"Etrog" Olmert has gotten over-confident, thinking that the world will be as coddling as the Israeli media and the agenda-ed judiciary. Yahoo! News changed its original headline for an updated article that still (at the time of writing this, at least) uses the following: "Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said Israel was not bound by the December 2008 target for the peace agreement set at last week's US-hosted Mideast summit in Annapolis, Md."
A few years ago, when I was in a group that studied Kohelet, Ecclesiastes, I remember being told that every word has power according to Judaism. We must be careful to say "bli neder" before, rather than after our statements, for instance. When at Annapolis, Ehud Olmert agreed to many things. Some have been revealed, and other things he has kept secret. They are secret to the Israeli public, but not secret to G-d and certainly not secret to those he promised, George Bush, Condoleezza Rice and the Arabs, who want to destroy us.
Olmert mustn't forget that once said, words can't be erased, at least in the real world. Etrog Olmert is in quicksand and he may be in over his head by now.
Etrog Olmert is in quicksand and he may be in over his head by now.
It's the eve of Chanukah, the Holiday of Miracles in the "material, obvious, sense." It's not yet Purim, when the Hand of G-d is more hidden.
Living here in Shiloh puts me in a different perspective in terms of Jewish history and our future. For many years, there was annual, pre-Chanukah school trip for the second graders to a nearby mountain - the same mountain where the Maccabees and the Greeks battled. It's just a couple of minutes drive from here, between Eli and Maaleh Levona. The year that I accompanied the kids, as one of the teachers, the boys were left at the foot of the mountain and the girls were driven to the top. They met in the middle for a mock battle.
Today, we're battling for real, for the future of our country. In Shiloh, I can see the lights of Jordan through my dining room window; and if I walk a few steps past my backyard and climb the water tower, I can see the entire country - Tel Aviv, the Golan, the vapors of the Dead Sea. I don't have telescopic vision, nor zoom lenses for my eyes; it's just that our country, our precious land, is minute in this enormous Earth. Even with all of Judea and Samaria, we have the square miles (or kilometers) of one of the smallest of states in the USA.
It is very hard for even the most sympathetic American to comprehend this.
I have no doubt that no matter how difficult it looks today, just like the Maccabees of old, we will defeat our current Greeks and the Jews of today who are like the mityavnim, those who assimilated themselves into Greek culture.
"Nes Gadol Hayah Poh!" - "A Great Miracle Happened Here!"