Continue to ]]> Source: Arutz Sheva News

With regards to Israel and Iran, is ambiguity the policy in the United States?

Continue to full article

Continue to ]]> Source: Arutz Sheva News

An Iranian newspaper reported Monday that the bomb used to assassinate a nuclear scientist last month was “made in the USA.”

Continue to full article

Continue to ]]> Source: Arutz Sheva News

An article calling for the destruction of Israel and genocide has appeared on numerous official government and military websites in Iran

Continue to full article

Continue to ]]> Source: Arutz Sheva News

The entire Lithuanian Jewish world holds its breath as Rabbi Yosef Shalom Eliyashiv, the leader of Lithuanian Jewry, struggles to breathe.

Continue to full article

Herzlia Conference 2012

This is a great panel

Continue to ]]> Source: Israpundit

This is a great panel

Continue to article source

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide. [I did not see the part about "Jewish people worldwide" - EoZ.]

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews [see above] and annihilate Israel, and in ]]> Source: Elder of Ziyon

From WND:

The Iranian government, through a website proxy, has laid out the legal and religious justification for the destruction of Israel and the slaughter of its people.

The doctrine includes wiping out Israeli assets and Jewish people worldwide. [I did not see the part about "Jewish people worldwide" - EoZ.]

Calling Israel a danger to Islam, the conservative website Alef, with ties to Iran’s supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said the opportunity must not be lost to remove “this corrupting material. It is a “‘jurisprudential justification” to kill all the Jews [see above] and annihilate Israel, and in that, the Islamic government of Iran must take the helm.”

The article, written by Alireza Forghani, an analyst and a strategy specialist in Khamenei’s camp, now is being run on most state-owned sites, including the Revolutionary Guards’ Fars News Agency, showing that the regime endorses this doctrine.

Because Israel is going to attack Iran’s nuclear facilities, Iran is justified in launching a pre-emptive, cataclysmic attack against the Jewish state, the doctrine argues.

On Friday, in a major speech at prayers, Khamenei announced that Iran will support any nation or group that attacks the “cancerous tumor” of Israel. Though his statement was seen by some in the West as fluff, there is substance behind it.

Iran’s Defense Ministry announced this weekend that it test-fired an advanced two-stage, solid-fuel ballistic missile and boasted about successfully putting a new satellite into orbit, reminding the West that its engineers have mastered the technology for intercontinental ballistic missiles even as the Islamic state pushes its nuclear weapons program.

Google’s Farsi translation is not quite as good as its Arabic, but this is what I could puzzle out.

The article quotes Ayatollah Khomeini (possibly current leader Khamenei) saying that the destruction of Israel is necessary, as it is a cancer in the Middle East. All Muslims are obligated to fight Israel.

It goes into a legal discussion of the difference between regular jihad and defensive jihad. While primary jihad may require the blessing of the Hidden Imam, defensive jihad does not. The author defines the obligation to fight Israel as defensive jihad because Israel controls Muslim holy places as well as because Israel instills fear in Muslims.

If I am reading it right, he is saying that any Israeli action would be justification to destroy Israel.

The article goes into detail as to which targets it would attack, from nuclear facilities to railways to airports and utilities, water and sanitation.

After going through the various kinds of missiles Iran has, the article claims that Iran can destroy Israel in less than 9 minutes. It claims that one of its rockets can reach Israel in less than 14 minutes and that anti-missile batteries would be ineffective.

The Alef article includes maps showing where they say Israeli airbases are, as well as the range of their rockets:

Arutz-7 has what might be a more accurate representation of the article; I’m being pretty conservative.

Continue to article source

The demonizing of Israel, dismissing the democratic Jewish state as a right-wing, religious, racist project, continues. The latest storyline describes ultra-Orthodox Israelis—known in Hebrew as haredim—as medieval Neanderthals rapidly converting Israel into an Iran-style theocracy. This popular caricature encourages those liberals seeking excuses to stop supporting Israel. The appalling images of bearded, black-hatted zealots spitting on eight-year-olds, forcing women to the back of public buses, and parading ]]> Source: Elder of Ziyon

A nice article in TNR by Gil Troy that explains how “ultra-Orthodox” Jews fit into Israeli society, and it is not nearly as black and white as people like to think:

The demonizing of Israel, dismissing the democratic Jewish state as a right-wing, religious, racist project, continues. The latest storyline describes ultra-Orthodox Israelis—known in Hebrew as haredim—as medieval Neanderthals rapidly converting Israel into an Iran-style theocracy. This popular caricature encourages those liberals seeking excuses to stop supporting Israel. The appalling images of bearded, black-hatted zealots spitting on eight-year-olds, forcing women to the back of public buses, and parading their children with yellow stars in protest, are all being read as tea leaves predicting Israel’s imminent degeneration into Haredistan. But what if the opposite is true? Haredi rampages seem more like impotent attempts to build a firewall against modernity than harbingers of conquest.

