I don't believe in conspiracies but I do believe in evidence.  Nevertheless, who killed Yitzhak Rabin isn't the subject of this short post nor will I engage in discussions about that issue (but I will gladly discuss the media's role in creating a false sense of "incitement" running up to the assassination).

What I do want to ask is this: Yigal Amir can be brought into a courtroom with ease and sit quietly for an hour or so and listen to the deliberations and hear the judge's decision (read about developments here) but he can't be brought to his son's brit milah (circumcision) ceremony and there are some who want to prevent the brit from being held even inside the prison?

A courtroom can be secured but a small hall in a synagogue can't?  Who is fooling whom?  The law is sacred but a 3500 year old religious ceremony is not?

So, this is the Jewish/Democratic state?

The Rabbi of an Orthodox synagogue in Los Angeles has proven that the pulpit should not be thought of as the cockpit.

Rabbi Yosef Kanefsky of Bnai David-Judea Congregation has issued a call in the local Jewish Journal weekly to openly discuss the redivision of Jerusalem.  Even the Los Angeles Times took note and wrote it up.

I read his article (here) and I am forced to say that I am not very impressed with his logic or his knowledge of international law as well as the history of the Zionist movement, or more properly, is ignoring of that history.  To be generous, I'd put him behind a mechitza and give him a condensed seminar to catch up on these issues and more.  It is actually embarrassing that this is the face of Orthodox Judaism in LA when it comes to current affairs, Middle East history and using plain sense.

What Kanefsky wants is not to see Jerusalem divided (and here his editor did him a disservice) but that we Jews/Israelis need be honest in telling the story of our conflict since the 1967 war (as if prior to 1967 is irrelevant.  of course, if we do relate to the pre-67 period, all of Kanefksy's thinking would be revealed to be pure, you should excuse the expression hogwash) because without that "honesty", no meaningful talks about peace can take place (if the Arabs were just as honest the Rabbi might turn rabid).

He must have just finished reading that inimical book of Gershom Gorenberg, The Accidental Empire, for he writes about the probable illegality of the reestablishment of Jewish communities in Judea, Samaria and Gaza which Gorenberg's book plays up (actually its the opinion of but one legal advisor - who has long since emmigrated to London - which flies in the face of dozens of others holding the opposite opinion, even if we neglect the 3000 year Jewish right to the Land).

I can presume, as we all, that the Rabbi has a grounding in Halacha and the Talmud.  Besides learning about the status of Jerusalem in the framework of Jewish tradition, he should also know about the League of Nations Mandate which sought to promote the reconstitution of the Jewish national homeland in the territory that, at the very least, included all of Jerusalem and Judea, Samaria and Gaza if not more (Rabbi, we were forced to partition the Land due to Arab violence that England, not us, surrendered to).

Could it be the Los Angles ambience that has affected his thinking?  Can it be that he is delusional and irrational or just playing to the grandstands as this excerpt illustrates:-

"The possibility that the Kotel, the Jewish Quarter or the Temple Mount would return to their former states of Arab sovereignty [no Rabbi, they would be handed over to the PA] is unfathomable to me.  At the same time though, to insist that the government not talk about Jerusalem at all...is to insist that Israel come to the negotiating table telling a dishonest story...".

But that bit doesn't make sense.  What seems to annoy him is our "story".  But if we alter our story to make the other side and him happy, we play into their hands.  What has his narrative to do with the fact that the Muslim Waqf is destroying Jewish historical and archeological artifacts?  That our antiquities are being dumped?  That the governments, backed up by the courts and a weak Chief Rabbinate, deny Jews the right to pray on the Temple Mount, to visit openly as Jews and not just as non-identifiable 'tourists'.  That the Mount of Olives is desecrated regularly?  Can he not recall what was done, when Jerusalem was divided, to the tombstones of our and maybe his ancestors - pathways and latrine covers?

Rabbi Kanefsky may be the spitiual leader of an Orthodox congregation but he happens also to be an outstanding and unfortunate example of that League of Trembling Israelites, seeking a disconnected high moral ground of a mea culpa stance.  He is retreating from Judaism and Zionism, the Jewish cultural and religious tradition and legacy.  And worse, he displays little knowledge of what the 'peace meeting' in Annapolis portends.

