The organizers of the main rally marking 22 years since the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak…
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Automatic-weapons-may-have-been-used-in-Las-Vegas-massacre-506597
Tuesday, 31 October 2017
Israel's favorite Bamba snack is now being sold for less by Trader Joe's
Israeli food giant Osem has started manufacturing Israel’s iconic Bamba snack for U.S. supermarket chain Trader Joe’s. Trader Joe’s Bamba is being sold for less than Osem-branded Bamba both in Israel and in the United States.
The peanut-flavored puffs have caught the attention of American consumers due to studies showing a lower rate of peanut allergies among Israeli children than among their American counterparts, with researchers concluding that their early, repeated exposure to peanuts in snacks such as Bamba is a factor in Israel’s lower peanut allergy rate.
Trader Joe’s is calling its peanut puffs Bamba, just like the original. It is being manufactured in Israel.
Osem brand Bamba has been sold at stores around the United States for several years already. The packaging is identical to that used in Israel, complete with the diapered Bamba baby, except for the writing, which is in English instead of Hebrew.
Trader Joe’s Bamba, on the other hand, has been given a clean orange and white bag, adorned by two elephants.
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The grocery chain has some 500 branches within the United States and is considered relatively health conscious and fresh.
Like the Bamba sold in Israel, its Bamba contains only four ingredients, it points out to consumers.
Trader Joe’s is selling 100-gram bags – 3.5 ounces – for $0.99. It’s nearly impossible to find it for such a good price, says the chain, without explicitly mentioning Osem.
In fact, Trader Joe’s packaging makes no mention of its manufacturer, Osem.
In comparison, Osem’s Bamba is sold for $2.50 to $3 per bag in the United States. At the chain Shoprite, a 100-gram bag sells for $2.69; at New Jersey kosher supermarket Glatt Express, smaller 28-gram bags sell for about $1.
In Israel, in comparison, an 80-gram bag of Bamba retails for between 3 shekels at Rami Levy and 4.90 shekels at Shufersal. Based on the price per weight, this works out to $1.06 to $1.74 for the quantity in Trader Joe’s bags.
Osem stated that the American retailers are the ones setting the price of the product there.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Automatic-weapons-may-have-been-used-in-Las-Vegas-massacre-506597
How hard is it to do business in Israel? Worse than Kazakhstan
How hard is it to do business in Israel? Israel dropped to 54 on the ranking of countries with the easiest environment for business, as rated by the World Bank.
This places the country behind Kazakhstan, Belarus, Rwanda and Armenia.
Israel dropped two places from its ranking last year.
The country has been included in the list since 2006, at which point it ranked 26, but since then has been slowly falling behind.
Of the countries in the OECD, Israel is currently ranked 31 out of the 35 nations.
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The World Bank’s Doing Business index is subdivided into 10 different rankings. Israel stood out for its poor ranking in categories including registering an asset — at 130 out of 190 in the world; in taxation, it ranked 99; and in enforcement of contracts, it ranked 92.
On the other hand, Israel did relatively well when it comes to protecting investors, ranking 16th; handling bankruptcies (29th); and starting a business (37th). In terms of receiving credit Israel ranked 55th, and in terms of international trade, 60th.
The country was 65th when it comes to ease of obtaining construction licenses, and 77th when it comes to connecting to the electricity grid.
The three highest-ranking countries on the list were New Zealand, Singapore and Denmark, unchanged from the previous year. They were followed by South Korea and Hong Kong.
The United States ranked sixth, slightly higher than it had the previous year, followed by Great Britain, Norway, Georgia and and Sweden.
The general picture painted by the World Bank’s index reflects the complaints often made by Israeli business owners. For example, compare Israel with Ireland, which ranked 17th. In Israel it takes four steps to open a business; in Ireland, three. In Israel it takes on average 12 days to open a business; in Ireland, five. The cost of opening a business compared to annual per capita income is 16 times higher in Israel than in Ireland. If you want to renovate your business, you need to go through 15 steps of bureaucracy, compared to 10 in Ireland.
However, renovations are one-third of the cost in Israel compared to Ireland, due to the lower cost of labor. Yet the approval process will take you an average of 209 days, versus 150 in Ireland.
Registering the business in your name will take an average of 81 days, as opposed to 31 in Ireland. Hooking your business up to electricity takes an average of 102 days, compared to 85 in Ireland.
These statistics point to more than an annoying situation. They constitute a threat. These conditions suppress the entrepreneurial spirit, reduce competition, and encourage corruption. Entrepreneurs tend to look for ways to get around barriers — and some of these ways aren’t legal. The greater the obstacles, the more likely to foster corruption.
Israel’s government has put the ease of doing business at the top of its agenda. It’s not impossible. Ultimately, easing regulations is fully under the government’s control. Some key ways it could do so would be by making better technology available for businesses, and by increasing transparency in bureaucratic processes. In some cases, this can be as simple as replacing printed forms with electronic ones.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Automatic-weapons-may-have-been-used-in-Las-Vegas-massacre-506597
Sexual assault case against Netanyahu's former chief of staff dropped due to insufficient evidence
Prosecutors have closed a sexual assault case against the prime minister’s former chief of staff due to insufficient evidence.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/Automatic-weapons-may-have-been-used-in-Las-Vegas-massacre-506597
Terror tunnel bingo
A few days ago the Israelis found yet another terror tunnel leading into Israeli territory and thinking it was empty, blew it to smithereens. Turns out that there were people still inside busy as beavers, terrorists from Hamas and Islamic Jihad. So the blast, bingo, eliminated them too, about 20 of them, half sent directly to their 72 virgins, the other half injured.
I get conflicting numbers between the naked and the dead, but within Israel there’s a larger conflict going on even as we speak.
First, the world’s leading Islamic terrorist, Mahmoud Abbas, left his EU and US- funded multi-million dollar bunker to proclaim his outrage.
The Israelis, he said with a straight face, have no right to use deadly force against terrorists. Jews have no right to protect themselves. …and according to that line of depraved thinking, New Yorkers are likewise open season as we saw from Tuesday’s ramming and shooting attack in Manhattan.
That is not news. We expect that from the man behind the Klinghoffer and Munich Olympics massacres.
But it is news when the IDF explains that it never intended to hurt anyone. This has sparked controversy as it amounts to an apology.
Since when do we – meaning any sovereign nation – apologize for killing the enemy?
In fact it is a command that when he comes to kill you – which is what these tunnels are all about – you are to get up early and kill him first. In every other country, that’s a good day when even by accident you’ve taken out your attackers. Lucky shot.
Sorry for what? Do they apologize to us? They give out candy and build statues to their murderers. They celebrate after they kill. Sorry we got to them before they got to us?
But this is Israel and Israel is Jewish and old habits die slowly. Jews always apologize.
Some may remember Tom Wolfe’s “Radical Chic” article in New York Magazine. That was about a group of Black Panther types who attended Leonard Bernstein’s big shindig to celebrate Black Power. The (Liberal) Jews at the same soiree were blamed for everything – and apologized for everything. Everything!
Never mind that from the start the Jews were at the forefront of the Civil Rights Movement.
So now there’s a flap within Benjamin Netanyahu’s cabinet. One says that the IDF was wrong to apologize; the other says, leave the IDF alone.
Criticism against the IDF will never come from me. But I must say this; the response comes across as pathetic…an uncalled for justification in the fog of war.
Sorry for what? Do they apologize to us? They give out candy and build statues to their murderers. They celebrate after they kill.
Sorry we got to them before they got to us?
Only we regret. I get it, we’re Jewish. We are supposed to be different. We are supposed to be better.
Maybe, as I’ve written elsewhere, we should be worse once in a while, and then maybe they’d leave us alone.
Or take it from our Book of Deuteronomy– “Your eye shall not pity them.”
Then came this British journalist who sprang this over coffee: “Must say, the Israelis have become awfully militaristic.”
The evidence, I explained, proves otherwise. But if so, it’s about damn time. I’ll take militaristic any day against 2,000 years of sitting-duck passivity.
Yes, I will take militaristic whenever it is between them and us.
Or to borrow from Patton:
“No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. You won it by making the other poor dumb bastard die for his country.”
New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva. Engelhard wrote the international book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal” and the ground-breaking inside-journalism thriller “The Bathsheba Deadline.” His latest is “News Anchor Sweetheart.” He is the recipient of the Ben Hecht Award for Literary Excellence. Website: www.jackengelhard.com
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Theater Review: In the prime of her life
When her mother dies in In the Prime of Her Life, the fact and the title of the play, 13-year-old Tirzta (talented newcomer Or Lumbrozo) is cut adrift, literally and figuratively, and comes under the influence of family friend Mintshi Gottlieb (Irit Pashtan), who reveals to her that her mother, Leah, had two lives. One was as the wife of Tirtza’s father, Mintz (David Ben-Ze’ev). The other was as the lover of the man she was not allowed to marry, Akavia Mazal (Yoav Hyman).
Mintshi, previously and presently in love with him herself, provides Tirtza with the journal and poems of Akavia. The girl, as Mintshi hopes, and as her father cannot understand, convinces herself that she too is in love with him, thereby fulfilling the life her mother could not have. Seeing all this with horror is the Mintz’s housekeeper, Kaila (Odelya Moreh-Matalon), but even her common- sense desperation fails to prevent the inevitable. Tirtza and Akavia marry, with a predictably unhappy outcome.
All this takes place on Roni Vilozni’s three-tiered set of platforms, steps and chairs among and on which the characters move and speak. The text is both narration and dialogue, as fits a tale told from diaries, Tirtza’s and Akavia’s, and the actors deliver it most splendidly. The chairs, perhaps a nod to Eugène Ionesco’s play of that name, signify the disenchantment and the emptiness of the characters’ lives, for none of whom life turned out as expected and who now muddle through as best they can. The stepped platforms, the stairs themselves, perhaps speak of the transitions the characters undergo but can never quite comprehend.
The performances are immaculate, singular yet united. Lombrozo makes a vulnerable, exciting and moving Tirtza, at one moment an innocent kid, at another old beyond her years. As Akavia, Hyman is lovely as a man whose life seems to be continually beyond his grasp. Wearing a rather obvious wig, perhaps intentionally so, Ben-Ze’ev copes elegantly with the stolid Mintz. By showing less of her, Pashtan tells us more of Mintshi in a delicately nuanced performance while Moreh-Matalon is a robust Kaila. Newcomer Yuval Oron neatly manages both his role as suitor Landau and as the puppeteer of Mintshi’s “dog,” who’s central to the meeting between Tirtza and Akavia.
The drama is both a coming of age and a disintegration. Watching this well thought out In the Prime of Her Life one is irresistibly reminded of Macbeth’s despairing monologue on life that is “a tale/Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury/Signifying nothing.”
