By Ted Belman
The Coordinating Council on Jerusalem is off to a good start. The organizations joining, and there are many, have accepted the principle that defending Jerusalem from division is more important than unquestioned support of decisions made by the Government of Israel.
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“Preserving an undivided Jerusalem is a paramount issue not only for Israelis, but for the worldwide Jewish Community. This is not a decision any Israeli government can make unilaterally. Jerusalem belongs to all Jews, even those not living in Israel, and their opinion matters.”
But this initiative is meeting some resistance.
First, Rabbi Kanefsky, an orthodox rabbi in California, publicly asked that Jerusalem be negotiable in order not to tie the hands of the government in Israel. I argued in We must be honest and realistic that the rabbi was wrong on his facts, wrong on his law and wrong in his belief that a negotiated peace was possible.
In response to my statement “Regardless of what the governments of Israel and the US tell you, a two state solution is a prescription for war, not peace, and it will never be viable.” one leader wrote, highlighting another fault line, “The mission of this coalition is about Jerusalem only. We at the RCA joined with that understanding.”
Jeff Ballabon summarized the dispute
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“As a coordinating council, the relevant question is whether groups want to adopt a “no 2-state” bottom line or a “no negotiations on Jerusalem” bottom line.”
My answer is very simple. If one really wants to keep Jerusalem undivided, and not just mouth platitudes, then one must fight the entire peace process. If Israel cedes Judea and Samaria to the Arabs or recognizes Palestine as the Palestinian national home, it will be impossible to protect Jerusalem from being divided. Our defensive line must be the Jordan River and not the boundaries of Jerusalem.
In “Painful Concessions”, I warned
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The “peace process” is like an enormous ship traveling with great momentum to a predetermined destination. Nothing Israel can do will stop it or alter its course. While Israel continues to debate the details, the ship continues, inexorably.
The “peace process” is a threat not only to Jerusalem but also to Israel itself. The peace mongers, including Rabbi Kanefsky, are so blinded by wishful thinking that they can’t see the facts. They ignore everything the Arabs say and do in pursuit of their blind ambition.
Benjamin Franklin once wrote “One of the great tragedies of life is the murder of a beautiful theory by a gang of brutal facts.”
The die-hards among them are unable to accept that Islamic “peace” and Israel are mutually exclusive. or that disengagement or withdrawal, unilateral or otherwise, will decrease out security rather than increase it or will bring us war not peace.
When are these liberals going to be mugged by reality.
To save Jerusalem we must kill the peace process.
Shy Madoff is just one of many like Michael Milken: The subprime mortgage crisis is a criminal affair. Not in the vague sense of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pushing mortgages to those who could not possibly repay them, but in the literal sense. Here comes Michael Milken, a junk bond casino creator of the 1980s. After being jailed in the US and paying hundreds of millions of dollars in fines (a fraction of his illicit gains), he now seeks to establish his financial scam empire in Israel. Milken is directly liable for the mortgage crisis. He and his accomplices from Drexel Burnham Lambert led the AIG CDS operations. In Milken’s casino for rich speculators, credit default swaps replaces junk bonds. AIG’s CDS were fake from the beginning: intended to cover the mortgage investors’ losses in case of default, the instruments were designed in such a way that they could not possibly withstand a market-wide default; AIG carried no reserves to cover them. Milken’s associates were selling insurance which they knew was without substance. That’s why they needed to co-opt AIG, a respected insurance company which could not sit quite with its traditional modest profits while speculative market was bubbling just out of the window. It was an especially heinous crime for a major insurer such as AIG which advertises its stability and engages in pension and lifetime savings business to perform so risky operations on mind-boggling amounts without even hedging them. Incredibly, CDS were carried by AIG Financial Partners, a formally independent firm with no significant reserves of its own; its failure wouldn’t have affected AIG core insurance business, and there was no social need for the bailout. AIG holds close to $600 billion in CDS, which makes the $85 billion bailout doubtful.
Sorry shy most invested in Madoff equity funds with no attempt of or prior investigation. Most by word of mouth and I have seen more careful and cursory examination of Tomatoes in the Shuck than millions and tens of millions of dollars by people placing such funds at his disposal. Most people are taken advantage of because they allow themselves to be. CAVEAT EMPTOR Let the buyer beware, means that ea. buyer is responsible to himself for not being swindled. Caution is the byword.
http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=CAVEAT%20EMPTOR%20&gwp=16
Yamit, a bit more pity for Madoff’s victims is in order. It’s one thing to expect your investment to go south as a direct consequence of the sour global economy. It’s another completely when a vile villian is involved, who gave nothing but an utterly false impression of integrity and rationalle to his lured victims.
His reputation was built on sound, stable, and steady low return investments. The method itself is logical and it worked – still does, in certain ways.
It is very hard to blame investors with being greedy when all so many of them wanted to do was the maximum possible to retain the value of their savings. This holds true for educational endowment funds and charitable organizations as well. The ones who will lose the most are the recipients in need of such monies, not the managers who made the decisions where and how to invest.
Madoff is to blame. He has been swindling people for at least an entire decade. He – not his victims – is the epitomy of greed and evil. He is criminally responsbile for shattering so many people’s lives and happiness. May he rot in this world and in the next.
Fools and their money are soon parted!! Hah Hah! Individuals who blindly invested with Madoff first of all had what to lose and in many if not most they lost mostly earlier profits, it was under this Ponzi scheme, the last ones in who really got burned but in all cases individual greed of the investors was that which allowed Madoff to succeed. The principle of CAVEAT EMPTOR was ignored. Those who invested blindly charitable funds instead of distributing them as per their purpose are no less criminal than Madoff and should be prosecuted for fiduciary fraud and malfeasance.
