Stunning Old City Renovations Masks Jordan's Destruction

Yesterday when I was wandering around Jerusalem's Old City, there was more than music on Mount Zion. I found myself walking into the very old Ramban Synagogue, which is in the center of what today is called the Jewish Quarter. I don't think I had been there for almost half a century.

My memories of the Ramban Synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem is of a ruin, walking down and although there was no artificial light, still seeing the old pillars. There was just dirt on the floor. If it had been paved in stones, I didn't notice or remember. Those are my memories of the place.

As you can see from the above photos, the synagogue has been reconstructed, and those pillars are in use. The floor now has well-kept tiles. There's furniture, and the Ramban Synagogue is in use for prayer. That's rather bittersweet for me. I'm glad that there's a Jewish community using that ancient location/building for what it was constructed, but it's one of the buildings, holy sites, the Jordanians had defiled and destructed during their nineteen 19 year illegal occupation of the Old City, from 1948 until the miraculous 1967 Six Days War.

When it was announced that the "Churba "Hurva" Synagogue" would be reconstructed, many people protested the decision. The reason was that it was/is important not to hide the immoral actions of the Jordanians during their illegal occupation. 

During yesterday's walk, everything looked "too pretty." There are museums depicting very ancient Jerusalem and Jewish History, but I didn't see anything to remind us of the cruelty of the Jordanians.

Two State "Solution," Dead or Hibernating?

Note that in the title and here, I put the word "solution" in quotation marks. That's because I don't see that "two states" would be a "solution" to the "conflict in the Middle East." The use of quotation marks indicates that I'm "distancing myself" from the words, because I consider it inaccurate. For added emphasis "solution" also is italicized.

Just a little history...

• There is absolutely no history of a group of people called Palestine.
• Only one people/nation ever had an independent country kingdom in this part of the world, the Jewish People.
• Many invaders occupied this part of the middle east, and other times it was leaderless, stateless.
• In its two thousand years of exile from The Land, the Jewish People still focused on returning. Jewish Prayers, Holidays, theology and Bible are all centered on The Land of Israel.

The Arabs who have been named as Palestinian have no unified history. They are just united in their support for terrorism against Jews and Israel. They also don't really want to be responsible for their own independent state, or they would have been happy to negotiate with Israel and come to some sort of agreement. Over the decades, they've been offered fantastic conditions, including plenty of land and financial backing, but they've always refused.

An independent country requires taking responsibility for one's population, and the terrorists prefer to continue their corrupt ways.

And now, finally even some international leaders, media, etc. are finally seeing the turth, though they've come to it in rather confused and peculiar ways:

Donald Trump has ruined any chance of a two-state solution in the Israel-Palestine conflict – and the American public knows it
Labor Party Lawmaker Draws Fire Over Call to Annex Major Israeli Settlement Blocs

Hat tip West Bank Jewish Population Stats Report

Jerusalem, Jewish and Israeli For Sure

Last night my husband and I attended an enjoyable and informative event hosted by the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs at the Israel Museum. The main speaker was Ambassador  Dore Gold. Gold, a former ambassador and Director General of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, appointed by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is now President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs.

The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is a leading independent research institute specializing in public diplomacy and foreign policy. Founded in 1976, the Center has produced hundreds of studies and initiatives by leading experts on a wide range of strategic topics. Dr. Dore Gold, Israel’s former ambassador to the UN, has headed the Jerusalem Center since 2000.

Gold's lecture centered on debunking six false claims about Jerusalem.

As a quick summary, two important points:

Ambassador Gold proved that according to international law and precedent, there is absolutely no reason to accuse Israel of illegally occupying sic Jerusalem. Gold easily showed how even the Muslims, until very recently, had recognized Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and Jerusalem.

Gold's lecture was extremely clear, informative and entertaining. The illustrations were excellent, and I certainly hope that it will be available online/youtube.