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Seventy years of the Dead Sea Scrolls
The Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956. After an initial flurry of excitement, the scrolls went into a period of quiet withdrawal. When I entered the field in the 1960s, only a few of the scrolls had been published. Those were the ones that were preserved in the Israel Museum that, in 1965, built a home for them known as the Shrine of the Book. A small number of the many texts discovered in the early 1950s while the West Bank was under Jordanian administration had also subsequently appeared. I was fascinated by the study of the scrolls, a then little-known and under-appreciated group of documents.
Since then, everything has changed. The full corpus of materials found at Qumran has been released. Anyone can consult the full set of volumes, with English translations, or get digital images online of all the scrolls. If you want to see the scrolls in person without traveling to Israel, look out for an exhibit coming soon to your neighborhood. The enormous number of visitors to these exhibits throughout the world and the tremendous public interest testify to the way in which the Dead Sea Scrolls have become part of our public culture.
How did all these changes take place? What impact did they leave on the study of the Dead Sea Scrolls today? From stagnation to reorganization In 1967, as a result of the Six Day War, Israel gained control of the area of the Judean Desert where Qumran and other archeological sites were located, and of the Palestine Archaeological Museum (now the Rockefeller Museum) in east Jerusalem where the still unpublished scroll fragments were housed. Nevertheless, the Israel Antiquities Authority (then the Department of Antiquities) left the Jordanian-appointed, judenrein international team in place and did not interfere in their work, believing their claims that work was going on constantly and that the large number of remaining texts would soon be published.
Between 1960 and 1990, a few members of the team still worked in the Palestine Archaeological Museum (PAM) in east Jerusalem, headed by John Strugnell of Harvard. They worked very slowly on the scrolls, saved many for dissertation topics for their own students, and refused outside scholars any view of the sequestered texts, although by the early 1980s international pressure had convinced them to include a few Israeli scholars.
In 1984, the Israel Exploration Society held a biblical archaeology conference in Jerusalem, during which the preliminary text of the Miqsat Ma’ase ha-Torah (MMT), a then still hidden foundational document of the Dead Sea sect, was presented by Elisha Qimron. I will never forget the shock of the audience, myself included, at learning that a text of such great importance had been held back from the scholarly and general public for so many years. It became obvious that there was much exceedingly important material in the cache of scrolls that was off limits to most of us who were researching the scrolls.
After a Dead Sea Scrolls conference that I had the privilege to organize at New York University in 1985, Hershel Shanks initiated a campaign in the Biblical Archaeology Review and beyond for the release of photographic copies of the scrolls for scholarly examination and research. Shanks relentlessly editorialized about the need for total access to the scrolls and the widening of the editorial team.
Meanwhile, as a consequence of the reluctance of the international team to provide any access, others took the matter into their own hands. Ben Zion Wacholder and Martin Abegg realized that the texts could be reconstructed from a concordance that had been prepared by the team and circulated only internally for their own research purposes and to a limited number of scholars and institutions. The concordance listed each word in the context of its preceding and following words. Using a computer, Wacholder and Abegg reconstructed non-biblical texts that they could not see and published their results in several fascicles published by the Biblical Archaeology Society (1991-95).
Robert Eisenman obtained photographs of the scrolls and released them in a facsimile edition, again published by the BAS, with an introduction by Hershel Shanks. Not long after, the Huntington Library in San Marino, California, where a microfilm copy had been deposited for safekeeping, decided to open its copy to the world. Then the Nova television series produced a documentary aired on October 15, 1991, about the scrolls and the situation of the hidden materials.
Coinciding with all this pressure, Strugnell gave an offensive, antisemitic interview to Haaretz on November 9, 1990. Amid persistent calls for something to be done, the Israel Antiquities Authority finally decided to remove him, replacing him with Emanuel Tov of the Hebrew University. Tov’s first task was to widen the team to over 60 international and interconfessional scholars and to reorganize the publication process. Now, due to Tov’s leadership and the work of the team, of which I am proud to have been a member, the complete edition and translation of the scrolls is available in print and in digital form. This sudden release of texts hidden for over four decades had a profound effect on scholarship in the study of the Hebrew Bible, Second Temple Judaism and early Christianity.
Rediscovery of the scrolls The entire series of events that led to the “liberation” of the scrolls certainly contributed to the reawakening of interest in the Dead Sea Scrolls among the wider public throughout the Western world. Indeed, the tremendous public interest that was ignited has supported a series of exhibitions, documentaries and conferences that has been of genuine advantage to the field. The study of the Dead Sea Scrolls has matured into a full academic field, with major publications in the form of monographs, collected volumes and periodicals. A wide-ranging popular literature pertaining to the scrolls has also come into being.
Two separate tracks were followed in opening up the scrolls and restoring the field to normalcy. We might term these the “liberation” approach and the “editorial” approach.” The liberation approach, led by the BAR editor Hershel Shanks, sought to bring about the release of photographs and rough editions of texts, assuming that breaking the monopoly of the earlier editorial team would reorient the field and make it possible for our collective understanding of the Dead Sea Scrolls and their historical significance to properly develop. The editorial approach, pursued for the most part by important Dead Sea Scrolls scholars not involved in the original editorial team, sought to reorganize the publication process so as to produce academically significant editions, critical notes, translations and commentaries on the texts.
When the contents of these texts were released, genuine excitement reinvigorated the field as scholars learned to make use of the entire corpus of scrolls, the majority of which had been unpublished at that time. The tremendous expansion of research in the scrolls field built solidly on pre-1991 scrolls research.
In the past 60 years, scholars have come to a consensus on many issues in Dead Sea Scrolls research, although some issues are, as is natural in any field, still subject to disagreement. Such is the case with the identification of the authors of the sectarian scrolls who, according to virtually all scholars, gathered the wider library that besides their particular sectarian texts also included biblical texts and a large number of post-biblical, Second Temple texts that must have been read widely by Jews in the Land of Israel.
The majority view regarding the identity of the sect is that they are Essenes. I have argued for the importance of recognizing that their system of Jewish law is that of the Sadducees and their historical origins lie in a group of pious Sadducees who protested the Maccabean takeover of the Temple with the establishment of the Hasmonean dynasty circa 152 BCE. As can be expected, despite the most informed speculation, some issues will never be resolved because there is just not enough evidence on the tiny scraps of parchment that once were full scrolls to answer all our questions.
Scholarly progress For those of us who labor in the field of scrolls research, the most exciting part of all this is the unbelievable scholarly progress that we have seen. Contrary to what so many people seem to incorrectly expect, scrolls research is not about looking for bombshells among the fragments. In reality, it is a painstaking activity, beginning with the proper evaluation and publication of manuscripts, proceeding to studying the literary history of texts, including their relationship to earlier texts of the Hebrew Bible, contemporary manuscripts from Qumran, other Second Temple compositions, and their later reflection in Judaism in rabbinic literature and in Christianity in the New Testament.
Only after this work can the scrolls scholar begin to unravel the history of ideas represented in the collection to which he or she is so devoted. This is why I think we are all so proud of the enormous number of recently published books that go way beyond the publication and translation of the scrolls. I often get the feeling that the public thinks that publication is all that is needed. However, what is most important is the careful literary and historical analysis of the texts that have been entrusted to us.
So what have we learned now that we have the entire corpus that we could not have known when we worked with the few scrolls that had been published before 1990? In the field of Hebrew biblical texts, we have come to understand much better the process of evolution of the authoritative Masoretic Hebrew text and its relation to the textual traditions that existed in Second Temple times. The lines between text and exegesis were nowhere near as clear as we would have thought beforehand. Furthermore, at least in the case of the Dead Sea Scrolls community, differing biblical text types or textual families could coexist and serve the needs of the community. We have learned an enormous amount about the scribal practices, modes of transmission, and assertion of authority that allowed the biblical text to be passed on from antiquity into the Middle Ages.
We have come to understand the varying modes of biblical interpretation that would later influence the authoritative texts of Judaism and Christianity. In the Scrolls we find Jewish legal midrash, some of it as complicated as what we find in later rabbinic literature. We also find modes of interpretation, like the genre of rewritten Bible, that point toward the aggadic midrash of the rabbis. Pesher, contemporizing biblical interpretation, points toward the fulfillment passages of the Gospels. Biblical texts were being used for the production of mezuzot and tefillin, indicating the continuity of Jewish traditional understandings of Scripture. Perhaps most important of all, we come to understand the plurality and variety of interpretations of the Bible and the manner in which they would shape the later development of religious traditions.
Many new details have emerged about the phenomenon of sectarianism in the Jewish community of the Land of Israel in late Second Temple times. Eventually, after the destruction of the Temple, a consensus developed around rabbinic Judaism that became the basis for the subsequent history of Judaism. Through the scrolls corpus, one can trace so many details of agreement and disagreement between groups, clear examples of common Judaism and inter – group tension, that there is simply no comparison between what we know now and what was known before the scrolls were made available to us.
Indeed, the notion of common Judaism has become increasingly significant, and can be seen by studying Dead Sea Scrolls’ Shabbat codes and other legal tractates that often have numerous parallels to those found in the later rabbinic corpus. Even while this allows us to observe continuities in Jewish practice, such as in the mikvaot (ritual baths) found at the sectarian site at Qumran, we must not forget that disagreements about Jewish law were the main factor that separated Jewish groups and movements in Second Temple times.
Yes, many theological differences existed. However, these were manifested most clearly in the differing opinions about Jewish practice and ritual. One cannot overstate the impact of the scrolls on our understanding of the history of Halacha, Jewish law, an area that I have specialized in. With the help of the scrolls we have been able to reconstruct the Sadducee/Zadokite system of Jewish law that competed in Second Temple times with the pharisaic-rabbinic system that is the basis for later Judaism.
The focus of research has shifted so that the important question is not “Who Wrote the Dead Sea Scrolls? This issue is far less important than what the scrolls tell us about the inner ferment and debate that took place in the Jewish community in the second and first centuries BCE and the early first century CE. After all, the apocalyptic messianism that we see in the scrolls would propel the Jewish community toward two revolts against Rome, both of which had at least some messianic overtones. Further, the expectation of a soon-to-come redeem- er and numerous other motifs found in Dead Sea Scrolls’ apocalyptic tradition have left their mark on the rise of Christianity and its eventual separation from the Jewish community.
Allow me to brag: now you know why Dead Sea Scrolls scholars are so proud of the field we have created and of the students we have trained. Now you can understand why I will fly across the country to participate in a dissertation defense of a new scholar joining the cadre of Dead Sea Scrolls scholars or why I will fly across the world to lecture about the Dead Sea Scrolls and how thrilled I am to walk through a Dead Sea Scrolls exhibit and to see people learning about our common past. Now you can understand why so many courses in the Dead Sea Scrolls are being taught to undergraduate and graduate students in our country and throughout the world. Now you can understand what the full publication of the Dead Sea Scrolls has done in placing them front and center in the cultural heritage of Western civilization.
We have arrived at a point when we truly have a right to celebrate 70 years of the Dead Sea Scrolls. Scroll scholars will gather at New York University to celebrate this milestone on November 16-17, 2017, and in Jerusalem from April 29 to May 3, 2018. It has been my distinct privilege to participate in the organization of both of these programs. They will no doubt show that we are on the cusp of 70 more years of significant research into the scrolls.
At the same time, the scrolls continue to spark considerable public interest. Witness the decision of Chabad’s exemplary Jewish Learning Institute to begin a course in 400 locations on “Great Debates in Jewish History” with a unit on the Dead Sea Scrolls. The 20,000-plus who are registered for this adult education course give an indication that it is not just academics who remain fascinated by the scrolls and their lessons.
As we look forward to the next 70 years of Dead Sea Scrolls research we should hope to see discussion of the scrolls become an integral part of the way we understand the history of Judaism and the background of Christianity. If the past 70 years are any indication, we should see the fulfillment of that hope.
The author is Judge Abraham Lieberman Professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and director of the Global Network for Advanced Research in Jewish studies at New York University.
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State dismisses sexual assault case against PM’s former chief of staff
Citing insufficient evidence, the State Prosecutor’s Office has dropped its sexual assault probe into Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, Gil Sheffer.
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Release of Republican US tax bill delayed until Thursday
WASHINGTON – The release of a Republican tax bill, which had been expected on Wednesday, has been delayed until Thursday, Axios website reported, citing sources with direct knowledge of the matter.
The delay by the House Ways and Means Committee shows the difficulties Republicans have had in agreeing on ways to raise enough money to pay for massive corporate tax cuts, according to Axios.
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In Israel's south, Australians ride and remember the path of their ancestors
They traveled thousands of miles from Australia to the Israeli desert city of Be’er Sheva Tuesday to trace the footsteps of their ancestors – or, the hoof prints of the horses they rode – in a reenactment of what is known as the “last successful cavalry charge” in history.
As late afternoon sun fell across a sandy open expanse that was once a battlefield, the horses of the Australian light cavalry brigade rode again, kicking up clouds of dust. Australian horsemen and horsewomen, some of them direct descendants of the original soldiers, rode in a reenactment of one of the most pivotal battles of World War I. On the stands watching were the prime ministers of Israel and Australia, the governor general of New Zealand and hundreds of fellow Australians as well as Israelis.
The Battle of Beersheba: Two faded photos solve 100-year-old mystery about epic WWI battle
“It’s a way to remember our heritage and the sacrifices made by our forefathers,” said John Welsch, 53, one of the reenactors who spent the past three days riding through southern Israel along the trail the soldiers had ridden.
He was wearing the olive colored uniform of the light horsemen, a leather ammunition belt strapped across his chest and on his head, their trademark wide brimmed hat with a plume of feathers.
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One hundred years ago to the day – and almost to the hour – the troops, as part of the British imperial forces, galloped full charge over this same piece of land in a bold surprise attack, dismounting only to overtake Turkish troops in their trenches in bloody, hand-to-hand combat.
The battle became the turning point for the British to conquer Palestine, breaking what had been 400 years of Ottoman rule. Just two days after the battle, the infamous Balfour Declaration was issued, promising the burgeoning Zionist movement a “Jewish national homeland” and setting the stage for the creation of the state of Israel.
At ANZAC ceremony, Netanyahu’s eloquent words underscore his tragic failures | Opinion
On Tuesday Be’er Sheva was host to a day of events commemortating the Battle of Be’er Sheva, won by the British Army and the Australian and New Zealand Army Corp, known as ANZAC.
The New Zealanders, earlier in the day on October 31, 1917, secured the hill of Tel el Saba, known today in Hebrew as Tel Be’er Sheva, with a cavalary charge and bayonets drawn. There were also official commemorations for their fallen soldiers Tuesday.
Among those who had made the pilgrimage to Be’er Sheva was Judith Estall, 78, who travelled here from Australia to pay homage to her father, who was among the light horsemen. She said he did not speak much about it to his family but did speak about the friends he lost there. She visited the graves of three of his friends Tuesday.
“My dad saw horrible things the four years he was away fighting,” Estall said.
David Wood was also at the reenactment. His great grandfather, Alfred Joseph March, was among the 800 soldiers in the battle. Wood, a musician in the Australian army, said that March appeared to have PTSD from his years fighting in World War I. He too did not say much about his wartime experiences, but when the war was brought up he would grow quiet.
Even reading his great-grandfather’s leather-bound war time diary, his descriptions were quite terse. He described overtaking the Turks in Be’er Sheva this way: “We took Be’er Sheva after a bit of a scrap.”
In Australia and New Zealand there is great pride in the memory of the Battle of Be’er Sheva. It’s also a welcome story of military triumph after the devastating losses they suffered in Galilopli, Turkey earlier in the war.
Amid mortar shells and machine gun fire, 800 light horsemen charged some 20,000 feet over open ground towards the Turkish who were caught by surprise. They had been expecting British imperial troops to try to take the holding line from Gaza. They also did not expect that the light horsemen, who were infantrymen who traveled by horse, to charge the whole way on horseback. Usually they would dismount at a certain distance from the trenches at the enemy line.
The subterfuge worked. The battle that began at dusk left Be’er Sheva in British imperial hands, 31 Australians were killed and over a hundred Turkish were left dead. Beersheva was a strategic city to capture, for beyond it lay the prize of Jerusalem and other cities and towns of the Holy Land including Jericho, Nazareth and Bethlehem. Damascus and other Syrian cities also were also taken within the year.
But victory that day one hundred years ago in Be’er Sheva was also motivated by thirst. Thirst of the hundreds of horses who at that point had not drunk any water for as long as two days.
