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Poverty Of The Soul

June 28th, 2009

In our society, we tend to associate poverty with financial depravation. But there is another poverty that is by far more devastating, and that is poverty of the soul, when a person doesn’t know who he is or from whence he has come. When he lacks self esteem because he feels rootless and empty, he is suffering from poverty of the soul. In vain is such a person heir to a great fortune - his ignorance of his inheritance renders him a pauper. Such is the condition prevalent among many of our brethren nowadays. Descendants of Mamlechet Kohanim, a Kingdom of Priests; Goy Kadosh, a Holy Nation that stood at Sinai, they have no memory, no recollection of their past. Their G-d-given inheritance is unknown to them.

This spiritual deprivation holds sway throughout the world, but it is especially visible among our secular government leadership in Israel. The stakes are high, for if they live in ignorance of their Divine heritage, of the fact that it was G-d Himself, who granted them this land, then the very presence of our people in the land is at risk, and alas, that is exactly what has been happening.


But even those of us who are aware very often remain unaware. As dichotomous as this may sound, it is part of the reality of the machinations of the yetzer hora. We became oblivious of the obvious and take for granted that which is readily available. We no longer wonder at the miracle of having returned to the land, of standing in places where for centuries, our forefathers could only have dreamt of standing.

I remember interviewing many years ago for my TV program, Yosef Mendelovitch, a prisoner of conscience who had just been freed from the notorious Soviet prison system.

“Tell me,” I asked, “while you were sitting in the horrible darkness of solitary confinement, did you ever dream that you would be free again?”
“I never gave up hope, I never stopped dreaming,” came his immediate reply.
“Did you ever try to imagine the very first place that you would visit upon being
granted freedom?”
“Yes, I knew exactly where I would ask to go,” he answered without hesitation.”
“Could you tell me?”

“Hebron.”
“Hebron…” I repeated. The words shot out like a bolt of lightening, pierced the walls of the studio, spanned the centuries, and took us thousands of years back to our roots, to the cradle of our existence, to our patriarchs and matriarchs. Today, we can all go to Hebron - we can all pray at the grave sites of our holy ancestors…Today we can all stand in the presence of the shechina, before the Wall in Jerusalem. Today, we can all breathe the air of our holy land, but somehow, we’ve lost it. We don’t feel the magic - We no longer have the vision. We have forgotten our royal past. As for our secular leadership, regarding them you can’t even say they forgot - they just never felt it.

Time and again, through this column and my speeches, I have posed a simple question to those who are our policy makers: If we have no right to Hebron, then by what right are we in Tel Aviv? This question has become especially poignant since the ill-fated Oslo accords, but amazingly, no one wakes up. No matter how many terrorist attacks Israel is subjected to our leadership continues to make suicidal concessions (and it doesn’t seem to matter who is in office, from the far left to the far right, they all fall prey to it).


On the very day that the horrific bus bombing took place in Jerusalem and innocent people were killed, seriously wounded and maimed, on that very day our leadership continued to negotiate with the murderers, releasing hundreds upon hundreds of terrorists with blood on their hands.

“What should Israel do?” you might ask. “After all, Israel has no option but to face reality and recognize a Palestinian state.”


We are a nation that lives by the laws of a different reality. Our reality stems from the Torah - from our G-d given destiny. But I’m not even going to discuss that, for our secular brethren scoff at such truths, so may I suggest that they deal with what they consider to be reality and heed the advice of a former PLO terrorist, Walid Shoebat. Through independent study of the Bible, Mr. Shoebat came to realize the error of his ways and now lectures to Jewish and non-Jewish audiences. In a recent address at the campus of the University of Toronto, he said, “Most Jews believe in a two-state solution. I do not believe in this. A Palestinian state will concoct its own rules and laws to continue the killing of Jews.” He suggested instead, that “Israel wake up and smell the Hummus. Israel must return to the status quo - the occupation. There were jobs then, people went to work and supported their families, and whoever got involved with terrorism was exiled or imprisoned. - like in any modern country in the world. I think Israel should stand strong and fight - dismantle Hamas and take away all the weapons, and return to the way it used to be. The introduction of weapons into Palestinian society by Israel (under the Oslo accords Israel gave assault rifles to Arafat’s police force) was a disaster and they must be confiscated. (The latest tragic bus bombing in Jerusalem was executed by one of these PLO policemen).

In describing what life in Judea and Samaria was prior to 1967, he said, “We did not particularly mind Jordanian rule. The teaching of the destruction of Israel was a definite part of the curriculum, but we considered ourselves Jordanian until the Jews returned to Jerusalem. Then, all of a sudden we were Palestinians - they removed the star from the Jordanian flag and all of a sudden we had a Palestinian flag.”

Shoebat feels very strongly that the ongoing war against Israel has nothing to do with an Arab desire for a Palestinian state.