Peskin are you worried? I hope so! They might put you at the top of the list, at least I hope so!
Antisemites don’t need a Madoff(Madeoff) to hate and scapegoat Jews, in any event many or most of those who got burned were other Jews. Madoff was very ecumenical and like your Black Deity just wanted to spread the pain instead of wealth, Ha Ha!
Peskin did you by chance have money invested with Made off?
Jews in America and Israel have been dealt a serious blow by the fraudulent activities of Mr. Bernard Madoff. Many Institutions, universities, and various charitable organizations have lost many millions as a result of thie machinations of this one individual.
Likewise the antisemitic movements that have long preached that the Jews control international finance have just received a christmas gift of immense proportions. 50$ billion dollars aqpproach the gross national product of many nations.This is a great propaganda weapon that has been handed to them, to fuel and propagate their hatred.
Americans on Canada
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4EDZNlTPpg&feature=related
With such geniuses : They would follow anyone and anything Scary as hell
German Students Lay Waste to Holocaust Exhibit
Does Jewish anti-Semitism exist? http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1228728151848&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull
Prof. Alvin H. Rosenfeld’s 2007 essay “Progressive Jewish Thought and the New Anti-Semitism” triggered an international debate over a largely neglected phenomenon: anti-Zionist Jews who are waging fierce polemical and organizational campaigns against Israel’s existence. Many of them employ language that fulfills the criteria of both the European Union’s “working definition” of anti-Semitism and the US State Department’s definition of contemporary anti-Semitism.
Progressive Jewish Thought and The New Anti-Semetisim Alvin H. Rosenfeld
http://www.ajc.org/atf/cf/%7B42D75369-D582-4380-8395-D25925B85EAF%7D/PROGRESSIVE_JEWISH_THOUGHT.PDF
A must read to understand the Jewish contribution to world wide anti-semetism and anti-Israel thought and actions today.
Read Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch, Commentary on the Torah, Exodus 1:9.
The question of the “oldest hatred” as Melanie Phillips refers to it is always an interesting one. Many have written on why the Jews have been singled out historically for persecution, pogroms, and extermination. There are many plausible answers.
Some on Israpundit remind that God has commanded us to “dwell alone”. Now, there’s a prescription for ostracism — the first step towards alienation from the local society.
Then there is the “arrogance” of calling ourselves “The Chosen People” — though few understand that this is a burden as well as a gift. Never mind, it is surely a sign we are begging for “special treatment”.
As a tiny minority in a world historically composed of impassioned Christians seeking to spread the gospel by the sword, we were guilty of Deicide and subject to conversion or death.
But of course, that fails to explain the embrace of Hitler the Pagan or the modern anti-Zionism of the secular European left.
It must be because we insist on being “different” — with our broad-brimmed hats and exotic curls. Yet reform Judaism was born and still, the Jews were targeted.
Well, one can always point to the obscene wealth we amass as a good reason to despise us. That one-fifth of Jews live below the poverty line in the wealthiest country on Earth is to be ignored.
Finally then, it must be the absolute power we wield over governments and monarchs. Everyone — from Wilhem Marr to Walt and Mearsheimer — can surely agree on that. Yes, that’s the ticket; I’m certain of it.
The Holocaust education among gentiles is counterproductive. The majority of
them would not volunteer to murder Jews or press for such murder. If pushed by
an anti-Semitic regime, almost all of them would join the murder despite any……..
Holocaust education is detrimental tactically because Holocaust sets a
benchmark for Jewish suffering. Anything short of annihilation is not perceived
as too hard on Jews. The Holocaust-educated world, therefore, pushes Israel to
unprecedented concessions to enemies: not being annihilated for now is deemed
good enough for Jews.
The world’s reaction to the expected annihilation of Israel in 1948, 1967, or
by nuclear Iran show how futile is Holocaust education: just as in 1942, the
world watches the doomed Jews with mild curiosity.
Israeli Jews who deride Holocaust victims for going as lambs to slaughter
should better look at themselves:
excellent piece. one correction: there is no such thing as a “palestinian”. it is a completely false construct. they admit it themselves (see israpundit “hadrian’s curse”); see ‘from time immemorial’ by peters.
this piece makes the essential point: Peace-loving Muslims have been made irrelevant by their silence.
THE BEST DEFENSE AND OFFENSE
New Prophets and Writings Daily Study cycle (recorded lectures) by OU (Orthodox Union) starts today Nov. 01/2007:
http://www.ouradio.org/nach
Starts with Yehoshua – “Yehoshua (Joshua) is named the successor of Moshe (Moses) by Hashem. He is commanded to lead the Jewish people across the Jordan River to the Land which G-d has promised them”.
The text of the chapter is available on-line and the Hebrew reading as well.
Learn Torah – save Am Israel in Eretz Israel.
forget about these (jews) we can’t waste our time and energies on these microbes. he is not important and a distraction. DO NOT LET DISTRACTIONS SIDETRACK THOSE WHO ARE COMMITTED TO THE LAND OF ISRAEL!
When orthodox Rabbi Kanesfsky makes his pronouncements from places like Hama Gader, southeast of Lake Kinneret, but considered as part of the Golan Heights, I’ll read his material.
In the meantime, Los Angeles is somewhat sheltered from the realities of what’s going on.
Kol tuv,