Stupid American Jews

I should be talking about tomorrow’s Israeli election, but I am seized by a most depressing headline last week about the American election stage.

A poll of American Jewish voting intentions by the Jewish Electorate Institute claimed that American Jews would still vote 65% for Socialist Bernie Sanders against 30% for Trump. This is despite 45% of the sample having an unfavourable view of Sanders and 91% of the poll group claiming to be pro-Israel.

What is wrong with these people? Supposedly OUR people?
Trump is undeniably the greatest friend Israel has ever had in the Oval Office and he has backed up every word with action.

Trump appointed Pence, Pompeo, Haley, Greenblatt, Friedman and Kushner - all staunch supporters of Israel and outspoken critics of Iran - to the most pivotal positions of influence over Middle East affairs. Then he cancelled Obama’s iniquitous Iran deal which gave the rabid ayatollahs the cash and cover to fulfil their dream of wiping out Israel as “a one-bomb-country”. Next he recognised Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem and moved the US embassy there. If that wasn’t enough, he went on to recognise Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights. Whilst all that was going on his ‘dream appointment’ of Nikki Haley as UN ambassador led to the defunding of UNRWA and its Hamas-run schools of Jew-hatred and America’s withdrawal from the incessantly Israel-bashing Human Rights Council in Geneva which has just welcomed Venezuela’s Maduro as an honoured member.

On top of all that, Trump brazenly took out Israel's most dangerous terrorist foe, Qassem Soleimani, in a clear message to Iran that he wasn’t afraid to hit them hard, even in an election year.

And while all this was going on in public, Trump was quietly providing Israel with all the military and defence materiel that it used to have to go begging for to former US presidents. New planes, spare parts, early warning systems, bunker busters. Whatever was needed, Israel got.

And now there is the grand peace plan, backed by a new alliance of Arab countries which Trump knitted together on his very first foreign visit as president. This plan would not only assure Israel of the security of its settlements and sovereignty over Jerusalem but will give it vital and permanent control over the Jordan Valley, Israel’s eastern border and the last frontier not yet facing an Iranian proxy.

For the Jews, undeniably, Donald Trump is the gift that just keeps on giving.

So what is it that 60 percent of American Jewish voters don’t get??
How in good conscience could they vote for a Bernie Sanders who excoriates Israel and takes selfies with outspoken haters like Linda Sarsour and Rashida Tlaib? Sanders truly is their ‘useful Jewish idiot. (Ironic that the expression was invented by Lenin!)

How can such voters claim to be 91% pro-Israel and yet bite the hand that has fed Israel’s vital needs for the last 3 years?

Have American Jews forgotten how Obama threw Israel under the bus with UN resolution 2334 as his final act as president? A public tarring of illegitimacy as his parting gift to the Jewish state. The applause of every Jew-hating state and BDS peddler around the world was deafening.
And you American Jews want more of this?
With Sanders?
Or with Obama’s vice president Biden?

Are you all completely stupid?

Yom Yerushalayim - the greatest miracle of our times

Text of my speech to Ner Yisrael in London this morning ....

This morning different shuls did lots of different things. Some said Hallel with a bracha, others without. Some said no Hallel at all and still others said Tachnun like it was any other day.
You could well ask: “If we’ve been saying Hallel with a bracha every month for thousands of years for such a natural event as moonrise, why on earth would we not say the same for the greatest miracle of our times, for which we waited two thousand years?”
I have an answer to that question. But first I need to take you on a trip.

Imagine that you had a time machine and could travel back to the date of any historic event or time and observe what was taking place. Some might take a trip to the time of the Exodus and Red Sea crossing. Others might choose the scene of the Kennedy assassination or 9-11.
You choose 1967 in Jerusalem and you set the dial to May 12th. Whoosh …! and you materialise in what is now the Mamilla area, just across from what is today the David Citadel Hotel. In the distance you see the walls of the Old City with Jordanian flags fluttering from the ramparts. In the
foreground you see Jordanian troops manning the Mandelbaum Gate, a barbed wire checkpoint that separates Jewish West Jerusalem from the Jordanian-occupied East and the Old City.
It’s a sunny Friday morning and nobody is thinking about any war. But there’s quite a lot of clamour coming from the park behind you: Independence Park. Turns our they’re doing rehearsals for Monday’s Yom Ha’atzmaut parade – it will be the 19th anniversary of independence.
The Jews were obliged to negotiate with the commander of the Jordanian Legion about how close the parade could pass to the border area, so tantalisingly close to the walls of our hallowed City of David.
On the newspaper stand you would have seen headlines about major allies boycotting the event for fear that their ambassadors’ presence might offend Jordan’s King Hussein. France, Germany and America all declined to participate. But in all other respects, it was the calm before the storm.
The first reports of Egyptian mobilisation would not surface till the following week.