Once they broke through the line in Beersheva the horses – and the men – could drink from its wells.
“It’s a very important part of Australian identity,” Welsh, the reenactor, said.
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Israel State Archives suffering mountain of unreleased documents
About 95 percent of the material in the Israel State Archives is concealed from the public, with “no practical way to open it”…
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MKs to European Parliament members: recognize Hezbollah's political wing as terror group
Ongoing global anti-Semitism, Iranian operations in the region, Hezbollah, the Greater Jerusalem bill and more were all discussed between delegates of the European Parliament and MKs from across the political spectrum in the Knesset on Monday.
The discussions were held in the framework of a visit by a delegation of eight MEPs currently visiting Israel, headed by MEP Fulvio Martusciello of the Christian democratic European People’s Party, a center-right grouping in the European Parliament.
One of the key issues raised during the talks was by Yesh Atid MK and former Shin Bet chief Yaakov Peri regarding hostile Iranian activity close in the region and close to Israel’s borders as well as the status of Hezbollah as perceived by the EU.
Peri said that “the time has come for the European Union to recognize all branches of Hezbollah as a terror organization and not just its military [branch],” Peri told the MEPs.
The EU currently only lists Hezbollah’s paramilitary guerrilla militia as a terror group and not the entire organization, which includes its political wing which has 14 seats in the Lebanese parliament and two ministers in the government.
Peri also underlined the growing Iranian presence in Syria close to the border with Israel, noting that Israel has made numerous requests to the international community to clamp down on Tehran’s activities in the region which have gone unanswered.
Knesset Speaker Yuli Edelstein said that Israel-EU relations were extremely important, and observed in particular that security cooperation had increased in recent years following a spate of terror attacks in Europe similar to those experienced of late in Israel.
He also noted that he has been criticized for various pieces of legislation proposed by MKs deemed detrimental or harmful to peace and coexistence, but which would never be passed into law and some of which had not even be submitted to the Knesset.
Edelstein referenced the Greater Jerusalem bill which had been scheduled for a vote for passage to the Knesset on Sunday and would would annex 19 West Bank settlements to the city of Jerusalem.
Edelstein said that the bill had not yet been passed to the Knesset, and added that it would not create any substantial changes to the status of Jerusalem.
At the same series of discussions, United Torah Judaism MK Yisrael Eichler upbraided the EU for interfering in Israel’s internal affairs.
Eichler pointed out that the EU and its member countries have complained and objected to Russian interference in internal political affairs in Europe but alleged that the EU conducted similar activities in Israel.
In referenced in particular financial support of the EU to what he termed leftist, anti-religious organizations in Israel.
For their part, the MEPs expressed a friendly attitude to the Jewish state, with MEP Miltiadis Kyrkos of Greece saying that the delegation “came as friend” of Israel and expressed appreciation in particular on behalf of Greece and Cyrpus for energy cooperation between the countries.
MEP Iveta Grigule-Peterse of Latvia said that as someone from a country with unfriendly neighbors, a reference to Russia, she was impressed to see how such a small country can survive in such an environment.
Martusciello concluded his comments by saying that time was “running out” and that public officials had an obligation to use all diplomatic tools at their disposal in the battle for democracy and peace.
“We are obligated to achieve this for our citizens,” said Martusciello.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Special police unit to be established for Temple Mount
Public Defense Minister Gilad Erdan announced on Tuesday a plan to establish a special police unit that will be dedicated to keeping order on Temple Mount in Jerusalem’s Old City.
The plan came as result of conclusions drawn following a terrorist attack on the compound in July 2017 in which two Israeli policemen were killed.
The Temple Mount Unit will be equipped with advanced technology and will gather intelligence in order to protect visitors to the holy site, the ministry said.
The unit will include approximately 200 policemen, in which 100 will be specially recruited to the police in the course of the next year.
In light of the announcement, Erdan said, that in his vision, “in two years Jerusalem will become not only the holiest city in the world but also the safest.
“With the most advanced technology, the city will become a model for cities around the world for its skilled policemen and for the technology it uses,” he said.
Following July’s attack, the Israeli government decided to install metal detectors at the entrances of several gates to Temple Mount and closed others.
After large-scale resistance by Palestinians, and also international pressure, Israel decided to remove the new safety measure and reassess how to secure the compound.
During a tour of east Jerusalem’s Jewish neighborhoods in August, Erdan said he was advancing a NIS 1.2 billion plan to strengthen the security infrastructure in Jerusalem, which includes adding 1,250 police officers to the capital, improving the salary of the officers and establishing a control center with thousands of “smart cameras,” which will be placed all over the capital’s Old City.
“I will continue to do everything that is in my power to make sure that every family that wants to come live here can do it and be safe,” Erdan said at the time.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Deri’s case evolving, likely to include ethics-related charges
The Israel Police is shifting its focus in the case against Interior Minister Arye Deri from economic-related charges to ethics-related criminal offenses, Channel 2 News reported on Tuesday.
“A large amount of money was drawn from Yaffa Deri’s non-profit organizations to relatives and associates. No one really knows where the money went and for what. But one thing is certain – a large amount of money was spent, not for the purposes that the NGOs were established for,” a senior law enforcement official was quoted as saying.
“The main point [of the investigation] is now shifting toward ethical offenses. The suspicions are strong,” he said.
Deri has already been questioned five times by the Lahav 433 National Fraud Unit in its criminal investigation. Until now, it had been reported that he was suspected of tax offenses, money laundering and breach of trust.
