Can There Be "A" Holocaust? Or is It Always "The" Holocaust?

It's the former English Teacher in me kicking in again.  Remember that "a" is "one of a potential many."  Most people don't understand the meaning of "a" and "an."  Calling it "an article" doesn't give an answer.  You have "articles" in a newspaper or magazine.  A blog post is a form of article.  When I began teaching English I had yet to be "trained" in the profession, so I had to search well within my mind and experience to figure out how to explain things to my students, who had been the school's failures until I got them, or they got me.  I realized that "a" and "an" were like the "un," "uno" and "una" in Spanish.  Those words are simply translated as "one," "1."

United States President Obama overuses the term Holocaust, considering it no more than a synonym for "pogrom."  One must remember that he was raised by an extreme loony Left mother who married foreign men of different religions and cultures.  She also lived in their countries for portions of her life.  The chances are that Obama has no idea that he's historically incorrect, mistaken.

Googling "Holocaust" I found it as "The Holocaust," because it's the term for a very specific historic event, the German Nazi persecution and systematic murder of Six Million Jews and millions of others.

It's pretty dangerous for the United States to have a president so intimately entrenched in extreme Left ideology.

Obama's statement at his Nuclear Security Summit about committing to limit nuclear weapons may sound good to cockeyed Pollyanna optimists (international loony Left,) but what it does is to destroy all remaining deterrent.  The "good guys" tie their hands to get progressively weaker, and the "bad guys" keep on developing weapons of destruction.  How is that supposed to promote world peace?

Strange Coincidences, or Said With A Picture

OK, it's a poster, but this poster gives one of the points in my post about politicians, spies and the Biblical Days of the Judges.  It supports the idea that we were better ruled by judges, because it's not an inherited position.

Hat tip: Cousin K

Translation:

Diapers and politicians need to be changed on a frequent basis.
The reason is the SAME

SOME IMPORTANT UPDATES ON THE TREACHERY SCANDAL

1. The Hebrew Arutz Sheva site is reporting that the disk that Kam stole from the Central Command Center office is officially missing.

2. The Ministry of Justice claims that back in 2009, all of Ha’aretz’s claims against the IDF were investigated and disproven. [From the News 1 Hebrew website].

3. Journalist Anat Kam, who is accused of stealing thousands of classified IDF files, has waived her claim to journalistic immunity. Kam is calling on the reporter to whom she gave the files, Haaretz writer Uri Blau, to bring them back to Israel. Her attorney reported that the young journalist and accused spy is in contact with the Israel Security Agency in an attempt to reach a plea bargain. He did not say whether his client's appeal to Blau was a part of that bargain.

4. In a must-read editorial in the Jerusalem Post, Hiding behind the secretary, Jacob Vecht raises the following piercing questions:
* What does it mean when the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency) demands that a journalist “return” all the documents that he received illegally? Does smashing a journalist’s computer really ensure that no copies of the information remain?
* Do the intelligence services here think that we do not know that information on Blau’s computer was almost certainly copied before the computer was destroyed?
* The Shin Bet has knowingly made a phony deal with a criminal journalist to treat him leniently, and indeed has let him leave the country knowing that he gave them absolutely nothing in return. Presumably the Shin Bet knows that we realize this too. So we must now ask why it did this. How could it catch a serious security criminal red-handed and just let him go? It tells us, on the one hand, that the release of these 2,000 secret files poses a serious compromise to national security and, on the other hand, it makes an overtly meaningless compromise with him, and then lets him go.
* So my next question is: Are these senior security officers possibly hiding behind one young secretary? Maybe it is worthwhile for the security services to arrest Kamm and release the Haaretz staff rather that have a public trial that will doubtlessly expose huge deficiencies in the computer security of the defense establishment and risk bringing down some of its most senior officers.

What Makes Me Different From Many Other Jews of My Generation...

To set the mood, watch the new version of the classic Passover song Chad Gadya:

Unlike many of my peers of the immediate post World War Two Jewish world, I was brought up totally oblivious of the Holocaust.   No, it wasn't a silent, repressed and repressing shadow shading and affecting my life.  It just didn't exist, didn't affect my immediate family.  My parents' voices and those of the other neighborhood grown-ups were totally American though with Jewish inflections and Yiddish slang.  And before you guess wrong, I was born in Brooklyn and raised in Queens, New York.