“Never in history was there a Palestinian state,” said Shoebat, “we’ve never wanted a Palestinian state - even today the Palestinians don’t want a Palestinian state”

“Then what do they want?” he was asked.
“They want the destruction of the Jews, period. It’s a religious holy war. It’s in the tradition, the culture. Arafat is a chip off the same block as Saddam Hussein, Osama bin Laden, Ahmed Yassin - they are all birds of a feather, they have a small difference, but are birds of a feather.”Asked what his message to the Jewish people today is, Shoebat thought for a moment and responded: “Your G-d is an awesome G-d and your land and your people are awesome. Hold tight and be strong. Do not be weakened by the nations of the world and all those trying to weaken you and take your land.”
Amazing words from a Muslim, and his story is equally amazing. Shoebat was a religious Muslim who grew up hating Jews. The first song he learned in school was, “Arabs are our beloved and Jews are dogs.” ‘I used to wonder who the Jews were,’ he confided, but he repeated the words with the rest of the kids without any knowledge of the meaning. As a Muslim, he was imbued with the prophecy of Mohamed, which foretold a battle in which the Holy Land would be recaptured and the elimination of the Jews would take place in a massive slaughter. ‘The day of judgment shall not come to pass until a tribe of Muslims defeat a tribe of Jews,’ it said, ‘in Jerusalem and the surrounding nations’.”

Shoebat became involved in various terrorist activities including Arafat’s Fatah group. He was indoctrinated to believe that the way to get to heaven and atone for his sins was to die fighting and killing Jews, and if he did, Allah would grant him a special place in heaven with beautiful women to fulfill his most secret wishes. He had been imprisoned in Israel for his terrorist activities, following which he came to the U.S. where he continued to be a PLO activist. His change of heart occurred when he married his Christian wife who challenged him to prove his Islamic belief that Jews corrupted the Bible and were prophet killers. In response, he obtained his first copy of the Bible to demonstrate to his wife the lies and corruptions for which the Jews were responsible. It was then that he saw the light and realized that it was he who had been fed a pack of lies, and the land was the G-d given inheritance of the Jewish people.

Shoebat expressed deep regret over his past which caused him to be branded a traitor among his own people and compelled him to go into hiding. Nevertheless, he is on a mission, determined not only to warn the Jewish people against the dangers of negotiating with Arabs, but he also feels the urgency of speaking out among his own people. “My dream is to go to the prisons where I used to be - Ramallah prison, Muskavit prison - whatever prison - to go there and say ‘hey, there is a different way you can live from the way Yassir Arafat and Ahmed Yassin are brainwashing you to believe. I want to debate them and tell them why there are not 72 virgins waiting for them in the heavens, or any of the other garbage that is being taught in their schools.”


Shoebat urges his Jewish audiences to take back the Land. “You are G-d’s people. It belongs to you.”

How sad it is that it is strangers who have to remind us of that - alas, poverty of the soul.  

 

 

 

 

 

Author: Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis 

 

 

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Critical Mass

June 21st, 2009

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The Future Belongs To Israel

June 20th, 2009
 
Prof. Paul Eidelberg
 
Israel is rotting in politics.  So must it be before Israel’s eventual ascendancy as a light unto the nations.   The seed must rot before the flower emerges.
 
One does not have to be a political scientist to smell the odor of politics.  Political scientists merely affirm the commonplace when they define politics as a struggle for power, a lust for self-aggrandizement.  We all know that this lust is couched in honorific terms, like “democracy” or “peace” or the “common good.”  We know that politicians manipulate the unwary, mislead them by spin or misleading language—even outright mendacity.  We see this in America, we see this in Israel. 
 
Although democracy doesn’t have a monopoly of disinformation, money and the mass media have trashed Jeffersonian democracy, which was supposed to foster reason and rational debate.  America has lost its bearings.  What about Israel?
 
Unlike America, founded on Judeo-Christian ideas and values, Israel was founded on a truncated form of Zionism—“secular” Zionism.  But Zionism can’t be secular without eviscerating original “Zion,” which involves three interrelated ideas:  (1) the People of Israel, (2) the Land of Israel, and, most emphatically (3) the Torah of Israel.  This third idea had no role in the reestablishment of the State of Israel. It may well be argued that the founders of the state, who wanted to create a “new Jew,” wanted to relegate Judaism not merely to the home and the synagogue, but to the dust heap of history.
 
Indeed, if Israel had as its leaders, when the Second Temple was destroyed, secular Zionists like David Ben-Gurion, Shimon Peres, and Binyamin Netanyahu, the Jewish people would have become as extinct as the dodo.  No serious person will dispute the fact—affirmed even by Ben-Gurion—that it was the Torah that preserved the Jewish people during two thousand years of dispersion, torture, and decimation.
 
Nevertheless, the secularists Zionists—mostly socialists—who founded the State of Israel thought they could dispense with the Torah.  We see the results:  their political descendants—not only the “post-Zionists”—are willing to abandon Israel’s heartland, Judea and Samaria, as well as the 300,000 Jews who live on this land.  Hence, they are willing to amputate the first and second ideas of “Zion”!
 
Still, one sometimes hears voices from the “Right,” including the Likud Party, that deplore the abandonment of Zionism, without realizing that this began with the abandonment of the Torah.  It’s important to recognize that secular Zionism died some sixteen years before Prime Minister Netanyahu buried it at Bar-Ilan University, once a stronghold of religious Zionism.
 