The investigation is being conducted by the Israel Police, the Israel Tax Authority and the Israel Money Laundering and Terrorism Financing Prohibition Authority.
During the investigation, Deri was reportedly questioned about three main issues. The first concerns suspicion of tax offenses, fraud and money laundering in a real estate deal in which Deri allocated a property in the Givat Shaul neighborhood of Jerusalem to his brother Shlomo, who is also expected to be indicted.
The second pertains to allegations that the construction of a vacation home owned by the Deri family in Kfar Hoshen in the Upper Galilee Valley, also known as Safsufa, was financed with money that was not reported to the tax authorities.
The third matter concerns the NGO Mifalot Simha, run by Deri’s wife, Yaffa. It is suspected that some of the organization’s money was not raised or used in accordance with tax regulations.
After the last questioning session in September, Deri posted on Twitter: “I just finished my questioning. This time, too, I answered all of the questions in detail. With the help of God, everything is okay and will be okay. May the people of Israel have a great day.”
Last month, Israeli Public Broadcasting Corporation Kan reported that the police were leaning toward recommending that Attorney-General Avichai Mandelblit indict both Deris.
That report said some of the offenses in which Deri was allegedly involved were committed during his time in office.
It remains unclear which of the issues will be included in the indictment, but the report indicated that law enforcement authorities were likely to accept the police’s recommendation.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Russia on Manafort charges: US should further investigate Ukrainian links
MOSCOW – After US charges against President Donald Trump’s former campaign manager Paul Manafort, Washington should investigate “the Ukrainian trace”, the RIA news agency cited Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov as saying on Tuesday.
Kiev “has information” about the 2016 US presidential election, Lavrov told a news briefing, RIA reported.
Federal investigators probing alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election, something Moscow denies, charged Manafort with money laundering on Monday.
Neither Trump nor his campaign was mentioned in the indictment against Manafort. The charges, some going back more than a decade, center on Manafort’s work for Ukraine.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Blast in Afghan capital causes numerous casualties
KABUL – A blast in the Afghan capital Kabul on Tuesday caused numerous casualties, Reuters witnesses and Afghan officials said.
A Reuters television team saw at least eight people who appeared to have been killed, besides several wounded at the explosion site in the city’s Wazir Akbar Khan area.
A public health official said three dead bodies and 10 wounded had been taken to city hospitals.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Syrian govt. says ready to take part in Moscow-backed congress
BEIRUT – The government in Damascus is ready to take part in a congress of rival Syrian parties that Russia aims to host in the Black Sea resort of Sochi next month, Syrian UN Ambassador Bashar al-Jaafari said on Tuesday.
He said during a televised news conference in Astana, Kazakhstan, that the congress was a result of dialogue with Syria’s Russian allies and of victories in the field.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Turkish passenger plane makes emergency landing in Ukraine
KIEV — A passenger plane flying from Moscow to Turkey made an emergency landing at Odessa airport in southern Ukraine on Tuesday after a suspicious package was found in one of its lavatories, a local police official said in a post on Facebook.
“The discovery forced the crew to take the decision to carry out an emergency landing at the nearest airport, which turned out to be Odessa International,” said Ruslan Forostyak, advisor to the head of Odessa regional police.
The press service of Odessa could not immediately be reached for comment.
Forostyak said the landing was successful and a security team with dogs was examining the package.
He did not name the plane’s operator but said it was Turkish. A Turkish Airlines official said it was not one of the company’s planes.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
One suspect in custody in New York City shooting
NEW YORK – New York City police were investigating reports of gunfire and a vehicle striking people in lower Manhattan on Tuesday afternoon, and one person has been taken into custody, police officials said.
Police were unable to confirm if there were any injuries, but local media reported at least five, including possible fatalities. The incident took place near the West Side Highway and Chambers Street, police said.
An eyewitness told ABC Channel 7 that he saw a white pick-up truck drive south down the bike path alongside the West Side Highway at full speed and hit several people. The witness, a man identified by the name “Eugene,” said bodies were lying outside Stuyvesant High School, one of the city’s elite public schools.
He also reported hearing about nine or 10 shots, but was not sure where they came from.
The West Side Highway runs on the western edge of Manhattan, alongside the Hudson River.
This is a developing story.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Israeli army opens investigation: Soldiers shot Palestinian because he refused to stop
The Israeli army has opened an official investigation into the lethal shooting of a Palestinian whose vehicle approached Israeli soldiers near a West Bank…
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Israel won't recognize an independent Catalonia – for now
Israel won’t be commenting on Catalonia’s bid for independence in the near future, senior Israeli officials said, despite a request by Spain as part of its attempt to block the region’s push for independence.
Last week, the Spanish government in Madrid requested that Israel officially announce that it will not recognize Catalonia. Israel declined to support either side, calling the conflict an “internal European issue,” the official said.
According to another Israeli official, “just as Israel doesn’t want Europe to intervene in its internal issues, it would be inappropriate for us to comment on the matter.” The official also told Haaretz that Israel’s official stance may change in the future.
Stop comparing Catalonia to Palestine | Opinion
Israel’s position stands out from the line taken by the U.S and the EU, and the government in Madrid has received official support from other Western countries. On Friday, U.S. State Department spokeswoman Heather Nauert said “Catalonia is an integral part of Spain, and the United States supports the Spanish government’s constitutional measures to keep Spain strong and united.”