The fathers in the spanking new garden apartment neighborhood of Bell Park Gardens, Bayside, New York, were all United States military veterans.  That was a condition of acceptance to the Veterans Authority co-op.  I wonder if any sociologists have written their doctorates on why that and other similar housing developments were almost exclusively filled with young Jewish families.  BPG was over 90% Jewish and so were the other nearby garden apartments, Oakland Gardens and Windsor Park.  The same went for the one and two-family homes in the neighborhood.  All of the new, post-WWII neighborhoods in northeastern Queens were Jewish.  Churches could only be found in older, pre-World War Two areas.

I first heard about the Holocaust when The Diary of Anne Frank was published.  It was featured on television shows, and I probably heard about it in Oakland Jewish Center's Hebrew School, which I attended for five years, three days a week.  At that time there weren't many books, especially for children, written about the Holocaust.  I tried to take out The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich from the Hebrew School Library, but the librarian offered me Minister of Death, about Eichmann, instead.  I presented it to my Sixth Grade class for an oral bookreport.  As soon as I named the book and author the teacher interrupted:

"No sixth-grader is capable of reading a book by Quentin Reynolds.  You must be lying.  You get a zero!!!"

In those days, one didn't question authority, certainly did  not argue with teachers.  I did read the book, though I probably didn't fully comprehend it.

I only became aware and met children of Holocaust survivors when I joined Betar.  Many of my Betar friends had the opposite Jewish childhood.  All of the parents in their circles were survivors or got out just in time.  Think of it as an old film picture and negative.  From different directions we ended up embracing the same ideology.  Many of us made aliyah and live in Israel.

My children, Israeli born and raised, grew up with strong knowledge and awareness of the Holocaust.  Jewish History is intertwined with Israeli culture and education.  Personal history, stories of bravery and survival from their friends' grandparents give them an intimate knowledge beyond anything I can comprehend or pass on.

Today is Israel's Holocaust Memorial Day.  It's a day I feel as a stranger here in Israel.  That may sound peculiar considering my politics and ideology.  Regardless as to how I arrived, I have no doubt that as a Jew my place is the Land of Israel.

TIME TO TAKE THE GLOVES OFF!

I’m a bit amazed that almost no one in the JBlogosphere has been posting on the terrible, treasonous case of over 2,000 classified documents that were stolen and either sold or released to a reporter. I am of course, referring to Anat Kam and her theft of these documents, which she subsequently gave or sold to Ha’aretz reporter Uri Blau.

Let’s see how Arutz-7 reported this:
Investigators …identified [the source of the documents] as 23-year-old Anat Kam of Tel Aviv, a media-affairs journalist at the Walla news portal. Kam was questioned, and revealed that during her military service in the office of then-Central Command Head Major-General Yair Naveh, she had stored thousands of classified documents on the computer provided to her by the IDF. Shortly before her release from service in June 2007, she stored more than 2,000 of the files on a 'disc-on-key' device.
She then copied the files onto her personal computer at home, despite being aware that possession of the documents was a serious crime. The documents taken included top-secret files with information on special operations, intelligence reports, General Staff meeting notes, ongoing IDF operations, troop deployment, and more. Had the information fallen into enemy hands, it would very likely have led to the deaths of military personnel, military sources said.

Kam has been under house arrest since January, although a normal country would have jailed her until her trial, which will hopefully be soon, and send her to prison for life!
And the Ha’aretz reporter? Oh, he’s safely abroad [as is Ehud Olmert], avoiding his own arrest. Of course, the left-wing controlled media, which has a virtual monopoly in Israel [since they shut down the Arutz Sheva radio station], is taking the offensive and calling the possible indictments and arrests a “threat to democracy,” although even Yediot’s Ynet site did boldly ask, “And had she been a settler?”

As usual, the story was first broken abroad in the international media, which forced the hands of Israel to allow its disclosure here. And of course, most of that media took the left stance of a “threat to democracy.” However, Judith Miller who first published an article calling it “Israel’s Censorship Scandal,” did change her mind when she found out how treasonous the info Kam handed out was.

The NFC Hebrew website reported that:
After hearing the position of the Shin Bet, the American journalist Judith Miller says that she has questions about Kam and Blau. Judith Miller, an American journalist, writes that she now realizes that Israel and not Anat Kam and Uri Blau are right, contrary to what she wrote in an article in which she attacked the gag order that was issued in Israel, an article which might have precipitated the exposure. In an interview this morning (Sunday, 11.4.10) Army Radio [Razi Barkai, "Ma Boer?"] said that she heard from a friend about the affair which led her to write about it. According to her, this episode is not the same case for which she sat in jail…"I sat for three months in jail until my informant agreed to expose himself. I never stole or received classified documents." But Miller said that she "understands the backup gives Ha'aretz reporter Uri Blau, but has questions after hearing the position of the Shabak, including:

* Why did Anat Kam - if indeed she was ideologically motivated - have to copy 2,000 documents beyond what was needed?

* Why did Blau publish the documents in a way that the GSS would be able to trace their origins?

Finally, the “Samson Blinded” blog did report the following:
Shabak’s briefing on Anat Kam’s case reveals a crazy situation: the less-than-almighty security agency is so afraid of the leftist press that it actually negotiated the return of top-secret documents from Uri Blau, the reporter who received them from Kam. Shabak did not arrest Blau even though he had committed a clear-cut crime and endangered state security.
During negotiations, Blau agreed to give up some 50 documents. Shabak then allowed this ultra-leftist to travel abroad even though he probably possessed copies of Israel’s top-secret military plans. Granted, Shabak and the army exaggerate the documents’ importance, but documents do not receive “top-secret” marks for nothing.
Now it is clear that Blau hid hundreds more documents - perhaps thousands more. He still has not been arrested.


So, I ask, where’s the outrage? It’s high time we took off the gloves and raise hell, to have these criminals duly arrested and tried for no less than treason!!!

Hold Onto Your Paper Books and Maybe Dust Off Your Records

As usual, Dry Bones says it perfectly.

I'm sure we're not the only people who still have 

• camera film, though we only shoot digital
• audio cassettes, some of which would probably rip and subsequently ruin a walkman, if we still had a functioning one
• movie film, but no functioning projector and maybe even an old  pre-video movie camera
• various size and versions of data storage discs for ancient computers, data no longer accessible
• old computers, printers, screens and keyboards which aren't compatible with today's computers
• data memory keys which no longer reveal the data so carefully saved
• LP records which could be played if we only had functioning record players
• books much, much older than all of the previous items listed, which we can and do still read with the same enjoyment as when they were new
• Please add more in comments

So, honestly, are those electric books really good investments? 

Like In The Time of The Judges

Thousands of years ago, during the Biblical time of the Judges, everyone did what he/she thought was right, interpreting the laws individually.  Many Biblical experts describe today's anarchy of questionable and contradictory morality as similar.

The Bible is the story of the Jewish People, so no where do we see the parallels more strongly than here in Israel.   The Judicial branch of the government ignores law and experts deciding according the the personal philosophies and agendas of the sitting judges.  And now this young espionage criminal, Anat Kam, claims that she did no wrong.

Ms Kam's lawyer said she did not harm, or intend to harm, national security.

"Anat denies that any damage was done to the security of the State of Israel or that it was ever her intention to do so," Eitan Lehman said.

A representative for the former soldier, who did not give a name, said security services were trying to paint her as an "enemy of the state".

She was a "Zionist" who acted as a "concerned citizen", not a left-wing activist, the representative said.

It's clear that it's not so innocent and simple, because she spent her IDF army service collecting documents, knowingly breaking the law.

Kamm, the main culprit, is accused of stealing some 2,000 secret military documents from the office of the commander of the IDF’s Central Command, burning them onto a CD and then handing them over to Blau on a disk-on-key data storage device.

 

Her motivation, according to the Shin Bet (Israel Security Agency), was her radical ideology. Her presence in a top general’s office and her exposure to classified material raises serious questions about the IDF’s ability to run background checks on its soldiers and prevent the infiltration of spies into its ranks.

I was recently at a Bible class during which we discussed the transition from Judges to Kingship and the reasons that Samuel the Prophet opposed anointing a king for the Jewish People.  It's believed that Samuel felt that the Jewish People were best governed by leaders who didn't inherit the position.  Kingship is an inherited system, while the judges and prophets were individuals who rose when needed.  That's similar to today's electoral, democracies.  Samuel was the son of two very righteous and brave parents, Elkana and Chana, but his own sons were corrupt as detailed in the Bible.

It's very obvious that both systems have serious problems and can easily lead to abuse.  Democracy, whether formal elections or the phenomena of the most charismatic individuals and ideologies rising to the top, does not guarantee that we will be led by the best or most moral.

