Hassan Askari, the Muslim who defended Walter Adler, a Jewish man who was being attacked by a gang of ten on the New York City subway, was invited to and attended a Hanukkah celebration with Walter. Congratulations to both Hassan and Walter. God Willing, may all of us be like Hassan and Walter. Peace on earth.

According to the Daily News, the Good Samaritan who tried to stop the Christmas-versus-Chanukah subway beating has two black eyes and a sore nose – but no regrets.

“I did what I thought was right,” said Hassan Askari, 20. “I did the best that I could to help.”

Askari, a Bangladeshi Muslim studying at Berkeley College in Manhattan, was on a Q train headed to Brooklyn late Friday when he came to the aid of young women confronted by a group of 10 thugs.

Fearful for the women’s safety, he pushed one of the men away – and was then pounced on by the group, he said.

“They grabbed me and punched and beat me up,” Askari said.

“They punched me first. I didn’t get a chance to punch him back.”

Askari, all of 5-feet-7 and 140 pounds, said he was left with a swollen face.

He said he didn’t go to the doctor because he’s too busy working two waiter jobs and doesn’t have the money for medical care.

He was mystified as to why the men became so outraged when the women and their male friends wished them a “Happy Chanukah” while they were yelling “Merry Christmas” on the train car.

“I don’t understand,” he said. “They were just being nice.”

New Yorkers Hassan Askari and Walter Adler were also honored by Foundation for Ethnic Understanding Wednesday for their role in preventing anti-Semitic attack on subway.  “We salute these young men for their courage in not allowing their faith come between them in a time of need. They are leading by example,” said Foundation President Rabbi Marc Schneier.  Please click here to read about this event.

Please note that Hassan Askari is not the exception among Muslims worldwide.  He is what all Muslims are expected to be, and he behaved in the manner that all Muslims are expected to behave when they see a fellow human being needing help.

Askari Update: December 19, 2007 :

Recently, at City Hall,  Hasan Askari was honored for his altruism and bravey.  Mayor Bloomberg presented Askari with a crystal apple that had been donated by Tiffany’s. It is interesting to note that Hasan was once the victim of ethnic intimidation himself: after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, he was on a trip to New Orleans when a group of men harassed him, yelling ”Go home, Osama!”  He found this type of intimidation and harassment  “very hurtful.” Last week, Mr. Askari said he was thinking only of helping his “fellow man” when he jumped into the fray on the Q train to protect the Jewish students as they were being beaten.

“You have to do what you can to help,” he said. “This gives a positive message to everyone in the city and the country.”

http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/11001#.Tu3bAUp-yeA

On the Holiness of Jerusalem to Judaism and Islam

Published: Sunday, December 18, 2011 8:55 AM

Guilio Meotti last week exposed the Vatican’s continuing efforts to control Jerusalem’s holy sites.The Muslim’s deny Jews were there. Let’s set the record straight.

Yonatan Silverman

The author is a professional translator from Hebrew to English. He is the author of For the World to See:The Life of Margaret Bourke White. He operates the online newsletter SARTABA.

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For 3000 years the eternal city of Jerusalem has held the most exalted position in the Jewish religion, and a place of unparalleled importance in Jewish life and history.

First and foremost, King Solomon built the first Holy Temple in Jerusalem between the years 965 and 928 BCE. At that time the Holy Temple was the stronghold of the Jewish religion, containing the Holy Ark and the holiest altar in the nation for bringing ritual sacrifices as offerings to God. The people of Israel would come to the Holy Temple to pray and to give thanks but especially to perform sacrifices on the three festivals of pilgrimage: Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. The actual performance of the sacrifices in the Holy Temple was reserved for the priests (cohanim) who were descendants of Aaron.

But in the year 586 the Babylonian monarch Nebuchadnezzar invaded Jerusalem, destroyed the Holy Temple carried off its implements made of precious metals, and exiled the remaining Jews of Jerusalem to Babylon. He had already exiled the rich and important ones several years earlier.

Although Nebuchadnezzar had laid waste to the Holy Temple, its holiness remained and it was then the Jewish exiles swore: “if I forget you Jerusalem, may I forget my right hand and may my tongue adhere to the roof of my mouth if I do not remember, if I do not hold Jerusalem above my greatest joy,” and generations of Jews have kept this vow to the present day.

When Nehemiah returned from Babylon around 536 with the first group of exiles the city was rebuilt, and the Holy Temple and Jerusalem were again the principle focus of national religious life until the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in the year 70 CE. Following the suppression of Bar Kochva’s revolt, the Roman Legions burned all of Jerusalem to ashes and in its place built a pagan city they called Aelia Capitolina, which Jews were forbidden from entering for generations.