Imagine if in the calm of that sunny Friday - you, from the future, tap an Israeli on the shoulder and say: “You know something? Just 3 weeks from now, there will be not a single Jordanian soldier here and Israeli flags will be fluttering from the walls of Jerusalem”. That person would have thought you were crazy.
But that is exactly what happened. One day we were begging for permission to pass within sight of our ancient capital city and 3 weeks later it was all in our hands. Our enemies had truly fled.

If you had hung around with your time machine to observe the war and how this miracle actually played out, you might have dialled yourself into the basement of the Knesset on June 5th the day it was shelled by Jordanian mortars. The war cabinet had been evacuated to this basement utility room, ministers huddled together, when opposition leader Menachem Begin popped the question to Prime Minister Levi Eshkol: ‘We told Hussein if he stayed out of the war we would leave him alone. But these are his shells falling on the Knesset. Why not use this chance to retaliate and take back Jerusalem?’ To which Eshkol replied in Yiddish: ‘Dos is ah gedank!’ (An interesting thought!).
And so it was – the most stunning victory in military history completed within 6 days, tripling our territory and delivering the most unexpected and most precious prize of all: Har Habayit Beyadeynu! (The Temple Mount is in our hands!)

But why waste a good time machine? Maybe go back further to 1945, and watch the skeletal remnants of European Jewry emerging from the Nazi death camps on liberation day – my own father among them, just 20 years old. And you, a visitor from the future, whisper in his ear: ‘In just 3 years from now a Jewish state will be created in Eretz Yisrael with an army powerful enough to make sure this never happens again'. My father might have thought you just as crazy.

And yet, after 2,000 years … just six days. After the Shoah … just 3 short years. This what is meant by the words: ישועת ה כהרף עין - the Almighty’s salvation comes in the wink of an eye. Just as Joseph woke up one morning in Pharaoh’s dungeon and was viceroy of Egypt by evening. This is the way salvation happens for our people.

Which brings me back to Rosh Chodesh and Hallel.
The moon has always been regarded as a symbol of our people and our national struggle through the ages. There are good times when we shine brightly and can light up the entire night sky. But there are bad times too, when we almost totally disappear seemingly never to return. But then, just as we seem to have totally disappeared, that small sliver reappears, the Shearit Yisrael (remnant of Israel) and we grow back to become as great as we ever were.
So, yes Yom Yerushalayim was the greatest miracle of our modern times. But our ability to survive the darkest hours and come back fighting from the lowest depths of tragedy, loss and despair is what truly merits the Hallel and bracha. And when we do that every month, it keeps us focused with faith and optimism.

Sadly we in the Diaspora are now living through another period of darkness – with a vile resurgence of antisemitism all across the world that seems to have taken hold with alarming
speed. But this too we will survive, as we now have Eretz Yisrael – a place called home where, as Frost put it, they have to let you in.
Significantly it’s not just Jews that are despairing of what’s happening in Europe and here in Britain. Douglas Murray is a well-known journalist and political commentator. He may not be Jewish but he is a staunch supporter of Israel and has spoken at many of our community events. He recently wrote a bestseller entitled: 'The Strange Death of Europe', in which he laments how the fabric of our society and the British way of life are crumbling before our eyes. He was recently interviewed by the journalist Mark Steyn and toward the end spoke painfully of how he truly feared for what was happening – “this is where live my life, this is my only home ….. I don’t have an Israel to go to."

Thank God we do!

Chag Sameyach.

Chevra – Don’t Throw Away Your Trump Card !

