Roberto Abraham Scaruffi

Friday 31 December 2010


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Friday, Dec 31 '10, Tevet 24, 5771
Today`s Email Stories:
Terrorist Shooting, None Hurt
Rabbis, IDF Top Brass in Shechem
Rabbis' Wives: Don't Date Arabs
Bedouin Oppose Illegal Entry
Iran: Harry Potter Zionist Plot
Lithuania Genocide Debate Part 4
Soldier Attacked in Kiryat Arba
  More Website News:
Wikileaks on Egypt and Israel
'Israel Not Fighting Boycotts'
Police Pressure in Yesha
New Chabad Branch in Debrecen
Vatican and Beijing Trade Charge
  MP3 Radio Website News Briefs:
Talk: Axing the Axis
Natural Law or Revealed Law?
Music: Quiet Selection
Hassidic for Rosh Hashana




1. Inflation Rearing its Head?
by Hillel Fendel 
Inflation Rearing its Head?


Transportation prices are going up: Gasoline will hit a record high on Jan. 1, and bus prices are to rise by 3%. 

Government-regulated gas (95 octane) prices will hit a record high this Sunday, when they jump a formidable 43 agorot per liter (46 cents a gallon) to 7.14 shekels ($7.60 a gallon). Only in Turkey, Norway, Eritrea and the Netherlands is the price higher.



The stiff hike is due to the declining dollar, the rising prices of benzene around the world, and a rise in gas taxes approved this week by the Knesset Finance Committee. Knesset Audit Committee Chairman MK Yoel Hasson (Kadima) said the hike would be a “death blow” to the middle class, and that 56 agorot of every shekel we pay for gas goes back to the government in the form of taxes, including VAT.



At the same time, public transportation rates will also increase, as they do twice a year based on the Consumer Price Index. City buses in Jerusalem and Haifa will cost 6.4 shekels instead of 6.2, and will hit 6 shekels in Tel Aviv and 4.1 in Be’er Sheva. Jerusalem monthly bus tickets will climb 8 shekels to 252 shekels, and 7 shekels in Tel Aviv to 215.



Israel Railways prices will be updated on Feb. 1.



Water Hike - Postponed

Water prices in Israel were supposed to jump by 2.7% next week, but this was canceled just a few days ago by the Knesset Finance Committee. Despite this, the Union of Local Authorities in Israel (ULAI) has called a nationwide strike of municipalities, beginning next week, to protest, among other things, the "rising water prices." Asked to explain the anomaly, a ULAI spokesperson told Israel National News that the latest price hike has not been canceled, but rather “postponed,” and “we want the prices to go down, not up.”



The price of water has risen dramatically over the past three years. A typical family of five in the northern town of Hatzor HaGelilit, for instance, paid 276 shekels a year for their water in 2007, and must now pay more than 627. Value Added Tax, 16%, has been added to water prices over the course of the past year.

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Wednesday, December 29, 2010
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2. Terrorist Shooting Reported in Samaria, None Hurt
by Maayana Miskin 
Terrorist Shooting, None Hurt


Palestinian Authority terrorists attempted to murder a Jewish shepherd on Friday morning, according to a report from the Samaria Regional Council. The terrorists opened fire on the shepherd as he tended his flock near Maaleh Shomron. 

The intended victim managed to take shelter and call for help. The attackers fled before IDF forces reached the scene. 

Soldiers are searching the area. 

On Thursday evening, a group of Arab men attacked a soldier at the entrance to Kiryat Arba. The soldier suffered head injuries in the attack. His assailants were arrested. 

The Shin Ben (Israel Security Agency) reported Thursday that there was a decrease in the number of terrorist attacks targeting Israelis in 2010. There were 798 recorded terrorist attacks in 2010 at the time the report was written, compared to 1,354 in 2009.

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3. Chief Rabbis and Chief of Staff on Shechem Visit
by Gil Ronen 
Rabbis, IDF Top Brass in Shechem


  

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Gabi Ashkenazi, along with Israel's two Chief Rabbis, are to visit Shechem Thursday night as guests of the Palestinian Authority, Arutz Sheva has learned. The Head of the IDF's Central Command, Maj.-Gen. Avi Mizrachi, and the Rabbi of the Holy Sites, Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich, will also take part in the visit. 

  

The delegation will be hosted by the PA's governor of "Nablus" - the Arabic name for Shechem, which is a bastardization of the Roman name Neapolis. 