Before the Umayyads built Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa, Jerusalem had no status at all in Islam.
The nation, however, longingly remembers the holiness of Jerusalem and did so throughout thousands of years of exile.

The strong heartfelt desire every Jew has to see Jerusalem rebuilt in his lifetime and the centuries-deep Jewish affection for the city King David founded are embodied in many important customs and prayers from Judaism’s great sages. For example, the prayer: “And to Jerusalem, your city mercifully return, and dwell within it as you said. And build in it soon in our lifetimes, the building for eternity, and may it hold a place for King David’s throne,” is repeated by every praying Jew several times a day.

In brief, those are the religious fundamentals on which Jerusalem’s holiness stands in the Jewish faith.

The Rambam outlines it even more succinctly: “It is a tradition with all that the place in which David and Solomon built the sacrificial altar and which held the Holy Ark on its floor is the place in which Abraham built an altar and bound Isaac on it, and it is the place on which Noah built when he came out of the ark, and it is the altar on which Cain and Abel sacrificed, and on which Adam sacrificed when he was created and on which he was created. As the sages say: “He was created from his place of atonement.” In other words, as the passage from the Rambam illustrates, the reason Jerusalem is the holiest city in Judaism is that in the 5000 year span of Jewish religious life the nation’s devotion to God has intersected more with this city and more intensely than with any other.

Various factors make Jerusalem holy to Muslims.

At first glance, the holiness of Jerusalem in the Muslim tradition is also religious at heart, and stems from the belief that Muhammad the prophet and founder of Islam rose to heaven from the site of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem.

But a little research shows that other factors beside religion played a role too.

After the prophet died in June 632 a series of successors, or caliphs, assumed authority as Islam’s leaders. Between 661 and 750 the Umayyad Dynasty held the Caliphate and ruled from Damascus. During the time they ruled, on account of various internal and external pressures the Umayyads exerted enormous effort to elevate Jerusalem’s status, perhaps even to the level of Mecca.

Daniel Pipes wrote in the Middle East Quarterly:

“The first Umayyad ruler, Mu’awiya, chose Jerusalem as the place where he ascended to the caliphate; he and his successors engaged in a construction program – religious edifices, a palace, and roads – in the city. The Umayyads possibly had plans to make Jerusalem their political and administrative capital…But Jerusalem is primarily a city of faith, and, as the Israeli scholar Izhak Hasson explains, the “Umayyad regime was interested in ascribing an Islamic aura to its stronghold and center.”

Toward this end (as well as to assert Islam’s presence in its competition with Christianity), the Umayyad caliph built Islam’s first grand structure, the Dome of the Rock, right on the spot of the Jewish Temple, in 688-91. This remarkable building is not just the first monumental sacred building of Islam but also the only one that still stands today in roughly its original form.”

The next step the Umayyads took to make Jerusalem holy to Islam relates to a passage in the Quran (17:1) that describes Muhammad’s Night Journey to heaven: “Glory to He who took His servant by night from the Sacred Mosque to the furthest mosque (al masjidi al aqsa).”

Pipes explains that when this Koranic passage was first revealed, in about 621, a place called the “Sacred Mosque” already existed in Mecca. “In contrast,” he goes on, “the ‘furthest mosque’ was a turn of phrase, not a place. Some early Muslims understood it as metaphorical or as a place in heaven.”

In other words, the line about the furthest mosque in the Koran is just a figure of speech. Which means there is no basis for associating the furthest mosque – the Koranic location of the start of Muhammad’s Night Journey – with the city of Jerusalem.

In 715, Pipes writes, the Umayyads did something very clever. To build up the prestige of their domain, they built a second mosque in Jerusalem, again on the Temple Mount, and named this one the “Furthest Mosque” (i.e. al-masjidi al-aqsa) the exact same name written in the holy Koran. And in so doing, the Umayyads forced the city of Jerusalem to assume a role in the life of the prophet Muhammad. A role which it never had.

This is how the Muslim belief in the holiness of Jerusalem, which persists to this day, originated.

It’s impossible to escape the conclusion, as the Palestinian historian A.L. Tibawi writes, that building an actual Al Aqsa Mosque “gave reality to the figurative name used in the Koran…” As Pipes points out, moreover, “it had the hugely important effect of giving Jerusalem a place in the Koran post hoc which naturally imbued the city with a higher status in Islam”.

Which is another way of saying, before the Umayyads built Dome of the Rock and Al Aksa, Jerusalem had no status at all in Islam.

