The Latest News From the Village of Chelm - Opinion

As a Jew in the Diaspora, I have to shake my head and wonder at what is going on in Israel today.

Recent news reports of a major rabbi attributing the deaths of Israeli soldiers to their religious defects not only offended me terribly, but point out the failures of Israeli

They can daven the Hizbullah to death.

leadership to seriously care about every Jew.

According to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, the Shas party spiritual leader, IDF soldiers killed in the Lebanon War were killed because they did not observe Shabbat, observe the Torah and pray every day. "Is it any wonder that soldiers are killed in war?" he asked, attributing their deaths also in part because they don't wear phylacteries every day.

Someone should tell that to the Israeli officer who threw himself on a grenade in Lebanon, effectively committing suicide to save his men. Just before dying the officer yelled, "Shema Yisrael." I suppose if he laid tefillin instead before throwing himself on the explosive he would have survived. Anyway, the good rabbi has hit upon a new military strategy for Israel in the event of another war with Nasrallah's boys: take all the Orthodox rabbis from Shas and have them wear tefillin so they can daven the Hizbullah to death.

The soldiers of the IDF are not only the front line for democratic Israel, but also for the free world; and any Jew, secular or religious, who fights to protect Eretz Yisrael is as virtuous as the next. I doubt even Rabbi Akiva would agree with Rabbi Yosef.

Moving on to events in Jerusalem, I found that four International Solidarity Movement leaders from abroad were in the Holy City last Wednesday broadcasting live on radio in Berkeley, California (where else) that Israel has a purposeful plan to murder Palestinian children.

These four could remind one of the opening scene with the witches around the cauldron from Shakespeare's MacBeth.

Alison Weir runs an Arab front in the US called If Americans Knew where she dispenses propaganda that Israel indiscriminately murders Palestinians. Her website is filled with graphs and charts containing made up statistics skewing the number of Palestinians killed, as suicide bombers or terrorists are "civilians" who were "murdered" by the Israeli government. She tours colleges in America and has even spoken at law schools. She also has written columns for Nazis in America like David Duke and, until I exposed her doing so at ISM conferences, used to dispense literature claiming the Jews fomented the Holocaust to create Israel.

Greta Berlin, another American and Los Angeles-based ISM activist from Women in Black in the US, was also there. She was just in France trying to arrange an ISM flotilla from Crete to break the Israeli Navy's control of Gaza and to facilitate the transfer of weapons to Hamas. Berlin, a big blonde in her 60s, once had a Palestinian husband and says her "Palestinian" children own the land of Israel. She runs around with all the ISMers in America striving to destroy Israel through boycotts, funding for the fedayeen, and letters to the editor in the local newspapers accusing Israel of unspeakable atrocities that did not occur.

Then we have Mary Hughes, a British-American writer also affiliated with Women in Black from LA, and an acolyte of Norman Finkelstein, who claims the Jews use the Holocaust to make money. Mary put together a letter to the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra during a visit to LA that was signed by every anti-Semite and Israeli radical leftist in the world. While she's in Israel, it seems, when Arabs tell Mary and her ISM buddies that olives legally grown on deeded land belonging to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria are Palestinian property, this 63-year-old phony "peace activist" assists the Arabs in stealing the produce, Mary acting as a human shield. Besides, when she and her ISM buddies are forced off property not belonging to them, she can then write in America about how the settlers are attacking "innocent" Arabs, instead of the other way around. Mary refers to the IDF as the IOF - Israeli Occupation Force.

Hedy Epstein is the only Jewess in the bunch. Hedy, who spent the Second World War in complete safety from the ravages of the Holocaust, claims she is a Holocaust survivor. She says she came from a family that was anti-Zionist in Germany before the war and that perished in the camps after Hedy was whisked off to England for protection. Of course, many of those Jews against a Jewish homeland before the Holocaust grew up after that awful event and now support a Jewish state. That is, all but the likes of a Hedy Epstein, who makes a living running around supporting the Arabs in their goal to dismantle Israel. I think the word is kapo.

All of these harpies are associates of Paul LaRudee, from the Northern California ISM. He was deported from Israel for suspected connections to Hamas a little over a year ago while trying to enter Israel under a false identification and passport. After fighting deportation, Paul went to Lebanon and became a human shield for Hizbullah. LaRudee claims he is "nonviolent," but he openly supports terrorism against Jews as "legitimate

These are internationals out to destroy Israel, not citizens practicing "free speech."

resistance." He should have joined his friends in Jerusalem, because no doubt the GSS and border control would probably have let him in this time.

Not one of these women is any less dangerous to Israel's existence and worldwide image than LaRudee, but they all got into the country. A police source told me that it's the price of democracy, but these are internationals out to destroy Israel, not citizens practicing "free speech" in their own land.

Using the logic of the Israeli authorities, I could expect to hear next on American radio:

"Live from Jerusalem! Ahmadinejhad and Nasrallah - speaking from Jerusalem Square and the Kotel! Reporting to you on their next Holocaust Tour! Sponsored by the Israeli security services and the Israeli government."

I bet that show would get high ratings in Berkeley.

Opinion	Tevet 11, 5769 / January 7, '09