  

Elements within Samaria's Jewish leadership were unhappy to learn of the visit, which was not coordinated with the Samaria local authority, and went so far as to say they would try to prevent it. These elements suspect that the IDF intends to transfer the newly-renovated Tomb of Joseph to the PA's hands. The IDF has denied this intention. 

  

Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovich told Arutz Sheva that the question of who controls the Tomb is not his to answer, and is for the IDF and no one else to decide.

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4. 20 Rabbis' Wives: Girls, Don't Date Arabs
by Gil Ronen 
Rabbis' Wives: Don't Date Arabs


Twenty rebbetzins (wives of rabbis) sent a public letter to Jewish girls Tuesday imploring them not to engage in romantic connections with Arabs. The rebbetzins warned: "Once you are in their hands, in their village, under their control - everything becomes different. The attention you wanted for yourself will be replaced by curses, beatings and humiliations." 

The rebbetzins instructed girls not to go out with Arabs, not to work in places where Arabs are employed, and not to carry out volunteer national service in such places. 

  

Rebbetzins traditionally hold leadership status alongside their husbands in the congregation and community, especially vis-a-vis women and girls.  

  

The rebbetzins' letter joins an earlier letter signed by over 300 rabbis, calling on Jews not to sell or rent out homes to Arabs, and citing intermarriage as one of the negative results of allowing Arabs to move into Jewish neighborhoods. In addition, demonstrations have been held in Bat Yam and the Hatikvah neighborhood in Tel Aviv, which included signs asking Jewish girls to beware of Arab suitors. 

  

Harassed in Ashkelon

Ashkelon Councilman Tomer Glam of the "Unity of Israel" faction sent a letter Thursday to the Minister of Public Security in which he said that Arabs routinely harass Jewish girls in the coastal city and asked for a greater police presence.  

  

"Unfortunately," wrote the councilman, "we have recently become aware of a growing nationwide phenomenon of minority-members who harass young women, which has not bypassed the city of Ashkelon. Here, the situation is getting worse in the last few years, and one reason for this is the growth in the number of buildings being constructed throughout the city. We must stress that these  incidents occur repeatedly, and once every few weeks, I unfortunately receive into my care girls who wind up suffering [from these ties]." 

  

Glam went on to point out what he said was a new phenomenon, which manifests itself on Fridays on the cities' beaches and in certain neighborhoods. Arab construction workers who rent apartments in Ashkelon or are given apartments to live in by the contractors "bring girls aged as young as 12 into town and 'go out on the town' with them at parties that include, among other things, the serving of alcohol to girls." 

  

Glam characterized the Arabs as sweet talkers who lavish girls with gifts in the initial stages of their courtship. He asked for an increased police presence in Ashkelon. 

  

A breakdown of authority

Family-values activists in Israel blame decades of leftist brainwashing and legislation for breaking down parental authority in the Israeli Jewish family, thus hampering parents' ability to protect and guide their children. Leftist propaganda erodes family values by demeaning motherhood and demonizing fathers.

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5. Israel to Get Help from Sinai Bedouin in Infiltration Battle
by Maayana Miskin 
Bedouin Oppose Illegal Entry


The Al-Tarabin tribe, one of the largest Bedouin clans in the Sinai desert, has decided to oppose illegal African infiltration into Israel. In a meeting this week, senior members of the tribe said they oppose human trafficking and do not wish to see their tribal lands used by smugglers. 

Bedouin leaders will meet again in mid-January, and plan to end that meeting by signing on a document requiring members of their clans to oppose the smuggling of humans and to do what they can to fight the phenomenon. 

Tens of thousands of people from various African countries have entered Israel illegally in recent months. The illegal entrants, most of them job seekers, cross into Israel from Sinai with help from Bedouin smugglers. 

The government has begun work on a fence along the border between Israel and Egypt in an attempt to keep infiltrators out. However, while the fence may slow infiltration in the long term, in the short term it has been linked to a dramatic increase in the pace of infiltration. 

Debate has raged within Israel over Israel's obligations, if it has any, to the infiltrators. On the political Left some have compared the infiltrators to Jewish refugees who entered pre-state Israel in defiance of Britain, and have said that foreign entrants should be allowed to remain in the country. 

On the other hand, Israelis living in the poor neighborhoods and cities that have become home to thousands of illegal entrants tend to oppose calls for infiltrators to be allowed to stay. Many residents of such neighborhoods have joined the new “Ramat Aviv First” program, which calls to house infiltrators in upper-class neighborhoods, in order to put left-wing support for the infiltrators to the test. 