Jewish Nationalism and History Unique and Proves Land is Ours

Workers at the Tel Shiloh archaeological site
Recent discoveries confirm that Shiloh remained an active city for thousands of years after the Tabernacle was destroyed. 

The other day I wrote Six Days War, Lots of Memories But No Pictures  and "shared it" to a Great Neck facebook page, since it was about my high school memories. Never in a million years did I expect the post to spark a vicious/vigorous debate about Jewish rights to this Land versus the Arabs.

Actually, it's still going on. The crux is whether or not just residing in a place gives someone national rights. Here are a few of the posts I wrote:

The only independent countries/kingdoms in this part of the world were Jewish. The Turks, British, Jordanians (a truly fake invented nation) etc were all invaders and occupiers. Learn history.
Were there Turks and British 2,000 years ago? List the kings/prime ministers of an independent country in this land during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
The only people/nation with a history of national aspirations for this part of the world is Jews. For all others, this land was just a place to be, but not their national homeland. Nomads passing through.

I don't think that the people arguing with me fully understand what a nation/people is, nor nationalist aspirations and history.

I certainly don't deny that there have never been non-Jews living in what we'll refer to as "the Holyland" from the time the Jewish Kingdom and Holy Temples were destroyed, invaded and occupied. But one must remember that those who ruled were occupiers/invaders, representing foreign kingdoms/countries.

The Arabs here had "city states," like there had been in Europe a few hundred years ago, but unlike Europe, they had no national aspirations and never evolved into a country. Even today, after enthusiastic and professional "mentoring" by foreigners, Arabs of Ramalla, Gaza, Shechem etc do not consider themselves as one people.  Compare that to Jews, who even two thousand years after being exiled and being forced to wander all over the world still have a united singular tradition of being a nation in this very Holyland, celebrate the same religious holidays, pray the same prayers and Bible in the same language and mourn the destruction of the same Holy Temple that stood in Jerusalem.

We Jewish People in The State of Israel aren't like any other. Our Jewish History confounds and even angers international military and economic experts. According to them, there was no way we could have survived the Holocaust. And even the countries that voted "yes" for a Jewish State in the United Nations, November 29, 1947, never expected us to survive. We had no allies, unlike the Arabs fighting us. And in 1967, our so-called friends again waited on the sidelines certain of our imminent demise. Instead of being pushed into the sea we liberated our Biblical Homeland and pushed our enemies past the Jordan River, to the Suez Canal and the the other side of the Golan Heights. Since then the "world" has put even more energy and money into inventing a "people" to replace us here in the Holyland. Unfortunately, even many Jews and Israelis have fallen for the con, the lie that we must share our tiny Homeland with Arabs who terrorize us, murder and maim.

Today our fight is more a war of words and ideas. We must stand strong and put our faith in Gd, not men and certainly not foreign leaders. In a few days we celebrate the Jewish Holiday of Shavuot, which can be translated as "Weeks" or "Oaths." Seven weeks from the Passover Holiday, and now we Swear and Oath to Gd to accept the Torah, accept the Laws Gd demands us to follow.

Chodesh Sivan Tov

Shabbat Shalom 

and Chag Sameach!

Rosh Chodesh Tammuz, 5777, will be Sunday June 25, 2017

Jerusalem is Israel's Eternal Capital City!

I 💗 JERUSALEM
Zion Square, Jerusalem

The insulting behavior of the world against Israel must end:

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has told senior ministers he is lifting restrictions on settlement building in East Jerusalem, a statement said on Sunday, immediately after the city's municipal government approved permits for the building of hundreds of new homes in the area. (Reuters)

It is really up to us. No normal self-respecting country would stand for it. Jerusalem has been the capital, most important city for the Jewish People since King David thousands of years ago. No other people or country or kingdom has ever had that relationship with Jerusalem. Actually no other indigenous people have ever had an independent country/kingdom here. Yes, there were invaders and occupiers like Hadrian, the Assyrians, the Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Turks and the British who had been assigned by the League of Nations to facilitate the establishment of a Jewish State here.