That brings us back to the Bible and Chana, Samuel's mother, who came to Shiloh to pray to G-d for a son whom she would dedicate to G-d and the Jewish People.  Shiloh is in our hands.  Come here to pray for our People.   

תפילת נשים תל שילה ראש חודש אייר
יום ד' ל' ניסן 14/4
9:30
כולן מוזמנות
Rosh Chodesh Iyyar
Women's Prayers at Tel Shiloh
Wednesday April 14, 9:30 AM
Please spread the word

Smart Move

I'm happy with the decision by the Israeli Government not to send Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu to Obama's nuclear summit meeting.  Sending Dan Meridor instead is a good idea.  Let Obama try pushing around another country.  At least Meridor can say:

"I'm a messenger.  I'm here to observe.  I can't commit my country to any agreements."

I just hope that's the line Meridor takes.

When I give advice, training to people who will be dealing with the media.  My second rule is: You don't have to answer all the questions.

My first is: No sarcasm;no jokes.  It doesn't read well.  I guess that Qatar diplomat needed my training.

No Excuses, Our Land Is The Essence

I'm taking advantage of the "extra daylight savings hour" before Shabbat to write this.  A negative comment to one of our dear friend and former neighbor Tzvi Fishman's Arutz 7 blog really bothers me. Fishman wrote about the importance of the mitzvah/commandment to live in the HolyLand, and someone wrote that he wouldn't come, because the country isn't perfect. It's not the first time I've heard that ridiculous, irrelevant excuse for not living in Israel.

The mitzvah to live here is to live in the Land. It overrides politics, judicial, philosophy etc. If we want perfection, we must work for it and not expect G-d to hand it to us on a "silver platter." Those miracles ended with the last "mon," G-d given food which nourished us when we wandered the wilderness for forty years, in between the exodus from Egypt and entering the Land of Israel, the Holy Promised Land.

Anyone who hangs out waiting for others to do the hard, dirty difficult work may find him/herself written out of Jewish History.

Vote with your feet, hands and children. For those of you who don't want to make aliyah, because you don't want your children to serve in the IDF Israel Defense Forces don't think you love your children more than I love mine. Living here in Israel gives my kids a more precious life, something money can't buy. It's a higher spiritual level than anything any place else in the world.

G-d won't reward us with the Moshiach, Messiah for the deeds done in Golus, Galut, the Diaspora, only for what's done here. If you truly believe in G-d, you'll obey G-d's commandments.

Shabbat Shalom uMevorach

Have A Peaceful and Blessed Sabbath

Was Barack Hussein Obama Born in Kenya? The Story Isn't Dead Yet

Hat tip: HLL

Should United States President Obama be impeached?  Has he gone against the United States Constitution?  Was he born in Hawaii or Kenya?  The Kenya story is still pretty convincingly in the news.  

There are still questions about him.

Interfaith thorns

Posted by Jewish Israel
THERE WAS A TECHNICAL GLITCH EARLIER WITH THE ROSES POST AND IT IS NOW ACCESSIBLE IN FULL AT JEWISH ISRAEL. THANK YOU FOR YOUR PATIENCE
Flowers for Jesus: Return to Sender:
Last week it was reported that officials in the Prime Minister’s office would not accept a donation of more than 1,000 dozen yellow roses from American Christians who were upset by reports of Obama’s treatment of Binyamin Netanyahu. This week's headlines report that the Prime Minister's office “was happy to get Christians’ roses”.

Jewish Israel thinks the agent and the agenda, rather than the gesture, caused the problem.

Taking a moral stand with Israel is a nice thing to do and some Gentiles like to say it with flowers. But next time use FTD as the conduit (or stick with lobbying Congress), as an evangelizing Janet Folger Porter, President and Founder of Faith2Action, packs a very thorny and loaded bouquet...more

Vatican continues to trip on crossed interfaith wires:
The state of Jewish-Catholic relations continues to deteriorate under Pope Benedict XVI. Two incidents on “Good Friday” caused outrage in the international Jewish community and elicited apologies from Rome.

Jewish Israel would like to note that any “shock” on the part of Jewish leaders seems a bit contrived at this point. Both scandals are part of a well-established pattern - woven with a flawed and deceptive thread – which appears to be an integral part of any tapestry spun by those engaged in attempts at Jewish-Christian conciliation...more