I have this movie playing in my head. 

It’s set in a parallel Israel where Olmert actually gave back the Golan to Syria and divided Jerusalem back in 2008 as part of his much vaunted ‘67-borders offer to Abbas.

Fast-forward 10 years and, in my movie, the new US President Trump is chatting to Prime Minister Netanyahu in the Oval Office. “Hey Bibi,” he says. “Shame your guys gave away Jerusalem and the Golan. I’d have let you keep both.”

As an orthodox Jew and religious Zionist, I truly believe that the Almighty has protected Israel from the folly of its leaders. The lesson is that we must hold on tightly to what we’ve got - to all the homelands that we have been blessed enough to liberate and for which brave soldiers have made the ultimate sacrifice and for whom their families still grieve.

Remember when Obama shunned Bibi and Barak at that first meeting in his White House? How he left them in a room saying he was off to dinner with his family but to call him if they came up with any ideas (to dismember parts of Eretz Yisrael)?  And how they had to leave by the back door, denied any photo-ops on Obama’s orders? 

I remember that horrible evening. Bibi was not to know that this ‘Ice Age’ would wind up as a two-term presidency. And how it would end with a $150bn lifeline to Iran and Obama kicking Israel under a bus at the UN in his final days of office.

But still, Bibi Netanyahu steered the Israeli ship of state though those stormy seas so that we lived to see the benevolence of the Trump era with our territory intact. Nothing given away. And stronger economically and militarily than ever before.

So, I appeal to Israelis – don’t throw away your Trump card tomorrow.

The Lesson of Yom Yerushalayim

51 years ago our people learned an important lesson about themselves and their destiny.

It started in a cleaners’ room in the basement of the Knesset to which the 1967 war cabinet had evacuated under Jordanian artillery shelling. On the way in, Menachem Begin took prime minister Levi Eshkol to one side and said: “We should discuss liberating the Old City”. Israel had pressed Jordan to stay out of the war if they knew what was good for them but Egypt’s President Nasser had convinced the Jordanian king that he was actually winning the war and pressed for continued shelling and pressure on West Jerusalem.

Begin saw the perfect opening and opportunity to liberate the Temple Mount and Old City, with full legal justification as territory captured in a defensive war. And from that tiny basement room came the order to retake Yerushalayim.

The lesson was: “We can do this !”

Al Tirah Avdi Yaakov. Fear not Jacob … God is with you.

The significance of this lesson should not be lost on us today. For, between those heady days of such a stunning victory in 6 days, the trebling of our territory and reunification of our eternal capital under the flag if Israel … between those days and now, we have seen repeated efforts to surrender those very territories, and out of nothing but fear. Fear of American presidents, European sanctions, BDS and, most of all, fear that the West Bank Arabs would turn us into a minority in our own democracy. As the old saying goes: We have nothing to fear but fear itself.

And so, for all those reasons, leaders like Barak and Olmert tried to outdo themselves in offering the surrender of 96 percent, 97 percent … as if they were talking about so much body fat they couldn’t wait to shed.

Barak handed over South Lebanon to Hezbollah and Sharon gifted Gush Katif to Hamas. As for Olmert, he was prepared to cede Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem to international control, and give the Golan back to the Assad family. Just imagine Iran’s Kuds Force staring down from the Golan Heights today!

For all this Jews need to invent a totally new blessing: “Blessed art Thou, O Lord our God, King of the Universe who protecteth Israel from its own leaders.”

These prime ministers of Israel, however great their service to the country in all other respects, failed the Jewish people at those crucial moments when they needed to say: “We can still do this!”

Sharon paid for his mistake with his life. Olmert with the ignominy of jail time. The heavenly jury is still out on Barak. But the message is simple: don't mess with the promised land.

Remember Queen Esther who had to be pressed by Mordechai to stand up for her people and put her fears of the King and Haman to one side. As the Megillah tells it: “If you will remain silent – relief and deliverance for the Jews will come from another place – and who knows if you attained royalty just for a moment as this?”

And true enough, relief and deliverance - Revach Ve’hatzalah – did indeed come from another place.
And this was in the form of Donald Trump.