Israeli scholar Izhak Hasson says: “construction of the Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa mosque, the rituals instituted by the Umayyads on the Temple Mount and the dissemination of Islamic-oriented Traditions regarding sanctity of the site, all point to the political motives which underlay the glorification of Jerusalem among the Muslims.”

In other words the sanctification of Jerusalem in Islam is based on the Umayyad building program. And their cleverness in bringing about a (baseless) association between the al-masjid al-aqsa mentioned in the holy Koran and the mosque they built on the Temple Mount and purposely named Al Aqsa, precisely so that it would assume a measure of Koranic holiness it did not have.

Perhaps the most convincing evidence of Islam’s very loose and insignificant bond with Jerusalem is how the Muslims related to the city after the Caliphate passed from the Umayyads to the Abbasid’s in 750. Daniel Pipes writes: “Jerusalem fell into near-obscurity. For the next three and a half centuries, books praising this city lost favor and the construction of glorious buildings not only came to an end but existing ones fell apart (the dome over the rock collapsed in 1016.)

These days, the never-ending cry for a Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital surely contains a trace of the claim that the city is holy in Islam. But essentially the historic record shows that the actions and circumstances on which the claim is based aren’t very holy at all. In fact, by any standard of religious values in any society in the world, artificially imbuing a place with holiness, through wordplay and administrative sleight of hand, constitute the very opposite of holiness.

Hat tip Arutz Sheva

Op-Ed: Shame on You, Harvard University!

Published: Friday, December 16, 2011 7:12 AM

Harvard has come to the aid of Islamic fundamentalists in their quest to dominate India and South Central Asia by their dismissal of Indian Prof. S. Swarmy for writing of Muslim persecution in India. For shame!

Prof. Phyllis Chesler

Prof. Phyllis Chesler is the author of fifteen books, including Women and Madness (Doubleday, 1972), The Death of Feminism: What’s Next in the Struggle for Women’s Freedom (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005) and most recently, The New Anti-Semitism. She is the co-founder of the Association for Women in Psychology and the National Women’s Health Network.

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First they came for the pagans and the Jews. Then they came for the Christians. And then they came for the Hindus, Buddhists, Zoroastrians, and Ba’hai.

What am I talking about? I am talking about the Islamic persecution of infidels on every continent—a persecution which is still ongoing; about forced conversions to Islam; and about the genocidal extermination of 80 million Hindus over a period of six centuries (1000-1500 CE).

What I’ve just written is historically true as is Islam’s history of anti-Black racism, slavery, and gender and religious apartheid. Ibn Warraq has a new and very important book just coming out on this very subject. It is titled: Why the West is Best. A Muslim Apostate’s Defense of Liberal Democracy.

But, it is a crime to say any of this. And, it is a crime to suggest that a liberal or constitutional democracy must defend itself against jihadic terrorism.

This is not true only in the Middle East or in Islamic central Asia. It is true in the major and most prestigious universities in the United States.

For example, in the summer of 2011, Yale got rid of the elegant and sophisticated Dr. Charles Small (The Yale Initiative for the Inter-disciplinary Study of Anti-Semitism), because he dared to hold a conference in which Islamic anti-Semitism and Islamic terrorism were discussed. This outraged the “Palestinians”, south-Syrians, Jordanians, and Egyptians on campus. Calls were made, letters were written.

The Ivy League professoriate, including the Jews, were exceedingly nervous about having such a politically incorrect Jew in their midst and on their faculty.

Thus, although Yale did not have to pay a penny for Dr. Small’s endeavor (he came with his own funding), they dismissed him. Dr. Small was able to establish a beachhead for five full years. In these times—not bad but especially in these times, not good enough.

Now, Harvard has similarly dismissed a distinguished and highly respected Professor or Economics, an Indian Hindu, Professor Subramanian Swamy. He taught at Harvard for 20 years, every summer.

We do know that many professors all across America preach daily against Israel and against Jews without losing their jobs due to “hate speech” or racism.
What was his “crime?” In the wake of a second Islamic terrorist attack on Mumbai (July, 2011), in which 26 people were murdered and 130 were  wounded, Professor Swamy wrote an article about this tragedy. Please recall that in 2008, Islamic jihadists launched a long and horrific attack on Mumbai, in which 164 people were murdered and 308 wounded. The Pakistani Islamist group behind this chose Mumbai because it is a densely populated commercial and entertainment center; they targeted Westerners, tourists, wealthy Indians, and, of course, Jews.