Politics in Israel is therefore devoid of any ideology, of any distinctively Jewish national goal.  This can be most promising, provided Israel awakens to the fact that the death of Zionism is a logical consequence of the flawed foundations of the State.  As mentioned on previous occasions, and as may be seen in the first sentence of its Declaration of Independence, Israel’s reestablishment was based on the territorial nationalism of nineteenth-century Europe—Europe, where the nation-state is succumbing to the multiculturalism and internationalism also manifested by post-Zionism! Irony of ironies, this is why a secularist like Netanyahu supports the territorial surrender involved  in the “two-state solution” initiated by post-Zionist Shimon Peres.
 
Let us not despair.  Israel is shedding what was at best a make-shift ideology—the secular Zionism that contributed to Israel’s physical redemption.  Needed is Israel’s spiritual redemption, and this is coming.   Never has there been so many Jews returning to the Torah; never so many yeshivas.  A veritable renascence is taking place in the study of Jewish law, revealing its great rationality and relevance. 
 
Meanwhile, a convergence of science and Torah has been taking place with every advance in astronomy, physics, and molecular biology.  “The Science of God” is the title of two books;  “God and the new cosmology” the title of another; “God and the new physics” still another.  Michael Denton’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis refuted Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion twenty years before that tract of Darwinian fundamentalism was published.  But this is not all.
 
Consider what is happening in the United States.  At last the U.S. has a president that dispels the stultifying illusion that Israel’s salvation depends on America.  This will prompt more Jews to turn to God.
 
But what about that bizarre pro-Muslim president? That a man long associated with anti-American malcontents and scoundrels, a man who, according to Islamic law is a Muslim—and, so far as we know, he may not even be an American—that this man was elected president of the United States signifies that democratic politics is intellectually and morally bankrupt and that America—short of a spiritual revolution—is approaching its nadir as a Judeo-Christian nation.
 
America was the model of mankind.  Its decline is a precondition for the eventual ascendancy of Israel.  This will be hastened by Islamism, whose spearhead is Iran.  Iran’s threat to “wipe Israel off the map” should be understood not simplistically as a manifestation of Jew-hatred but as a dim foreboding—now of universal scope—that the future belongs to Israel.  

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Muslims Kill German Christians In Yemen

June 16th, 2009

YEMEN: 7 FOREIGN TOURISTS KILLED [BODIES MUTILATED] , 2 CHILDREN FOUND ALIVE

Just in..

(AGI) – Sana’a, 15 Jun. – There has been a massacre of tourists in the Yemen: the bodies of seven foreign tourists who were kidnapped on Thursday in the north of the country have been found not far from the city of Saada. Two children who were part of the group have been found alive. According to tribal and government sources, the victims were shot dead. They were part of a group visiting Saada: a German doctor with his wife and three children and two German nurses, a British engineer and his wife, and a South Korean teacher.

SAN’A, Yemen (AP) — Three German women abducted in a group of foreigners last week in Yemen were found dead early Monday, their bodies mutilated, a Yemeni security official said.

Shepherds roaming the area found the women’s remains in the mountainous northern Saada province near the town of el-Nashour, known as a hideout for al-Qaida militants, the official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak to the media.

The three women were among a group of nine foreigners, including seven Germans, abducted Friday in the remote area. The Interior Ministry said the foreigners, who were not identified by name, were kidnapped while on a picnic north of the capital, San’a.

In Berlin, the Foreign Ministry said it could not confirm the reports that the Germans had been killed. A spokesman, speaking on customary condition of anonymity, said that a ministry crisis team and the German embassy in San’a were working together to try and get more details.

Yemeni authorities said the group included a German doctor, his wife and their three children, as well as a Briton and his South Korean wife and two other German nationals. They were all working in a hospital in Saada, the state news agency said.
South Korea’s Foreign Ministry identified their national by her family name, Eom, and said she is a 34-year-old aid worker in Yemen.

The killing of hostages is not common in Yemen, where tribesmen often kidnap foreigners to press the government on a range of demands, including a ransom, but usually release them unharmed.

A tribal leader in the area, who also spoke on condition of anonymity for the same reason as the security official, blamed al-Qaida for the Friday abduction and the killing.

In March, four South Korean tourists in Yemen died in an apparent suicide bombing blamed on al-Qaida.

Earlier, the Yemeni government had accused a local Saada rebel group, led by Abdel Malak al-Hawthi, but the group issued a statement saying it has not been involved in any abductions of foreigners.

Thousands of people have been killed in Saada, which lies near the border with Saudi Arabia, since a Shiite rebellion erupted there in June 2004. The rebels say the government is corrupt and too closely allied with the West. The rebels negotiated a fragile cease-fire with the government last year, but serious tension remains
Yemen, the ancestral homeland of al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden, had long been a haven for Islamic militants and was the scene of the October 2000 suicide bombing of the USS Cole that killed 17 American sailors.

Yemen is also the Arab world’s poorest nation — and one of its most unstable — making it fertile territory for al-Qaida to set up camp.

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Obama Will Not Make a Difference

June 6th, 2009

Sivan 12, 5769, 04 June 09 02:14

by Prof. Sami Alrabaa

(IsraelNN.com) Barack Obama is undoubtedly a good orator and a charismatic figure. These two traits have certainly helped him get elected as president of the United States of America.

Islamic terrorism and a severe global economic crisis added impetus to his success. Rhetorically talented and charismatic figures usually flourish in crises.