Just imagine if Barak and Olmert had prevailed in their time. Along comes new President Trump in 2016 and says to Bibi: “So sad. I would have recognised Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem if only you hadn’t given it away so quickly.”

The lesson of Yom Yerushalayim is to keep saying: “Yes, we can do this!” This is our time in history. We have been blessed as the generation which lived to see the liberation of our homeland. We must not fail our children as its custodians.

With God’s help we have seen off every mortal threat deployed against us, from rockets to tunnels to burning kites. And with the miracle of the Israeli birth rate having overtaken the Arabs’, we will debunk the demographic threat as well.

Am Yisrael Chai.
Jerusalem, the light of the world – ours forever.

Trump's Truth to Power on Jerusalem

My Statement re Trump's declaration on Jerusalem

Likud-Herut UK applauds United States President Donald J Trump for his statement yesterday, recognising Jerusalem as the capital of the state of Israel.

Jerusalem has been the Jewish capital for 3,000 years and the seat of Israel’s government since 1949.

In making his bold and brave statement, President Trump spoke ‘truth to power’ in a very real sense. The truth being what is enshrined in the bible that unites the world’s three main faiths. The power being what has until now held that truth as a hostage to terror and oil interests.

We call upon our prime minister Theresa May to follow the US president’s lead and speak the same truth to the power of her own Foreign Office here in London, which has such an abysmal record on anything that concerns the Jewish state. Truth to the power of her Labour opposition, whose party has disgraced itself in the UK Jewish community and whose leader has referred to the likes of Hamas as friends.

In truth Britain owes Israel far more than just a recognition of its Jerusalem capital. It owes Israel the Kingdom of Jordan which was stolen out of its League of Nations mandate. Britain is therefore the very last nation in a position to complain about Jewish ‘occupation’ of the West Bank of the Jordan river.

So, we urge Prime Minister May to follow President Trump’s lead. To atone for that historic betrayal. To show that Britain will not be cowed by threats of terrorism – either conventional or economic. To show real daylight on this issue between her party and that of Jeremy Corbyn. And to take her Foreign Office in a new direction which might finally facilitate the very long-outstanding royal visit to the region’s only democracy – the state of Israel.

Finally we lament any death or injury caused in the rioting which has been fomented by Palestinian groups over this announcement. It is a great pity such outrage could not have been mobilised over the loss of 500,000 lives in Syria.

Zalmi Unsdorfer

Chairman - LHUK

Israel isReal

Finally we're getting it right - see this super video ....

The "StoneWall" of Jerusalem is in Washington

Referring to my penultimate posting, be sure that this is no fluke failure to respond on the capital of Israel.

Here is an earlier briefing by the State Department, in March of this year, where similarly unrelenting questions elicit a total stonewall.

How is this compatible with all Obama's assurances of an "unshakeable alliance" with the Jewish state and that Israelis can depend on him 'watching their backs'.

If his people dare not utter the name of its capital, how can anyone expect him to defend it?

 

From Poor Phrasing to Denial in 4 Years

In JULY 2008 – Seeking Jewish votes for election as president, Senator Barack Obama made this statement at AIPAC:

"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided."

In JULY 2012 – President Obama’s own press secretary Jay Carney would not even acknowledge Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, divided or otherwise.  See him resist incessant questioning.




How asinine or hopelessly assimilated must American Jewish voters be to continue supporting Obama for re-election? 

And how ironic that this deligitimisation of Jerusalem's Jewish status, by it's "unshakeable ally", took place 3 days before Tisha b'Av. 

New Plans to Divide Jerusalem

I reproduce below a letter from One Jerusalem which needs to be widely disseminated.

