews on condition that they accept being pelted with stones. Things have not changed.
Q: Yet you were barred from the Knesset and also face numerous legal problems. What about them?
A: concerning the Knesset barring – an act of totalitarianism which saw an obscene silence on the part of Jewish liberals and every Jewish establishment group – we are, of course, working on running for the next Knesset within the constraints of the present law. We have studied it carefully and know what changes must be made to have me run. They were changes we did not have the time to make in 1988. This time it will be different and we will use the loophole we have found to run.
Rabbi Meir Kahane, ztk’l standing in front of the Knesset building in Jerusalem
I must add that if and when, please G-d, we do, we will amass a huge number of votes and seats since the events of the past two years have made countless Jews realize how right I was over the past 20 years. Not only will we be the third-largest party but we will challenge Labor as the second party and no nationalist government will be formed without us. And that will be the beginning of an historic change in Israel and the creation of a truly Jewish state made in the image of the G-d of Israel.
Q: and your legal problems?
A: As of this moment, I await the decision of my citizenship trial in Washington. That entire thing is a sordid example of a joint effort by the United States and Israeli governments to insure that I will not be able to enter the United States since, if I do lose my citizenship, the U.S. will never issue me a visa. Both the U.S. and Israeli governments have a vested interest in my not being able to raise money and support here, since if I achieve even substantial power in Israel, the Baker Plan and every other American attempt to pressure Israel into dangerous concessions will be rejected and U.S. Mideast policy thwarted.
Rabbi Kahane as a young student at the Brooklyn Talmudical Academy (BTA)
I have a superb attorney, Nat Lewin, one of this country’s finest constitutional lawyers, and he believes that we have a strong case in opposing a clearly outrageous political scheme. The great problem here is the judge, Aubrey Robinson, who sentenced Jonathan Pollard to life imprisonment. During my hearing he was openly hostile and sarcastic and his anti-Semitism came through clearly. Even if I lose, I will of course appeal (I have two more appeals), but so will the State Department if I win. The big question is whether Robinson will allow me to enter the U.S. pending that appeal. If not, I will have to depend on good Jews replying to the Israel-U.S. conspiracy by voluntarily sending me the large amounts of funds needed.
Q: And what about your Israeli problems?
A: Two serious criminal cases face me there, both outweighed only by the totalitarian nature of the proceedings. In the first, involving my speech at a protest rally in Jerusalem following the murder of 16 Jews on an interurban bus near Jerusalem, at which I called the Arabs a “cancer in our midst,” I am being tried under a British Mandate law that defines “sedition” in a way that any totalitarian state would envy and under which any Jew in Israel could be jailed daily for stating political views. Worse, this law bars me from proving the truth of my statement since under the law truth is not relevant.
Rabbi Kahane at a KACH party rally in Israel in the early 1970s.
For a while there was hope that the case would be thrown out since the state simply forgot to sign the indictment, and the statute of limitations had passed. But the judge in the case (a leftist who had also ruled against the Jews who purchased an Old City building from the Greek Orthodox Church some time ago) allowed the state to rule that an unsigned indictment was valid, since “one could not escape the truth through a technicality.” This, in a case in which the truth is not relevant!
The second case involved the murder of two elderly Jews in May 1989, on Jaffa Road in Jerusalem, in which I led a large crowd of Jews in a protest march to the Old City, and the police charge me with having refused to disperse (the crowd was tear-gassed and 11 Kach people, including myself, arrested). In the United States a conviction on such a charge would be a minor affair but in Israel the maximum is five years imprisonment (the same as with my first case).
At his wedding to Libby Kahane, nee Blum in the 1950s in Brooklyn
Q: I must return to a previous point since so many people raise it. The lies and defamation and attacks on you must surely wear you down. How do you cope with it?
A: I answered that previously, at least in part. But let me add a bit to that. To begin with, one rule is basic: Never responds to vicious and filthy lies that are clear attempts to defame and destroy and that are funded and planned by enemies of the Jewish people. When one responds to these things, that is exactly what the enemy wants, since it only helps to publicize the defamation. When one gets into the mud with the swine, one must emerge filthy. King David said (Psalms 69:5): “They who hate me without reason are more than the hairs of my head,” but he also taught us how to react to the haters in Psalms 39:2: “I will keep a curb on my mouth, while the wicked one is before me.”
Serving as a reservist in the Israeli army. Circa 1983
In a word, one does not bark back at barking dogs if one is a person and not a dog.
Please continue your prayers for Rivka bat Talya the 20-year old daughter of Binyamin and Talya Kahane, may G-d avenge their blood.
Join Dennis Prager of Prager University as he gives a lucid and knowledgeable synopsis of the Middle East conflict. There is nobody today who knows how to simplify the arguments for Israel better than Prager. When there is so much noise that muddles the issue, he cuts right through it like swiss cheese.
If you want to know why Palestinian children believe that killing Israelis is model behavior, all you have to do is look at a chapter in one of their schoolbooks.