But will rhetoric and charisma help Mr. Obama succeed at home and in the Middle East?

I doubt it. Unless Obama calls a spade a spade, he will fail. Unless he calls things by their real name with regard to the Middle East, he will fail. Unless he uses the language of Ronald Reagan, Obama will never succeed - especially as far as Islamic terror is concerned.

Instead of highlighting the root causes of Islamic terrorism and lack of democracy in the Middle East, Obama repeats himself ad nauseum. He advocates that America become partners and dialogue with Muslims. America no longer wants to impose its values on the rest of the world. He also uses aphorisms like, “Democracy brings peace and prosperity to all of us.”

Had Western leaders during the Cold War confined themselves to general rhetoric with regard to Communism, the Berlin Wall would have stayed and the Soviet Union would have survived until now.

Obama must address the root causes of Islamic terror and the lack of freedom and human rights in the Middle East and Islamic societies if he wants to make a difference. Obama must speak loudly and specifically. He should tell his audience in Cairo and elsewhere:

King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia: Stop preaching hatred, violence. Stop practicing oppression, and discrimination against women. Introduce democracy and freedom of expression. Close down those mosques and madrassas that preach fanaticism. Stop exporting Wahhabism and fanaticism. Scrap those school books which incite to hatred and violence against non-Muslims. Allow religious freedom, and let Christians, Jews and followers of other faiths build their own temples and practice their own religion, as you are allowed to do so in other countries. Introduce democracy and freedom of expression. Stop oppressing women. We are not living in the Middle Ages.

Mr. Hosni Mubarak, President of Egypt, release all those political prisoners who demand democracy and human rights. Stop prosecuting them. Establish real democracy and free media. Stop confining freedom of expression. Stop prosecuting bloggers who criticize your regime. Stop prosecuting religious reformers. Fight for power through democracy and fair play.

King Abdullah of Jordan: Stop cementing your police state. Release all those political prisoners. Stop squandering our aid of billions of dollars on your palaces, luxury yachts and motorcycles. Invest the money in development projects and create jobs for the poor.

Hamas leaders: Scrap your charter in which you call for wiping out Israel. This is barbaric and there is no place for barbaric people on this Earth.

Arab and Muslim leaders: protect those scholars who call for religious freedom and modern interpretation of Islam. Stop those fanatic chaplains from preaching fanaticism.

That is the kind of specific language and content which Mr. Obama should use in his speech in Cairo. Had Mr. Obama spoken clearly and straightforwardly he would encourage people to demand political and religious freedom and isolate radical Muslims. Radical Muslims are emboldened because they are tolerated by Arab and Muslim regimes, and the West is unspecific and inactive.

Mr. Obama, and for that matter most Western leaders, are hypocritical. While they incessantly demand the release of Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma, they never demand the release of political prisoners in the Arab world. They never criticize “friendly:” Arab regimes for lack of democracy and abuse of human rights. Obama avoids being specific in relation to Arab regimes. As a matter of fact, he contradicts himself. While he always repeats that he wants to help Muslims build democratic societies, he defended totalitarian regimes like the Saudi and the Egyptian ones in interviews with BBC (June 1, 2009) and French media (June 2, 2009).

When Justin Webb from BBC asked Obama what he thought of the authoritarian regime of Egyptian President Mubarak, Obama said that he did not like to use such “labels”. Then he defended Mubarak and argued that the man is a “force of stability”. In other words, democracy and freedom must be sacrificed for the sake of “stability”.

Webb also asked President Obama about human rights abuse in Egypt. According to Amnesty International, there are thousands of political prisoners in Egypt. “Oh, well, there are thousands of political prisoners around the world.” Obama said, and added, “It is not our job to lecture on human rights.”

Later in the interview with BBC, Obama said, “Action is required, not words.” But obviously this does not apply to the Arab world. He wants “to open a dialogue with Muslims to remove misapprehensions on both sides.” Obama added, after 9/11, the level of misapprehension has increased.

Oh, 9/11 is simply a “misapprehension”! To add insult to injury, Obama added, “There are cultural differences between us and the Muslim world, and we must understand these differences.” Besides, “There are many Muslims who live among us, and that makes us part of the Muslim world.”

So 9/11 and all the terror launched by Islamic jihadists is due to “cultural differences” and misunderstanding of these differences? The free world “misunderstands” the Islamic culture of hatred and violence?

The question is, Mr. President, who is rejecting whom? Who is inciting to hatred and violence? Christians, Jews, Hindus, Buddhists, Bahais? It is Muslims, their Koran and their Hadith.

In his recent interview with French media, Obama also defended Saudi Arabia, the worst despotic and fanatic regime in modern history. He commended Saudi Arabia for being a loyal strategic ally of pivotal importance for the West.

My Saudi friends tell me that the totalitarian regimes in Burma and elsewhere are actually paradise compared to life in Saudi Arabia, which lacks all kinds of basic human rights. Obama’s defense of Saudi Arabia is music to the ears of King Abdullah and his clan. They can relax and carry on their totalitarian rule. The most important power in the world approves.

Bowing to the Saudi king, the way Obama did in London, and talking about Saudi Arabia like that is suspicious. I suspect that he received millions of dollars, directly or indirectly, during his presidential campaign. The Saudis are very good at that. They bribe influential people to keep them quiet.