Dear Friend of Jerusalem, New plans to divide Jerusalem surfaced last week. Recently, sophisticated designs on how Jerusalem should be divided were published in the prestigious Atlantic magazine. These plans are an attempt to kick-start the misguided plan to make Jerusalem the capital of a Palestinian State. You can be sure this plan will be adopted by the Palestinians to supposedly show that Jerusalem can be divided. Of course, this plan assumes that Jerusalem should be divided, by denying the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of only one people: The Jewish people. This plan does not point out that the Temple Mount, the holiest spot in Judaism, would be in Palestinian East Jerusalem. It also ignores the history of discrimination against Jews and Christians, when the Old City was under control of the Arabs from 1948-1967. Jerusalem must never again be divided. Today, Jerusalem is a free and open city for the first time in modern history because the State of Israel insures that all people have a right to visit, pray, and live in Jerusalem. It allows the different religions sovereignty over their holy places. This unprecedented situation would be shattered if the city is divided. But make no mistake. Considerable sums of money were spent drafting these "new" plans and you can be sure they will be referred to in negotiating rooms and the anti-Israel media. This is one important reason why One Jerusalem needs your continued support. Our mission in defense of a united Jerusalem includes exposing the sophisticated propaganda from Israel's determined enemies. They would love it if we did not exist to tell the world that Israel must remain united under the State of Israel. If you can, please make a year-end donation to One Jerusalem so we can continue our campaign of defending Jerusalem. Sincerely, Allen Roth & David Goder www.OneJerusalem.org

Freedom of the City

Wednesday June 1st.

My very first time in Jerusalem for Yom Yerushalayim - 44th anniversary of the recapture of our eternal capital city.

The mayor seems to have had political reasons to change the route of processions. But it totally backfired.

I don't think I have ever seen so many youngsters in one place - and having such fun rejoicing in possession of the most treasured icon of the Jewish people.

I've uploaded some of my photographs here.
Click any photo to enlarge. 

Lots more can be viewed at this link   

Make sure you come next year for the 45th !

March starts at Ammunition Hill

Throngs of kids ...

Far as the eye can see

Rallying Point

Down Highway 1

Group of girls - thousands of them

Entering Sheikh Jarrah - Arieh King

Sheikh Jarrah used to be called Shimon Hatzaddik  - most Jewish areas were renamed by Arabs to support false claims

Small protest group

Entering Damascus Gate

Approaching Damascus Gate

Musicians play 'Im Eshkocheych Yerushalayim'

Pressing on towards ....

The Western Wall Plaza

"Rikud Degalim" - Dance of the Flags

Minister Gideon Saar pledges Jerusalem undivided

Home time...

Middle East conflict explained in 6 minutes

Jerusalem Street This Morning

"Lest I forget thee O'Jerusalem ...
Netanyahu - stand firm!"

Jerusalem - a message to the world

After watching this video, I realised that this was the same Stanley Goldfoot whose Jerusalem apartment I had almost bought some years ago. A soft-spoken unassuming man, I had no idea that he could have been a former intelligence officer in Avram Stern's underground movement: LEHI.

Stanley Goldfoot died in November 2006 at the age of 96.
His 'Letter to the World' lives on ....



One of his more successful schemes during his years as a LEHI fighter was the founding of a scholarly journal concerning itself with the Middle East. Through these unsuspecting and lawful means, Goldfoot was able to secure press credentials as a foreign correspondent. With the unknowing aid of such figures as Abba Eban, Goldfoot created a ruse upon which the most up-to date British military intelligence was at his disposal. The information he gathered not only went toward the publishing of articles in his journal, but additionally, and more importantly, directly to the LEHI high-command in Tel Aviv. Goldfoot was present at all press briefings by the British Mandate Authority and later United Nations' personnel and had virtually unlimited access to the key figures dominating the scene. Freedom of movement in a Jerusalem frequently subject to curfews was an additional benefit of press credentials and his journal. Goldfoot was able to gather intelligence information for his clandestine organization as well as be in places restricted to the ordinary Jewish citizen.

For more informaton see this LINK.

Kiruv

Enchanting picture from Jimmy Carter's apartheid state of Israel.

JERUSALEM: The Final Frontier

A front page essay for:




It didn’t take more than a few hours for Barack Obama to backtrack on the promise he made at last week’s AIPAC convention to maintain Jerusalem as the undivided capital of the Jewish state.

But who are we to complain when Israel’s own prime minister chose to "celebrate" Yom Yerushalayim in Washington and was rumored to be carrying plans for the surrender of vast parts of the city, down to the last street name and alleyway?