Professor Swamy, is also the President of the Janata Party and served as both India’s former minister of Commerce and Industry as well as the former minister of Law and Justice. This learned man published an op-ed piece in an Indian newspaper in which he reminded his readers of the long history of Hindu persecution at Muslim hands and of the contemporary stated intentions of Pakistani-based terrorist groups to convert all India or to kill those who resist. He suggested adopting a “Hindu mindset” as the first way of fighting back against this.

In a letter to Harvard President, Drew Gilpin Faust,  Dr. Jagan Kaul, Retired Professor of International Law and Chairman, Diversity-USA, defended Dr. Swamy’s right to hold his opinion without being dismissed because that opinion was being viewed, by some Harvard students and by a handful of highly politicized faculty, as anti-Islamic “hate speech.”  Professor Kaul writes:

“Dr. Swamy has clearly stated that ‘Islamic terrorism is India’s number one national security problem….and already the successor to Osama bin Laden as the al-Qaeda leader has declared that India is the priority target for that terrorist organization and not the USA.’  Towards the concluding portion of his analysis Dr. Swamy has summarized the goals of the Islamic terrorism in India. He believes that their number 1 goal is to overawe India on Kashmir….By demanding the abrogation of section 370 of the Indian Constitution Dr. Subramanian Swamy has been trying to reverse the dangerous advance of Wahabi Islam in the Indian sub-Continent and in the process saving the US from having to deal with one more nasty, bloody and complex development in the world.

“How unfortunate and regrettable it is that Dr. Swamy is being banished because he showed the wisdom, fortitude and guts for doing the right thing by fighting the Jihadis before it was too late.”

On December 6, 2011, Professor Swamy was formally dismissed by Harvard. I do not know if he has any legal recourse. Harvard’s reputation is certainly damaged—just as Yale’s has been.

Professor Swamy should be allowed to write op-ed pieces in India that are not held against him in the United States.

I am not sure whether he preaches against Muslims in his Economics classes. We do know that many professors all across America preach daily against Israel and against Jews without losing their jobs due to “hate speech” or racism. I do know that infidels are cursed in many mosques and madrassas and in Islamic state universities across the world. ”

This situation affects us all. The West must understand that silencing men like Professor Swamy is in a sense an act of Jihad. We are aiding the Islamic fundamentalists in their quest for domination in India and South Central Asia.

(from ArutzSheva)

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah

Israel news photo: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia

Insulting the friends of the founder of Islam earned an Australian national 500 lashes and a year in jail in Saudi Arabia last month.

Mansor Almaribe, a resident of southern Victoria state, was arrested by religious police on November 14 in Medina while participating in the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca known as the hajj. His eldest son Jamal told The Melbourne Age newspaper that Almaribe was reading and praying in a group at the time.

Family members told Australian media that Saudi officials accused the 45-year-old of insulting companions of Islam’s Prophet Muhammed; blasphemy is considered a serious offense in Saudi Arabia, which is governed under Shari’a (Islamic) law.

No information is available about exactly how or when he insulted them, or even which companions of Muhammed he allegedly had insulted.

He was convicted Tuesday and sentenced to two years in prison and 500 lashes. The court later reduced the sentence to “only” one year in jail, in the presence of an Australian consular official who attended the proceedings.

The maximum number of lashes ever allowed to be used as a sentence under Jewish law during the time of the Holy Temples was 39, and that was to be delivered under the supervision of a medical doctor, in sets of three, so as to ensure the convicted person did not die as a result.

A sentence of 500 lashes is considered equivalent to a death sentence.

Another son of Almaribe, Mohammed — named for the very prophet on whose behalf he is set to be tortured — has expressed fears for his father’s safety. ”Five hundred lashes on his back, and he has back problems,” he told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “I wouldn’t think he’d survive 50.” Almaribe, a father of five, suffers from diabetes and heart disease.

Australian Ambassador to Saudi Arabia Neil Hawkins has appealed to Riyadh for leniency, according to Canberra’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. ”The Australian government is universally opposed to corporal punishment,” the department in a statement.

Approximately 300,000 Muslims now live in Australia, and there are over 100 mosques, according to an Australian government website.  The Arab community in Australia, numbering more than 210,000, is “diverse and includes many high-profile and successful members,” the site notes.

From http:/ /www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/149890#.TseWsfF-yeA

Hevron

Flash 90

In honor of “Shabbat Hevron”, when Abrahams’s purchase of Mearat Hamachpela [Tomb of the Patriarchs] is in the Torah reading, thousands will make their way to the second holiest city in Judaism to spend an uplifting and spiritual Shabbat praying at the Meara and learning about the city. Arutz Sheva brings you the city’s history, written by the tireless spokesman of the Jewish Community of Hevron.