On the other hand, how come Obama was so specific as far as Israel is concerned? He urged the Israeli government to stop building settlements in the West Bank, but failed to urge Hamas to stop its terrorist attacks and its denial of Israel’s right to exist.

Obama’s address at Cairo University on June 4, 2009, I am sure, will be rhetoric-filled speech that is void and unspecific.

Obama is maybe a good orator, but as a politician he will fail - in particular, in the Middle East.

© Copyright IsraelNationalNews.com

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Obama’s Islamic Speech

June 5th, 2009

There was a time when Barack Hussein Obama wasn’t eager to highlight his ties to Islam. Just a year ago, he was a presidential candidate trying to counter false Internet rumors that he was a Muslim as he sought the support of American voters.

Today however, Hussein Obama is the U.S. president and his audience is bigger and more diverse: a world that includes 1.5 billion Muslims.

On Thursday, Obama sought common ground with Muslims by tracing personal links to Islam throughout his life as he laid out his vision for a strengthened relationship between America and followers of that faith.

President Hussein Obama delivered his landmark speech to the Islamic world quoting the Koran and emphasizing his Islamic roots by mixing religion and policy to bring great words of appeasement to the Islamic world.

He said “I am a Christian, but my father came from a Kenyan family that includes generations of Muslims. As a boy, I spent several years in Indonesia and heard the call of the Azaan at the break of dawn and the fall of dusk. As a young man, I worked in Chicago communities where many found dignity and peace in their Muslim faith. . .That experience guides my conviction that partnership between America and Islam must be based on what Islam is, not what it isn’t. And I consider it part of my responsibility as President of the United States to fight against negative stereotypes of Islam wherever they appear.”  

And, he quoted from the Quran as he issued a greeting of peace, saying “Assalaamu alaykum.”

President Obama finished his whirlwind tour of Islamic dictatorships. He received golden gifts and gave, in exchange, golden complements, saying of Saudi King Abdullah, “I’ve been struck by his wisdom and graciousness” as well as “his generosity”. The President spoke with reporters before touching down in Saudi Arabia, declaring that he “thought it was very important to come to the place where Islam began and to seek His Majesty’s counsel”. – Remember, this president of the United States just recently bowed to the Saudi King in England?

Hussein Obama’s Islamic ties go back to his schooling in a Jakarta “Madrassa.”  Both his father and stepfather are Muslim, and Sarah Hussein Obama of Kenya, Obama’s step-grandmother, is a lifelong Muslim. According to Islam, anyone who willingly submits to the will of Allah is a Muslim. And while Obama may not identify as a Muslim, he may not know not how the Arabs and Muslims see it. -  In Arab culture and under Islamic law, if your father is a Muslim, so are you. And once a Muslim, always a Muslim. You cannot go back. In Islamic eyes, Obama is certainly a Muslim. He may think he’s a Christian, but they do not.

You may object that millions of Muslims today leave Islam and convert to the Christian faith. But according to Shariah law, whoever critiques Muhammad is an enemy of Islam, and thus deserves the death penalty. Regardless of whether the Muslim embraces Christianity (as is happening today with millions of the Indonesians) or becomes an atheist, Islamic law declares that he must be killed. Also, anyone who rejects any of the basic ordinances of Islam or insults the prophet or the Qur’an (as Salman Rushdie did) will be regarded as an apostate and must be killed. – Have you ever asked yourself why do Muslims not object to Obama’s Christianity????

 Obama went on saying during his speech, that all of us have a responsibility to work for the day when “the Holy Land of three great faiths is the place of peace that God intended it to be; when Jerusalem is a secure and lasting home for Jews and Christians and Muslims, and a place for all of the children of Abraham to mingle peacefully together as in the story of Isra, when Moses, Jesus, and Mohammed (peace be upon them) joined in prayer.”  This man claims to be a Christian, yet promotes a Quranic story that Moses, Jesus and Mohammed were together in prayer.

Sura Al-Isra (Arabic: ???? ???????, S?ratu al-Isr?, “The Night Journey“), also called Sura Bani Isra’il (ie Children of Israel), is the 17th chapter of the Qur’an, with 111 verses. This Surah takes its name from the first verse, which tells the story of the Isra and Mi’raj, the transportation of Muhammad during the night to what is referred to as “the farthest Mosque”. The location of this mosque is not explicitly stated in the Qur’an, although in Islamic Hadith this is commonly taken to be the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.

The story of Isra begins with Muhammad (570–632) resting in the Kaaba in Mecca, when the archangel Gabriel comes to him, and brings him the winged horse Buraq, the traditional lightning steed of the prophets. The Buraq then carries Muhammad to the “farthest mosque”. Muhammad alights, tethers Buraq, and leads other prophets in prayer. He then re-mounts the Buraq, and in the second part of the journey, the Mi’raj, is taken to the heavens, where he tours the circles of heaven, and speaks with the earlier prophets such as Abraham, Moses, and Jesus, and then is taken by Gabriel to Allah. Allah instructs Muhammad that Muslims must pray fifty times a day; however, Moses tells Muhammad that it is very difficult for them and they could never do it, and urges Muhammad to go back several times and ask for a reduction, until finally it is reduced to five times a day.