During Israel’s 60^th anniversary celebrations Ehud Olmert admonished the Israelis to buy into his surrender and appeasement policy. To quell any ideas of retaining the Jewish capital, he declared: "Only fantasists can believe that in this day and age, and in the current situation, it is still possible to cling to the vision of Greater Israel."

That Olmert had strayed so far from the Revisionist ideals of his ideological mentor Ze’ev Jabotinsky was bad enough. But this latest statement placed him even to the left of Ben-Gurion, who famously said, "To be a realist in the land of Israel, one has to believe in miracles."

It was this fear of an imminent division of our national capital that brought such a large crowd to UK-Likud’s annual Yom Yerushalayim celebration in London the previous Sunday. In the front row I spotted Rev. Leslie Hardman. Now in his nineties, he was chaplain of the British armed forces in 1945 and one of the first Jews to unlock the horrors of the concentration camps. My own father at Auschwitz may have been one of those survivors who told his liberators how inmates had collected cigarette butts to trade tobacco with the camp guards in exchange for some flour to make matzo for Seder night. I fantasized a scene of the Jewish chaplain sitting among all those forlorn figures and what he might have offered them as some hope for the future.

"Did you sing Leshana Haba’ah b’Yerushalayim?" he might have asked. They would all have nodded enthusiastically. "Well then, let me tell you something," he may have

continued. "I have a vision that you will yet live to see the creation of a Jewish state in Eretz Yisrael with Jerusalem as its capital. And, after vanquishing all the Arab armies in six days, your children will begin celebrating their bar mitzvahs at the Kotel, where Jews from all over the word will come to pray under the protection of the strongest army in the entire region."

Even with their wits dulled by starvation and disease, this group of survivors might have regarded the reverend as completely mad. Nevertheless, stay with me and imagine if he had then continued to prophesy: "And then, having kept Jerusalem united under Jewish rule for 40 years, the new State of Israel will be asked by the world to give it back to the Arabs. And they will do so, with the stroke of a pen and not so much as a shot fired."

I wondered at the level of anger and sense of betrayal such a conversation might have invoked among those Holocaust survivors. Those who have survived to this day will be no less angry, perhaps more so for the memories of their fellow inmates who perished in the camps with "Shema Yisrael" on their lips and a vision of Jerusalem in their minds. And yet, the prime minister of Israel will not even dignify their memory by putting up a fight for something millions died for.

This appeasement of the world’s demands for the dismemberment of the Jewish state goes on against the backdrop of a new threat from Iran. At last week’s AIPAC conference, all the major speakers seem to have acknowledged that a nuclear Iran is not just Israel’s problem but represents a clear and present danger to the West as well.

Just so, I would venture to suggest, is the proposed division of Jerusalem. The future of Jerusalem is not just a Jewish or Israeli problem. It is an issue that has major ramifications for the free nations of the West.

We are in the midst of a world war commonly referred to as the "War on Terror." But when – and if – the history books are written about this struggle, it will be referred to by its real name: the Islamic War. A conflict between good and evil – between those who cherish life and those who embrace death; between those who seek to build on a century of democracy and technological progress and those who wish to bomb us all back into the Middle Ages.

And the frontline of this essentially religious struggle is not in Iraq or Afghanistan, but in Jerusalem.

To explain this I need to move from my fantasy about the chaplain in the concentration camp to science fiction, so much of which has ultimately come true.

There is an old "Star Trek" episode in which the ship encounters a fiery ribbon cut into the blackness of space. All the instruments go off-scale and, in a flash, the captain and senior officers are beamed away and immediately replaced by doubles.

But these doubles are brutal psychopaths; just the opposite of the decent men they replaced. Meanwhile, the real Captain Kirk and his officers find themselves on an identical ship, but one filled with consummately evil passengers and crew.

They had interchanged with a parallel universe through a rip in the cosmos. A world where everything was the exact opposite – love supplanted by hate, compassion replaced by brutality. Dead bodies littered the lower decks as the degenerate crewmembers used murder to advance their rank.

There is no better parallel to our present times. And no better manifestation of that rip in the cosmos than the Kotel Maaravi – the Western Wall of the ancient Jewish temple.