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu recently released a statement warning Israelis not to take the law into their own hands when dealing with infiltrators. His video statement followed non-violent demonstrations against the influx of illegal entrants into southern Tel Aviv.



6. Iran: 'Harry Potter a Zionist Plot to Promote Devil Worship'
by David Lev 
Iran: Harry Potter Zionist Plot


If you thought the Harry Potter series was an innocent children's fantasy story, you're wrong, an Iranian movie producer says: In reality, the Harry Potter books and movies are part of a “Zionist plot” to “spread their poison.” With its emphasis on witches, warlocks, and wonders, he says, the Harry Potter series "serves to spread the dark and evil essence of Zionism and its goals." 










In a series of accusations that sound ridiculous to those raised in the West, Iran's Irinn TV channel produced a documentary that purports to show how the various elements of the Potter story – the use of magic, the struggle against the Dark Lord, and other themes – essentially reflect the tenets and goals of Zionism (read: Judaism), and encourage innocent people around the world to support those goals.



"Propaganda for purity of blood and race, one of the principles of global Zionism, is openly portrayed and emphasized in the second Harry Potter film," the film's narrator says, referring to the obsession of the film's villain, Voldemort, with pure bloodlines – symbolic of the Jews' parochial attitude to non-Jewish nations. "If we add this [film] to the other pieces of the puzzle – the beliefs depicted in the other propaganda and political products of the Ziono-Hollywoodists, the Satanic features of this inhumane movement will become more evident."



In addition to the blood theme, the series alludes to the Jewish desire to rule the world, says a prominent Iranian film critic quoted in the movie. "[The Zionists] support Harry Potter because he is the promised Messiah," Sa'id Mostaghasi says. "As you can see, he has the same traits and wants to defeat a dark force, which in this film is depicted as Voldemort. In the sixth episode, there is even mention of the War of Armageddon."



Perhaps worst of all, the documentary says, is the series' attempts to influence innocent Christians and Muslims to worship the devil, as the Jews do. “The creation of new stories, based on mythical themes leading to witchcraft and devil worship, has always been a tool used by contemporary Zionists, and is once again being used by them... targeting innocent children and youth” to join them in their Satanic ways."



The Iranians are apparently the first to make the three-way connection between Harry Potter, the Devil, and Jews, although they did not invent the two strands that make up that connection; Christian Europe has for nearly a millenium portrayed the Jews as the representative of the Devil on earth, while modern-day Christian evangelicals preachers have railed against Harry Potter because of its magic and fantasy related themes – although there have been a number of commentators across the spectrum of Christianity, including evangelicals and Catholics, who have rallied to the series' defense. Thus, while the Focus on the Family group has said that the Potter books contain some positive messages, “they are packaged in a medium – witchcraft – that is directly denounced in Scripture,” evangelical author Connie Neal has written.



That the Iranians would connect the devil theme to the Jews is not surprising at all, given that Christians have been doing this for much of their own history. In his seminal work on the subject, “The Devil and the Jews,” author Joshua Trachteberg laid out a sordid history of European anti-Semitism, which showed that much of Christian anti-Semitism over the past 1,000 years stems from a fear – and suspicion – that the Jews were working with the Devil to destroy Christianity.



“How is it that the Jews can be hated for being Communists and capitalists – at the same time,” asks Trachtenberg, as he explores some of the most ridiculous beliefs that Christians have had about Jews: that they poison wells, desecrate the “host” (the wafer representing Jesus in Catholic ritual), and destroy morality, among many other sins. In his work, published in 1943, Trachtenberg builds a persuasive case that Christians have seen Jews as allies of the Devil, working against them, and that those vestigial beliefs are still around today – for example, in the accusation that Hollywood (which everyone knows is “controlled by the Jews”) spreads moral perversion and unpatriotic attics.



Thus, it didn't take much for Iran to pick up on these themes in its battle against Israel and the Jews, says history researcher Morris Cohen. “Those themes were out there for the taking, so it makes sense that they would use them against Israel.” The Islamic world, he said, is much more vehement in its condemnation of Harry Potter than the Christian world: In 2002, the books were banned in schools across the United Arab Emirates (UAE), on the grounds that its themes were contrary to Islamic values; in 2007, police in Karachi, Pakistan discovered and defused a car bomb located outside a shopping center where the final Harry Potter novel was scheduled to go on sale that day; and of course, Iran has harped on the Jewish connection to the sorcery themes in the books, saying that "Zionists had spent billions of dollars" on it in order to encourage devil worship, as described above.