This story has however no evidence. It was established by other companions of Muhammad. Although some accounts describe the Prophet as having visited Al-Aqsa mosque, this is an anachronism since Al-Aqsa was only built many years after the ”Prophet’s” death.

After Muhammad returned to Earth and told his story in Mecca, the unbelieving townspeople regarded it as absurd. Some went to Muhammad’s companion Abu Bakr and told him, “Look at what your companion is saying. He says he went to Jerusalem and came back in one night.” Abu Bakr in reply, told them, “If he said that, then he is truthful. I believe him concerning the news of the heavens — that an angel descends to him from the heavens. How could I not believe he went to Jerusalem and came back in a short period of time — when these are on earth?” It was for this that Abu Bakr is said to have received his famous title “Us-Siddiq”, The Truthful.

Ahmad Muhammad ‘Arafa, a columnist for the Egyptian weekly Al-Qahira, which is published by the Egyptian Ministry of Culture, wrote an article rejecting the established Islamic belief that the Prophet Muhammad’s celebrated “Night Journey” (Koran 17:1) took him from Mecca to Jerusalem. ‘Arafa, presenting a new analysis of the Koranic text, asserts that the Night Journey in Surat Al-Isra’ (that is, “the Sura of the Night Journey”) in the Koran does not refer to a miraculous journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, but to the Prophet’s emigration (Hijra) from Mecca to Medina.

This would seem more logical to me also, since Mecca and Medina were always were Islam’s holy places.


Jerusalem is never mentioned in the Qur’an, yet, it is mentioned 823 times in the Bible, and Zion (which usually means Jerusalem, and sometimes “the Land of Israel”), appears 161 times. Of the 823 mentions of Jerusalem by name in the Bible, 669 of them are in the Old Testament, and 154 times in the New Testament.

Please tell me how Jerusalem became a holy place for Islam? - Lilo

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Do you feel the ice-cold wind blowing from the White House?

June 1st, 2009

Dear Friends,

 

Do you feel the ice-cold wind blowing from the White House?

 

 

Just last month, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu asked the United States to make it a priority of stopping Iran from pursuing the nuclear bomb that threatens Israel’s existence.


Netanyahu didn’t go to the White House seeking a photo opportunity. He went to ask for American leadership and support in dealing with the out-of-control Iranian nuclear threat that is primarily directed against the Jewish state. Israel’s leader simply asked the US to help stop Iran from acquiring the means to inflict a holocaust on the Jews.

But the Obama administration refused. “Get going with the two-state solution”, Obama shot back, “and we’ll be better able to deal with Tehran. If there is a linkage between Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I personally believe it actually runs the other way,”  the American President Hussein Obama said. “To the extent that we can make peace with the Palestinians - between the Palestinians and the Israelis, then I actually think it strengthens our hand in the international community in dealing with the potential Iranian threat.” - The president went on to suggest that he might reassess his “let’s talk” approach to Iran if, by year’s end, there was no sign it was having an effect.

Netanyahu’s position was that it is necessary to deal with Iran first, and with the “Palestinian” question later. - Netanyahu expressed his appreciation, but administration officials “close to Obama” later quickly emphasized that no deadline had been set.

I find it interesting that just two days after Netanyahu met with Obama, Iran successfully test fired a ‘Sajil’ surface-to-surface missile with a 1,200 mile range. Israel is less than 1000 miles from Iran just over one week later, America was standing on the edge of a potential nuclear conflict with North Korea, which test-fired an atomic warhead and launched a handful of surface-to-surface missiles in a defiant show of force. - How interesting then, that exactly one week after spurning Israel’s appeal, the United States this week suddenly finds itself confronting a nuclear-detonating, missile launching North Korea?

It looks like Israel stands alone against the threat, but nobody will help America either.

 

When, in 2004/5, the Sharon government was preparing to uproot the Jews of Gaza, destroy their homes and hand over that territory to the Palestinian Arabs because America pressured Israel to expel the Jews from Gaza we had the Hurricane Katrina that caused the people to flee their homes at the exact same time. - : “Was Katrina the fist of God?”

 

As we do unto Israel, so will it be done to us.

 

It’s just an observation, a thought of mine. What do you think?

 

Shalom - Lilo

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PRAVDA: ‘American descent into Marxism happening with breathtaking speed’…

May 31st, 2009
 
It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.
 
True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.
 
Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.
 
First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their “right” to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our “democracy”. Pride blind the foolish.
 
Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different “branches and denominations” were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the “winning” side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the “winning” side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.
 
The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama.
His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America’s short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Weimar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.
These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?
 
These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.
 
Then came Barack Obama’s command that GM’s (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of “pure” free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.
 
So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a “bold” move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK’s Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our “wise” Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.
 
Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper…but a “freeman” whimper.
 
So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set “fair” maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses?
 
Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.
 
The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.
 
The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.
 

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Israel and the Axis of Evil

May 28th, 2009

- By Caroline B. Glick

 
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com  | North Korea is half a world away from Israel. Yet the nuclear test it conducted on Monday has the Israeli defense establishment up in arms and it its Iranian nemesis smiling like the Cheshire Cat. Understanding why this is the case is key to understanding the danger posed by what someone once impolitely referred to as the Axis of Evil.
 