Hevron is the first Jewish city in the land of Israel , home of our patriarchs and matriarchs — Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Sarah, Rebecca and Leah.

King David ruled from Hevron for more than seven years before moving the capital to Jerusalem .

Jews have lived in Hevron almost continuously for thousands of years. At Tel Hevron, commonly known as “Tel Rumeida,” artifacts were discovered dating to the era of the Patriarch Abraham. “L’Melech” (King) seals, 2,700 years old, inscribed with the word “Hevron” in ancient Hebrew were uncovered there by archeologists.

Our community offices are in a neighborhood founded in 1540 by Jews exiled from Spain in 1492.

When returned to Hebron in 1967, Jews did not occupy a foreign city; rather, they came back home.
Jewish presence in Hevron came to an abrupt end only in August 1929, when Arab riots led to the murder of 67 Jews and the wounding of 70. All survivors were exiled from the city by the ruling British.

Following the riots, massacre and exile in 1929, a small group of Jews returned to Hevron in 1931. About thirty families lived in the city until just after Passover, 1936, when they were expelled by the British.

Following the 1967 Six-Day War, Jews again had access to the first Jewish city in . It must be clearly understood: when returned to Hevron in 1967, Jews did not occupy a foreign city; rather, they came back home.

In 1968 Jews officially came back to Hevron . The day before Passover in April, 1968 a group of families arrived at the Park Hotel in Hevron . The proprietor rented them half of the kitchen, which they promptly koshered. The women and children slept in the rooms; the men and boys slept in the lobby and on the floor. It was the first Jewish Pesach in Hevron in decades.

Moshe Dayan, then Minister of Defense, arrived in Hevron shortly after Passover. Following several weeks of discussions he offered the group two choices: either be forcibly removed from the city, or go live in the Hevron military compound, several kilometers outside the center of the city. This building, originally a British police station, had been transformed into the Israeli military Headquarters of Judea. It was not overly conducive to a civilian lifestyle.

Dayan must have expected that the young families, including women and babies, would soon throw up their arms in frustration at the poor living conditions and leave of their own accord.

Dayan was partially correct. The group did eventually leave. But first they lived in the military headquarters for two and half years, until the first neighborhood of the newly founded Hevron suburb, Kiryat Arba, was completed.

There was, however, a yearning to return to Hevron , to Beit Hadassah, to the 450 year old Jewish Quarter, home of the ancient Avraham Avinu Shul, to reside adjacent to Ma’arat HaMachpela. Attempts were made, again and again, all leading to failure.

Only in 1979, when Menachem Begin was Prime Minister, did a group of 10 women and 40 children succeed in setting up house in the basement of the old medical center, Beit Hadassah, in the middle of the city. Living in adverse conditions for close to a year, these women and childen became the nucleus of Hevron ‘s renewed Jewish community.

In 1980, following the murder of six young men outside Beit Hadassah, the Israeli government finally gave official recognition and authorization of Hebron ‘s Jewish Community.

The present Jewish Community of Hevron numbers more than 1,000 people, including almost 100 families, hundreds of children, and some 250 post-high school yeshiva students studying at Yeshivat Shavei Hevron in Beit Romano. The reason there aren’t more people living in Hevron is simply because of lack of space. There are not any apartments available.

That is, perhaps, a misnomer. There are apartments available that we are presently unable to utilize. We have been unjustifiably expelled from 12 apartments that we lived in. Clearly, were there more room in Hevron , there would be many more Jews living in the city.

However, in spite of the small size of the community, according to the statistics received from the IDF and Civil Administration, hundreds of thousands of people visit Hevron annually. Worldwide support, including Jews and gentiles, is overwhelming. Groups from Europe,  Scandinavia and even the Far East tour Hevron .

Why do we choose to live in Hevron ? Again, the answer is quite simple. A few years ago, a group of people associated with the New Israel Fund visited Hevron .

Following a short visit on the Jewish side of the city, they crossed the ‘border’ and met with Hevron ‘s Arab mayor, Mustepha Natsche. They asked him whether Jews were allowed to pray at Ma’arat HaMachpela, the second holiest site to the Jewish people in the world. His answer greatly surprised them. He said no. “Ma’arat HaMachpela is a mosque, and only Moslems can pray in a Mosque,” said Arab Mayor Mustepha Natsche.

This was reiterated by Natsche’s deputy, Kamal Dweck.  In an interview he also stated that Jews and Christians may not pray in the Tomb of the Patriarchs ‘because it is not a church or a synagogue; it is a mosque and only Moslems can worship in a mosque.’