PA schoolbooks have been criticized ever since Palestinian Media Watch wrote the first report on them in 1998, and the newest books in some respects are the worst ever. However, one chapter stands out in its overt promotion of terrorism. This chapter, appearing in the fifth-grade Arabic Language book published in 2017, serves as a window to understanding the PA leadership’s profoundly twisted values.
The chapter starts innocently by stressing the importance of heroes to national identity and national pride: “Heroes have an important position in every nation… the people – even if they are divided over many things – they all agree regarding the pride in their heroes…”
The schoolbook continues and teaches students that feeling pride is not enough. Society takes numerous active steps to honor its heroes: “[We] sing their praise, learn the history of their lives, name our children after them, and name streets, squares, and prominent cultural sites after them…”
In short, society assures that heroes are never forgotten. They might have lived in earlier times, but by naming streets and squares after them and singing their praise, these heroes remain in Palestinian consciousness.
The next message is most important: The children are taught that these heroes are not merely memories of the past they are the role models for the future: “Every one of us wishes to be like them.”
Until now this messaging is not problematic, however, all that changes when the schoolbook presents the 10 people who PA educators promote as the role models Palestinian children should emulate. The list of Palestinian heroes includes no scientists, no doctors, no engineers, no singers, no athletes, nor any artists. There have been three Muslim Nobel Prize laureates in science and two in literature, but they are not on the list of Palestinian heroes. Who are the Palestinian heroes then according to the PA schoolbook? They are 10 Muslim combatants from the first century of Islam through the 21st century. And possibly the worst name on this list of role models is terrorist mass-murderer Dalal Mughrabi.
Mughrabi led a team of terrorists who hijacked a bus in 1978 and murdered 25 adults and 12 children. Among those she murdered when she threw a hand grenade inside the bus was a young Israeli woman Rebecca Hohman and her two sons: Ilan, aged three and Roi, aged six. Mughrabi, a child murderer, is the person Palestinian educators are telling children to see as their role model, someone “everyone wants to be like.”
After naming the 10 heroes, the PA schoolbook stresses that there is no one better than these fighters: “These heroes are the crown of their nation, they are a symbol of its glory, they are the best of the best, the best of the noble people.”
That’s not all that is horrific. Mughrabi was killed during her terrorist attack and others on the list were killed in battle. The PA schoolbook focuses on their deaths and glorifies their willingness to die: “They took their lives in their hands and threw them at the dangers, without losing their determination and without weakening and surrendering. Some of them died as martyrs, some of them died on the way to fulfilling their obligations, as heroes.”
So if it weren’t scary enough for the children to be told they have to go out and kill, PA educators teach them that “heroes” are willing to fearlessly die as martyrs. The final sentence of the chapter they are taught what this means for them if they don’t want to adopt this heroic behavior: “Bravo to the heroes, and scorn to the cowards!”
Tragically, presenting Dalal Mughrabi as a hero and role model is not accidental or in isolation but is part of a broad almost cult-like worship of Mughrabi directed by the Palestinian Authority. The PA Ministry of Education has named five schools as well as sporting events after Mughrabi. City squares and community centers bear her name. Videos with her picture and story are produced and appear regularly on Fatah and PA media channels. Every year on the dates surrounding her mass murder Fatah and the PA make sure her name and face appear regularly up in lights. There was a march in Bethlehem to celebrate the founding of Fatah and three giant posters led the parade. Two posters had pictures of Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas – internationally known and recognized leaders of Fatah and the PA. The third poster had the picture of Dalal Mughrabi. Dalal Mughrabi was not a leader. She was a terrorist murderer who did one thing in life to make her famous. And yet she completes the PA trinity with the PA leaders.
This cult-like worship of murderers is fundamental to the depraved value system that Palestinian leaders have promoted since the PLO’s founding in 1965, and upon which the PA has indoctrinated its children since 1994. It is not surprising that so many of the Palestinian terrorists in recent years have been teenagers, including the recent murderer of Israeli-American father of four, Ari Fuld. The Palestinian leadership has been transmitting its “kill an Israeli – be a hero” message for decades, and judging by the results, it is clear that Palestinian children have been listening.
So these are the choices racing through the minds of Palestinian children who just studied one of the worst chapters in their schoolbooks: If I, Palestinian child, am willing to kill Israelis and be a martyr, then I will then be the best of the best, the crown of my nation, streets will be named after me and I will be a Palestinian hero; if I am not willing to kill Israelis and be a martyr, then I am a coward.
If you were an impressionable child, which path would you choose? The writer, director of Palestinian Media Watch, represented Israel in negotiations with the Palestinian Authority on incitement and co-authored with Nan Jacques Zilberdik, Deception: Betraying the Peace Process.
A member of the Revolutionary Council of Fatah movement and its spokesman Osama al-Qawasmi issued a press release saying that those who "smuggle" land to Israelis, directly or indirectly, are "spies and traitors to the religion, the land, the people, to the blood of the martyrs and to our brave families," and they will be "pursued by the curse of fate and become vile outcasts who will be haunted by their treachery everywhere they go until they reach a stage where they die."
On the other hand, those who resist the temptation to sell land to Jews instead purchase pride and dignity of his land and religion and reputation.