Less than two years ago, on September 6, 2007, the IAF destroyed a North Korean-built plutonium production facility at Kibar, Syria. The destroyed installation was a virtual clone of North Korea’s Yongbyon plutonium production facility.
 
This past March the Swiss daily *Neue Zuercher Zeitung* reported that Iranian defector Ali Reza Asghari, who before his March 2007 defection to the US served as a general in Iran’s Revolutionary Guards and as deputy defense minister, divulged that Iran paid for the North Korean facility. Teheran viewed the installation in Syria as an extension of its own nuclear program. According to Israeli estimates, Teheran spent between a billion and two billion dollars for the project.
 
It can be assumed that Iranian personnel were present in North Korea during Monday’s test. Over the past several years, Iranian nuclear officials have been on hand for all of North Korea’s major tests including its first nuclear test and its intercontinental ballistic missile test in 2006.
 
Moreover, it wouldn’t be far-fetched to think that North Korea conducted some level of coordination with Iran regarding the timing of its nuclear bomb and ballistic missile tests this week. It is hard to imagine that it is mere coincidence that North Korea’s actions came just a week after Iran tested its solid fuel Sejil-2 missile with a range of two thousand kilometers.
 
Aside from their chronological proximity, the main reason it makes sense to assume that Iran and North Korea coordinated their separate tests is because North Korea has played a central role in Iran’s missile program. Although Western observers claim that Iran’s Sejil-2 is based on Chinese technology transferred to Iran through Pakistan, the fact is that Iran owes much of its ballistic missile capacity to North Korea. The Shihab-3 missile for instance, which forms the backbone of Iran’s strategic arm threatening to Israel and its Arab neighbors is simply an Iranian adaptation of North Korea’s Nodong missile technology. Since at least the early 1990s, North Korea has been only too happy to proliferate that technology to whoever wants it. Like Iran, Syria owes much of its own massive missile arsenal to North Korean proliferation.
 
Responding Monday to North Korea’s nuclear test, US President Barack Obama said, “North Korea’s behavior increases tensions and undermines stability in Northeast Asia.”
 
While true, North Korea’s intimate ties with Iran and Syria show that North Korea’s nuclear program, with its warhead, missile and technological components, is not a distant threat, limited in scope to faraway East Asia. It is a multilateral program shared on various levels with Iran and Syria. Consequently, it endangers not just the likes of Japan and South Korea, but all nations whose territory and interests are within range of Iranian and Syrian missiles.
 
Beyond its impact on Iran’s technological and hardware capabilities, North Korea’s nuclear program has had a singular influence on Iran’s political strategy for advancing its nuclear program diplomatically. North Korea has been a trailblazer in its utilization of a mix of diplomatic aggression and seeming accommodation to alternately intimidate and persuade its enemies to take no action against its nuclear program. Iran has followed Pyongyang’s model assiduously. Moreover, Iran has used the international - and particularly the American response - to various North Korean provocations over the years to determine how to position itself at any given moment in order to advance its nuclear program.
 
For instance, when the US reacted to North Korea’s 2006 nuclear and ICBM tests by reinstating the six-party talks in the hopes of appeasing Pyongyang, Iran learned that by exhibiting an interest in engaging the US on its uranium enrichment program it could gain valuable time. Just as North Korea was able to dissipate Washington’s resolve to take action against it while buying time to advance its program still further through the six-party talks, so Iran, by seemingly agreeing to a framework for discussing its uranium enrichment program, has been able to keep the US and Europe at bay for the past several years.
 
The Obama administration’s impotent response to Pyongyang’s ICBM test last month and its similarly stuttering reaction to North Korea’s nuclear test on Monday have shown Teheran that it no longer needs to even pretend to have an interest in negotiating aspects of its nuclear program with Washington or its European counterparts. Whereas appearing interested in reaching an accommodation with Washington made sense during the Bush presidency when hawks and doves were competing for the president’s ear, today, with the Obama administration populated solely by doves, Iran, like North Korea believes it has nothing to gain by pretending to care about accommodating Washington.
 
This point was brought home clearly by both Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s immediate verbal response to the North Korean nuclear test on Monday and by Iran’s provocative launch of warships in the Gulf of Aden the same day. As Ahmadinejad said, as far the Iranian regime is concerned, “Iran’s nuclear issue is over.” There is no reason to talk anymore. Just as Obama made clear that he intends to do nothing in response to North Korea’s nuclear test, so Iran believes that the President will do nothing to impede its nuclear program.
 
Of course it is not simply the administration’s policy towards North Korea that is signaling to Iran that it has no reason to be concerned that the US will challenge its nuclear aspirations. The US’s general Middle East policy, which conditions US action against Iran’s nuclear weapons program on the prior implementation of an impossible-to-achieve Israel-Palestinian peace agreement makes it obvious to Teheran that the US will take no action whatsoever to prevent it from following in North Korea’s footsteps and becoming a nuclear power.
 
During his press briefing with Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu last Monday, Obama said the US would reassess its commitment to appeasing Iran at year’s end. And early this week it was reported that Obama has instructed the Defense Department to prepare plans for attacking Iran. Moreover, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen has made several recent statement warning of the danger a nuclear-armed Iran will pose to global security - and by extension, to US national security.
 