But the British sabotaged the plans by severely restricting entry to Jews and trying to invent Arab "nations" to occupy the Land, which had been known as Palestine-Transjordan. They invited the foreign desert tribe of the Hashemites to occupy the eastern bank of the Jordan and invented the "Kingdom of Jordan," which has no historic roots whatsoever.

November 29, 1947, the newly minted United Nations General Assembly rather half-heartedly voted to approve the establishment of a Jewish State in just a sliver of what remained of the British Mandate. At the same time it supported the establishment of an additional Arab State in most of what remained west of of the Jordan River. The Arabs were given military superiority and security, since they had the mountain range, which also was the Historic Heartland of the Jewish Nation and History.

Here we are almost seventy 70 years later, after many wars during which Israel has proven its superiority in all ways except for one. Although we have consistently and miraculously defeated our enemies, we still act like the world is doing us a favor by letting us exist. Today in the 21st Century there isn't a single country that honors and respects us properly by having its embassy in our "Capital City Jerusalem. And instead of taking steps/sanctions against them by retaliating in kind, and probably saving billions of dollars over the years, by locating our embassies in the cities of our choice, rather than capitals, we just let them insult us and our history.

Some of you will want to comment that they are sure that the United States will be moving its embassy to Jerusalem. Sorry, but until it actually happens, I just don't believe it.

Misused Term "Occupied Territories" Israel's Fault

On 22 May 1967, President Nasser addressed his pilots
at Bir Gafgafa airbase in Sinai:
"The Jews are threatening war – we say to them
ahlan wa-sahlan (welcome)!"[21]
By Unknown - Downtown Express, Public Domain,
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7505851

Too bad we can't just turn back the clock, or do a gazillion "undos" until we get to that glorious moment when in June, 1967 we, the State of Israel, realized that we had defeated the three (actually four-- read  A Six Days War IDF Soldier Tells his Story) Arab armies which had allied together to destroy our precious and seemingly fragile young country.

People in a bomb shelter at Kibbutz Dan, Wikipedia

That moment was a turning point, a watershed moment in Jewish and World History, and the State of Israel goofed.

Egypt Surrenders, 1967

We are still paying for that crucial and very stupid mistake.

Instead of accepting Gd's miracle and message, that we The Jewish People and The State of Israel as its tool is supposed to be fully sovereign over all of the Biblical Land of Israel, plus whatever additional Land came into our hands in this amazing war, the Eshkol Labor Leftist Government aimed for peace and conciliatory relations with the Arab countries.

Within hours of liberating Har Habayit, the Temple Mount, the symbolic key was given to the Moslems and we Jews made do with the much less holy Western Wall.

In addition, the Israeli Government only approved minimal "settlement" for civilians in the newly liberated Land, since it expected the Arabs to be happy to get it back in exchange for "peace." That was the invention of the concept "occupied territories," and we're paying the price for that awful decision to this day.

Security and the So-Called "Occupation," sic

I don't know why people are so afraid to come to Israel. All and all, with the very low crime/murder rate, rather competent police and concerned/interfering private citizens, one is safer in Israel than most places in the world. Add to that top notch medical care, decent roads and a great variety of climates and places of interest etc (compared to many tourist favorites) Israel should be the number one choice for international travellers.

The frequency of terror attacks, which some people use as an excuse not to come, is lower than the murder rate in most places.

And here in Israel there isn't the "ticking bomb" that awaits, like in many places such as Europe. Dry Bones drew it right! Isn't this the 21st Century's version of the Communist "sleepers?"

