Dayenu & Yom Yerushalayim

Had God led us to Mount Sinai and not given us the Torah,

Dayenu! (it would have been enough for us.)

This is a line most of us will remember from the Haggada on Seder night.

Many of us will have puzzled at the sense of it.

After all, the whole purpose of the chosen people was that they received the Torah and became the so-called ‘people of the book’.

So how could it possibly have been ‘Dayenu’ enough for our people to have arrived at Mt Sinai but not received the Torah?

I think I found an answer in newsreels of the re-capture of the Wailing Wall during the Six Day War of 1967.

Totally irreligious Jews – without a shred of Jewish upbringing – bursting into tears at the sight and touch of the Kotel; that last remnant of the Jewish Temple.

By accident or design, they have never accepted the Torah.

And yet, they tremble with emotion at the sight and touch of a place that seems to speak to their history and their destiny all at once. To be part of a special nation and its 2,000 year struggle for survival and the return to their homeland against impossible odds.

I think this must be the Haggada’s meaning of Mt Sinai being sufficient in itself.

And the modern-day manifestation of that place is the surviving Western Wall of the ancient temple.


It is a magnet to all Jews worldwide – regardless of their religious observance or understanding. It is what binds all of us together. And we know that the only times in history that our people has been defeated was when they fought amongst themselves.

That is why the Arabs are so determined to deny us access to this site and continue to repudiate all Jewish rights or historical connection to the Old City. It is also why Jewish visitors to the temple mount are forbidden to even move their lips. Such is the degree of fear amongst our enemies.

They, at least, fully understand the empowerment this place gives to our people.

It’s a pity so many of our people – particularly in the USA – have yet to discover it.

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Wise words

Dr Benny Begin, son of the late Prime Minister Menachem Begin, was our special guest in London for the annual Likud-Herut celebration of Yom Yerushalayim - the anniversary of the reunification of the Jewish people with their capital city in June 1967.  He is a member of current prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu's inner cabinet, known as the 'septet'.

Of the difficulties between Israel and the Obama administration and other EU countries and the UN, Minister Begin remarked:

"It is better that Israel is harshly criticized than elegantly eulogised".

That about sums up the whole situation.
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Value Added Tax

Americans face crippling taxes to bail out their busted banks and auto companies, and to continue funding the global fraud of "climate change".



Europeans face crippling taxes to bail out Greek wastrels and prop up a Euro currency which countries falsified accounts to join.



The auditors' refusal to sign off the European Union's accounts is now in its FIFTEENTH year.



Israeli taxpayers also face hardships.

Their taxes going up too.



But not to pay for past greed or to fund ongoing fraud.



It is to make them self-sufficient in water supplies for generations to come.

Billions of shekels are needed to connect the desalination plants popping up along the coast to the national water carrier and to integrate them properly into the system.



In return for their tax hikes, by 2013 Israelis will see 600 million cubic meters of desalinated water being produced for their needs.



No other country in the world has such an ambitious desalination program.


I'll drink to that !
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EVEN more on that "shitty little country"

More on that "shitty little country"

It was the French ambassador to Britain - Daniel Bernard - who referred to Israel as 'that shitty little country' at a dinner party in 2001.

He died at the age of 62.

How sweet that at the same age of 62 the country of his disparagement lives on and prospers.

Happy birthday Israel ! Many happy returns.

A Bible Lesson Revisited

Whilst researching another story, I happened to come across one of my previous Op-Eds which was published in December 2006.

It was just about the time when the shine started wearing off the presidency of George W Bush. Entitled "A Bible Lesson for Bush" it drew a parallel between the biblical story of Joseph and Anatoly (now Natan) Sharansky's rise from a gulag dungeon to the White House where he was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor.

In 2006 the specter of a 'President Barrack Hussein Obama' had not even been dreamed of.

At the time I had clearly not realised the full significance of that parallel.

The last part of my piece read as follows:

"George Bush still has another two years left in the most powerful office on earth. Two years that can either glorify his place in history or leave it utterly sullied. But at the end of those two years there will be an election and another parallel in biblical history.
“And there arose a new king over Egypt, who knew not Joseph. (Exodus 1:8) ”

One thing seems clear enough.

Mr Obama is one dude who does NOT know Joseph.

Or else, doesn't WANT to know him.

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UK Election Footnote

They plotted a coup to overthrow their most popular leader in recent times - Tony Blair had won them 3 elections.

His only crime: to take sides with George Bush in pursuing the evil murdering Saddam to the gallows.

They ganged up on Blair as if he were a bigger monster than Saddam. They enlisted the hordes of useless idiots carrying placards of "Not in My Name" and "B-LIAR" .

The plotters succeeded - in the mother of all parliaments. They installed their own motley crew of Ed Balls, the Milliband brothers, Jacqui Smith (probably the biggest joke of a home secretary!) and finally ennobled the utterly nauseating Peter Mandelson to act as ventriloquist to Gordon Brown's dummy.

What a delicious irony it is therefore to see them having to roll out Tony Blair in a last desperate effort to support their doomed campaign for re-election.

These were cheats and scoundrels.

Good riddance to the lot of them !

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