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Donald Tusk, the president of the EU, also supports the actions of the central government in Madrid. He says that the Catalonian bid for independence won’t change EU operations, and that the EU will continue to work only with the central government of Spain.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Israel’s Labor party leader sides with Diaspora Jewish leaders in Western Wall controversy
In his first appearance before Diaspora Jewish leaders, the head of Israel’s largest opposition party shared a little secret: He knew from day one that the government had no intention of following through with its plan to create an upgraded and permanent egalitarian prayer space at the Western Wall.
“I was a cabinet minister at the time, and I remember saying what a great achievement this was,” said Avi Gabbay, the newly elected leader of the Labor party in an address to the Jewish Agency Board of Governors on Tuesday.
“To my regret, the joy didn’t last long. As soon as the plan was approved, the minister sitting next to me, who was much more senior, said, ‘Avi, don’t celebrate. It just won’t happen.’ He knew then what we would witness later.”
‘Stop throwing us crumbs’, non-Orthodox Jewish leaders tell Netanyahu’s representative
Gabbay, who did not disclose the name of his cabinet source, served briefly as minister of environmental affairs in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. He quit in May of 2016 as an act of protest after Netanyahu ousted Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon to make room for another party in the coalition.
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These were Gabbay’s first public remarks on the Western Wall controversy since being elected head of the Labor party in July. “I’m a believing Jew, and I’m of the view that every Jew has the right to express himself in his way – secular, Orthodox, Conservative or Reform,” he said, drawing a round of applause from the audience.
In January 2016, the government approved a plan to upgrade the existing temporary prayer plaza used by non-Orthodox Jews on the southern side of the Western Wall for mixed-gender services. The plan would also have provided the Conservative and Reform movements with official recognition at the Western Wall. Under pressure from his ultra-Orthodox coalition partners, however, Netanyahu pushed through a vote in June to suspend the deal.
Describing the current situation as “unacceptable,” Gabbay said: “Would the soldiers who liberated the Western Wall in 1967 believe that we, the Jewish people, would be fighting about it like this today? It’s unbelievable, and we should fix it.”
Earlier in the day, members of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors met with Israeli lawmakers to explain why they felt so betrayed by the government’s decision.
At a special meeting of the Knesset caucus devoted to strengthening Jewish unity, Jewish Agency Chairman Natan Sharansky was unusually downbeat about the prospects of resolving the dispute. “The crisis continues,” he said, noting that little, if any, progress had been made in recent months by the Israeli government to resolve it.
Yehuda Glick, an Orthodox member of the ruling Likud party, earned a round of applause from Diaspora Jewish leaders when he said the government was entirely to blame for the crisis over the Western Wall.
“A deal is a deal, and you can’t break a deal,” he said, “and here I believe that the Israeli government has turned its back on the Jewish people. Now it has the responsibility to solve this crisis. We cannot allow Jewish people from around the world to not feel part of Israel.”
Earlier this week, a senior representative of Israel’s government tried to reassure world Jewish leaders that Netanyahu remains committed to the agreement. They didn’t buy it, though.
“What we understood is that the few crumbs the government has said it will throw our way it will continue to throw our way,” said Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, summing up the meeting. “We said, I believe loudly and clearly, that those crumbs are unacceptable and the unilateral declaration that there will be some minor improvement will not meet the approval of Diaspora Jewry or those here in the State of Israel.”
Tzachi Hanegbi, deputy minister for regional cooperation and a close confidant of the prime minister, met with Jacobs and other members of the Jewish Agency Board of Governors at the Western Wall in Jerusalem’s Old City, hoping to convince them of the need to make further compromises. Hanegbi had been asked by Netanyahu to find a way to resolve the crisis with Diaspora Jewry that was sparked by the Western Wall controversy.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
Baby bats can learn foreign languages
Fish have feelings, it turns out, and cats are smart even if they ignore you. Now, Tel Aviv University has proven language acquisition capabilities in baby bats.
Put otherwise, bats have language, Dr. Yossi Yovel and his students Yosef Prat and Lindsay Azoulay reported in their paper, “Crowd vocal learning induces vocal dialects in bats,” published in PLoS Biology.
As children, we learn language from others, but the ability to learn vocalization had not been widely recognized in animals, Yovel explains. “The most common animal models for this ‘vocal learning’ are songbirds, which learn songs from specific tutors. Bird researchers usually emphasize that a bird learns to sing from one parent.”
Now they have demonstrated that baby bats listen and learn from an entire colony of several hundred bats, not just from their parents, Yovel says: “In other words, young bats pick up the dialect vocalized by their surrounding roost-mates.”
And how do they know this? The team raised 14 bat pups with their mothers in three different colonies. In each of these colonies, the scientists played three specific subsets from a collection of recordings of natural bat vocalizations over speakers. They did this for a whole year, until the youngsters had reached adulthood.
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Although the babies were raised with their mothers and were exposed to their mothers’ “normal” dialect, each group developed a dialect resembling that of the batty crowd to which it was exposed through the recordings, Prat says.
What differences are we speaking of, so to speak? Yovel compares bat dialect differences to London versus Scottish accents: “The pups eventually adopted a dialect that was more similar to the local ‘Scottish’ dialect than to the ‘London’ accent of their mothers.”
Previous research by others has shown that bats not only use their squeaks to echolocate, giving rise to the fallacy that they can see in the dark – they also squeal to communicate with one another. Or, as the scientists put it, “echolocation conveys social information.”
So can bats learn their equivalent of French? Can they acquire a new dialect to the extent that they can integrate into foreign colonies? Stay tuned.
Article source: http://www.jpost.com/Breaking-News/NY-Times-Some-Trump-advisers-used-private-email-for-government-business-505972
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