Al-Qawasmi also called on families of those who sold land to "repudiate the traitors who sold their consciences and who stand by the Israeli occupation against their people."
Just in case you think that he is only talking about Israelis, just imagine what would happen if an Arab in Jerusalem sold his house to an Israeli Arab.
Hundreds gathered at the Heichal David event hall in Jerusalem Thursday evening to mark the 28th anniversary of the assassination of Rabbi Meir Kahane, the founder of the Jewish Defense League and Knesset Member for the now-defunct Kach party.
Students and supporters of the late rabbi also used the event to mark the 30th anniversary of the banning of Rabi Kahane’s Kach movement, which was barred from participating in the elections for the 12th Knesset in November 1988.
“Twenty-eight years have passed since the murder of this great Jewish leader,” said attorney Itamar Ben-Gvir, a member of the Otzmah Yehudit party, which was formed by former Kach members Baruch Marzel and former National Union MK Michael Ben-Ari.
“Rabbi Kahane was murdered twice,” Ben-Gvir continued. “The second time was the physical murder by the lowly terrorist who took his life. The first time was much worse. It wasn’t by a terrorist, but by the entire government. Not with the bullet of a pistol, but through laws and regulations – like a mafia.”
“They didn’t take his body, but they tried to take his soul – to silence him and shut his mouth. Looking in retrospect twenty-eight years year, it looks like it is impossible to silence the true ‘Jewish Idea’,” Ben-Gvir continued, alluding to the title of Rabbi Kahane’s book “The Jewish Idea”.
“Thirty years after the banning of the Kach movement [from running for the Knesset], we demand justice, and to right this historic wrong. Thirty years later, it is now impossible to silence us.”
Born in Brooklyn in 1932, Rabbi Meir David Kahane was ordained at the Mir Yeshiva in New York, becoming rabbi for a congregation in Queens in 1958.
After working as a consultant for the FBI in the 1960s, Rabbi Kahane founded the Jewish Defense League in 1968, with the goal of providing security for American Jewish communities, and agitating on behalf of Jewish causes abroad – most notably the plight of Jews in the Soviet Union who wished to emigrate.
Rabbi Kahane quickly became a controversial figure within the Jewish community for the JDL’s harassment of Soviet diplomats.
In 1971, Rabbi Kahane and his family immigrated to Israel where he established the Kach movement, running for Knesset in 1973.
Running on a platform supporting the expulsion of Israel’s Arab population and the annexation of Judea, Samaria, and Gaza to the State of Israel, Rabbi Kahane became a highly polarizing figure in Israel.
Kahane served in the Knesset as the Kach party’s sole MK from 1984 to 1988, before the faction was banned from running for the 12th Knesset, after polls predicted the party would win as many as 12 seats.
In 1990, Rabbi Kahane was gunned down by Sayyid Nosair, an Egyptian terrorist with ties to Al Qaeda.
Rabbi Kahane’s son, Rabbi Binyamin Zeev Kahane, was murdered along with his wife in a terror attack in Samaria on New Year’s Eve 2000.
In a piece about FBI Most Wanted fugitive terrorist Ahed Tamimi published yesterday, the Washington Post breezily describes our daughter's murderer this way:
For Israelis, the Tamimis are a group of provocateurs intent on manipulating the media to hurt the country’s image. One cousin [of Ahed], Ahlam Tamimi, was an accomplice to a suicide bombing. " At this point, we know a lot about Ahlam Tamimi. Here's how she herself details the central role she took in the 2001 Sbarro pizzeria massacre:
Interviewer: "Who chose Sbarro [restaurant, as the target of the attack]?" Ahlam Tamimi: "I did. For nine days I examined the place very carefully and chose it after seeing the large number of patrons at the Sbarro restaurant. My mission was just to choose the place and to bring the martyrdom-seeker (i.e. the human bomb, a young man called Al-Masri). [I made] the general plan of the operation but carrying it out was entrusted to the martyrdom-seeker." Ahlam Tamimi: "I told him to enter the restaurant, eat a meal, and then after 15 minutes carry out the martyrdom-seeking operation. My job was to realize, for this martyrdom-seeker, the happy life that he wanted." Interviewer: "Didn't you think about the people who were in the restaurant? The children? The families?" Ahlam Tamimi: "No." Interviewer: "Do you know how many children were killed in the restaurant?" Ahlam Tamimi: "Three children were killed in the operation, I think." Interviewer: "Eight." Ahlam Tamimi (smiling): "Eight? Eight!"
This is the monster that Jordan's King Abdullah refuses to extradite to the United States despite the US Department of Justice's request under a valid extradition treaty that has existed between those two countries since 1995 and under which multiple Jordanian felons have been extradited to face trial in US courts.
RAMALLAH, West Bank — A West Bank journalist was detained by Palestinian Authority security forces for four days after he took photographs on his cellphone of the Palestinian prime minister’s convoy stuck in line at an Israeli-controlled checkpoint.
An activist in Gaza said that Hamas security forces detained him for 15 days after he wrote a Facebook post protesting the lack of electricity in which he asked the group’s leaders if their children slept on the tiled floor to escape the heat, as his did.