Change is coming to a community defined by its rejection of change. Haredim are joining Israeli society. Haredi vocational programs are proliferating, as government generosity wanes. Over 3000 haredi soldiers have now served in Israel’s army, including a combat-ready unit. Many haredi women, who increasingly are highly educated and working, are demanding more respect while continuing to maintain gender distinctions. The debate about television and internet usage is intensifying, as modern popular culture seeps into the society, which is not hermetically sealed.

While haredi triumphalists emphasize their high birthrate, the outflow of the last two centuries since the Enlightenment continues. Though statistics are elusive, communal anxiety abounds about the apostates. Most haredim, while denying the hemorrhaging, have close relatives who are no longer haredi. The deserters are numerous enough to have inspired a television drama series: Simanei She’eilah (question marks), which tracks the stories of haredi runaways living in a Tel Aviv halfway house, debuted last year.

The Zaka organization provides the most dramatic—and inspiring—example of haredi engagement with Israeli society. Zaka became famous during the second intifada, dispatching ultra-Orthodox crews who cleaned up the spilled blood and pieces of flesh strewn about after bombings. Their reverence and thoroughness impressed normally hostile secular Israelis. Zaka’s heroism, along with the suicide bombings in haredi neighborhoods, reminded all Israelis of their shared destiny. Today, more than 1500 Zaka volunteers nationwide serve in ambulances and participate in search and rescue operations. A Zaka team in Haiti after the 2010 earthquake worked through the Sabbath, saving lives.

… Noah Efron, a Bar Ilan University philosopher and historian, has explored the ingrained prejudice and popular revulsion against haredim. “The Jewish fight against ultra-Orthodoxy is part of a long-running struggle about what legitimately counts as Jewish,” Professor Efron says. “The modern forms of Judaism have so won the day that this need to continue fighting the battle seems neurotic.” Nevertheless, emphasizing the bad behavior of haredi Jews—who epitomize the stereotypical Jew—makes modern Jews and non-Jews feel better, less judged, suggesting that “these ostensibly superior Jews are actually inferior,” Efron says. “We continually prove our own probity to ourselves by proving the depravity of those people.”

More broadly, these stories provoke secular Westerners’ condescension toward religious people. Reading many of the American and European blogs about the haredi tensions this winter, Efron has been “stunned” by “the depths of the hatred and the crassness of the arguments. The attacks reflect a toxic mix of old style anti-Semitism and contemporary anti-Zionism, with a new style modern anti-anything-that-is-not-secular-liberal-and-Western added.”

Haredim—and their leaders—are, of course, partly responsible for the broad anger against them. Many lack civic spirit. Few serve in the army. The separation of women often entails inequality. Their politicians exploit Israel’s fragmented coalition-governing system. A culture of lawlessness has grown in many communities, and their holier-than-thou attitude toward fellow citizens rankles.

Nevertheless, even in Bet Shemesh, the town where the haredi men spat on the eight-year-old schoolgirl, the true story is more complex than headlines suggest. “Haredi residents are furious at the recent developments and resent that they are being blamed for the acts of a tiny minority,” the haredi paper, HaModia reported. This doesn’t excuse haredi leaders: In a hierarchical community that grants rabbis so much power, the rabbis must do a better job of restraining the bullies. But as Rabbi Yeshaya Ehrenreich, a member of the Beit Shemesh City Council, told the newspaper, “The haredim who live in the same neighborhoods as these [fringe elements] suffer more than anyone else.”

This video from Aish, although a bit corny, seems appropriate:

(h/t Seth Mandel, SwissYankee)

Continue to article source

Continue to ]]> Source: JPost.com – Op-Ed Contributors

The army must internalize the need to formally empower its commanders against the gang-law threatening from the ranks.

Continue to full article

Continue to ]]> Source: JPost.com – Op-Ed Contributors

Tu Bishvat, which is also the birthday of the Knesset, should be transformed into a national day of ecological awareness.

Continue to full article

Continue to ]]> Source: JPost.com – Op-Ed Contributors

In the face of growing impatience with Iran’s stalling tactics, Obama insisted on giving the Islamic regime space and time to come to the table.

Continue to full article