In front of our Wall stands everything that is good. An impossibly tiny nation whose people count for one-tenth of one percent of the world’s population but hold the highest proportion of Nobel prizes in all fields of endeavor that have enriched the world and the welfare of mankind. The only nation in history to have returned to its homeland after 2,000 years – and, to top it off, in half a century transformed a desert landscape into a world-beating powerhouse.

This side of the Wall swears in the recruits of the most humane army that has ever existed in the history of conflict – the only army that takes a human rights lawyer into battle against its enemies.

Perhaps more important, this side of the Wall is home to citizens whose compassion and humanity are second to none in the world. A people who have not known a day free of terrorism in the 60 years since their state was formed and yet are daily healing the ailments of their enemies.

And as Gazan children are treated in Israeli hospitals, their Jewish doctors live in fear of a phone call informing them that their home, or their children’s kindergarten, has been rocketed by Hamas.

Despite all the lies and vile propaganda, it is a fact that Israel has never once cut off the electricity supply to Gaza. But still the Arabs continue to rocket the hand that feeds them and Ashkelon power workers come to work each day not knowing whether their homes will still be intact by evening.

On our Jewish side of the Wall stands a people who can claim to be the most charitable on earth. Despite government cutbacks to maintain the essentials of defense and the huge cost of absorbing over a million new immigrants from Russia and Ethiopia, citizens have turned kindness into an art form. There are more charitable and voluntary support organizations per capita in Israel than anywhere else in the world.

From simple soup kitchens to terror victim support, these organizations have woven a tapestry of humanity and compassion that would be the envy of the world – if only the world’s news media were honest in their coverage of Israel.

As much as European politicians like to draw comparisons with Northern Ireland, most realists have come to accept that there can never be peace between Judaism and Islam. Irish Catholics may have wanted a united Ireland but they never incited their kids to kill every last Protestant as a religious duty. So long as Islamists use the Palestinian Arabs as pawns in their bid to remove all infidels from Muhammad’s peninsula, there will be no peace for Israel, no matter how much territory she hands over.

Then we get to the parallel universe that stands on the opposite side of the Wall. A culture of hatred and death that starts in kindergarten. A faith that has translated its holiest book into a screed of savagery. A cowardly army that launches rockets from schoolyards and hospitals. Mothers who celebrate the suicide deaths of their bomber sons and who send their daughters on postnatal appointments to bomb the Israeli midwives who delivered their last grandchild. Unrepentant terrorists who vow to return to their murdering ways even as their freedom is negotiated in exchange for a simple set of Israeli dog tags.

This may be the front line, but the demon seed has already pollinated in Europe and America. London and Madrid have had their own taste of 9/11 and there will surely be more to come. In just the past few days we have seen the architect of 9/11’s carnage using a U.S. courtroom to extol his pride in the Islamic mission of mass murder and thereby encourage other sleepers to follow his example.

Whenever I stand at the Kotel, I feel very strongly that this wall represents the thin line between these parallel universes of our time. By the grace of God, Israel stands at that frontier and has provided free access to pilgrims of all religions to the places that are holy to their faiths. The free world remains that much safer for as long as Israel holds that line.

As for all the journalists and pundits who love to demonize the Jewish state at every opportunity, let them remember that they are only free to do so because countries like Israel keep that rip in the universe sealed up. If the forces of radical Islam are allowed to seep through and take hold, their critical reporting will be subject to beheadings and their womenfolk will no longer be free to dress, work, and live life as they please.

When I stand at the Kotel I also focus on all those kvitlach; the hundreds of scribbled notes squashed into the cracks of the wall. Each one seeks help from the Almighty in some way or another: to cure a sick child, to find a suitable marriage partner or simply sufficient funds and food to keep the family going. But mostly, just a simple wish for "peace" – whatever that word means in the lexicon of this troubled region.

I don’t know if there is a similar wall or "wish depository" in the parallel universe. But if there were such a thing on the opposite side of the Wall, I imagine the majority of entreaties from the radicalized masses could be summarized by one central theme: "Death to the Jews."

So there it is: Jerusalem truly is the "Final Frontier."

And I am thinking: what better way to seal those cracks and insulate us from such a parallel universe of hate than with the prayers and pleas of decent people who share and cherish our simple human values?



Photo by Zalmi