Citing those cases and others in a report published on Tuesday, Human Rights Watch, the New York-based advocacy organization, accused both the Western-backed Palestinian Authority and its rival, Hamas, the Islamist militant group that controls Gaza, of routinely using arbitrary arrest and torture as tools to crush dissent.
The systematic practice of torture by the two authorities might amount to a crime against humanity and could be prosecutable at the International Criminal Court in The Hague, the report said.
On Tuesday, spokesmen for the internal security forces of both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas dismissed the group’s report as biased and inaccurate.
Adnan Damiri, a Palestinian Authority spokesman, said the report was “highly biased and full of mistaken information.”
In an annex to the report, the security agencies of both Palestinian territories argued that abuses occurred only in isolated cases where perpetrators were investigated and held to account.
Human Rights Watch said the evidence it had collected contradicted those claims.
Speaking at a news conference in Ramallah, Omar Shakir, the Israel and Palestine director for Human Rights Watch and the lead researcher on the report, said: “Abuses happen. When abuses happen, those who carry them out should be held responsible. When you have impunity, abuse continues. There has been impunity for a quarter of a century.”
Tom Porteous, deputy program director at Human Rights Watch, said that 25 years after the Oslo peace accord, “Palestinian authorities have gained only limited power in the West Bank and Gaza, but yet, where they have autonomy, they have developed parallel police states.”
“Calls by Palestinian officials to safeguard Palestinian rights ring hollow as they crush dissent,” he added.
Many of the accusations are not new. Human Rights Watch drew attention to what it called the “perilous state of human rights in the Palestinian self-rule areas” in a report on both Israeli and Palestinian violations in 1995. Journalists and rights organizations have documented many cases since.
But the 149-page report published on Tuesday, which was two years in the making, drew on testimony from more than 140 witnesses, including former detainees, their relatives and lawyers, and it also reviewed medical records and court documents. Human Rights Watch detailed more than two dozen cases of people who it said were “detained for no clear reason beyond writing a critical article or Facebook post or belonging to the wrong student group or political movement.” The detentions often lasted for days or weeks, and the purpose of the authorities’ actions, the advocacy group said, was to punish critics and deter further activism.
Human Rights Watch also pointed to systematic abuse including beatings, foot-whipping and, in particular, a form of torture known as “shabeh” in Arabic, in which detainees are contorted for long periods into stress positions that cause pain but rarely leave marks.
Human Rights Watch called on countries that provide assistance to the various security agencies accused of such abuse to suspend that part of their aid.
Palestinian analysts have long noted the increasing autocracy of the octogenarian Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, in his struggle to suppress real and perceived rivals, and the competition between his Fatah-led Palestinian Authority and Hamas has led to waves of tit-for-tat arrests.
In Ramallah, some Palestinians asked about the authority said that they did not dare speak publicly, making a snatching motion with their fingers to suggest that expressing criticism could lead them to be whisked off the street. Unauthorized protests have been brutally broken up. In Hamas-run Gaza, the authorities have long been accused of intimidating journalists and critics.
In response to questions posed by Human Rights Watch, one of the West Bank security agencies, the Preventive Security Service, said that 220 Palestinians had been detained following posts on social media because they “fell outside the bounds of criticism and expression of opinion,” and could have “endangered the lives of citizens.”
Jihad Barakat, the West Bank journalist who took the photographs of the Palestinian prime minister, was ultimately acquitted of any improper or unlawful behavior by a court in Ramallah.
Amer Balousha, the activist in Gaza who complained about the heat, was first summoned on suspicion of incitement after calling on people to demonstrate and was later released. He was then arrested on another, unspecified charge “of a criminal nature,” according to the Hamas security forces.
The Israeli authorities have so far refused to grant Human Rights Watch permission to enter Gaza to present its report there. And in a twist, the report comes as Mr. Shakir, an American citizen, is fighting an Israeli deportation order after the authorities moved to revoke his work visa under a contentious 2017 law barring entry to people who have promoted boycotts against Israel.
The Israeli authorities have accused Human Rights Watch of anti-Israel bias in the past and compiled a dossier on Mr. Shakir that documents his activities in support of a boycott, mostly from before he joined the advocacy group. The dossier also points to a 2016 report by Human Rights Watch that called on businesses to cease activities that benefited Jewish settlements in the occupied West Bank.
It was just before Yom Tov that word came that the Regional Planning Council had approved the construction of a beautiful Visitor Center at the foot of the 3000-year old makom kadosh, Har Hazeisim. Several days earlier, the same project had passed the Local Planning Council, under the leadership of Deputy Mayor Rabbi Yosi Deutsch. For the International Committee on Har Hazeisim (ICHH), the Visitor Center was to be the signature project of restoring the security and sovereignty of Har Hazeisim.
Almost from the day of its founding in May 2010, the ICHH has been lobbying for the Visitor Center to be built on an area just outside the cemetery and adjacent to the Ras al Amud Mosque (in the Ras al Amud Square). The Mosque itself was problematic in that it illegally expanded beyond its original allocated land and despite several Municipal “Stop Orders.” According to documents obtained by the ICHH, the area designated for the Visitor Center was never part of the cemetery and thus did not pose a problem. In fact, says Prof. Aharon Kimelman, the octogenarian historian of Har Hazeisim, the area designated for the Center was used as a road by the Turks during their occupation.