On the surface, all of this seems to indicate that the Obama administration may be willing to actually do something to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power. Unfortunately though, due to the timeline Obama has set, it is clear that before he will be ready to lift a finger against Iran, the mullocracy will have already become a nuclear power.
 
Israel assesses that Iran will have a sufficient quantity of enriched uranium to make a nuclear bomb by the end of the year. The US believes that it could take until mid-2010. At his press briefing last week Obama said that if the negotiations are deemed a failure, the next step for the US will be to expand international sanctions against Iran. It can be assumed that here too, Obama will allow this policy to continue for at least six months before he will be willing to reconsider it. By that point, in all likelihood, Iran will already be in possession of a nuclear arsenal.
 
Beyond Obama’s timeline, over the past week, two other developments made it apparent that regardless of what Iran does, the Obama administration will not revise its policy of placing its Middle East emphasis on weakening Israel rather than on stopping Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons. First, last Friday *Yediot Ahronot* reported that at a recent lecture in Washington, US Lt. General Keith Dayton, who is responsible for training Palestinian military forces in Jordan stated outright that if Israel does not surrender Judea and Samaria within two years, the Palestinian forces he and his fellow American officers are now training at a cost of more than $300 million will begin killing Israelis.
 
Even more unsettling than Dayton’s certainty that within a short period of time these US-trained forces will commence murdering Israelis, is his seeming equanimity in the face of the known consequences of his actions. The prospect of US-trained Palestinian military forces slaughtering Jews does not cause Dayton have a second thought about the wisdom of the US’s commitment to building and training a Palestinian army.
 
Dayton’s statement laid bare the disturbing fact even though the administration is fully aware of the costs of its approach to the Palestinian conflict with Israel, it is still unwilling to reconsider it. Defense Secretary Robert Gates just extended Dayton’s tour of duty for an additional two years and gave him the added responsibility of serving as Obama’s Middle East mediator George Mitchell’s deputy.
 
Four days after Dayton’s remarks were published, senior American and Israeli officials met in London. The reported purpose of the high-level meeting was to discuss how Israel will abide by the administration’s demand that it prohibit all construction inside of Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria.
 
What was most notable about the meeting was its timing. By holding the meeting the day after North Korea tested its bomb and after Iran’s announcement that it rejects the US’s offer to negotiate about its nuclear program, the administration demonstrated that regardless of what Iran does, Washington’s commitment to putting the screws on Israel is not subject to change.
 
All of this of course is music to the mullahs’ ears. Between America’s impotence against their North Korean allies and its unshakable commitment to keeping Israel on the hot seat, the Iranians know that they have no reason to worry about Uncle Sam.
 
As for Israel, it is a good thing that the IDF has scheduled largest civil defense drill in the country’s history for next week. Between North Korea’s nuclear test, Iran’s brazen bellicosity and America’s betrayal, it is clear that the government can do nothing to impact Washington’s policies towards Iran. No destruction of Jewish communities will convince Obama to take action against Iran.
 
Today Israel stands alone against the mullahs and their bomb. And this, like the US’s decision to stand down against the Axis of Evil is not subject to change.

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Four Muslims Didn’t Read The Memo….

May 21st, 2009

Four Muslims arrested in plot to bomb New York synagogues

Four Black Muslims in New York don’t seem to have gotten the memo that the jihad terror threat is all over. “NBC: 4 arrested in plot to bomb NYC targets: Suspects were under heavy surveillance, authorities say,” from NBC News, May 20 (thanks to Pamela):

WASHINGTON - Four men have been arrested in a plot to attack several targets in the New York City area, including synagogues, federal and local authorities told NBC News Wednesday.Authorities said the four men have long been under investigation and there was little danger they could actually have carried out their plan, NBC’s Pete Williams reported.

Investigators say the four, described as Black Muslims from the Bronx, had planned to place bombs at various targets. But New York city police and federal agents got wind of the plot and kept the men under careful surveillance.

In fact, officials say, the men recently bought what they thought were explosives, which they put in storage lockers outside the city. But what the men did not know is that the material they bought was actually harmless, sold to them by informants posing as explosives dealers….

Two years ago, two Muslims pleaded guilty to plotting to attack synagogues in Los Angeles. But officials said that they knew of no connection between those arrests and this latest plot in New York.

 

More:

“FBI arrest four in alleged plot to car bomb Bronx synagogue,” by Alison Gendar and Helen Kennedy for the New York Daily News, May 20 (thanks again to Pamela):

The FBI busted a homegrown terror cell late Wednesday night as the men sneaked around a Jewish temple in Riverdale planting what they thought were packages of C-4 explosives, sources told the Daily News.The four men also allegedly had what they believed was a working Stinger missile in their car: officials said they wanted to shoot down a plane near Stewart Air National Guard Base.

Sources said the four men were arrested after a year long investigation that began when an informant connected to a mosque in Newburg said some militants wanted to buy eplosives.

FBI agents posing as militants sold them what they thought were C-4 and a plane-downing Stinger missile.

The weaponry was all phony.

The men were arrested as they planted fake bombs in front of the Riverdale Temple in the Bronx and under cars parked in front of the synagogue.

They also allegedly planned to blow up a second synagogue, the Riverdale Jewish Center….

http://jihadwatch.org

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