This lie was raised again by the Arab world when Israel put Hevron on its list of Heritage Sites.

The Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs was off-limits to Jews for 700 years. During that time Jews, (as well as Christians), were not allowed inside the 2,000 year old Herodian structure atop the Caves of Machpela. Today we are told by Hevron’s Arab Mayor and deputy mayor that should the Palestinian Authority ever regain control all of Hevron , again this holy site will be closed to anyone not Moslem.

There are those who are skeptical. How then, can one explain what happened to Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem.  According to the Olso Accords this holy site was to remain accessible to Jews. However, following the killing of an Israeli soldier at the tomb, was forced to abandon it. The result was the total destruction of the building which was burned to the ground. And if the Arabs had their way, Kever Rachel would have long ago been turned over to the Palestinian Authority. They claim that her tomb, too, is only a Muslim site.

The only reason that Ma’arat HaMachpela is still accessible to Jews is because there is a permanent Jewish presence in the city. The disappearance of the Jewish Community of Hevron would be tantamount to abandoning our Patriarchs and Matriarchs.

Could any Jew, be they religious or secular, dream of abandoning the Fathers and Mothers of our people?

What is our goal, living in Hevron ? Despite media reports, the goal of Hevron ‘s Jewish community is not to expel the Arabs living here. Anyone of any race or religion should be able to live in Hevron .

However, we demand that our Arab neighbors accept the fact that the Jews have an eternal, legitimate right to live in the first Jewish city in the land of Israel . This is our goal: living normal lives, just as anyone else, anywhere in .

Our goal is to ensure that our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren will be able to live in Hevron.

Our goal is to make sure that all Jews will have access to Ma’arat HaMachpela, that Jews will never again be told that this holy site is ‘off-limits’ because ‘you are Jews.’

Others ask: how can you stay in Hevron ? It is so dangerous. How can you risk the lives of your families and children in such a place?

It was May 2001, about eight months after the Oslo War — otherwise known as the second intifada — began. Daily, Hevron ‘s residents were attacked by terrorist gunmen from the surrounding hills transferred to the control of the Palestinian Authority several years earlier.

At 11 one night I was still in the office, five minutes from our home. Again, the sound of gunfire could be heard from the Abu Sneneh and Harat al-Shech hills The phone on my desk rang. It was one of my daughters, Aderet, then 16. Breathless, she exclaimed, “Dad, they’re shooting again.” I answered lackadaisically, “Yeah, I hear it.” In other words, “What’s new — it’s the same, every day.”

“But they shot into our apartment. And I was standing there,” my daughter cried.

Arriving home, I discovered five holes in a wall opposite the window in the children’s room. Aderet and Ruti had been standing not more than three feet from where the bullets hit. Miraculously, they weren’t injured.

Today, Aderet is married with two children of her own. And she too lives here in Hevron . Another of my married daughters, with three children, also continues to live in the city. Why not leave, due to the danger?

Jews in Hevron are willing to risk present dangers because acquiescence can only be defined as a reward for terrorism. Arab terror seeks to expel us from our homes, using murder as a means to an end. However, “our homes” include not only those in Hevron but also in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa . New Palestinian textbooks contain maps of “Palestine” that include the entire state of Israel .

Eviction from Hevron, the first Jewish city in Eretz Yisrael, would be tantamount to the removal of Americans from Boston or Philadelphia upon terrorist demands. Except, of course, that American history is less than 250 years old; Jewish history in Hevron is more than 3,700 years old.

Hevron, home of Abraham, is not just the place where Judaism got its start. It is the source of monotheism for all peoples of the world.

Jewish people in and around the world support a strong, vibrant Jewish presence in Hevron . We do not expect any Israeli government to attempt to follow in the footsteps of Arab Nazi Mufti Amin el-Husseini and the British and expel Jews from the city. In any case, we would never abandon our homes.

Besides which, why should the state of be forced to chop off its roots to appease Arab terror? We know the result of eradicating the roots of a tree. God forbid that should happen!

Present Defense Minister and Former Prime Minister Barak once blessed Hevron as follows: “The test of the renewed Hevron Jewish community, which is the same test of the Arab majority, is the ability to develop good neighborly relationships. Mutual honor and a joint effort are necessary to overcome the scars, the pain and the difficult reminders left from the despicable carnage which desecrated this holy city.”