Outgoing Mayor Nir Barkat saw the construction of a Visitor Center as an important symbol of sovereignty that would once and for all serve as a marker of Jewish sovereignty, as if the 150,000 Jews buried there under Hebrew markings were not enough. Barkat and the national government nearly 6 years ago asked the ICHH to be a full partner in the construction of the multi-million dollar Visitor Center. This was to emphasize the fact that Har Hazeisim was indeed the “Arlington Cemetery of the Jewish people.” We agreed.
Despite its broad support in the government of Benjamin Netanyahu and the administration of Mayor Nir Barkat, the project constantly faced bureaucratic delays and at one point enough time had elapsed to require the permit application process to be reset. All of this was happening while the ICHH exerted enormous pressure on the government to end the violence on the historic holy cemetery. Up until late 2014, many cars ascending to Har Hazeisim were routinely stoned, with several resulting injuries. Tombstones were upended and desecrated almost daily with few arrests made. Fear had become the operative term for the oldest Jewish burial place and holy site overlooking the Makom Hamikdash. Most Israelis stayed away from the cemetery that includes so many kedoshim.
Responding to the worldwide pressure, led by the ICHH, enormous strides were made to secure Har Hazeisim. A network of 173 surveillance cameras and a 24/7 monitoring station were installed, a new police station was launched with a force of 24 police officers, a platoon of Border Police was stationed on the mountain, sanitation and grounds keeping services were restored, the infrastructure repaired and upgraded, and finally gating and fencing helped secure the cemetery. By 2015, security was restored to the bais hachaim. Hundreds of thousands came to the yahrzeits of the Or Hachaim Hakadosh, the admorim of Zhvill and Ger and to the saintly Bartenura, whose grave was previously a sight of blight and desecration. On one visit, I found Arab youths smoking pot.
The Prime Minister voiced support for the project in a meeting with the ICHH leadership earlier this year. His government had allocated NIS 10 million for the project nearly 7 years ago and despite the delays and attempts to reallocate the money, it remained in the budget until recently when Minister Moshe Kahlon’s Finance Ministry threatened to reallocate the money to other projects. The ICHH which has committed to at least match the funds has vowed to fight any attempt to remove the funds from this important project. Zev Elkin, the Minister for Jerusalem Affairs and his team, guarded the money up until recently. MK Rabbi Yoav ben Zur (Shas), who heads the unprecedented 67-member Knesset Caucus on Har Hazeisim, has also vowed to restore the funds.
The Visitor Center is slated to be a magnificent building with an amphitheater overlooking the historic cemetery where one can literally walk through 3000 years of history from the Neviim – Zecharia, Malachi and Chagai, to some of the greatest Gedolei Yisrael of the past generations. It is unfathomable that on the other side of Har Hazeisim, tens of thousands of tourists visit some of the 13 churches there, with dozens of busses lined up and on the Jewish side despite increased traffic in recent months, there is still somewhat of a feeling of fear.
The Visitor Center will include a gallery of some of the most prominent leaders buried there, including Roshei Yeshiva, Admorim and even Israel’s national leaders, including former Prime Minister Menachem Begin and his wife Aliza. It will be a place to educate young and old on the amazing history of the mountain, it serving the makom hamikdash, the place of the proclamation of the new chodesh, the burning of the ashes of the Parah Ha’adumah, and, of course, the future arrival of Moshiach. The Center will include a computer bank to help people locate an approximate documented 79,000 Jews who are buried there. There will be a room for lectures, seminars and special occasions. It will also include a comfort station with rest rooms and water. Plans call for a huge picture window with a splendid view of the Har Habayis, just across the road.
Of great importance will be a permanent police station that will be housed within the Visitor Center. It will include a modern communications hub which will connect it to the network of surveillance cameras and to the police sub-station on the upper part of the mountain.
The Visitor Center is extremely important in safeguarding the enormous security gains over the years and for preserving the Jewish character and sovereignty of the mountain. It will no doubt attract tens of thousands of visitors which will reinforce the importance of the concept of “there is safety in numbers.” The Center will assure that there is no further encroachment by the Arabs in the area. It will offer the police a modern permanent headquarters safeguarding Har Hazeisim. It will send a strong message to the local Arab populace that Har Hazeisim will no longer be their dumping grounds of waste, construction materials and garbage, soccer fields, and drug-infested headquarters, all of which it was in the past. It will enable families of loved ones or leaders buried on Har Hazeisim to freely and securely visit the holiest Jewish cemetery.
The hope is that the government at all levels will fully comprehend what people like Prime Minster Netanyahu, Mayor Barkat, Deputy Mayor Deutsch, and MK Yoav ben Zur fully grasp. A Visitor Center on Har Hazeisim will guarantee their investment of hundreds of millions of shekels to secure the mountain.