The Jewish attitude to Harry Potter, it should be noted, has been a bit more varied. While some rabbis, especially in the hareidi-religious community, have spoken against the series, few have pointed to its emphasis on magic as the reason – and are more likely to lump it together with other popular culture phenomena that can draw the attention of children away from Torah study.



However, there are a fair number of rabbis and Jewish authors who have made deep analyses of the books and movies, and have found what they say are many parallels to Jewish philosophy and thought, with themes such as the power of good over evil, the importance of loyalty and friendship, and the value of doing right vs. the value of preserving light. In an article on Aish.com, for example, author Shira Albertson says that Harry “has to find the inner strength to act with independence and conviction,” reflecting Hillel's famous saying, “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?”



While one would expect Judaism to be as vociferously opposed to Harry Potter as Christians and Muslims are – after all, magic and sorcery are capital crimes in the Torah - one reason that the Jewish towards Harry Potter is more relaxed may be because of the way Jews practice the Torah. “Jews are used to interpreting the Written Law through the lens of the Oral Law, and thus don't necessarily automatically jump on things that appear 'suspicious' on the surface,” Rabbi Chaim Shapiro of New York told Israel National News. “For example, the death penalty is mentioned numerous times in the Torah for a wide array of sins, but the Talmud tells us that a Court of Jewish Law that killed too frequently – even once in 70 years – was condemned. The Oral Law obviates many of these penalties, so it makes sense that rabbis would look beyond the surface on the Harry Potter issue as well.” 



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7. Debate Goes On: Nazi Hunter Zuroff vs. Researcher Rabbi Rosenson
by Dr. Efraim Zuroff 
Lithuania Genocide Debate Part 4


This is Part 4 of an ongoing, emotional debate started when INN interviewed Rabbi Y. Rosenson, Dean of Efrata Teachers College in Jerusalem and a noted researcher and writer on Lithuanian Jewry and the Holocaust. Efraim Zuroff took issue with the facts and their interpretation.

INN brings you this significant contribution to knowledge of the Holocaust and how complicit countries are dealing with it.

I have to admit that I read Yisrael Rosenson's responses to my assertions that Lithuania remains incapable of honestly facing the extensive complicity of its nationals in Holocaust crimes with a certain ambivalence. On the one hand, I was happy to learn that the Efrata Teachers College program about Lithuanian Jewish history was not the beneficiary of funds from the Lithuanian government. I never claimed that this was indeed the case, I only wondered whether such a scenario might possibly explain the opinions expressed by Rosenson, which not only do not reflect the current reality in Lithuania, with which I am very well-acquainted for the past twenty years, but sound more like Lithuanian government propaganda than a description of the facts. On the other hand, Mr. Rosenson did not provide any concrete answers to any of the facts which I presented to prove my assertion regarding the ongoing failure of the Lithuanians to face their past. 

In this respect, all he did was reiterate his comment about "several [unnamed-E.Z.] research institutions dedicated to Holocaust research, an annual Holocaust Memorial Day and an apology by the Lithuanian government over a decade ago for its role in the Holocaust," and their honoring of Lithuanians who helped Jews during the Shoa, all of which have convinced Rosenson that "at least some elements of the country's society are making a very sincere effort to reevaluate their behavior, to make an honest accounting of their crimes against the Jews."

 

The problem is that even the facts Rosenson mentioned, which ostensibly support his thesis, crumble upon closer examination. Thus, for example, his mention of Holocaust research institutions, which simply do not exist. The Lithuanian government generously supports historical research on crimes against humanity committed in the country, but not about those committed by Lithuanians against Jews during the Holocaust. Thus there is ample funding for genocide research, but the only genocide they are interested in, is the so-called genocide committed by the Communists against Lithuanians. In fact, the Lithuanian parliament even had the incredible chutzpa to pass legislation to change the definition of the term genocide so that it could apply to Communist crimes in Lithuania.

 

As far as the annual memorial day for the Holocaust, a closer look at the date will provide a clearer understanding of Lithuanian intentions in this regard. The date chosen is September 23, when the Nazis evacuated the Vilna Ghetto in 1943, an operation carried out primarily by the Nazis. A far more appropriate date for such a memorial day, which should focus on the role of local Lithuanian Nazi collaborators in Holocaust crimes, would have been October 28, the date of the large-scale action in the Kovno Ghetto in which close to 10,000 Jews were murdered in the Ninth Fort by Lithuanian Security Police. By choosing a date which is not directly connected  to crimes by Lithuanian murderers, the authorities evade the cardinal question of local Holocaust complicity and help deflect all criminal responsibility to the Germans and Austrians, who certainly should bear a major portion of guilt, but were certainly not the only ones carrying out the murder of Jews in Lithuania.