Hevron ‘s Jewish Community could not agree more with this statement. The time has come for our Arab neighbors to stop shooting at us, to stop trying to kill us for no other reason than because we are Jews living in Hevron . Perhaps they believe that by killing us, or by attempting to murder us, they will scare us away. They cannot be further from the truth, because Hevron is the heart of the Jewish people, the life-blood from which the Jewish people derives its sanctity.

This is a simple truth that everyone should not only understand, but also agree with. We truly hope and pray for the day when true peace will prevail, both in Hevron, throughout the land of Israel and all over the entire world.

Final note from our archives: “On the occasion of the thirty second anniversary of the renewal of the Jewish Community of Hevron, I am happy to convey to the entire community blessings of success and shalom. The right of Jews to live tranquilly in the city of the Forefathers securely, protected from all danger, is not disputed.” So began Defense Minister and former Prime Minister Ehud Barak’s letter of good wishes to The Jewish Community of Hebron on Jerusalem Day 1999. (Ehud Barak is not a part of the Israeli right.)

David Wilder is spokesman for the Jewish community of Hevron. This article appears on the Jewish community’s website.

I know I’m a few years late here, but any band that writes songs entitled “One Way Ticket To Hell ….And Back” and “Is It Just Me, Or Am I On My Own Again?” has to be talented. It’s like Spike Milligan wrote their set list.

The Darkness have some of the funniest clips on Youtube (e.g.  “Friday Night” and “Girlfriend”).

They do get a bit naughty sometimes though. As singer / guitarist Justin Hawkins said with a grin on The Big Day Out “here’s another song with lots of swearing in it!”

Apart from not being too serious, they really rock in a 70′s kind of way – and you have to love them for spending a whole year with producer legend Roy Thomas Baker to record 10 songs! As Justin says – “more is …more”.

Like a Spinal Tap that can actually play.

The Darkness are definitely the best 70′s rock band of the 21st Century!

I recently posted on the Facebook page & the blog of the Sydney Peace? Foundation, a far left wing group that causes me some aggravation. Their “Peace Prize” is handed out mostly to delusional darlings of the left such as Chomsky, Tutu, Ashwari and that greasy Pilger character.

Hardly champions of peace!

What I object to is the sheer audacity of calling it “The Sydney Peace Prize” – as if it has the approval of all of the people of Sydney (it hasn’t – only of the moonbats, pro terrorist lobbyists and the sad dullards who are always conned by this sort of tripe.)

Why don’t we have a real Australian Peace Prize and award it to the real champions of peace in the world – and I’m not talking about those on the extreme right either. To those decent souls who work hard at achieving peace in the world without resorting to the vitriol, pseudo-intellectualism and racist hatred of the heroes of the SPF.

Or, even better, why don’t the SPF do some honest, impartial research into their prize winners and into the actual history of the subjects they contend themselves with and wake up to their error? Not very likely, I know.

To dream the impossible dream ……………………..

p.s. – they don’t like debate, either. Try getting an answer out of them. I did. They don’t want to talk to me. I wish they’d grow up!

From http://unitedwithisrael.org/

A Scottish professor responds to campus boycott. The Edinburgh Student’s Association made a motion to boycott all things Israeli since they claim Israel is under an apartheid regime. Dr. Denis Maceoin (a non-Jew) is an expert in Middle Eastern affairs. Here is his letter to those students. AN EDUCATED NON-JEWISH TAKE ON ISRAEL.

Dr. Denis MacEoin, a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly, addresses The Committee of the Edinburgh University Student Association.

Received by e-mail from the author, Dr. Denis MacEoin, a senior editor of the Middle East Quarterly,

TO: The Committee Edinburgh University Student Association.

May I be permitted to say a few words to members of the EUSA? I am an Edinburgh graduate (MA 1975) who studied Persian, Arabic and Islamic History in Buccleuch Place under William Montgomery Watt and Laurence Elwell Sutton, two of Britain ‘s great Middle East experts in their day.

I later went on to do a PhD at Cambridge and to teach Arabic and Islamic Studies at Newcastle University . Naturally, I am the author of several books and hundreds of articles in this field. I say all that to show that I am well informed in Middle Eastern affairs and that, for that reason, I am shocked and disheartened by the EUSA motion and vote.

I am shocked for a simple reason: there is not and has never been a system of apartheid in Israel . That is not my opinion, that is fact that can be tested against reality by any Edinburgh student, should he or she choose to visit Israel to see for themselves. Let me spell this out, since I have the impression that those members of EUSA who voted for this motion are absolutely clueless in matters concerning Israel, and that they are, in all likelihood, the victims of extremely biased propaganda coming from the anti-Israel lobby.