When my brother Avrohom and I launched the ICHH back in 2010, we could only dream that we would succeed in restoring the safety and glory to Har Hazeisim. It was as if our parents who are buried there pleaded with us to finally help them rest in peace. Now, Boruch Hashem, we are well on the way to achieving our goal. Let us hope that the Visitor Center will soon be the signature to a historic initiative.
Menachem Lubinsky is president and CEO of Lubicom Marketing Consulting. He, together with his brother Avrohom, are the co-founders and co-chairman of the International Committee on Har Hazeisim.
The article talks about the New World Order and who is behind all major world events.
It includes these gems:
The new world order, through the invisible government, aims to spread the political movements in order to encircle the world according to the curriculum that they can controls the world's sovereignty, such as the Zionist movement which demanded a national homeland for the Jews in Palestine. But the Israelis in Arab Palestine are not Jews but they are Zionists who have no religion Belonging to the group of the devil worshipers, who exploited the Jewish religion with the aim of colonizing the Arab countries as a whole and the proof of this after their occupation of Palestine in 1948, they occupied the Sinai in 1967....
...The Templars found the thing they wanted when they traveled to Palestine: the Kabbalah, which is meant to be used for controlling the jinn and witchcraft. They use magic and demons to achieve their goals. The slaves of Satan are considered to be the elite among them.
Hossein Amir-Abdollahian, who is the special assistant to the speaker of the Iranian parliament and a former Iranian deputy foreign minister, said that if Israel "carries out even the smallest mistake" against Iran, Iran would raze Tel Aviv and Haifa to the ground. He accused Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of employing childish and bombastic diplomatic tactics at the U.N. General Assembly and on TV, and said that Netanyahu and Israel have reached the end of the road. Abdollahian added that the Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, will never unite, and that Iran, Iraq, and Turkey are the only reason the Arab nations can maintain their security. Abdollahian called on the Arab countries to stop playing Trump "the lunatic" and Netanyahu's games, and invited them to partner with "their real friends, like Iran." Abdollahian's remarks aired on Russia Today TV on October 18, 2018.
Israeli Ambassador to the UN Danny Danon excoriated Palestinian Authority (PA) President Mahmoud Abbas in a speech to the Security Council on Thursday.
Addressing the body’s regular meeting on the Middle East, Danon presented an official Palestinian Authority textbook that Abbas had authorized for the current school year.
“This textbook lists a number of so-called heroes — like Dalal Mughrabi — the terrorist responsible for a massacre that killed 38 people,” Danon declared. “This is Abbas’ culture of hate — right in front of you. This is the reason Palestinian schoolchildren learn that it is better to kill a Jew than keep a job.”
Danon commented that in “13 years of rule, Abbas has done nothing but inspire this rampant culture of hate…He preaches tolerance in English and terror in Arabic…He has led his people down a path of self-destruction and misery, stealing their chance at a good life. He is the obstacle to peace. If you hope to see a better future between Israelis and Palestinians, you will join us in indicting Abbas.”
Danon also highlighted the PA’s policy of paying salaries and other benefits to terrorists and their families — a practice that resulted in new legislation in the US this year that conditioned the continuation of direct aid to the PA on a verifiable end to what critics have dubbed a “pay-to-slay” policy.
“In this year’s budget, Abbas has allocated $355 million dollars toward the pay-to-slay policy,” Danon said. “That’s 7 percent of the total PA budget.”
Concluded Danon: “Nearly half of every dollar [the international community] gives to the Palestinian people to build roads and schools is put in the pocket of those who murder Jews.”
Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, before the UN Security Council, Oct 18
Israel's Ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, reveals to the international media that Palestinian Authority set aside money for terrorist payments in its 2018 budget
NEW YORK — Growing up a Jewish-American kid in the 1980s, there were three successive incidents that were a constant source of consternation: president Ronald Reagan at Bitburg, the murder of Leon Klinghoffer and the election of Kurt Waldheim as Austria’s president in 1986.
If you weren’t alive then, maybe you don’t know about Waldheim. After all, there have been plenty of anti-Semitic outrages between then and now to keep us busy.
Waldheim first came on the scene as the United Nations secretary-general in 1972. Being from Austria, a nominally neutral country during the Cold War, he was someone the two superpowers could agree on. After his time served he decided to run for president in his home country on a right-wing, “traditionalist” platform. But an Austrian journalist discovered that his World War II military record was a little bit fudged: He wasn’t, as he claimed, someone who was essentially pressed into service, quickly wounded and then spent the remainder of the war getting his law degree.
General Alexander Loehr with Leutnant Kurt Waldheim December 1944. (AP Photo)
The World Jewish Congress, headed by Edgar Bronfman Jr. and led by Israel Singer, dug further and discovered that Waldheim had a significant position as an intelligence officer in the Wehrmacht and was present during war crimes in Yugoslavia and Greece. He was stationed in Salonica (also known as Thessoliniki), which had a substantial Jewish population since the time of the Spanish expulsion. In 1943 it suffered one of the more devastating deportations of the entire war. (It is estimated that over 90% of the city’s Jews were killed.)