The other day, there was a ruckus.  A group of religious fanatics attacked policemen, endangering their lives.  A policewomen was taken hostage after severely beaten and stabbed.  Only after police agreed to release prisoners was the woman released herself in exchange.

Did this happen in the hills of Samaria with the "Youthtop Youth"?

Did this happen in the Casbah of Hebron where rocks were thrown at policemen before?

Did this happen at Amona?

No, at none of these places. 

It happened at Peki'in.  They weren't Jews - but Druze.

Can you imagine this happening, say, in Hebron?  Or in Homesh? Or in Gush Katif in the summer of '05?

Dare I think that this is blatant discrimination?

Druze does ryhme with Jews but there the similarity stops.

Some might think it admirable that a potentially explosive situation was defused in this way.

Well, if so (and these people are mainly bleeding-heart liberals), can we have them sympathize with Jews in parallel situations when attacked by ill-disciplined police personnel?

No prejudice, no discrimination

May I introduce to you Mr. Tyler Brule (that's a circumflexed u and an acute e for you French speakers who need the diacritic marks, although his father never used them).  He's a Canadian in Europe and a homosexual, two things that have nothing to do with this column.  In his past as a reporter, he spent time with the Arafats in their Tunisian compound (before an Israeli Prime Minister, a Foreign Minister and one poodle all thought it would be a great idea to bring them from their compound to close proximity to Israel) and survived an ambush in Kabul where he was shot twice, he claims.  He thinks that media and design are inextricably linked and that it's pedantic (his words) to attempt to keep the two apart.

That's him above.

Tyler has an urban environment column every Saturday in the International Herald Tribune. And how do I know that?  Well, I spotted this ad below:

You only have to take about 30 seconds to notice that neither Jerusalem nor Tel Aviv are in that ad.  No culture there is the only assumption.  Tyler (sorry but I prefer his first name rather than a family name I don't know how to pronounce) has designed his purview of culture so that Israel and its cities are not linked to anything.  Tripoli, though, where the Arafatian compound used to be, is included.  There is a nothingness between Cairo and Dubai.  Once again, Israel is wiped off the map but this time, the prestigious Int'l Herald Tribune has a hand in it.

What am I and you, my readers, to deduce from this?  An error?  A typo?  Or, perhaps, there's a grand design at work.  A few days ago, Roger Cohen published in the IHT a piece on the Bamiyan Buddhas.  You remember those: the rock-carved statues that the Talibans dynamited in Afghanistan.  And he even referred to the destroyers as Islamic fanatics.  But does the IHT have anything special about some other Islamic fanatics who are destroying another religious site called the Temple Mount in Jerusalem (that city that even isn't included in the ad about culture)?  Is there a Jewish culture besides Halle Berry's joke about noses, not to forget Sarah Silverman's joke about Amy Winehouse's nose ( At the VMA this year, she declared that Winehouse is Jewish - and she is - and "if she isn't, then someone needs to tell her face" and, pointing at her own prominent nose, Silverman shouted, "she's got one of these".)

Is anti-Israel and anti-Zionist sentiment based on politics moving on over into the culture sphere of downright Judeaphobia?  Are too many Jews lending a hand?  Is George W. Bush the only one truly concerned about the Iranian threat to obliterate Israel?

There's a gap developing more rapidly than we can grasp and there's a lot of work to be down before we fall into it.  It's a culture gap, a political gap and a psychological one.  It's no use moaning or ignoring or assuming that aloneness is an okay reality.

As this site reports, a soldier was shot and severely wounded today near Ariel.

He was "tremping", that Israeli slang term for hitchhiking.

For the past few years, the far-out Left, the Jewish peace camp extremists, Haaretz and others have been trying to get the term "apartheid" into general lexicon usage.

But I ask you, besides all the other silly and ridiculous apsects of this false comparison, if the system Israel practices in YESHA is one of apartheid, how come Arab vehicles can drive along roads that enable them to shoot at Israelis?

Either there's "apartheid" or there isn't, right?