 

As far as the apology made in Israel in 1995 by Lithuanian President Algirdas Brazauskas for the complicity of Lithuanians in Holocaust crimes, I personally was present at his speech in the Knesset, and met him in person several times. If there was ever a Lithuanian leader who had the potential to take the necessary steps to help his society face their Holocaust crimes, it was the former Communist Brazauskas, who had no sympathy for his fascist countrymen who murdered their Jewish neighbors, but even he ultimately realized that it was political suicide to try and do so in contemporary Lithuania. Thus, for example, his impassioned promise that Lithuania would "publicly, consistently and conscientiously bring local Nazi war criminals to justice," remained an empty promise as the local judicial authorites made sure that not a single Lithuanian Nazi war criminal would ever be punished for their crimes. 

That brings me to the question of the attitude toward Lithuanian "Righteous Among the Nations," who helped Jews during the Shoa. Undoubtedly, such individuals deserve every honor, as well as our everlasting gratitude. The problem begins in this regard, when this designation is given to people who do not fit the precise criteria for the honor established by Yad Vashem. It turns out that the Lithuanians decided on their own to apply their own criteria in order to "inflate" the number of Righteous Lithuanians to help deflect the justified criticism of Lithuanian complicity in the mass murder of Jews, and create another false symetry, as if the number of Lithuanians who helped Jews during the Shoa was equal to, or even exceeded, the number of those who killed Jews. In fact, Knesset Speaker Ruby Rivlin, while on a state visit to Vilna, refused to participate in a ceremony honoring Righteous Gentiles whose files had not been approved by Yad Vashem.

 

If we add the undeniable fact that Holocaust education in Lithuania has been entrusted to the main promoters of the Prague Declaration and the false equivalency between Communist and Nazi crimes, which will undermine the current status of the Shoa as a unique historical tragedy and case of genocide, and ultimately destroy most of the beneficial results of sixty years of Holocaust commemoration and education, I think that Rabbi Rosenson should reassess his positive attitude to Lithuania. There are a few Lithuanians whose outlook fits his description, but they have no public standing, are not involved in Holocaust education, and have effectively been silenced or marginalized by the government's Holocaust distortion campaign, which is what really counts in that Baltic republic. When Avraham Avinu came to plead  with G-d to spare Sodom, he gave up after realizing that the city did not even have ten righteous residents. The same, unfortunately, applies to contemporary Lithuania, when it comes to Holocaust-related issues. 

Click here to read the previous exchanges in this debate: 

  

Part 1       Part 2     Part 3 



8. Soldier Attacked at Entrance to Kiryat Arba
by Elad Benari 
Soldier Attacked in Kiryat Arba


An Israeli soldier was attacked and wounded by Arabs on Thursday evening at the entrance to Kiryat Arba. 

According to reports, the Arabs hit the soldier with various objects and threw a glass bottle at him, injuring him in the head. 

The assailants were arrested and turned over to the police for questioning. 

Following the incident, Kiryat Arba local council members Bentzi Gofshtein and Yisrael Bramson called on the IDF to close Tzir Tzion (Zion Road) to Arab traffic. “Don’t force us, the residents, to close the road,” they said. 

Tzir Tzion, the road leading from Kiryat Arba to Hevron, was reopened to Arab traffic last summer, upsetting Jewish residents of Hevron and Kiryat Arba who warned that opening the road will lead to murder. 

The opening of the road, as well as the removal of dozens of other checkpoints, was done as part of Israel’s “good-will gestures” to the Palestinian Authority. 

Earlier on Thursday, Arab terrorists opened fire towards the community of Horesh Yaron in Binyamin. No one was hurt. IDF soldiers were searching for the shooters. 

Thursday’s incidents occurred after the Israel Security Agency released its annual report which said that there was an overall decrease in the number of terror attacks against Israel in 2010, compared to 2009. 

The report said that there were 798 recorded terror attacks by Arabs in 2010, down from about 1,354 in 2009. Nine people were murdered by terrorists in 2010, and none of the terror attacks were suicide bombings.  The total number of shooting and explosive attacks in Judea and Samaria in 2010 was 32, just one less than the previous year.



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