Waldheim claimed not to have been there. Then he said he was there, but before and after the deportations, and never noticed the disappearance of the city’s Jews. Then he said, “Why are you asking these questions?” Then he said, “In whose interest is it to dig up the past?” Then he said, “The World Jewish Congress is sticking their noses into Austrian affairs, are we going to let that happen?” Then he won the election.
I’ll allow you a moment to pause and throw up.
Back in 1986, Ruth Beckerman, a Jewish-Austrian filmmaker who lives in Vienna but has also worked in Israel, protested in the streets with her video camera. That footage, plus an avalanche of old news interviews, have been worked into her newest documentary, “The Waldheim Waltz.” It opens in New York City (at the Metrograph Theater) this Friday before expanding to additional cities, and has been selected by Austria as its submission for the Academy Awards.
I had the good fortune to speak to Beckerman, and below is an edited transcript of that conversation.
I wonder if younger people know this story?
Nobody knows about this story, except the people who are old enough and lived through it. I started the film because I watched the material that I shot years ago with young people. They were so shocked and asked so many questions, and they drew parallels to politicians who lie and to populism. That’s what got me interested in the project. There’s a feeling all over Europe – and even Korea, where I just visited – from people who don’t know about Mr. Waldheim, but see him as a very good screen. A screen for all kinds of projection.
People watch this film and talk about Trump. They talk about Viktor Orban in Hungary. Rodrigo Duterte in the Philippines. It’s all about the context of when or where you see the film. I did not expect that.
Nazi hunter Beate Klarsfeld stages a protest against Austrian president Kurt Waldheim in front of his presidential offices in Vienna, Thursday, Dec. 10, 1987. She holds a sign saying in part ‘No Liar as President with War Criminal Files.’ (AP Photo/Martha Hermann)
Well, I watched it just as we in the United States were coming off the contentious confirmation of Brett Kavanaugh for the Supreme Court. And there are some remarkable one-to-one comparisons you can make, almost as if this were a deliberate piece of satirical fiction.
What Waldheim’s supporters did was the same thing.
I mean, it’s important to make a distinction that Nazi exterminations and one person’s sexual predation are not equivalent, but the dramatis personae equate quite nicely. A very powerful man who is obviously lying, an accusation from the past, in this case the World Jewish Congress, and then the rabid followers blaming the victim, saying they are digging up old news to make trouble.
You find a group of people that already has prejudice against them — in Waldheim’s case, the Jews — then make a campaign against them. You can always win elections this way. These are the mechanisms of right wing populism. It always works.
The term “populism” is so strange to me. It sounds like it means “everyone” or “community” and yet it is just the opposite.
For the right wing it means xenophobia. Left wing, sure, it can mean class war, “Let’s be against the rich.” But in the right wing context it is anti-Semitism. “We are the patriots. We are the homogenous Austrians vs. the others.”
Footage of an a demonstration against Kurt Waldheim in Austria, 1986, from Ruth Beckerman’s film, ‘The Waldheim Waltz.’ (Courtesy Menemsha Films)
You’ve had this old footage for decades, did you always know it would some day be used for a film?
No. When I shot it at the time, it was not for my own use. It was because the official Austrian media ignored our group. We had a need to document our side, and our activities.
There is the journalist in the film, Hubertus Czernin, the one who first uncovers the initial military documents. I searched the Austrian TV archives and could not find one interview! The interview in the film is from America. The French and the British and Americans, they were interested in us as opposition, but not the official Austrian media.
Do you think the French and British may have been interested in this story to throw off the scent a little from their own behavior during the War?
Of course. Especially the Americans, they come off as the good guys in this movie. WWII was still a good war for them compared to the wars that came after.
It comes up in the film a lot that Austria likes to consider itself the first victims of Nazism –
Not anymore.
Israeli premier Golda Meir gestures to an attentive United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim before taking lunch at the Prime Minister’s Residence in Jerusalem in 1973. (AP Photo/pool)
That’s changed?
Yes, definitely. And the Waldheim Affair was the big turning point. Only very old people still hold this view.
There’s more of an acceptance of complicity?
Yes, but until 1986 not at all. 1986 was the most important event in Austria since the end of the war. There was this taboo, you didn’t ever talk about the real victims — the Jews, the Roma, the homosexuals — because the whole country considered themselves victims.
Of course, there were some resistance fighters, but they were in the closet — along with the small Jewish community. During the Waldheim Affair it was the first time the Jewish community came out, gave a press conference. Because they were threatened.
People treated my friends and I as traitors. And not only the Jews — there are not many Jews in Austria — all of us were slammed by all this patriotism.
Waldheim didn’t have a shot at re-election after 1986, did he?
No, no. He was vain and aloof and arrogant by the end. He was so isolated, and nobody came to Austria. And no one invited him anywhere. Only some Arab countries and the Vatican. Not even the Swiss invited him!
Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe, left, and UN Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim talk during Zimbabwe’s flag-raising ceremony at the United Nations, Aug. 26, 1980, New York. (AP Photo)
Did this have an effect on the economy?
That I don’t know, but he was on the United States “watch list,” and the whole standing of the country was poor. He was old by then.