Being anti-Israel is not in itself objectionable. But I’m not talking about ordinary criticism of Israel . I’m speaking of a hatred that permits itself no boundaries in the lies and myths it pours out. Thus, Israel is repeatedly referred to as a “Nazi” state. In what sense is this true, even as a metaphor? Where are the Israeli concentration camps? The einzatsgruppen? The SS? The Nuremberg Laws? The Final Solution? None of these things nor anything remotely resembling them exists in Israel , precisely because the Jews, more than anyone on earth, understand what Nazism stood for.

It is claimed that there has been an Israeli Holocaust in Gaza (or elsewhere). Where? When? No honest historian would treat that claim with anything but the contempt it deserves. But calling Jews Nazis and saying they have committed a Holocaust is as basic a way to subvert historical fact as anything I can think of.

Likewise apartheid. For apartheid to exist, there would have to be a situation that closely resembled how things were in South Africa under the apartheid regime. Unfortunately for those who believe this, a weekend in any part of Israel would be enough to show how ridiculous the claim is.

That a body of university students actually fell for this and voted on it is a sad comment on the state of modern education. The most obvious focus for apartheid would be the country’s 20% Arab population. Under Israeli law, Arab Israelis have exactly the same rights as Jews or anyone else; Muslims have the same rights as Jews or Christians; Baha’is, severely persecuted in Iran, flourish in Israel, where they have their world center; Ahmadi Muslims, severely persecuted in Pakistan and elsewhere, are kept safe by Israel; the holy places of all religions are protected under a specific Israeli law. Arabs form 20% of the university population (an exact echo of their percentage in the general population).

In Iran , the Bahai’s (the largest religious minority) are forbidden to study in any university or to run their own universities: why aren’t your members boycotting Iran ? Arabs in Israel can go anywhere they want, unlike blacks in apartheid South Africa . They use public transport, they eat in restaurants, they go to swimming pools, they use libraries, they go to cinemas alongside Jews – something no blacks were able to do in South Africa .

Israeli hospitals not only treat Jews and Arabs, they also treat Palestinians from Gaza or the West Bank. On the same wards, in the same operating theaters.

In Israel , women have the same rights as men: there is no gender apartheid. Gay men and women face no restrictions, and Palestinian gays often escape into Israel, knowing they may be killed at home.

It seems bizarre to me that LGBT groups call for a boycott of Israel and say nothing about countries like Iran , where gay men are hanged or stoned to death. That illustrates a mindset that beggars belief.

Intelligent students thinking it’s better to be silent about regimes that kill gay people, but good to condemn the only country in the Middle East that rescues and protects gay people. Is that supposed to be a sick joke?

University is supposed to be about learning to use your brain, to think rationally, to examine evidence, to reach conclusions based on solid evidence, to compare sources, to weigh up one view against one or more others. If the best Edinburgh can now produce are students who have no idea how to do any of these things, then the future is bleak.

I do not object to well-documented criticism of Israel . I do object when supposedly intelligent people single the Jewish state out above states that are horrific in their treatment of their populations. We are going through the biggest upheaval in the Middle East since the 7th and 8th centuries, and it’s clear that Arabs and Iranians are rebelling against terrifying regimes that fight back by killing their own citizens.

Israeli citizens, Jews and Arabs alike, do not rebel (though they are free to protest). Yet Edinburgh students mount no demonstrations and call for no boycotts against Libya , Bahrain , Saudi Arabia , Yemen , and Iran . They prefer to make false accusations against one of the world’s freest countries, the only country in the Middle East that has taken in Darfur refugees, the only country in the Middle East that gives refuge to gay men and women, the only country in the Middle East that protects the Bahai’s…. Need I go on?

The imbalance is perceptible, and it sheds no credit on anyone who voted for this boycott. I ask you to show some common sense. Get information from the Israeli embassy. Ask for some speakers. Listen to more than one side. Do not make your minds up until you have given a fair hearing to both parties. You have a duty to your students, and that is to protect them from one-sided argument.

They are not at university to be propagandized. And they are certainly not there to be tricked into anti-Semitism by punishing one country among all the countries of the world, which happens to be the only Jewish state. If there had been a single Jewish state in the 1930′s (which, sadly, there was not), don’t you think Adolf Hitler would have decided to boycott it?

Your generation has a duty to ensure that the perennial racism of anti-Semitism never sets down roots among you. Today, however, there are clear signs that it has done so and is putting down more. You have a chance to avert a very great evil, simply by using reason and a sense of fair play. Please tell me that this makes sense. I have given you some of the evidence. It’s up to you to find out more.

Yours sincerely,

Denis MacEoin