The immigrant situation in Germany, according to the Gatestone Institute:

" the German government has lost track of the whereabouts of hundreds of thousands of migrants who entered the country in 2015. N24 television has reported that up to 50% of "asylum seekers" have gone into hiding; their whereabouts are unknown. They presumably include economic migrants and others who are trying to avoid deportation if or when their asylum applications are rejected. The Saarbrücker Zeitung reported that up to 30% of the migrants being sheltered in the eastern German states of Brandenburg, Thuringia and Saxony-Anhalt have "simply vanished." Separately, German authorities estimate that hundreds of thousands of migrants have entered the country without being registered and whose whereabouts are unknown."-more

Europe, more specifically France, has been plagued with terror attacks on massive numbers of ordinary citizens, and they have no way to stop them. In the United States, terror and shootings can never be predicted.

And more about Israel, concerning the so-called "occupation," if it was all so terrible for the Arabs here, they'd be leaving in massive numbers like the Syrians. And they'd also be clamoring to get into the P.A. -Palestinian Authority. But the actual situation is totally different. The local Arabs try to live in "Israel proper," inside the "green line." And those on "my side" of the old pre-Six Days War border, prefer "occupation" to the P.A. -Palestinian Authority.

Food for thought... Have that with your coffee or booze!

Conning the World: Israeli "Occupation"

There are two big cons going on against Israel that belittle the legitimacy of the State of Israel.

1. There was a country called Palestine that the Zionists replaced with Israel.
2. Israel's rule in land liberated in its defensive war in 1967 is "occupation."

Note the red Ottoman empire, the fact that today's borders and countries aren't even hinted at in this map. That is why there is so much instability among the Arab countries. They have no real history as independent countries. 

The truth is very simple! There never was a country called Palestine, and there is no history of a people or country by that name either.

The lower map shows the tiny Israel in yellow just before the 1967 Six Days War. The borders were indefensible and it's a total miracle that Israel survived the coordinated attack to push it into the sea by Egypt, Jordan and Syria. They had planned our destruction and we had no ally other than G-d. Everyone stood by watching, expecting us to be a footnote in history.

Thank G-d a miracle happened and the IDF with the help of G-d defeated those three countries.

In the history of the world, it is always accepted that a victorious army/country is the new ruler of any land achieved in a victorious war of defense. The only time this rule has been ignored has been in the case of Israel defeating its enemies in 1967. We should be sovereign; we are not occupiers!!!

Israeli MFA uses MK Ayelet Shaked Image to Promote "Gaza Occupation" Counterpoint

I don't know who drew and designed this hasbara, Israeli formation campaign cartoon, but the Israeli spokesperson is a dead-ringer for NRP aka Jewish Home Knesset Member Ayelet Shaked.

The voice, unfortunately, sounds very mid-20th century Bell's operator or old-fashioned schoolteacher.  Though the style they have her dressed in is rather flaky, with a cropped top showing a bare midriff. I guess that's the image of Israel the Foreign Ministry wants to promote.

In all honesty, I don't like this cartoon, especially not the way the message it is being promoted. I also don't like the use of the  term "legal Palestinians government"

Here is is, what do you think?

"You may have heard claims that Israel's occupation of the Gaza Strip is the reason for hostilities in the region. Is this fact or fiction? Well, guess what: Israel DOES NOT occupy Gaza. It left Gaza in 2005, pulling out all its soldiers and leaving all its settlements. So who DOES occupy Gaza? Hamas. In 2007, this terrorist organization attacked the legitimate Palestinian Authority government and violently seized control of Gaza. It has ruled since then by force and without elections. Hamas turned the Gaza Strip into a terrorist base and uses its population as human shields."

I think that we are getting into points that can backfire on us. By just concentrating on the Gaza occupation issue, it's admitting that we are the "occupation power" over Judea, Samaria, the Jordan Valley and the Golan.

And the big truth is that the world isn't interested in the facts and truth. Those countries and people and NGOs against us won't budge from their beliefs no matter how much history, facts or how attractive and youthful the speaker is. This Ayelet Shaked lookalike would be more influential recommending or promoting an amusement park, not explaining facts and history to a staid, suited, bespectacled guy like in the cartoon.

If you want to read something more serious about the so-called "occupation," recommend Evelyn Gordon's latest.