It seems like Austria has done a decent job of owning up to this history. The United Nations, as far as I can tell, has not. I know that Waldheim’s picture is still hanging there.
I told my distributer that we should have a screening at the UN. Just for the people who work there, you know? But it is hard to get into the cosmos of the UN.
When Waldheim and his team are defending themselves against the World Jewish Congress, one of their strategies is to suggest that the only reason the Congress found this information is because they disliked Waldheim, and they disliked the UN because of the way the UN rolled out the red carpet for Yasser Arafat and the “Zionism Equals Racism” resolution. This, I will confess, sounds like it has a bit of truth to it.
I am sure about it. I can not prove it, but I think you are correct. Because why should they be interested in an Austrian politician? They were interested in the politics of the UN. So many countries in the 1970s became independent. There was the wave of anti-colonialism. And Israel is a kind of colonial project in the perspective of many countries. And they voted for this strange resolution. So I think the World Jewish Congress did have a different agenda.
But they struck gold. It paid off.
Yes. And if the discovery had been only in Austria it would not have had the same impact. It came from America.
Then Waldheim calls them a small group with a lot of influence in the media, which has anti-Semitic connotations.
I don’t know if Waldheim himself was a true anti-Semite, but his party and his campaign managers used it, for sure.
Even when he was at the UN, as you show in the film, he’s the world’s top diplomat, visiting every country, then he goes to Yad Vashem and refuses to cover his head. What is he thinking?
This is a big enigma. I have no idea. A psychologist in Germany who saw the film suggested that maybe if he put on a kippah or hat it would be like he was admitting guilt to himself. I don’t know.
A still of footage of Kurt Waldheim, from Ruth Beckerman’s film ‘The Waldheim Waltz.’ (Courtesy Menemsha Films)
I am Jewish but if I am a tourist in St. Stephen’s Cathedral in Vienna, which is lovely, by the way, I take my hat off. It’s what you do.
Yes, of course. So why do you think he did it? Nobody knows!
Well, this is the bigger question: you’ve been living with Waldheim for years –
I didn’t live with him.
I mean living with this film. He is in your life.
Okay.
All he does is deny. He denies knowing about the Salonika deportations, one of the biggest in Eastern Europe. Does he believe his own lies?
Yes. I think he just forgot it. I am quite sure, after analyzing all this material, that he lied in 1947 when [Waldheim’s wartime superior] Alexander Löhr was hanged and then nobody spoke about it anymore. And by 1986 he had constructed a lie and he’d forgotten the truth. If someone asked him about the past, he’d just repeat the lie.
United Nations Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim, right, meets with Israeli Foreign Minister Yigal Allon, Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Defense Minister Shimon Peres at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem on February 10, 1977. (AP Photo/Max Nash)
It’s amazing what the brain can do, I guess.
The deportation of the Jews in Salonika, which he claims he didn’t know about, he didn’t even look it up later. In the interview with the BBC, he says, “Why should I have looked into something I didn’t know?” I mean, I didn’t live through the Holocaust, but I have read many books about it.
And he’s also the Secretary General of the United Nations! An organization built to prevent future Nazi-like atrocities! He’s not just a sheep farmer somewhere!
I know.
Sorry for shouting, it can get frustrating.
I understand.
There’s a phrase that comes up in the film, “Austrian Elasticity.”
Yeah, the turning around, another turn. That’s why I called it “Waldheim Waltz,” you turn and try to sneak out.
Austria at the time was fascinating because during the Cold War it was neither East nor West.
This is part of why Waldheim became General Secretary, it was a neutral country, okay for the Soviets and the Americans. Then 1986 comes and the Cold War is coming to a close, so no reason to spare Austria criticism.
Filmmaker Ruth Beckerman. (Alexi Pelekanos)
It would appear that Austria is in support of your film, you’ve been submitted for the Academy Award.
Yes, it is done by a jury, from various film associations. I don’t exactly know how it works, I’ve never been interested in Oscars, but I think it is five people. But not the government.
With the heightened profile has there been some controversy?
Sure, some postings on the internet. Always from people who didn’t see the film yet. Germans and Austrians. “Why dig up the past?” and “The Wehrmacht was clean.” But anyone who sees the film is enthusiastic, especially young people. They want to know the logistics of how we protested, how it worked, they are fascinated by this. They have the desire to do something about the current government. And they are shocked with the bluntness of the anti-Semitism in the streets and with the politicians. At the time we were used to it.
Waldheim’s son is in the film, in old footage, and it is heartbreaking. He seems intelligent but just repeats his father’s position. Is he still alive?
Yes. And he knows about the movie, we tried to send him a DVD, but we couldn’t find his address. He lives in Germany.
The scene in Congress is flabbergasting, because he is working in America, as a banker at Citibank, which means he’s got Jewish co-workers, and he’s defending his father — how does he go to work on Monday?
He took a vacation for the campaign. After that I can’t say, I haven’t met him. But why defend the father at Congress. Why? Is he a good son? Why does he believe what Waldheim says? If you can track him down, ask him.
“The Waldheim Waltz” opens in New York City on October 19.
