If you go here, if you listen carefully to the Hebrew commentary of the video (if you comprehend Hebrew), you'll be able to hear that the Temple Mount has "two parts, the Jewish and the Muslim section". Well, that's where the Pope visited according to Ynet.

I am not quite sure that definition's bad.  Sometimes, in a situation like this, fifty per cent is more than you'd expect.

And if you can actually read the accompanying Hebrew text, it reads there that the Pope, on the Temple Mount, visited

במתחם כיפת הסלע

which translates as : "in the Dome of the Rock compound."

That's even better.  No Haram El-Sharif.

Funny how ignorant journalists can make the correct mistakes.

P.S.  No video since Israel and the Palestinian Authority broadcasting companies couldn't reach an agreement on rights to distribute.  And they still expect us to make peace?

Remember the "apartheid roads" canard?

That there are "Jews only roads" in Yesha?  Part of the "occupation oppression and harrassment"?

Well, where are they?

Here are some photos I snapped Tuesday, May 5, of Arab cars, bearing Palestinian Authority license plates, on the way in to Jerusalem from Shiloh, over 30 kilometers of road:

Please, do not comment on the driving skills of the Arab drivers, or lack thereof.   A)  They are too well known;  B)  It doesn't help;  C)  Someone will call you a racist (it's enough they are calling us an "apartheid regime".

From you correspondent blogger in the field.

Welcome/Wilkommen to Israel's Homegrown Nazi Propaganda.

Is that a bit too strong a headline for you?

Well, make your own judgment.

Here's the satirical photo that adorns this morning's Ma'ariv Weekend Political Section, page 23:

That's Minister for Foreign Affairs Avigdor Lieberman, if you have difficulty recognizing him.

His portrait is adorned in a red lipstick overlay with the words, in German, meine Liebe!, my love/mydear one, in Gothic script.

It's the creation of one "Lahav", e-mail: bigeyes.express@gmail.com.

Now, I know that the left in Israel considers Lieberman a fascist.

And I know that his name is "Lieberman".

But to draw overt attention, via the German Gothic element, to Nazi reminisces or, perhaps, to recall homoerotic memories of Max Hansen (*) of Berlin? That was his only creative graphic choice?

After all, Lieberman is Moldavian. Lahav couldn't have found a more relevant model? He just had to link up with the German/Nazi association, eh?

And while I agree, it's not Rabin in a SS uniform, it is unmistakeably intended to draw a subliminal link with Nazi art flavor.

But he's alright, that Lahav, he won't have to flee Israel like Hansen needed to flee Germany.

==========================================

(*)

In 1932, Max Hansen satirised Adolf Hitler as a homosexual with his song "War'n Sie schon mal in mich verliebt?" (Did you ever fall in love with me?).

The picture you've been waiting for:

J Street's Jeremy Ben-Ami has an op-ed in The Forward: For Israel's Sake, Moderate American Jews Must Find Their Voice (and a similar one in the ‘International Herald Tribune’ of April 10, under the headline: “Tel-Aviv, Then and Now” (which is a reprint from the New York Times.

Its essence:

For the sake of Israel, the United States and the world, it is time for American political discourse to re-engage with reality. Voices of reason need to reclaim what it means to be pro-Israel and to establish in American political discourse that Israel’s core security interest is to achieve a negotiated two-state solution and to define once and for all permanent, internationally recognized borders...In early 21st-century America, the rules of politics are being rewritten, and conventional political orthodoxy is clearly open to once-inconceivable challenges.

It is time for the broad, sensible mainstream of pro-Israel American Jews and their allies to challenge those on the extreme right who claim to speak for all American Jews in the national debate about Israel and the Middle East — and who, through the use of fear and intimidation, have cut off reasonable debate on the topic.

Why should this silly approach be adopted?

Well, Jeremy asserts:

By and large, we are a progressive community, among the most liberal in the United States.

and what really bothers him is:

In the name of protecting Israel, some of our community’s leaders became linked with neoconservatives...Some of our leaders have struck up fast friendships with far-right Christian Zionists...many of these are people with whom we disagree profoundly on values and beliefs that our community holds dear...

In Washington today, these voices are seen to speak for the entire American Jewish community. But they don’t speak for me. And I don’t believe they speak for the majority of the American Jews with whom I have lived and worked.

So, Jeremy's personal beliefs and what he perceives personally to be the majority of American Jewish beliefs is what counts. And if the majority of Jew were arch-conservatives, would Jeremy be quiet? Of course not.  He's not a true democrat.

By the by, if it is true that Jews are overwhelmingly progressive (further left than "liberal"), how come for over 60 years the vast majority of America's Jews support stands and positions that are what Jeremy would consider "extreme right views"?

Well, simple, really. Because American Jews are not totally stupid and they know that in the Middle East, there is no balance nor logic nor rationality on the Arab side and you can't compare all that happens in the Middle East to the political atmosphere in democratic America. To apply "Washington rules" of the Constitution and Bill of Rights to the Arab-Israel conflict is not only wrong but dumb. Jeremy, though, would blame the "Jewish establishment" at all costs for this attitude of American Jewry, foremost AIPAC, as if he were an antisemite, which he isn't.

At that Forward op-ed, some people left comments that they presumed to know what Jeremy's grandparents and parents would be doing in their graves - rolling over. I don't know for sure that is the case, but since Jeremy does invoke his ancestry ("I support Israel. My family history ingrains in me the belief that the Jewish people need and deserve a home. I know that that nation must be strong and secure and that a deep bond between Israel and America is essential to its survival."), I am going to take a guess.

And my guess is that with his current policies, if Jeremy had been his grandfather, Tel Aviv would not have been purchased and established. It would have been considered Arab land, Jewish expansion and needlessly causing friction with the neighbors. Sometimes, chronology does work - Jeremy is not his grandfather, although I am sure his proud display of genealogy is as empty as his political aptitude and I am not even going to guess what his father, Irgunist Yitshaq Ben-Ami would be thinking.

On April 17, next week, the descendants of the founders will gather in Tel Aviv at the ‘old’ Manshia Train Station (border Neve-Tsedek/Jaffa) on April 17th, at 10:30 to reenact the famous photograph of the plot purchasers on the sand dunes together with descendants of the city builders and prominent figures alongside thousands of residents.

Jeremy Ben-Ami will be there.

I wonder, will anyone be there holding up a placard reading: